Program Notes by Jim Yancy

George A. Faber, II, speaker

September 26 , 2009

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

Variations on “America”

 

Charles Ives, born in Danbury, Connecticut, was the son of George Ives, a U.S.Army bandleader in the American Civil War. Charles was taught to play the drum, cornet, piano, and violin by his father and played in his father’s band at the age of 12. At 13, he was composing simple marches and fiddle tunes. It was from his father that he learned the music of Stephen Foster. His father’s unique music lessons took an open-minded approach to musical theory, and Charles was encouraged to experiment in a musical unorthodoxy which asserted his independence from the rigid musical life of 19th century New England.  Ives became the youngest salaried church organist in Connecticut at the age of 14 and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on ‘America’ which he composed at 17.  Originally composed for organ, the work was later popularized in a 1949 arrangement for orchestra by William Schuman, and in 1964 was transcribed for wind band.

 

The five variations on “My Country, ‘tis of thee” are humorous in character and full of surprises.  There are musical evocations of marching in a parade, dancing the polonaise, attending the circus, and a set of close “barbershop” harmonies.  There is even an example of musical polytonality where two keys appear at once – rather volatile musical behavior for 1891, and at a July 4 celebration!

 

 

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

A Lincoln Portrait

 

Written as part of the World War II patriotic war effort in 1942,  A Lincoln Portrait uses material from speeches and letters of Lincoln and quoted folk songs of the period, including Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races” and the Appalachian Mountains ballad “Springfield Mountain.”  The spoken excerpts are punctuated by full orchestral pronouncements with particular emphasis on the brass section at climactic moments.  There are three distinct sections.  The first portrays Lincoln’s personality, what the composer called “the mysterious sense of fatality” that surrounded him, together with “something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit.”  In the middle part, which takes on a sprightlier quality, Lincoln’s background is evoked, and in the final section. Lincoln’s eloquent words from the Gettysburg Address bring the work to a triumphant conclusion.

 

 

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, From the New World

In 1891, it was suggested to Mrs. Jeannette M. Thurber, the philanthropic founder of the National Conservatory of Music, that her institution was not fulfilling its chief purpose of bringing to birth an American school of composition.  Two new candidates for the directorship were suggested – Dvorak and Sibelius – but no fruitful talks with Sibelius could be arranged and consequently Dvorak was offered the position.  At first he refused it, but Mrs. Thurber made him an offer he couldn’t refuse:  a two-year commitment with four months of each year a paid vacation; the opportunity of conducting several of his own works each season, and $15,000 a year, which was 25 times the salary he had been earning at the Prague Conservatory.  On September 15, 1892, Dvorak set out for New York, accompanied by his wife and two of his six children.

 

Although occasionally stricken with bouts of homesickness, Dvorak enjoyed his stay in the United States where he was readily accepted into New York society.  He took a five-room apartment at 327 East 17th Street, and there he composed a number of new works, including the Ninth Symphony which became the subject of a violent controversy.  Is it an American work by a Bohemian?  Or is it a Bohemian work with superficial American traits?  Dvorak himself added to the controversy when he wrote:  “Omit the nonsense about my having made use of …’American’ motives.  It is a lie.  I tried to write only in the sprit of these national melodies.”  Dvorak was too much the Czech to presume to write an American work.  His aim was to record the impressions of a visitor and to respond to the exuberance and vastness of a young and growing land.  “He wished also…to pay homage to the spirit of Negro folk music even while he longingly evoked the landscape of his own Bohemia.”

 

The first movement opens with a slow introduction in which the main theme is suggested in horns and lower strings.  This theme is carried over by the woodwinds to a transitional subject in flutes and oboes and to a second main theme.  This third main theme sounds something like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and is sometimes given as evidence of but one of several “Americanisms” in the work.

 

The second movement, one of the most celebrated in music, is built around an elegiac and nostalgic melody for the English horn.  It is a melody which so has the unmistakable personality of a spiritual that Dvorak is sometimes falsely assumed to have expropriated it.  One of Dvorak’s pupils, William Arms Fisher, later wrote words for it and the song which resulted, “Goin’ Home,” is now almost as famous as the original.  But there is an additional American programmatic element.  According to Dvorak, the direct inspiration for the second movement was the “Funeral in the Forest” scene from Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” The scherzo movement had also, according to the composer, a “Hiawatha” reference.  It supposedly was intended to depict “a feast in the wood where the Indians dance,” but it clearly evokes the character of Czech song and dance.

 

Although the energetic and jubilant march-like theme of the finale is often described as suggesting the restless energy of America, and the numerous recordings of the piece have used iconic American images ranging from the Statue of Liberty to Indian bonnets to the Empire State Building by way of Iowa corn fields to evoke America and the New World, all through the symphony the composer’s nostalgia for his homeland is evident.