MakingMUSIC CONCERTS
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Featuring the Association of the Louisville Orchestra’s Young Artist Competition Guest Soloists
Strauss Opening to Also sprach Zarathustra
Mozart Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
Wagner Ride of the Valkyries
ALO’s Young Artist Competition Guest Soloists
..........One of these will be selected for each performance
..............................................
Elgar Concerto for Cello in E minor (Mvt. 1)
.............................................. Caroline Saltzman, cello (3/1 & 3/2)
Tchaikovsky Variations on Rococo Theme for Cello, Op. 33
Miriam Smith, cello (3/14, 3/15 & 3/16)
Williams Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Sousa Semper Fidelis with Teddy’s Kids Conductors
Hancock Chameleon with Landfill Orchestra
Arr. Abrams
Ronson Uptown Funk
Arr. Abrams
What does a composer do when confronted by the heroic past, while managing the expectations of the present and still keeping an eye to the future? This is the overarching question that we are examining throughout this season. But this question doesn’t just apply to composers – it can just as easily be asked of any artist, writer, director, or even you.
Ultimately, this question leads us to ask how you find your own unique voice. All of the composers in the 2016/17 season had to struggle with being compared to composers who came before them. Some also struggled with political situations or expectations that affected their ability to be creative. All of them had to find their own unique compositional style or “voice” while also staying relevant and looking to the future of their craft. And in finding their own compositional voice, they each brought something new to the world of music making their mark in very distinctive ways. This is why Sousa sounds like Sousa, Mozart sounds like Mozart and why each composer’s music sounds different; much in the same way that writers have unique styles that are easily identifiable from Dr. Seuss to Langston Hughes to J.K. Rowling.
Modern day composers have all found their unique compositional voices through study and practice as well as embracing elements of the past while still looking to the future.
As you listen to the works of the composers on this program, ask yourself how each composer has taken musical forms as well as the traditions of the orchestra and made it uniquely theirs. How do they utilize the timbres (colors) of the instruments of the orchestra? How have they manipulated the musical form to express themselves? Can you tell if they were inspired by a particular composer, musical style, or musical form and how? Or have they created something so unique and new that they are exploring the future of music?
You can ask these same types of questions when you are reading a book, admiring a painting, watching a play and/or movie, etc. You can also ask these questions of yourself. How are you finding your own voice and what does that mean? What is your voice?
*Disclaimer – please be sure to review all video clips associated with the composers as well as any commentary prior to playing for students (especially on Youtube). We do our utmost to provide links that will not only best highlight the composer and the representative pieces but also maintain a level of appropriateness. The clips that are included below have been vetted for appropriateness however as the comments can change, please be sure to review before playing for students.
Timeline
1752 - Ben Franklin conducted his famous kite experiment
1756 - Mozart born in Salzburg, Austria
1775 - Daniel Boone blazed the trail through the Cumberland Gap
1775-83 American Revolutionary War
1778 - City of Louisville founded by George Rogers Clark
1786 - The Marriage of Figaro opera premiered in Vienna, Austria
1788 - Kentucky became the 15th state
1791 - Mozart died in Vienna, Austria
1803 - Louisiana Purchase
1804-06 Lewis and Clark expedition
1812 - Grimms’ Fairy Tales
1813 - Wagner born in Leipzig, Germany
1835 - Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales
1837 - Queen Victoria crowned in England
1840 - Tchaikovsky born in Votkinsk, Russia
1851 - Isaac Singer invented the sewing machine
1853 - Stephen Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home was published
1854 - Sousa born in Washington, D.C.
1857 - Elgar born in Broadheath, UK
1861-65 American Civil War
1864 - Strauss born in Munich, Germany
1865 - Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
1868 - The first professional baseball team (Cincinnati Red Stockings)
1870 - Die Walküre opera premiered in Munich, Germany
1875 - First running of the Kentucky Derby
1876 - Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1877 - Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty
1883 - Wagner died in Venice, Italy
1883 - Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island
1888 - Sousa composed Semper Fidelis
1892 - Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker
1893 - Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel
1893 - Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia
1894 - Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book
1896 - Also sprach Zarathustra premiered in Frankfurt, Germany
1900 - L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
1911 - Frances Hodgsen Burnett’s The Secret Garden
1912 - Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes
1926 - A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh
1928 - My Old Kentucky Home became the official song of Kentucky
1932 - Sousa died in Reading, PA
1932 - John Williams born in Floral Park, NY
1934 - Elgar died in Worcester, UK
1940 - Hancock born in Chicago, IL
1942 - Fanfare for the Common Man premiered in Cincinnati, OH
1949 - Strauss died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
1960 - Jane Goodall began her behavioral study of chimpanzees in Tanganyika
1967 - The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
1973 - Chameleon was released on Hancock’s Head Hunters
1975 - Richard Adams’ Watership Down
1975 - Mark Ronson born in London, UK
1981 - Music Television (MTV) launched
1990 - Hubble telescope launched into space
1994 - Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa
2001 - Apple introduced the iPod
2004 - Completion of the Human Genome Project
2015 - Ronson released Uptown Special featuring Bruno Mars
Learn More about the Music
Richard Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra
You may recognize the first minute of Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra as it has been used many times in movies, television and commercials (it gained wide popularity thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey as it was used in the opening credits). But there is much more to this piece than the first minute – in fact, the work in its entirety runs about 33 minutes. Based loosely on German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s book of the same title, the piece can be divided into nine sections with the opening to the first section being the most familiar. The first section (Introduction – Sunrise) opens with the low C in the double basses, contrabassoon and organ seguing into the three note brass fanfare (C-G-C) or Nature motif followed by timpani and the rest of the orchestra. Strauss was a master of the tone poem or program music meaning the music followed a theme or story told through the musical score. Strauss often used “leitmotifs” or themes for characters, places or events. This practice is still used by composers today especially in movie scores – composer John Williams has utilized leitmotif in many of his film scores including Jaws, Star Wars, Indiana Jones series and Harry Potter (movies 1-3 and theme in the remaining films).
According to Strauss “I did not intend to write philosophical music or to portray in music Nietzsche’s great work. I wished to convey by means of music an idea of the development of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of its development, religious and scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the superman. The whole symphonic poem is intended as homage to Nietzsche’s genius, which found its greatest expression in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra.”
Wolfgang Mozart Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
Very few composers have the honor of changing the musical landscape to the extent that nothing would be the same after a singular work. Mozart and his opera The Marriage of Figaro sit comfortably within that exclusive category that includes Ludwig van Beethoven and his Third Symphony “Eroica” and Stravinsky with his groundbreaking ballet The Rite of Spring. Composed in 1786, The Marriage of Figaro was the first of the three opera collaboration between Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the other two operas were Don Giovanni in 1787 and Così fan tutte in 1790). Based on the Pierre Beaumarchais Figaro plays (Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère coupable), the Mozart/Da Ponte opera premiered in Vienna to a relatively enthusiastic audience. The overture has taken on a life of its own as a separate orchestral work as well as being utilized in pop culture; in the 1983 Eddie Murphy/ Dan Aykroyd movie Trading Places and in 2011’s The King’s Speech. The frenetic feeling carried throughout the overture perfectly captures the “one crazy day” that encompasses the entire opera.
The opera itself had fans among composers including Joseph Haydn who wanted to mount a production in 1790 with his company Eszterháza (his patron Nikolaus Esterházy died before this could happen) and Johannes Brahms who said “In my opinion, each number in Figaro is a miracle; it is totally beyond me how anyone could create anything so perfect; nothing like it was ever done again, not even by Beethoven”. The Marriage of Figaro is in the top 10 of most performed operas around the world (you will also see it listed with its original Italian title Le Nozze di Figaro). Figaro had an operatic life outside of Mozart that included the popular Rossini The Barber of Seville (1816) as well as a contemporary adaptation in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (1991). Even Bugs Bunny utilized the comic genius inherent in the character of Figaro in the cartoon Rabbit of Seville.
Richard Wagner The Ride of the Valkyries
Like the Strauss and Mozart pieces, Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries has a life outside of the opera for which it was conceived. And like Strauss and Mozart, Wagner was a “game changer” in the world of opera. A firm believer in the marriage of story and music (he wrote a whole book about it in 1851 called Opera and Drama), Wagner’s operas changed the scale and the scope that many had thought not possible. Wagner’s middle “romantic period” operas (Lohengrin, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser) set the stage for what would become his opus four opera cycle The Ring (Der Ring des Nibelungen) as well as his later operas Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Parsifal.
The Ride of the Valkyries is from Wagner’s second opera in The Ring cycle Die Walküre (The Valkyrie). Wagner drew heavily on Norse mythology for The Ring cycle and for Die Walküre, the focus is on the goddess/warrior women who choose who lives and dies in battle and amongst the dead, they choose who will join them in Valhalla. First mentioned in the ancient Norse poem collection known as the Poetic Edda (also a source of inspiration for writers like J.R.R. Tolkien), the image of the Valkyrie with her horned helmet and brass breastplate have become synonymous with not only Norse mythology, but the Wagnerian female opera singer. The Ride of the Valkyries takes place in the first scene of Act III as the Valkyries ride into battle to collect the dead. It is perhaps one of the most recognizable works in classical music so it’s not surprising that pop culture has taken notice. Again, we look to Bugs Bunny and What’s Opera, Doc? – a mash-up of Wagner operas and most notably the theme in The Ride of the Valkyries became “kill the wabbit”. Director Francis Ford Coppola used The Ride of the Valkyries in the helicopter attack scene in his 1979 film Apocalypse Now (one of the most iconic scenes in movie history).
Edward Elgar Concerto for Cello in E minor (Mvt. 1)
British composer Sir Edward Elgar had humble origins although music was always a part of his young life. He was a self-taught composer who was more influenced by continental Europe than England, yet his musical style came be associated with Victorian and early 20th century British classical music. He gained some fame with the Enigma Variations (1899) and his six Pomp and Circumstances Marches (1901 – 1930; it should be noted that his sixth march only existed in sketches). March No. 1 is most familiar as the “graduation march” – the section entitled Land of Hope and Glory is used at virtually every high school and college graduation.
Composed in 1919, the Concerto for Cello in E minor was one of Elgar’s final works and though it had a rather disastrous premiere due inadequate rehearsal time, it has since become a staple within the cello repertoire. This was thanks in part to cellist Jacqueline du Pré whose 1965 recording of the work with Sir John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra gained her international fame and catapulted the work into popularity where it has remained. The first movement begins slowly (Adagio) with a recitative for the solo cello with responses from the winds before moving into the Moderato section and introducing the main theme. As this was Elgar’s final notable work, the piece at times seems more retrospective and thoughtful as perhaps Elgar recognized his time was short.