EUGENE SYMPHONY

Earthand SeaApril 19, 2018Program Notesby Tom Strini ©2018

”I am so excited for the second part of Augusta Read Thomas’ residency in Eugene this season with the West Coast premiere of her percussion concerto, Sonorous Earth, co-commissioned by the Eugene Symphony. Thomas is one of the most celebrated American composers today and we are truly honored to be taking part in her latest creation. The renowned ensemble Third Coast Percussion will play on approximately 300 bells of all kinds. It is an intriguing sound world based on the percussive quality of bells, and the breathtaking silences that appear naturally as the sound decays. On the second half, we move to the reflective nature of water in music. Wagner’s depiction of a journey down the Rhine is full of nostalgia and mythical inevitability, while Debussy brilliantly captures the myriad changes in waves in his awe-inspiring work, La mer.”

— Francesco Lecce-Chong

PAUL DUKAS (1865–1935)Fanfare from La Péri (1912)

Scored for four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, and tuba. This is the first Eugene Symphony performance, and performance time is approximately two minutes.

The gist of Dukas’ fanfare: An annunciatory introduction in chattering repeated tones; two bars of cadence formula; a heroic, rising first theme, with a bit of development; the cadence formula extended, serves as transition to a creamy second theme marked by a flowing triplet; a brief return of the intro; a little coda crafted from bits of the intro and the cadence formula.

That’s it, except to say that Dukas wrote La Péri, a 40-minute ballet, on a commission from Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. But Diaghilev pulled it from the schedule, and the Ballets Russes never performed it. Diaghilev thought that Natalia Trouhanova—the toast of Paris after appearing in a scandalous costume in Salome—lacked the skill to dance the title role. (She did dance the title role, with a new set of collaborators, a year later.)

Dukas, also an accomplished journalist and poet, based the ballet scenario on his own prose poem. The conqueror Iskender roams the world in search of the Flower of Eternal Life. On the steps of the Temple of Ormuzd, he comes across a sleeping Péri, a sort of Persian female genie. Even in her slumber, she holds the flower tight; without it, she cannot enter the sacred light of Ormuzd—that is, Paradise. Iskender yanks the flower from La Péri, who awakens and screams in alarm, then decides that a seductive dance might be a better approach to flower retrieval. It works. The Péri disappears into Paradise, leaving Iskender to ponder his mortality—which is imminent, given that he is alone and in the middle of nowhere.

AUGUSTA READ THOMAS (b. 1964)Sonorous Earth (2017)

In addition to the solo percussion quartet, which plays a wide array of bells and other metallic instruments, this work is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, percussion, harp, and strings. This is the West Coast Premiere and the first Eugene Symphony performance. Performance time is approximately 30 minutes.

APRIL – MAY 2018

When Augusta Read Thomas started work on Resounding Earth, about six years ago for Third Coast Percussion, she had no idea it would become the precursor of Sonorous Earth, which Third Coast and the Eugene Symphony are playing tonight.

The idea of transforming the piece from percussion quartet, involving more than 300 bells, to framing those bells as an orchestral concerto came from Third Coast’s players.

“It was like taking a house, putting it on wheels and moving it to another state,” Thomas said, in a recent phone interview. “It ends up in a new light on a new site.”

Not to mention new paint, a new foundation, and new landscaping. Resounding Earth became a new piece.

“You can’t do five minutes of bells with the orchestra just sitting there,” she said.

She completely replaced the fourth movement and drastically transformed the rest, with the aim of creating interaction between the orchestra and the clanging, ringing percussion ensemble.

“It’s been hard for Third Coast, too,” she said. “They thought they knew the piece. Then they had to learn a new one.”

No hard feelings on the part of David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and Sean Connors. Their relationship with Thomas goes back to their student days at Northwestern University; she was one of their professors. She asked about writing something with lots of bells for them. That innocent question launched a years-long journey.

“I’d been collecting bells for years and had always written for percussion,” she said. “This is a natural extension of my work of 30 years, though it is something of an extreme case.”

The five of them researched bells in use around the world and bought dozens of them. They experimented for countless hours, to see how these instruments interact. They also experimented with set-up and a vast battery of mallets. Choreography is always crucial to percussion pieces; Thomas and her collaborators plotted every move.

The composer had to organize the piece down to the smallest detail. Every bell is named in the score. All the instruments pitched sharp hang from

The composer had to organize the piece down to the smallest detail. Every bell is named in the score.

racks. Those on the table are natural. Those on the floor are flat.

With more than 300 ringy things at hand, narrowing choices is a top compositional priority. Thomas made bell choice a structural element.

“Each movement involves specific sets of bells,” she said. “So each movement sounds very different. In the last movement, they strike every bell on the stage.”

Thomas described the first movement (“Invocation”) as jazzy and syncopated, with a big climax and long denouement. In the poetic and dreamy “Prayer,” the orchestra weaves around the bells like “a gossamer thread, a halo.” In “Mantra,” pizzicato strings, harp and wood blocks complement 18 kyeezees, Burmese bronze bells that spin when struck. In the clangorous “Reverie Carillon,” massive “pillar chords” sounded on eight bells anchor a swift, riotous finale.

The sounds of the various bells decay at vastly different rates. And unstruck bells presumed silent ring quietly in sympathy with other bells as they resound. In these respects, bells are unpredictable. Thomas celebrates that.

Leon Bakst’s sketch for La Péri’s costume, for the ill-fated Ballets Russes production of the Dukas ballet. Bakst’s Art Nouveau designs made him internationally famous in the decades between World Wars I and II.

EUGENE SYMPHONY

Earth and SeaProgram Notes

“We never stop any bell,” she said. “We always let them ring out. I like that they play out naturally.”

Thomas meticulously details scores, for tight control over every parameter of the music. Before the November world premiere, she was concerned that the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra might drown out the bells. No worries: “I realized that even a little bell can cut through an orchestra.”

RICHARD WAGNER (1813–1883)Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, as arranged and extracted by Engelbert Humperdinck, from the opera Götterdämmerung (1848–1874)

Scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. First performed by the Eugene Symphony in November 1987 under the direction of Adrian Gnam. Performance time is approximately 10 minutes.

Wagner’s Rhine Journey, an orchestral interlude, connects the Prologue to Act I of Götterdämmerung (“Twilight of the Gods”), the last of the four “Ring” operas.

The hero, Siegfried, has finally consummated his love with Brunnhilde. But he must leave her behind, protected within the Ring of Fire, as he departs on another mission. He gives her his ring. She gives him her flying horse, Grane. From the edge of her rocky aerie, she watches horse and rider descend to the river valley far below. He finds a boat, leads Grane aboard, and rows toward the domain of the weak and hateful Gibichungs.

During the 10-minute orchestral interlude, Siegfried ponders his fate. Wagner portrays all this musically—the curtain is down throughout. He weaves the interlude from leitmotifs: the staccato 16ths of the Magic Fire, Siegfried’s horn call, the dissonant chords of Fate, Brunnhilde’s fitful 32nd notes and leap of a major sixth, a bit of the Ride of the Valkyries, Rhine music from the first opera in the cycle, and the dramatic Curse of the stolen Ring—the very one Siegfried left with Brunnhilde.

“We feel the Rhine change over the course of the day,” said Music Director & Conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong. “As he rides down the Rhine, everything in Siegfried’s past haunts him and everything that will happen is foreshadowed.”

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918)La mer (The Sea, 1905)

Scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, and strings. First performed by the Eugene Symphony in March 1977 under the direction of Lawrence Maves, and last performed in March 2011 under the direction of Danail Rachev. Performance time is approximately 23 minutes.

“I was interested in how Wagner and Debussy viewed water,” Lecce-Chong said, of the pairing on this program.

The “Rhine Journey” gave Wagner opportunity for a musical plot summary. Debussy took a more painterly—yes, Impressionistic—approach to the sea. He has no protagonist or plot; he need address only the waves, the sky, the colors, the heave of swells and troughs, the crests of surf and the chop of whitecaps.

“He calls the three movements ‘sketches’,” Lecce-Chong said, “and that’s how they feel. They’re through-composed, a series of episodes. Listening to it is just like staring at the ocean. It’s always different, but always the same. You know the waves will break, but not when or how.”

La mer is not always adrift in meditation. A storm brews in the last movement, and the sketch becomes more like a thought-through painting.

“The whole piece,” Lecce-Chong said, “has been ‘don’t look back, don’t repeat.’ In the end, finally, a theme comes back three times. And he brings back a fragment of a chorale from the first movement. But he’s still not like Wagner, where everything must tie up with everything else. Debussy just goes forward.”

So does the sea. It just goes on. Lecce-Chong: “That’s the tragedy of nature—it’s only in

that moment. The sun hits that wave in a certain beautiful way, and then it’s gone.”

“Listening to La mer is just like staring at the ocean. It’s always different, but always the same. You know the waves will break, but not when or how.”

Historical sources:

Mary E. Davis, Classic Chic: Music, Fashion and Modernism, University of California Press, 2006; Helen Julia Minors’ essay, “La Péri, poème dansé (1911–12): A Problematic Creative-Collaborative Journey,” University of Kingston, U.K.; Wikipedia article on La Péri

Wikipedia article on Götterdämmerung; Rudolph Sabor, Richard Wagner Götterdämmerung, Phaidon Press, 1997.