USF Symphonic Band Cherished Transcriptions

February 26, 2013 – 7:30 p.m. USF Concert Hall

Dr. Matthew McCutchen, Conductor

John Littlepage, Graduate Conductor

USF School of Music

Tampa, FL

Program

Colas Breugnon Overture (1937/1967) ................................................ Dmitri Kabalevsky/Beeler

Bach’s Fugue à la Gigue (1851?/1928) ...................................... J. S. Bach/Gustav Holst/Mitchell

O Magnum Mysterium (1994/2003) ........................................... Morten Lauridsen/ Reynolds

John Littlepage, Conductor

Light Cavalry Overture (1866/1922) ..................................... Franz von Suppé/Fillmore/Foster

Ritual Fire Dance: from “El Amor Brujo” (1915/1966) ............................................. Manuel de Falla/Morrissey

Ye Banks and Braes O’Bonnie Doon (1903/1932) ............................................... Percy Grainger/Grainger

The Cowboys (1972/1986) .................................................... John Williams/Curnow

About the Concert For much of its history the wind band filled concerts with music that was originally written for other ensembles. The past 50 years or so has seen tremendous growth in the amount and level of artistic music being written for bands, but to this day transcriptions remain an important part of our repertoire. In tonight’s concert we will play a number of selections that have found a seemingly permanent home in the concert band. We have music initially composed for orchestra, organ, and choir, and pieces that were conceived for opera, dance, and a Hollywood movie. Some of these works have been through multiple rewrites, and one was completely rescored by its composer. Most of the pieces are still regularly performed in their original settings, but all are celebrated as borrowed gems that wind bands will enjoy for many years to come.

Notes Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987) was born in St. Petersburg, the son of a Russian civil servant. Early on he showed a talent for music, playing the piano by ear at the age of six and soon after trying to compose. His formal musical education waited until he was fourteen, when his family moved to Moscow. There he attended the Scriabin School of Music and the Moscow Conservatory. Kabalevsky became an assistant instructor at the Conservatory and earned full professorship in 1939. His style is marked by clear tonality and energetic rhythms, which made it easy for him to abide by the Communist Party’s decree for music that was socially usable. He never abandoned his early interest in young people and produced numerous instrumental compositions and songs for them. The opera, Colas Breugnon, was first performed in Leningrad in February 1938 at the height of socialist realism. Based on the novel by Romain Rolland, the plot is set in sixteenth century France and centers about the efforts of Colas to overthrow the cruel lord and free his people from tyranny. The story develops Colas into a sort of Burgundian Robin Hood, at once a jester and philosopher, vine grower and artist, combining in himself a lusty appetite for food and wine and an ardent love of art. The "Overture to Colas Breugnon" sets the mood for the ensuing action and sweeps the listener into the first act of the opera. The timbres range from overwhelming fortissimos to chamber effects to raucous splashes of wind and percussive energy. The overture has been widely performed by American symphony orchestras, and was premiered in this country by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony in 1943. Fugue à la Gigue was born out of an exercise by Gustav Holst to prepare himself to write Hammersmith for the BBC Wireless Military Band. Holst felt out of practice in orchestrating for the winds and wanted to practice before starting on a masterpiece. For some years he had the idea of arranging Bach fugues for brass and military band. So, he set himself the task of scoring the Organ Fugue in G Major, BWV 577. He, rather than Bach, called it Fugue à la Gigue. The piece made an ideal exercise and Holst’s dovetailing of the counterpoint between different instruments shows his mastery. Interestingly, there is scholarly debate on whether or not Bach was the actual original composer. The earliest known copy is thought to have belonged to an eighteenth-century composer named F. W. Rust who was a pupil of Bach's oldest son. Rust's grandson, in the nineteenth century, held Bach's old post as Leipzig organist and edited the first attempt at a complete edition of the master's compositions. This may seem to be authority enough — except that the Bach son was an untrustworthy character who, among other things, passed off one of his father's Vivaldi arrangements as his own composition. Furthermore, young Rust

played a notorious hoax on the musical world by rewriting his grandfather's compositions and then claiming that they were a hundred years ahead of their time in style and expression. Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1995–2001 and professor of composition at the USC Thornton School of Music for more than forty years. His choral and instrumental works are featured regularly in concerts by distinguished artists and ensembles throughout the world. By century's end he had eclipsed Randall Thompson as the most frequently performed American choral composer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he worked as a Forest Service firefighter and lookout (on an isolated tower near Mt. St. Helens) before traveling south to study composition. His life as a composer has been documented in Michael Stillwater’s award-winning film, Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen. In 2007 he received the National Medal of Arts from the President in a White House ceremony, "for his composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power and spiritual depth that have thrilled audiences worldwide." O Magnum Mysterium has become one of the world’s most performed and recorded compositions since its 1994 premiere by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Lauridsen writes, “For centuries composers have been inspired by the beautiful O Magnum Mysterium text with its depiction of the birth of the new-born King among the lowly animals and shepherds. This affirmation of God’s grace to the meek and the adoration of the Blessed Virgin are celebrated in my setting through a quiet song of profound inner joy.” H. Robert Reynolds arranged the symphonic wind version of this work with the approval and appreciation of the composer. Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppe-Demelli – best remembered as Franz von Suppé (1819-1895) was born on a ship lying off Spalato to parents of Belgian descent. Showing great musical talent at an early age, he became an excellent flute player and composed a mass at age 13. As a young man he studied Italian, medicine, and music, and at age 22 he made his debut as a dramatic composer of the Vienna stage with music for a play. Today he is best known for the exciting, melodic overture to 31 operettas including; Poet and Peasant, Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna, and Jolly Robbers. Light Cavalry debuted in 1866 in Vienna. During this time, Austria was about to become part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The citizens of Vienna were fascinated by Hungary, the land of the Gypsies, and composers added eastern melodies and Hungarian characters in their operas, giving their music a distinct sound. In Light Cavalry, heroic fanfares and eastern Hungarian melodies can be heard, making it a perfect overture to a grand adventure. The Overture starts off with a brilliant fanfare played by the trumpets and brass, like a military reveille preparing soldiers for battle. Next, a theme of quick triplets indicate that the enemy soldiers stealthily approaching the battlefield. Brass play a galloping theme as the cavalry rides to battle, and the rest of the ensemble joins in. The music changes into a minor key as the battle starts and the cavalry charges. At the end of the first battle, soldiers and their general die, and the clarinet mourns the deaths in its cadenza. A solemn Hungarian melody plays as the people of the country mourn its lost soldiers. Near the end the cavalry regroups for another charge, defeating the enemy and ending the overture in a triumphant victory. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) is considered by some to be the greatest Spanish composer of this century.. In 1907 he achieved a long-held ambition of travelling to Paris and was welcomed there by Ravel, Debussy, and Paul Dukas. He completed

several chamber works and began work on Noches en los Jardines de Espãna (Nights in Gardens of Spain) before the outbreak of war in 1914 compelled him to return to his native country. Two years later he was approached by Diaghilev to write a work for the Russian Ballet and in response composed a mime-play in two tableaux, El Corregidor Y la Molinera (The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife). In 1919 he settled in Granada, where he remained until the end of the Civil War, and composed several of his most important works. He then moved to Argentina and worked there until his death in 1946 just a few days before his 70th birthday. Danza Ritual del Fuego (Ritual Fire Dance) is a movement of the ballet El Amor Brujo (Love the Magician). It was made popular by the composer's own piano arrangement. The piece was influenced by the traditional, religious ceremony of a fire dance, which was used to worship the fire-god, and in which people would often jump through or leap around the fire. In De Falla's ballet a young gypsy girl is haunted by the ghost of her dead husband. To get rid of him all the gypsies make a large circle around their campfire at midnight. The girl then performs the Ritual Fire Dance which causes the ghost to appear, with whom she then dances. As they whirl around faster and faster, the ghost is drawn into the fire, making him vanish forever. Many band enthusiasts consider Percy Grainger (1882-1961) to be the most significant composer for this medium. His works range from the sublime to the delightfully charming and include moments of great passion, power, and reverence. He was born in Australia and quickly became recognized as a piano prodigy. In 1895 he went to Germany with his mother, Rose, to further his training as a pianist and composer. Next, the two moved to London where his talents flourished. In addition to gaining international attention as a composer and performer he also befriended the Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg, whose love of national music inspired Grainger to begin collecting English folk music. He traveled throughout the United Kingdom and used a phonograph (a new invention) to record songs from folk-singers. From these he later made many famous arrangements, including Molly On The Shore, and Shepherd's Hey! In 1914 Grainger moved to the United States where he lived for the rest of his life. During World War I he learned to play the soprano saxophone when he served in the US Army Bands. Perhaps it was this experience that led him to be one of the first band composers to explore the full range of the woodwind families in his pieces. Notably, he is also credited with raising the appreciation of mallet percussion as serious expressive instruments. As well known as Grainger has become for his folk song arrangements, he was even more proud of his many original compositions using entirely his own ideas. Ye Banks and Braes O’ Bonnie Doon was inspired by the river Doon that flows gracefully in Stirlingshire, Scotland. The river was the inspiration for Robert Burns’ 1738 poem The Banks of Doon, telling of a forsaken young woman who bore a child without the sanction of the Church. Burns, a scholar of Scottish tunes, set the poem to music a few years later.

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair? How can ye chant ye little birds, And I sae weary, fu' o' care?

Ye'll break my heart, ye warbling birds, That wanton through the flow'ry thorn, Ye 'mind me o' departed joys, Departed never to return.

We include this on this concert not because it was first conceived as a poem and then a song, but rather because Grainger’s original setting was scored in for a chorus of single voices, whistlers, and harmonium, and then he transcribed it for wind band 29 years later. John Williams (b. 1932) is of the most popular and successful American orchestral composers of the modern age. He is the winner of five Academy Awards, 17 Grammys, three Golden Globes, two Emmys and five BAFTA Awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Williams’ scores for such films as Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Seven Years in Tibet, The Lost World, Rosewood, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Home Alone, Far and Away, JFK, Hook, Presumed Innocent, Always, Born on the Fourth of July, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Accidental Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick, the Star Wars trilogy, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws and Goodbye Mr. Chips.series, have won him multiple awards and produced best-selling recordings. His scores for the original Star Wars trilogy transformed the landscape of Hollywood film music and became icons of American culture. In 1980, Williams was named nineteenth Conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. He assumed the title of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor, following his retirement in December 1993, and currently holds the title of Artist-in-Residence at Tanglewood. On June 23, 2000, he became the first inductee into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame The Cowboys is a typical example of John Williams' capacity to enrich a film story with an almost narrative musical score. Through the music we are transported to the Old West and experience the joys and hardships of cowboy life. Taken from the 1972 motion picture “The Cowboys” starring John Wayne and Roscoe Lee Browne, the music complements the story of a 60 year old Montana cattleman who enlists (and ultimately mentors) ten schoolboys as cowboys after the regular ranch hands have left with Gold Rush fever. The 400-mile cattle drive provides the boys with a different and harsher schooling as they learn the rigors of the job and have to deal with rustlers. The music conveys the high spirit of wild horses and their taming. Jollity around the campfire is contrasted against the loneliness of the open range. The plains have a beauty, though, which is reflected in the song of a lark. The hard work of the cattle drive, including the fording of the wide, muddy river and dealing with many fears and threats, succeeds in maturing the boys into men.

Personnel Piccolo Julia Ford Flute Kelly Jordan Ashley David April Copeland Haley Choen Justin White Jocelyn Escobar Christina Gutierrez Oboe Sameer Bhatia Kathryn Bottomley Vanesa Vanzile English Horn Kathryn Bottomley Bassoon John Hanson Christy Hobby Nicholas McKain Clarinet Katie Ammons Antoinette Panagiotouros - Eb Michelle Bednarek Chelsea Tortora Natasha Jackson Anna Schwab Holly Moon Bass Clarinet Michael Frazier Caitlyn Autry Saxophone Alyson Agemy -Alto Chase Hadley Chris Greco Stephen Gabin Sarah Griffith Jesse Strouse - Tenor Reed Stricsek - Baritone

Horn Arie Matthew Katherine Palmer Caitlyn Lutz Logan Sorey Trumpet James Coyne Corbin Smith Sam Garnett Stacey Jones Robert Apple Matthew Hopper Ryan Violette Paige Hall Stathis Linardos Trevor Butts Tyler Vance Bethany Finch Max Slakoff Trombone Lisa Duxbury Zach Smith Nancy Karan Nicholas Atheras Danielle Batcheller Rico Santiago John Littlepage – Bass Trombone Euphonium Zach Dardis Michael Lebrias Bruce Herrmann Tuba Joel Wine Haley Powell Stephen Senseman Danny Bresson David Suarez Kelly Bravard Percussion Kyle Kinsey Alex Murphy Dan Dau Mitchell Montgomery Daniel Greenwood Bryan Scott

Upcoming School of Music Events:

USF S tuden t Compose rs ' Conce r t Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2012 7:30 pm, Barness Recital Hall Free Event Students in the USF composition program present an evening of new music premieres. Composing in a wide variety of styles and for a wide variety of instrumentation, undergraduate and graduate composition majors present their cutting-edge work in the intimate space of the Barness Recital Hall.

USF SYCOM Friday, Mar. 1, 2012 7:30 pm, Barness Recital Hall Tickets available at the door only, 1hr prior to the performance: $5 Students/Seniors, $7 Adults Students of USF’s SYCOM present an evening of electroacoustic premieres. SYCOM is a suite of electronic music studios that was established at USF in the early 1970s, and it remains one of the most extensive electronic music programs in the region. Using a variety of hardware and software to create their music, students present their work using the state-of-the-art audio system in the School of Music’s Barness Recital Hall.

USF ChamberFes t : Moza r t Madness-Facu l ty/Gues t A r t i s t Rec i ta l Sunday, Mar. 3, 2012 7:30 pm, Barness Recital Hall Advance Tickets: $8 Students/Seniors, $12 Adults Day of Performance: $10 Students/Seniors, $15 Adults The 2013 USF ChamberFest finishes in grand style with a collaborative performance featuring Musicians from Music Beyond the Chamber and members of USF's chamber music faculty. This year, ChamberFest focuses on the chamber music works by the great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!

For additional information and to purchase tickets, visit music.arts.usf.edu

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