Morton Gould (1913-1996) was an American conductor, composer, and pianist. He was recognized as a child prodigy very early in his life, and as a result he published his first composition before his seventh birthday. His talents led him to become the staff pianist for Radio City Music Hall when it opened in 1932. He went on to compose movie soundtracks, Broadway musicals, and instrumental pieces for orchestra and band while also cultivating an international career as a conductor. Among the honors he received were the 1995 Pulitzer Prize, the 1994 Kennedy Center Honor, a 1983 Gold Baton Award, and a 1966 Grammy Award. By the time of his death in 1996 he was widely revered as an icon of American classical music.
Cowboy Rhapsody exists in both an orchestral version (the original) and a band version, arranged with some edits by David Bennett. The band version was premiered by the University of Michigan Band under William Revelli in 1940. This performance reportedly inspired Gould to write more for band, leading to his several famous contributions to the literature. Cowboy Rhapsody uses several famous cowboy songs, including “The Trail to Mexico“, “Little Old Sod Shanty“, “Home on the Range“, “Old Paint“, and others, to create a piece that straddles the line between tone poem and medley. Gould’s treatment, especially the off-stage echoes in the middle, captures the wide-open atmosphere of the cowboy lifestyle of legend.
I performed this with the Arizona State University Concert Band on March 1. You’ll hear a lot of trumpet given the camera placement, but otherwise this is a solid performance that represents how the piece is supposed to go:
“The Trail to Mexico” performed by country music legend Foy Willing:
A good deal of my Cowboy Rhapsody information came from this dissertation. It also gets a mention in these program notes, and it is featured (in its orchestral version) on this compilation. It is a piece that deserves more study and performance.
There are several short biographies of Gould on the Internet. Each one is more glowing than the last:
Conductor Leonard Slatkin described Ron Nelson (b. 1929) thusly: “Nelson is the quintessential American composer. He has the ability to move between conservative and newer styles with ease. The fact that he’s a little hard to categorize is what makes him interesting.” This quality has helped Nelson gain wide recognition as a composer. Nowhere are his works embraced more than in the band world, where he won the “triple crown” of composition prizes in 1993 for his Passacaglia (Homage on B-A-C-H). An Illinois native, Nelson received his composition training at the Eastman School of Music and went on to a distinguished career on the faculty of Brown University.
Nelson wrote Courtly Airs and Dances in 1995 on commission from the Hill Country Middle School Band in Austin, Texas, and their director Cheryl Floyd. It is dedicated to that same group. About the piece, Nelson writes:
Courtly Airs and Dances is a suite of Renaissance dances which were characteristic to five European countries during the 1500s. Three of the dances (Basse Dance, Pavane, and Allemande) are meant to emulate the music of Claude Gervaise by drawing on the style of his music as well as the characteristics of other compositions from that period. The festival opens with a fanfare-like Intrada followed by the Basse Danse (France), Pavane (England), Saltarello (Italy), Sarabande (Spain), and Allemande (Germany).
Nelson uses a different Renaissance style for each movement. The Intradais entrance music, designed to begin a suite of music or serve for an entry procession. This performance of an Intrada by German composer Christoph Demantius captures that spirit:
Nelson based his Intrada on Claude Gervaise’s Fanfare allemande (more on that later).
In general, abasse danseis in a slow and elegant 6/4 or 3/2, allowing for the use of hemiola. Here is a reasonably authentic example of an early basse danse:
Nelson took his Basse Danse almost verbatim from Gervaise. Here is another arrangement of it by the Belgium Brass:
The pavaneis similar to a basse danse, being a slow and stately dance, but in duple meter and often faster. Again, Nelson borrowed fairly directly from Gervaise:
The dance would have looked something like this:
The saltarellowas a lively jumping dance whose specific steps have been lost. Nelson wrote an original melody for his Saltarello, not relying on Gervaise. Here is what a Renaissance saltarello may have sounded like:
The sarabandeappears to have originated in the Spanish colonies in Central America before returning to Spain itself. It was declared obscene and banned there in 1583. It was in 3/4 time with the second and third beats often tied together, giving the rhythm a step-drag feel. Nelson’s Sarabande relies on original material. This sarabande example comes from the Baroque era, but it still demonstrates the rhythmic characteristics of the dance:
The allemandewas a dance named in France for its supposed origin in Germany (the name means “German” in French). It was a moderately fast duple meter dance that may have looked something like this:
Nelson again borrowed from Gervaise for this movement. Here is a children’s flute choir version of Gervaise’s original:
Suite Française is a true classic of the wind band repertoire and a personal favorite of mine that I have been studying on and off for years and have conducted twice in concert. It hasn’t appeared on this blog until now only because I have known that it would take a tremendous effort to really do this piece justice, even in my relatively un-scholarly format, as evidenced by the three days it has taken me to put this post together. I hope that what follows proves enlightening for the uninitiated.
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was a prolific French composer and teacher and a member of Les Six early in his career. He was born to Jewish parents and grew up in Aix-en-Provence, France. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, graduating in 1915. His composition career took off from there. He traveled to Brazil (Rio) and the United States (Harlem), where he heard the uniquely New World sounds of Brazilian music and American jazz, both of which would influence his compositional style. The Harlem experience inspired him to write the jazz-tinged ballet La creation du Monde in 1922, before even American composers were making serious efforts to blend jazz with concert music. The Nazi occupation of France put Milhaud in serious danger: not only was he a prominent Jewish figure, he also was often confined to a wheelchair due to severe rheumatoid arthritis. He fled for the United States 1940. While there, he secured a teaching position at Mills College in Oakland, California, where his notable students included Burt Bacharach, William Bolcom, Peter Schickele, and Dave Brubeck. Once France was liberated, he resumed his career there, alternating years at Mills College and the Paris Conservatoire from 1947-1971. His music further distinguished itself through its unique and unabashed use of polytonality. Milhaud wrote two autobiographies. The first (1953)was called Notes Without Music. Despite having dodged Nazi persecution and spent years in pain confined to a wheelchair, Milhaud titled the second (1972) Ma vie heureuse (My Happy Life). He died in Geneva at age 81.
Milhaud wrote Suite Française in 1944 on a commission from Leeds Music, which published the piece in 1945. They were looking for a piece fit for high school bands, and Milhaud delivered beautifully. It was premiered by the Goldman Band in New York City on June 13, 1945. Milhaud also created versions for orchestra and for 4-hands piano, although the wind band version came first. Says Milhaud of the piece (from the band score):
For a long time I have had the idea of writing a composition fit for high school purposes and this was the result. In the bands, orchestras, and choirs of American high schools, colleges and universities where the youth of the nation be found, it is obvious that they need music of their time, not too difficult to perform, but, nevertheless keeping the characteristic idiom of the composer. The five parts of this Suite are named after French Provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground of the liberation of my country: Normandy, Brittany, Ile-de-France (of which Paris is the center), Alsace-Lorraine, and Provence (my birthplace). I used some folk tunes of these provinces. I wanted the young American to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their fathers and brothers fought to defeat the German invaders, who in less than seventy years have brought war, destruction, cruelty, torture, and murder, three times, to the peaceful and democratic people of France.
In addition to the folk tunes (which I will discuss below), Milhaud provided some melodies of his own. Each movement is uniquely of its place, as you will see in the videos below. “Normandie” uses two lively Norman folk songs: “Germaine”, about a warrior coming home through the eyes of a young woman; and “The French Shepherdess and the King of England“, about a comic meeting between the two title characters. Milhaud added some original material to help him depict the region where so many American servicemen landed in France during World War II:
“Ile-de-France” depicts the bustle of Paris with lively, largely carefree folk material. It begins with “A ma main droite j’ai un rosier” (I tend a rosebush with my right hand), a children’s round that alternates bars of 3 and 2, and which Milhaud sets in 4 while still retaining the accents of the original. The lyrical melody that soon crops up is “Voici la Saint-Jean“, a summer festival song. “La belle au rosier blanc” (The Fair Maid of the White-Rose Tree) also make an appearance:
“Alsace-Lorraine” takes a more melancholy turn, suggesting distant artillery fire around a solemn funeral procession, fitting for a region that borders Germany and was taken over during the war. Still, the movement’s ending suggests hope and triumph to come. The main melody is apparently a Milhaud original. The primary countermelody that sounds so distant desolate at first is “Voici le moi de Mai” (Here is the month of May), a spritely tra-la-la of a tune. The clarinet interlude in the middle comes from “Le mois de Mai”, a different but still spritely festival tune:
“Provence“, Milhaud’s childhood home, is joyous and innocent and uses the most original material of any movement. The only folk song is “Magali“, another story of a lover transformed:
I owe a large debt to Robert Garofalo’s fantastic study guide on this piece, without which I would not have been able to even begin identifying the folk material in the suite. His book goes much farther than this page in giving background information and context. Here is a look at some of the folk songs that he names:
I. NORMANDIE – Sadly, none of these songs seem to be recorded in internet form.
II. BRETAGNE
“La Paimpolaise”, of which Milhaud only uses the major-key refrain (presented first in this performance):
“Les marins de Groix”, which Milhaud slows down dramatically. If you listen carefully, you’ll recognize the tune once the tempo picks up:
III. ILE DE FRANCE
“A ma main droite j’ai un rosier”:
“Voici la Saint Jean” seems to be one set of lyrics with several different tunes attached. Here is one that closely resembles that which Milhaud used. Listen carefully to the top vocal and you’ll hear it:
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was a nationalist Russian composer and master orchestrator famous for symphonic works like Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol. He was born into a family with a history of military service in which he eventually followed. He started piano lessons at age 6 and composition at 10. Around the time of his graduation from military school, he met Mily Balakirev, who introduced him to fellow young composers César Cui and Modest Mussorgsky, heightening Rimsky-Korsakov’s interest in a composition career. Eventually, with the addition of Alexander Borodin, these composers would call themselves The Five and advocate for a specifically Russian approach to composition. Later in his career, Rimsky-Korsakov became the Inspector of Bands for the Russian Navy as well as a professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, which now bears his name.
Procession of the Nobles (Cortége) was written in 1889 as part of the opera-ballet Mlada. Although it was originally begun in 1872 as a collaborative effort with three other composers, the initial project fell through. Rimsky-Korsakov completed it himself nearly 20 years later. I defer now to Eric Bromberger’s excellent program note for the Los Angeles Philharmonic:
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mlada, first produced in 1892, almost defies the effort to describe it. In form it is half-opera and half-ballet, and its libretto is unbelievably complex, even by the standards of opera librettos. Set a thousand years ago in an imaginary kingdom called Retra on the shores of the Baltic, Mlada tries to fuse Wagnerian opera with ancient Russian legend, and the result is an absolutely fantastic story. Princess Mlada, a role that is danced rather than sung, has been murdered by her rival Voyslava, who sets out to secure the love of Yaromir, Mlada’s lover. The story involves magic, evil spirits, and trips into the underworld, and at the climax an entire village is submerged by an overflowing lake and Yaromir and Mlada are seen ascending on a rainbow.
Mlada has not held the stage, and the only familiar music from it is the Procession of the Nobles, the orchestral introduction to Act II, which begins with a festival of tradespeople. The music bursts to life with a rousing brass flourish, soon followed by the processional music, a noble tune for strings in E-flat major. This is music of color and energy, and in the opera it is punctuated by shouts from the crowd at the festival. A central section just as vigorous as the opening leads to a return of the march tune and a rousing close.
Rimsky-Korsakov made an orchestral suite from the opera, of which Procession of the Nobles is the final movement. You can see the full score here. Also, there is another great program note from the University of Wisconsin bands.
Here is the standard band transcription, arranged by Erik Leidzen:
And now the original orchestral version:
There is also a very nice version for young band arranged by Jay Bocook:
Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Eric Ewazen (b. 1954) is a composer and teacher at the Juilliard School in New York City, where he has been on the faculty since 1980. He studied at Juilliard and the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt, Joseph Schwantner, Gunther Schuller, and Warren Benson. His works, which have won him many awards, have been performed and recorded by prestigious ensembles and artists all over the world.
Celtic Hymns and Dances was one of the very first pieces I conducted with the Columbia Wind Ensemble, and for that reason it holds a special place in my heart. It is an entirely original work, not based on any specific Celtic folk tunes, but rather on a generally Celtic feel. Says Ewazen in the score:
Celtic Hymns and Dances was commissioned by and is dedicated to James Fudale and the Berea (Ohio) High School Symphonic Winds who premiered the work in March 1990. The one movement work draws its inspiration from medieval and renaissance music. Although the melodies and themes are original creations, the modal harmony, the characteristically energetic rhythms and the use of colorful wind orchestration calls to mind music of ancient times. Within the piece one finds pastoral ballads, heroic fanfares and joyful dances culminating in a lively sonorous finale.
The composer known conventionally as Franz von Suppe (1819-1895) was born to an Italian-Belgian father and a Viennese mother in Croatia, which was then part of the Kingdom of Dalmatia in the Austro-Hungarian empire. His full name befits his convoluted nationality: his parents named him Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé Demelli. His early musical training was in flute and singing. His parents pushed him to study law, but he continued his musical studies nonetheless. He eventually moved to Vienna to complete his studies and find work conducting in opera houses. He went on to compose over 100 works for the stage.
Light Cavalry is a two act operetta written in 1866. The story revolves around a troop of cavalry men who attempt to unite a young couple through many twists and turns. The overture has taken on a life of its own, much beyond operetta that spawned it. It is core repertoire for orchestras and bands everywhere.
Here’s the overture played by the Indiana University Summer Music Clinic Cream Band conducted by Stephen Pratt:
and now the original orchestral version, conducted by the legendary Herbert von Karajan:
Here’s another great arrangement for horn ensemble:
My first exposure to Light Cavalry came via this amazing Disney cartoon. Watch all the way to the end for something truly unique. Warning – you may wince in the meantime!
Aaron Copland (1900-1990) is one of the titans of American art music. A native New Yorker, he went to France at age 21 and became the first American to study with the legendary Nadia Boulanger. His Organ Symphony, written for Boulanger, provided his breakthrough into composition stardom. After experimenting with many different styles, he became best known for his idiomatic treatment of Americana, leaving behind such chestnuts as The Tender Land (1954), Billy The Kid (1938), and Appalachian Spring (1944). This last piece won Copland the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1945. He was also an acclaimed conductor and writer.
An Outdoor Overture had its genesis as a commission from Alexander Richter, the music director at the High School for Music and Art (now LaGuardia High School) in New York City. Richter was looking for music that would appeal to American youth. Copland responded with a brightly optimistic, wide-open triumph of Americana, in versions for both orchestra and band. It was premiered in December 1938 (ironically, indoors) at the high school. Copland describes how the piece progresses:
The piece starts in a large and grandiose manner with a theme that is immediately developed as a long solo for the trumpet with a string pizzicato accompaniment. A short bridge passage in the woodwinds leads imperceptibly to the first theme of the allegro section, characterized by repeated notes. Shortly afterwards, these same repeated notes, played broadly, give us a second, snappy march-like theme, developed in a canon form. There is an abrupt pause, a sudden decrescendo, and the third, lyric theme appears, first in the flute, then the clarinet, and finally, high up in the strings. Repeated notes on the bassoon seem to lead the piece in the direction of the opening allegro. Instead, a fourth and final theme evolves another march theme, but this time less snappy, and with more serious implications. There is a build-up to the opening grandiose introduction again, continuing with the trumpet solo melody, this time sung by all the strings in a somewhat smoother version. A short bridge section based on steady rhythm brings a condensed recapitulation of the allegro section. As a climactic moment all the themes are combined. A brief coda ends the work on the grandiose note of the beginning.
Copland’s greatest works started to appear immediately on the heels of this piece. He even interrupted work on Billy the Kid, the first of his famous Americana-themed ballets, to write An Outdoor Overture. It is thus a window into an important period in his career, as he developed the musical language that would be associated both with him and with the broader idea of Americana in classical music in the following decades.
Copland has a huge presence on the internet, thus this site will feature only the main portals into his work. Please click far beyond the sites listed here for a complete idea of Copland’s footprint on the web.
Fanfare for Aaron Copland – a blog with information on the composer, extraordinarily useful links, and some downloadable versions of old LP recordings. This is the place to explore the several links beyond the main site.
If you do one thing while looking at this post, you MUST watch the first video posted below! It really puts the whole piece in perspective.
Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921) was the French composer of such famous works as Carnival of the Animals, the opera Samson et Delila, Danse Macabre, and the Organ Symphony. He was a child prodigy who became France’s most renowned composer. Late in life, he traveled to all corners of the world.
Bacchanale comes from his 1877 opera Samson et Delila, which is based on the Biblical story of those 2 characters. In both the opera and the Bible, Samson is a leader of the Israelites, who are in the midst of a revolt against their malevolent rulers, the Philistines. The Philistines want to bring him down, so they send one of their own, a woman named Delila, to seduce him and discover the source of his extreme physical strength. It turns out that secret is his long hair, which binds him in a vow to God. But Samson does not let that secret slip easily: he misleads Delila several times before finally revealing the true secret. Yet when that is done, Delila shaves his hair while he sleeps, allowing the Philistines to capture and blind him. After years of forced labor at their hands, Samson winds up in the temple of Dagon, one of the Philistine deities, in Gaza. There, he prays to God to restore his strength, and he pulls down the central columns of the temple, killing himself and all of the Philistines inside. Each version of the story has its nuances (e.g., the Bible says Samson killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass!) so it’s worth your time to investigate both. The Bacchanale occurs in Act III of the opera, just before Samson is led into the temple of Dagon. It is a depraved dance performed by the priests of Dagon. Saint-Saens loved “exotic” sounds, so he used an exceptionally exotic sounding scale for a good chunk of the piece: it contains two one-and-a-half step gaps (from the 2nd to 3rd steps and the 6th to 7th steps). While that does heighten the exoticness of the piece, it is not authentic to any world musical tradition.
Here it is in the actual opera. They’re almost naked!
For something a little different, Gustavo Dudamel leads the Berlin Philharmonic in Bacchanale. He plays a little fast and loose with tempo, but it’s really a thrilling version!
Here’s the band version done by a Japanese middle school. As I’ve come to expect from young Japanese bands, they knock it out of the park: this is the only band version on YouTube that’s any good at all, and I looked at a couple dozen!
Clifton Williams (1923-1976) was born in Arkansas and attended high school in Little Rock, where he became an accomplished french horn player. He studied composition at Lousiana State University and the Eastman School of Music. He taught composition for 17 years at the University of Texas at Austin before becoming chair of the composition and theory department at the University of Miami in 1966. He held this post until his untimely death. His first compositions were written for orchestra. His career as a wind band composer took off in 1956 when Fanfare and Allegro, his first composition for band, won the inaugural Ostwald Award given by the American Bandmasters’ Association. His Symphonic Suite won him the award again the following year. He went on to write over 3 dozen works for band, many of which are considered essential repertoire.
No one describes Symphonic Dance no. 3: Fiesta better or more succinctly than the Foothill Symphonic Winds:
Fiesta was originally one of Clifton Williams’ five Symphonic Dances, commissioned by the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra to celebrate their 25th anniversary in 1964. In the original suite, each of the five dances represented the spirit of a different time and place relative to the background of San Antonio, Texas. Fiesta is an evocation of the excitement and color of the city’s numerous Mexican celebrations. The modal characteristics, rhythms, and finely woven melodies depict what Williams called “the pageantry of Latin-American celebration – street bands, bull fights, bright costumes, the colorful legacy of a proud people.” The introduction features a brass fanfare that generates a dark, yet majestic atmosphere that is filled with the tension of the upcoming events. The soft tolling of bells herald an approaching festival with syncopated dance rhythms. Solo trumpet phrases and light flirtatious woodwind parts provide a side interest as the festival grows in force as it approaches the arena. The brass herald the arrival of the matador to the bullring and the ultimate, solemn moment of truth. The finale provides a joyous climax to the festivities.
Fiesta will be the sole piece played by the Columbia Festival Band , which will open the 4th annual Columbia Festival of Winds on 3/4/2012. Dr. Christian Wilhjelm of the Ridgewood Concert Band will conduct this band, which will be made up of members from each of the bands participating in the Festival. We also played it in Columbia Wind Ensemble in 2003.
Since I won’t be conducting it this time around and don’t know exactly how Dr. Wilhjelm will like it, here are several version of Fiesta for your listening (and hopefully practicing!) pleasure:
First, a studio recording by an anonymous band:
A live performance by a Japanese high school band:
Finally, here’s a slightly different live interpretation by a Texas honor band:
Educated at the University of Michigan, composer Frank Ticheli (b. 1958) has become one of the biggest names in new wind band repertoire. Since 1991 he has been a Professor of Composition USC-Thornton and, until 1998, Composer in Residence of the Pacific Symphony. The recipient of many awards, he was most recently winner of the 2006 NBA/William D. Revelli Memorial Band Composition Contest for his Symphony No. 2.
Ticheli’s 1999 composition Shenandoah is based on an American folk song of the same name whose popularity has not been dimmed by its uncertain origin and meaning – more on that in a minute. Ticheli himself aptly describes how this song inspired his work for band:
In my setting of Shenandoah I was inspired by the freedom and beauty of the folk melody and by the natural images evoked by the words, especially the image of a river. I was less concerned with the sound of a rolling river than with its life-affirming energy – its timelessness. Sometimes the accompaniment flows quietly under the melody; other times it breathes alongside it. The work’s mood ranges from quiet reflection, through growing optimism, to profound exaltation.
He also gives some historical background on the song:
The Shenandoah Valley and the Shenandoah River are located in Virginia. There is disagreement among historians concerning the origins of their names. Some claim that the river and valley were named in the 1750’s by the Cherokee as a friendly tribute to a visiting Iroquois Chief named Skenandoah. Others suggest that the region was named not by the Cherokee, but by the Senedo Indians of the Virginia Valley. In the Senedo tradition, Shenandoah means “daughter of the moon”, and bears no relation to the Iroquois Chief Skenandoah.
The origins of the folk song are equally obscure, but all date to the 19th century. It has been attributed variously to a coal miner in Pennsylvania, a young protege of Stephen Foster, and to a housewife in Lexington, Kentucky [ed: also to Native Americans or French-Canadian sailors!]. Many variants on the melody and text have been handed down through the years, the most popular telling the story of an early settler’s love for a Native American woman.
Wind Band Literature 