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Andrews University Symphony Orchestra
November 15, 2003
Contrasts

Ives: The Unanswered Question | Finzi: Romance for Strings | Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915 | Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36

Charles Ives (1874-1954)
The Unanswered Question

The life of American composer, professional organist, and insurance salesman Charles Ives was one of constant contrast. His father not only bestowed a passion for music on his son, but also imparted the advice that freedom to do what he wanted with his music would come from making a living doing something else. Heeding this advice led the young Ives to the insurance business. During his lifetime, Ives' compositions were often not taken very seriously, perhaps due to his "day job," the diversity of his output, and the relatively few performances given during the years of composition. However, by the time of his centenary in 1974, Ives was regarded as a respected musical innovator and one of the first to project a distinctly American musical voice. He explored various innovative techniques such as polytonality, tone-cluster, chords based 4ths, and atonality. His creativity spilled over into his insurance work where he promoted the use of actuarial statistics and ceaselessly sought ways to improve the lot of low income groups. Ives never forgot the people behind the insurance policies. While he ran one of the most successful insurance agencies in the United States, he took only $25,000 a year, eschewed fancy parties, and spent his days off padding around his modest house in his overalls composing music until 2 or 3 a.m.

One of Ives' most performed works, The Unanswered Question (1908, rev. 1930-35), is a study in contrasts. Strings intone slow diatonic, triadic chords; a solo trumpet asks the question seven times; the flutes try to answer the question, each time getting more and more agitated and atonal. True to his pragmatism as a sometime theater orchestra pianist, the composer leaves considerable leeway in orchestration of the piece. One group is an unspecified number of strings, another group is a flute quartet (clarinet and/or oboe may substitute for some of the flutes), and the trumpet part may be played by English horn, oboe, or clarinet. In "Note to Performers," Ives indicates that the groups should operate independently:

"The strings play ppp throughout with no change in tempo. They are to represent The Silences of the Druids who Know, See and Hear Nothing.' The trumpet intones The Perennial Question of Existence,' and states it in the same tone of voice each time. But the hunt for The Invisible Answer' undertaken by the flutes and other human beings becomes gradually more active. . . . The Fighting Answerers,' as the time goes on, and after a secret conference,' seem to realize a futility, and begin to mock The Question'the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, The Question' is asked for the last time, and the Silences' are heard beyond in Undisturbed Solitude.'"

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Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
Romance for Strings

Ever mindful of life's transienceby age 18 he had lost his father, three brothers, and a teacher to death, and by 50, he knew of his own fatal illness Gerald Finzi devoted himself to rescuing endangered species of apples from extinction, collecting rare works of literature, championing the works of neglected English composers, and writing music in his own voice. With the 1940 founding of the Newbury String Players, Finzi discovered his instrument: the chamber orchestra. This largely amateur group not only brought fine music to the surrounding rural communities but also helped bring to life some of the music of eighteenth century composers such as Boyce, Wesley and Mudge. Finzi's own music is devoted to creating beauty, and the Romance for Strings is one of his notable successes. Assigning an exact date to Romance is difficult due to Finzi's habit of revising earlier works later on. The piece makes its first appearance in a 1928 sketchbook but was most likely revised following the formation of the Newbury String Players. Conducted by John Russell, to whom the work was dedicated, the Reading String Players premiered Romance for Strings in October of 1951.

Following a short introduction, the first theme appears accompanied by rich divisi and a variety of contrasting textures. The middle section creates another contrast as the solo violin introduces the new theme while tempo and complexity grow. This beautifully balanced piece concludes with a brief restatement of the first theme.

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Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Knoxville: Summer of 1915

From the pen of one of America's most esteemed composers, Samuel Barber's music entered the repertory soon after its composition and continues to be frequently performed today. Not surprisingly, his lyrical writing seems vocally inspired. First hand experience as a professional baritone certainly contributed to the composer's large output of songs, which make up nearly two-thirds of his compositions. A commission from soprano Eleanor Steber and difficulties in Barber's family (his father and aunt were terminally ill) contributed to the creation of the lyrical tone poem for soprano and orchestra based on William Agee's lyrical prose-poem Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Although the literary piece later appeared as the prologue to Agee's posthumously published autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family, it was first published in Partisan Review in 1938. Barber was not only attracted to the lyrical prose style, but he felt an immediate affinity with Agee's impressionistic portrayal of childhood. He and Agee were both five in 1915, and it seemed that the same relatives in rocking chairs, the same hoses watering the lawns, and the same trolley cars clanging up the street had been in West Chester as they were in Knoxville. The piece was completed on April 4, 1947 and was premiered with Steber and Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 9, 1948. Unfortunately, neither the composer nor the poet was able to attend: Barber had commitments in Rome and Agee was in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy. In 1950 the chamber orchestra version, which we hear tonight, was premiered with Eileen Farrell at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C. The scoring is for flute (piccolo), English horn, clarinet, bassoon, horns, trumpet, harp, and strings. The dedication is "In memory of my father."

"We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child." This single movement work falls into three main sections. The rocking motive heard throughout provides a unifying element, and the sounds of Agee's poetrystreetcar, locusts, water hoseslend themselves readily to musical representation. Listen particularly for the calm created when the singer speaks of "my father who is good to me," which leads into the intensity of the prayer to "remember them (his people) kindly in their time of trouble; and the in the hour of their taking away." The full orchestra restates the opening theme before the reassuring rocking takes the child off to bed, who gets drowsier, and doesn't know who he is.

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 36

Adagio molto. Allegro con brio
Larghetoo
Scherzo
Allegro molto

When one reads the October 1802 document known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, we begin to understand some of the despair that Beethoven felt with the isolation that his increasing deafness imposed. The contrast in the music that comes from the same period of this document is all the more striking. The noble Piano Concerto No. 3 and the playful, buoyant Symphony No. 2 in D hardly seem compatible with "As the autumn leaves fall and wither, so have my hopes withered. Almost as I came, so I depart; even the lofty courage, which so often inspired me in the lovely summer days, has vanished. . . . With joy I hasten to meet death face to face." Somehow these feelings didn't last: "I came near to ending my own lifeonly my art held me back, as it seemed to me impossible to leave this world until I have produced everything I feel it has been granted to me to achieve." In spite of his despair, Beethoven was actually entering a very prolific period. He wrote a friend "I live only in my notes, and with one work barely finished, the other is already started: the way I write now I often find myself working on three, four things at the same time." The new symphony was presented at the Theater an der Wien on April 5, 1803. The box office was good, but reviews were mixed. Some critics noticed that the symphony as they knew it was changed forever. One noted that the work was "full of new, original ideas, of great strength."

The piece begins with a slow introduction, with more harmonic diversions than had been heard in previous symphonies. When the principal theme finally arrives, it is introduced by the lower strings; in contrast, the winds present the second themea peppy march in dotted rhythm. A rather stormy development of the themes brings us back to the recap of the main themes, then we begin to see that Beethoven intended to create an unusually long coda. The trumpets and drums rest as an idyllic larghetto (including even a hint of capriccio) unfolds with special colors offered by clarinets and bassoons. The short, playful scherzo takes contrasts to a new level with dramatic diversity of dynamics and instrumental groups. The humorous mood is carried into the finale, but to assure us that this is not just a throw away diversion tacked onto a serious work, the movement develops into the weightiest final movement in a symphony to date. And then there is the coda. Whereas what seemed an extensive coda in the first movement (56 measures), we're now offered an "ending" of 160 measures. A Leipzig critic commented that it is ". . . a crude monstrosity, a serpent which continues to write about, refusing to die, and even when bleeding to death still threshes around angrily and vainly with its tail." While history may have delegated Beethoven's subsequent work Eroica as the ground-breaking symphonic work, the Symphony No. 2 must certainly take its place of honor in the composer's development of the genre—a premier study in contrasts.

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Program notes by Linda Mack. Copyright 2003.
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