Fanfare Finale

Aaron Copland

Born: November 14, 1900, Brooklyn, New York
Died: December 2, 1990, North Tarrytown, New York

Dubbed “the dean of American composers,” Aaron Copland was one of the first composers from the United States to enjoy worldwide fame. He studied piano, composition, and theory in the U.S., then went to Paris to work with the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger. Copland’s early works betray a love of both jazz and the modernist sounds he encountered in France. In the mid 1930s, Copland embraced a more consciously “American” style, marked by the use of folk songs and folklore (evident in his famous ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring) and greater melodic and harmonic accessibility. By the 1950s Copland was the most popular of American composers, even as he returned to more dissonant writing. His compositional output declined in the 1970s, but he continued to conduct his works around the world.

Fanfare for the Common Man

Composed: 1942
Duration: 3 minutes
Instrumentation: 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, tam-tam

In his autobiography, Aaron Copland wrote that “Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, had written to me … about an idea he wanted to put into action for the 1942-43 concert season. During World War I he had asked British composers for a fanfare to begin each orchestral concert. It had been so successful that he thought to repeat the procedure in World War II with American composers.” Goossens was looking, according to his proposal, for fanfares that were “stirring and significant contributions to the war effort.” Copland was one of eighteen composers who wrote new fanfares for this project. His original thoughts for names for his new work were Fanfare for Four Freedoms or Fanfare for a Solemn Ceremony. But then Copland found inspiration in a speech made around that time by Vice President Henry A. Wallace in which Wallace, trying to rally Americans against the imperialist threat, announced the dawning of the “Century of the Common Man.”

Goossens had hoped to premiere the new Fanfare for the Common Man in October 1942 at the first concert of the new Cincinnati Symphony season. But, as Copland was late in finishing his piece, the premiere was rescheduled for March 12, 1943, in the middle of tax season. Copland wrote, “I [am] all for honoring the common man at income tax time.” A few years later, Copland returned to the Fanfare, employing it as the main theme of the fourth movement of his Third Symphony. The Fanfare begins with dramatic percussion crashes. Then the trumpets intone a noble, majestic theme that is soon taken up by the entirety of the brass section. Long, sustained notes and a final rush from the percussion bring the work to a powerful peroration.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Born: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria
Died: December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria

No reminder is really needed of the unique stature of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the history of Western music. His vast catalog of compositions – over 600 of them, including some 15 operas, 17 masses, 50 symphonies, 20 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, and much more – epitomizes the German-Austrian Classical style. His music is recognized and loved all over the world for its melodic, harmonic, and textural richness and beauty. The son of a well-known violinist and pedagogue, Mozart was one of the greatest prodigies ever, playing his first public concert at age five and composing his first music at seven. Before reaching the age of ten he had already played recitals in front of the likes of Marie Antoinette and King George III of England. He traveled throughout Europe through his teens. After failing to find a secure post elsewhere, and having grown dissatisfied with his career in Salzburg, Mozart moved to Vienna, where he spent the last decade of his life. While he enjoyed some successes with his new operas and piano concertos, life there grew more and more precarious, leading to his early death at age thirty-five.

Serenade No. 12 for Winds in C minor, K. 388 (K. 384a)

Composed: 1782-83
Duration: 24 minutes
Instrumentation: 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons

A common feature of the musical world in eighteenth century Europe was the commissioning of new music to serve as entertainment, or background music, for parties, social occasions, and civic functions. Most composers of the day wrote such works, which went by names like divertimento, serenade, cassation, partita, or nocturne. Mozart wrote many of these himself, often simply for some relatively easy income. Such entertainment works tended to fall easily on the ear, and were in cheerful major keys. But that is far from the case with the present, often dark and portentous C minor Serenade.

No one knows for certain when, or for what purpose, this work was written. On July 27, 1782, Mozart mentioned in a letter to his father Leopold that he was writing a piece that he referred to as Nachtmusik, or “nocturne.” It would seem that he meant this C minor work, which he ended up simply titling Serenada or Serenade. He may have intended it for the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, who had just hired a permanent wind octet – or Harmoniemusik, as it was then called – for his court, or for Prince Aloys Joseph Liechtenstein, another music fan that Mozart was courting for commissions. In any case, Mozart seems to have thought highly of the Serenade, and in 1787 made a second arrangement of it for string quintet (K. 406/516b).

The opening Allegro is in sonata form, with its usual exposition, development, and recapitulation of the main melodies. The music is tense, sometimes stormy, even projecting a martial spirit at times, with alternating flowing and more staccato passages. Moving into the relative major key of E-flat major, the slow movement is graceful and waltz-like. It provides some respite from the seriousness of the rest of the work, with brief solo cadenzas for the first oboe and first clarinet.

The Menuetto takes the form of a canon, in which the bassoons answer phrases from the oboes one bar later. Its central Trio section is similarly imitative, but in this case the answers are upside down (inversion, in musical terminology). The final Allegro is a theme and eight variations. All of the variations but one remain in a tense, serious minor key. But Mozart does pull a “happy ending” out of his hat, concluding the work in an optimistic, even jaunty C major.

Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges

Born: December 25, 1745, Baillif, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe
Died: June 10, 1799, Paris, France

Joseph Boulogne’s father was a wealthy plantation owner, and his mother one of his father’s slaves. Educated in Paris, Boulogne first gained notoriety in his teens as a fencing master. He was made an officer of the king’s bodyguard and a chevalier at age 21. Little is known about his musical training, although he became famous as a virtuoso violinist. Saint-Georges later became the music director of Le Concert de la Loge Olympique, perhaps Paris’s most famous orchestra, and was responsible for the commissioning of Franz Josef Haydn’s “Paris” Symphonies, Nos. 82-87. During the French Revolution, Saint-Georges served as a colonel of the first all-black regiment in Europe, and later took part in the Haitian slave rebellion and independence movement. He composed eight operas, two symphonies, and around ten violin concertos and many string quartets, songs, and other works. U.S. President John Adams called him “the most accomplished man in Europe in riding, shooting, fencing, dancing, music.”

Violin Concerto in A major, Op. 5/2

Composed: 1775
Duration: 25 minutes
Instrumentation: strings, solo violin

Although the evidence is uncertain, Saint-Georges may have studied with one of the great violinists of his day, Jean-Marie Leclair. In 1769, Saint-Georges became the concertmaster of the Concert des Amateurs orchestra, which was led by another of his teachers, Françoise Joseph Gossec. When Gossec moved on to direct the Concert Spirituel in 1773, Saint-Georges went with him to serve again as concertmaster. Over the years, Saint-Georges also became increasingly known as a solo performer. Along with his own ten concertos, composers like Gossec and Karl Stamitz wrote works for him.

Saint-Georges’s abilities as a virtuoso are evident in all his concertos, including the Concerto in A major. Its longest movement is the first, in something like sonata allegro form with ideas that are developed and then repeated in their original form. The movement opens with a graceful tune. Lively and more introspective passages alternate in quick measure, as Saint-Georges shows off his facility with melodic writing. When the solo violin enters with its frequently decorative melodic line, ideas pass freely back and forth between the soloist and orchestra, as each of them also develops its own material. A few passages move into a more urgent minor key.

Beginning with a stately, melancholic tread, the slow movement, while still in a major key, plumbs some emotional depths. When the string orchestra completes its unfurling of the opening, the violin enters with a gesture repeated from the first movement, holding a lengthy single note that eventually extends in a lyrical outpouring. The texture is light throughout, and at several points, Saint-Georges restricts the accompaniment to just a small group of violins, making the return of the lower strings that much more dramatic. Opportunities for virtuoso display, plentiful throughout the first two movements, become even more pronounced in the Finale, a rondo, with wonderfully varied textures, based on a playful recurring opening theme.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Born: May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Viatka district, Russia
Died: November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia

Tchaikovsky has become one of music’s iconic figures, the composer of world-famous works such as the 1812 Overture, The Nutcracker, and Romeo and Juliet that even non-classical music fans recognize and love. These compositions as well as his symphonies, especially the “Pathétique,” his other ballets Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 are among the most-performed works in the repertoire. Tchaikovsky showed great musical talent as a youngster, but was groomed for a career in law. Music ultimately won out, and after completing his studies, in 1866 he took a post teaching at the brand new Moscow Conservatory. Within a decade he was famous as a composer, but his unhappiness in an ill-advised marriage led to a suicide attempt. He won the financial support of Nadezhda von Meck, with whom he carried on a long correspondence without ever meeting her face-to-face. Tchaikovsky had many more great musical successes, traveling the world and meeting most of the major musical figures of his day. But anxiety and depression continued to plague him, and he died in 1893, a still-discussed death by cholera that may have been accidental or a suicide.

Serenade for Strings in C major, Op. 48

Composed: 1880
Duration: 30 minutes
Instrumentation: strings

Within a week of his brief, disastrous marriage to Antonina Milyukova in 1877, Tchaikovsky suffered something of a breakdown. Wanting to avoid his friends and the bustle of large cities, he retreated to Kamenka, an estate outside Kiev belonging to his sister and her husband. There, in 1880, he set to work on two very different compositions. One was the boisterous 1812 Overture – which Tchaikovsky hated, describing it as “noisy” and of “no great artistic value,” despite its quickly becoming one of his most popular compositions. The other was the Serenade for Strings, of which he admitted, “I’m terribly in love.” The Serenade was written in a matter of weeks during September and October of 1880 – “it poured from the heart,” he wrote. From its first performance, on October 30, 1881 in St. Petersburg by Eduard Napravnik and the Russian Musical Society, the Serenade was a great success. Tchaikovsky himself conducted it often, including during his 1891 tour of the United States.

Tchaikovsky’s favorite composer was Mozart, of whom he once wrote “I don’t just like Mozart, I idolize him.” Discussing the String Serenade in a letter to his friend and patroness Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky wrote, “The first movement is my homage to Mozart, it is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model.” Belying its relatively innocuous title “Piece in the form of a Sonatina,” that first movement is lush and passionate. Its Andante introduction, marked “sempre marcatissimo” (“always very accented”) features double-stopping from both the violins and violas, enhancing the richness of texture. Two themes dominate the faster main section of the movement – one with a hint of yearning, the other fast and fleet, with pizzicato accompaniment. The slow introduction is recalled at the movement’s end.

FIRST VIOLIN
Ruth Lenz*, Concertmaster
Olga Archdekin*, Acting Associate Concertmaster
Laura Ahn*
Allison Harvey
Ellen Flanagan*
Laurentiu Norocel

SECOND VIOLIN
Calvin Lewis*, Acting Principal Second
David Haskins*, Acting Assistant Principal Second
Sarah Coyl*
Claire Tatman*
Elizabeth Lenz

VIOLA
Dustin Budish*, Principal
Tiantian Lan*, Assistant Principal
Catherine Matovich
Nathaniel Sattler

CELLO
Peter Lenz*, Principal
Eileen Brownell*, Acting Assistant Principal
Karen Stout-Gardner*

BASS
Scott Faulkner*, Principal
Mark Wallace*, Assistant Principal

OBOE
Neil Tatman*, Principal
Jordan Pyle*

CLARINET
Joshua Anderson*, Principal
Chris Money*

BASSOON
Jeff Leep*, Principal
Eric Fassbender*

HORN
John Lenz*, Principal
Kris Engstrom*
Peter N. Adlish*
Dennis M. Gribbin*

TRUMPET
Paul Lenz*, Principal
Jon Bhatia
Larry Machado

TROMBONE
Jim Albrecht*, Principal
Joseph Peterson*
Andrew Williams*

TUBA
Russ Dickman*, Principal

TIMPANI
Robert Lightfoot*, Principal

PERCUSSION
Eric Middleton*, Principal
Carol Colwell

*denotes contract musician