Music Primavera
The world around us has burst forth in new growth, with trees and flowers flaunting their fragrant blossoms. Once again it's spring! It's the time of many shades of green and when our northern half of the planet vividly reminds us how fortunate we are to be here amid all this vibrant beauty. In the spring we naturally want to dance and sing. We want to celebrate life. Yet, being who we are, we also are brought back in touch with how tenuous our lives are, how dependent we are on each other, and how much intertwined we are with the way we each treat this precious gift of life during our brief years afloat in the ocean of eternity. All these aspects of spring find expression in music, for indeed, music is our ongoing biography, describing in ways that mere words cannot what it feels like to be human. Tonight we hear three musical offerings that give us a generous taste of this spring mix of joy, pathos, determination, awe, reverence, passion, and contemplation.
Kenton Coe (b. 1943) Music for James Agee (1991)
Kenton Coe is one of our own, an East Tennessean from Johnson City. He got his early training in Chattanooga and Knoxville, went to Yale – where he studied under Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) – and eventually to Paris, to study under the most famous music teacher of the twentieth century, Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979). Coe has written a wide variety of music, including three full-length operas, other stage plays, ballets, film scores, songs, choral and instrumental works. He is probably most famous for the opera Rachel that premiered in Nashville and Knoxville in 1989. His work we hear tonight is a suite arranged from the music he wrote for the documentary film “Agee,”telling the story of the life of another famous East Tennesseean, the writer James Agee (1909-1955). The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary in 1980. The suite is instrumented for a string orchestra, with oboe soloist.
As you listen to a work that is quintessentially modern, notice the use of musical texture and the evocation of mood. If you close your eyes you will sense something of the pairing of music with imagery that has become a hallmark of modern times, the Age of Cinema. Listening to Music for James Agee illustrates for us how music has, in fact, evolved with our culture, pervading every aspect of it, no longer making occasional appearances only in concert halls and the salons of the well-to-do. And to think, this part of it all was created right here in our neighborhood!
Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Serenade for Strings, Opus 48
Since about the beginning of the 17th century, the string family of instruments has dominated both orchestral and chamber composition. By the time of Tchaikovsky, with European music deeply into the throes of Romanticism, strings were carrying an ever-increasing emotional burden, in the vanguard of the new expressions of the times. It had been Mozart, especially, who had solidly established the form of the string serenade, but those who followed him have brought this musical form to the pinnacle of creative greatness. And Tchaikovsky's masterpiece we hear tonight is certainly among the finest examples of this achievement.
Tchaikovsky was a composer who depended more heavily than most on periods of inspiration. His Serenade for Strings was originally conceived as a symphony, then a string quintet. Only as a result of an “inner compulsion” did it finally come into being. Interestingly, in that fall of 1880, Tchaikovsky was also working on his thunderous 1812 Festival Overture. The composer wrote to a friend at the time, "The overture will be very showy and noisy, but will have no artistic merit because I wrote it without warmth and without love. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart." Later he also wrote, "I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played." It was premiered in St. Petersburg in 1881 and met with instant success, a success that has been undiminished in all the years since. At its premier, the Valse (2nd movement) was played again as an encore. When you hear it, you will not only recognize it but will also fully understand why the audience wanted to hear it again.
The first movement, Pezzo in forma di Sonatina, moves from the Andante introduction to a simple, four-note theme that is beautifully developed, demonstrating the great variety of orchestral colors available from strings alone. The Valse of the second movement is perhaps Tchaikovsky's 19th-century answer to the minuets of Mozart's serenades. This graceful dance seems like it could have been taken from one of his ballets; in fact the movement, with portions of the rest of the work, has been used many times in ballet performances. Each string section takes a turn carrying the dancing melody in counterpart to rhythmic lines from the other sections. The movement ends in a gentle pianissimo, leading to the quietly stated Elégie. Like the first two movements, the third is built on a simple scale passage, this one expanding in quiet intensity. The lower strings carry a good portion of the lyrical melody which, though called an elegy, is more introspective than truly sad. The Finale is subtitled Tema russo, and includes two Russian folk tunes. The first is a slow tune sung by men working along the Volga River. It appears in the Andante introduction. The second is a Russian dance. Listen for the composer's use of pulsing, balalaika-like pizzicato in octaves, something like the folk accompaniment out in the countryside. There is also a third, lyrical theme – strictly the composer's – that provides a broad contrast to the vivacious dance. Listen, too, for the reappearance of the Andante theme from the first moment. Then Tchaikovsky cleverly blends this stately theme into the pulsing descending pattern of the dance, ending the piece with good-humored vigor.
Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) Lux Aeterna (1997)
Morten Lauridsen is an American composer of Danish ancestry. He has been professor of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for many years. Unlike many highly regarded musical creators his training has been strictly American. Lauridsen is a proven master of choral composition, with nearly a million copies of his scores already sold. Everyone who sings one of his works loves the experience and is awed by the challenge both to the voice and the emotions. In the Lux Aeterna, as with others of his compositions, there is something of an other worldly feel to the music, as if ancient emotions echoing within great European cathedrals for thirteen centuries were transformed into similar but more complex emotions for modern ears.
In his preface to the published choral score of Lux Aeterna, Lauridsen wrote, "The work is in five movements played without pause. Its texts are drawn from sacred Latin sources, each containing references to Light (Lux). The piece opens and closes with the beginning and ending of the Requiem Mass, with the three central movements drawn, respectively, from the Te Deum (including a line from the Beatus Vir), O Nata Lux and Veni, Sancte Spiritus.” The connections with chant are especially important in Lux Aeterna, so that, like the music of Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986), the rhythm of the melodic lines seem to be suspended in time, even as the music is moved along by an inner pulse. Lauridsen composed Lux Aeterna in 1997, the year his mother died. The consolation offered in the music is often compared to that of Fauré's Requiem and Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, works also inspired by the deaths of the composers' mothers. All three masterpieces also have in common a certain simplicity, yet with an ability to touch the listener at great emotional depth.
The chorus, after sixteen measures of introduction, quietly enters a capella. Within a few more measures the listener has captured the essence of Lauridsen's pervasive idea, this blending of ancient with modern to create a sense of timelessness. The second movement, "In Te, Domine, Speravi" (In thee, O Lord, have I trusted), opens with a 17th century chant from the hymn Herliebster Jesu (Dearest Jesus). This passage is a plea for mercy, for a light to shine in the darkness. The third movement, "O Nata Lux" (O born of light) is the center of the work, scored Molto expressivo, and introduced with a D in octaves then sung entirely a capella. Here the interplay of voice parts is very much in the style of Renaissance polyphony, creating a beautiful choral showpiece. In movement four, the exuberant "Veni, Sancte Spiritus" (Come, Holy Spirit), there is a soaring emphasis both on light and grief, creating a kind of connection all human beings share. At the phrase O lux beatissima (O light most blessed) the chorus is singing in high unison, calling for the filling our “cordis intima” (inmost heart). The final movement, "Agnus Dei – Lux Aeterna" (Lamb of God – Eternal Light), begins with a long, quiet prayer for the dead, then builds into full voice on the phrase “lux aeterna,” and comes to a close with a hopeful “Alleluia!”
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