Program with Note (Program with Notes in Spanish)

A Grand Grand Overture, op. 57
Malcolm Arnold (1921–2006)

Soloists
Keith Manlove
Dr. Tidimogo Gaamangwe
Dr. Melissa Melendez
Dr. W.P. Sterneman

Night on Bald Mountain
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
Completed and orchestrated by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Intermission

The Composer is Dead 
Nathaniel Stookey (Born 1970)
Words by Lemony Snicket

Dr. W.P. Sterneman III, Narrator

Samson and Dalila: Dance Bacchanale
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Program Notes

A Grand Grand Overture – Artist, teacher, cartoonist, broadcaster, and tuba player Gerard Hoffnung commissioned notable composers to write some of their wittiest and most humorous compositions at the Hoffnung Music Festivals in Royal Festival Hall in London. This Overture was presented at the first Festival on November 13, 1956. The concert band introduces a gay, rollicking tune that climaxes in superb pomp and circumstance when the four soloists, performing on three vacuum cleaners and floor polisher, join in concertante fashion. The glissandi and staccato passages make severe demands on the musicians, requiring clean attacks. The full ensemble brings an electric texture to the musical sound. As each of these unique instruments in turn becomes silent, we can appreciate the composer’s talents that have been uniquely displayed and his comment: “I write exactly what I would like to hear if I were to go to a particular entertainment for which the music has been commissioned.” The score is dedicated to President Hoover.

Night on Bald Mountain – Mussorgsky is, of course, familiar to concertgoers for his ever-popular work for solo piano, Pictures from an Exhibition—made even more well known in Ravel’s masterful orchestration. Opera lovers occasionally are afforded the opportunity to attend a performance of his stunning opera, Boris Godunov, but for most, that’s it. For the great preponderance of his work is encountered through his many songs, well known to singers and teachers of voice. The single exception to this is manifestly his evergreen tone poem, Night on Bald Mountain—except that he didn’t compose it. Well, not in the conventional sense of a complete, polished composition. For it has a checkered history, to be sure.

A tone poem is a single movement for orchestra that, in the best romantic tradition, is about something other than its straightforward musical elements. Composers of the eighteenth century were quite satisfied with music that stood on its own: first theme, second theme, etc. But, our passionate romantics of the nineteenth century were also interested in composing music that took as its inspiration a picture, a story, a poem–anything that could stimulate the imagination. So, by the late 1840s this trend was in full swing, led by the inimitable Franz Liszt. Our young Modest Mussorgsky was quick to pick up on the trend, and so was inspired around 1858 to compose a work partly drawn from recycled elements of an opera abandoned earlier that definitely had a romantic focus: witchcraft and deviltry, tentatively entitled, St. John’s Night on Bald Mountain. Some years later, twenty-eight years old, and spending the summer of 1867 on his brother’s farm, he further developed the idea into an orchestral work, now called “The Witches.” He offered it to his colleague, Balakirev, for performance on a concert of the Russian Music Society. The latter was severely critical of the work, and the composer withdrew it. That was the practical end of the matter for Mussorgsky, for he never worked on or edited the work, although he did attempt to include elements in two subsequent operas. But, he never heard it performed as he had conceived it—an orchestral work. Fast-forward to years later, after the composer’s death, when distinguished composers and music scholars were assiduously—but misguided, to be sure—busily working over Mussorgsky life’s work, “correcting” his supposed crudities and fundamental compositional mistakes. The eminent Russian composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, was chief among these do-gooders, and he took it upon himself to more or less re-compose Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. The result was a work that was as much Rimsky-Korsakov’s as that of Mussorgsky. Given its première in 1886, it became the version heard almost exclusively ever since. Well, it may be mostly by Rimsky-Korsakov, based upon Mussorgsky’s themes, but it’s a corker, nevertheless, and justly beloved.

The story is simple. For those not familiar with the details of the Christian ecclesiastical calendar, the feast day of St. John the Baptist is exactly six months before Christmas, thus (generally) occurring on June 23rd. Throughout the Christian world, for many, many centuries, the eve of the holiday was popularly thought of as the province of the Devil and his minions, but other traditions simply invoke old, Summer Solstice observations. Every country in greater Europe still has its own version of traditions, many of which invoke various nefarious characters and their evil deeds on that night. There are various rocky promontories—mostly Slavic–upon which these “black” celebrations occur, the most famous being the Lysa Hora in Kiev, Ukraine. Rimsky-Korsakov included a brief description of the “story” in his score. Following it, the work begins with “subterranean sounds of non-human voices, followed by the appearance of the spirits of darkness.” Thereupon an evil “black god,” traditional in Slavic countries, materializes, and presides over a “Black Mass.” The ringing of a church bell in the distance breaks up this infernal ritual, and the evil spirits disperse. Morning has come, God’s on his throne, and all’s right with the world. — William E. Runyan

The Composer is Dead! – The Composer is Dead was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 2006 with text by Lemony Snicket and music by Nathaniel Stookey. The piece premiered on July 8, 2006 and was later released as a book with CD with illustrations by Carson Ellis. The story is a musical murder mystery about the killing of a composer. The plot takes place in an orchestra and it is the inspector’s mission to interrogate the instruments of the orchestra and uncover who killed the composer.

Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah – In 1867, Saint-Saëns’ initial idea for a dramatic work on the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah was to set it as an oratorio. But when he enlisted Ferdinand Lemaire to help on the libretto, Lemaire persuaded him to try it as an opera. The composer began with Act II, the pivotal seduction and betrayal, but after private piano performances baffled everyone who heard it, Saint-Saëns broke off work on the project. The staging of his opera La princesse jaune in 1872 inspired Saint-Saëns to resume work on Samson and Delilah. He did not finish it until 1876, and when no French theater was interested in the new work, the premiere was given by Franz Liszt in Weimar in 1877. Samson and Delilah did not begin provincial performances in France until 1890, and did not reach the Paris Opera stage until 1892.

It has remained in the repertory ever since, however, the only one of Saint-Saëns’ numerous operas, ballets, and other stage works to do so. The opera is a dazzling virtuoso and expressive vehicle for the two leads, and is admired for its combination of brilliant sound and dramatic emotion. Those qualities are quite evident in the famous Bacchanale, the orgiastic, percussion-driven dance that precedes Samson’s destruction of the Philistine temple in Act III.– John Henken

Join us for our next concert: Artistry of the “Woman Composer”, Saturday, November 2, 7:30 pm, South PAC at Cedar Park High School, 2150 Cypress Creek Road, Cedar Park, TX

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