The Saint Cloud Symphony Orchestra
2018-2019 Concert Season
Heroes and Homelands
2018-2019 Concert Season
Heroes and Homelands
Upcoming Events
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Coming Home – The Armistice Anniversary
November 10, 2018 – 7:30pm Dr. Brian Dowdy, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Preconcert Discussion – 6:30pm Ritsche Auditorium, St. Cloud State University Adult | $25 Senior | $20 Student | $5 PROGRAM American Salute | Morton Gould Le Tombeau de Couperin | Maurice Ravel Mutations from Bach | Samuel Barber Appalachian Spring | Aaron Copland |
Program Notes for Coming Home – The Armistice Anniversary
American Salute
Morton Gould
Composed in 1942 for a patriotic radio broadcast during the early days of WWII, Gould’s American Salute is an orchestral setting of the Civil War era song, “When Jonny Comes Marching Home.” Gould’s two brothers were serving in the army during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the composer himself attempted to enlist, though multiple health issues prevented his admission. Gould instead served his country and supported his family through work as a composer, radio broadcaster, and conductor. American Salute’s many quotations of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” are framed by driving, repetitive figures in the percussion and brass. These marches alternatively evoke images of battle, funereal, victory, and the return home, calling upon the simplest of musical materials to conjure the deep, personal complexities of living in a world at war.
Le Tombeau de Couperin Suite
Maurice Ravel
Written and orchestrated between 1914 and 1919, Ravel’s neo-baroque suite of prelude and dances is named for the 17th/18th-century keyboardist and composer, François Couperin. Beneath the colorful, jaunty, even joyful sounds of this strange tombeau (taken from the French for “tomb”), there lies a memorial of more personal genesis. Ravel composed each movement in memory of friends lost in World
War I.
The “Prelude” was for First Lieutenant Jacques Charlot, who had transcribed Ravel’s Mother Goose for solo piano. The “Forlane” was for a Basque painter, First Lieutenant Gabriel Deluc. The “Menuet” was dedicated to Jean Dreyfus, at whose family home Ravel recuperated after the onset of debilitating health issues and the death of his mother – events which together had ended the composer’s own active service in the war. The Rigaudon was for Pierre and Pascal Gaudin, brothers killed by the same mortar blast in 1914.
What then of François Couperin and the seemingly cheerful sounds which comprise most of this work? Ravel’s own response to critics was that, "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence." Yet grief makes itself heard, especially in the central section of the “Menuet.” There, a somber woodwind chorale gives way to a brief but passionate outpouring of grief in the strings, an outpouring that lies at the structural midpoint and the very heart of this symmetrical dance.
Mutations from Bach
Samuel Barber
Despite its warming colors and peaceful, even joyful character, Barber’s 1968 work for brass ensemble was born of a dark time for the composer and his country. America was in the throes of the Vietnam War, and the abject failure of Barber’s 1966 opera Antony and Cleopatra had sent the composer into isolation, depression, and alcoholism. Perhaps it is no surprise that Barber’s next two compositions would borrow from previously successful material and be inspired by the “Agnus Dei” – a Christian prayer for mercy and peace. The first of these works was a 1967 choral setting of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, with the liturgical text in Latin. A year later Barber wrote Mutations from Bach, a quasi-collage of settings of the hymn melody for “Christe, du Lamm Gottes” (“Christ, Thou Lamb of God,” also known as the German or Lutheran Agnus Dei). The work begins with a setting of Joachim Decker’s 1604 harmonization of that melody. It continues through several transformations of settings by Bach – taken especially from his Cantata No. 23 and Chorale Prelude for organ No. 21. The work concludes with a return to the Decker harmonization. For Lutherans of Bach’s time, the melody under transformation was inseparable from the text, “Christ, Thou Lamb of God…have mercy on us…grant us Thy peace…” Barber’s mutations sound forth as pleas for peace, prayers for mercy, and hymns of supplication.
Appalachian Spring Suite
Aaron Copland
When in 1942 Martha Graham and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned Copland to write a ballet with “an American theme,” the United States was still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the tide of World War II was just beginning to turn. According to musicologist Marta Robertson, Martha Graham wanted to illustrate “the American Dream [that] was being threatened by Nazism.” Indeed, the work’s domestic, romantic, religious, and “pioneer” themes call up a mythical vision of American history. Copland described the setting as,
A pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.
If Gould’s American Salute is about coming home, and if Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is about those lost to war, then Copland’s iconic work is about the life that many seek to build together in moments of peace. Graham’s bride and groom are literally building a house in the ballet, and as Copland said upon receiving Graham’s initial script, “This is a legend of American living. It is like the bone structure, the inner frame that holds together a people.”
Copland’s music calls upon the sounds of Appalachian fiddle playing and the Shaker melody “Simple Gifts” to create the overall sense of Americana. Yet he was also thinking about a singular American individual: Martha Graham. “Nobody else seems quite like Martha,” wrote Copland, “she’s so proud, so very much herself. And she’s unquestionably very American: there’s something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her which one tends to think of as American.” It is perhaps this quality of strength and restraint that we hear at the music’s very beginning and end. At the same time, these gently glowing harmonies are a sunrise-in-sound. Copland called it “a suffused light.” In its first and last moments, the sounds of Appalachian Spring lift up the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the land, the rising strength of family, and the possibility of a life lived in community.
Morton Gould
Composed in 1942 for a patriotic radio broadcast during the early days of WWII, Gould’s American Salute is an orchestral setting of the Civil War era song, “When Jonny Comes Marching Home.” Gould’s two brothers were serving in the army during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the composer himself attempted to enlist, though multiple health issues prevented his admission. Gould instead served his country and supported his family through work as a composer, radio broadcaster, and conductor. American Salute’s many quotations of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” are framed by driving, repetitive figures in the percussion and brass. These marches alternatively evoke images of battle, funereal, victory, and the return home, calling upon the simplest of musical materials to conjure the deep, personal complexities of living in a world at war.
Le Tombeau de Couperin Suite
Maurice Ravel
Written and orchestrated between 1914 and 1919, Ravel’s neo-baroque suite of prelude and dances is named for the 17th/18th-century keyboardist and composer, François Couperin. Beneath the colorful, jaunty, even joyful sounds of this strange tombeau (taken from the French for “tomb”), there lies a memorial of more personal genesis. Ravel composed each movement in memory of friends lost in World
War I.
The “Prelude” was for First Lieutenant Jacques Charlot, who had transcribed Ravel’s Mother Goose for solo piano. The “Forlane” was for a Basque painter, First Lieutenant Gabriel Deluc. The “Menuet” was dedicated to Jean Dreyfus, at whose family home Ravel recuperated after the onset of debilitating health issues and the death of his mother – events which together had ended the composer’s own active service in the war. The Rigaudon was for Pierre and Pascal Gaudin, brothers killed by the same mortar blast in 1914.
What then of François Couperin and the seemingly cheerful sounds which comprise most of this work? Ravel’s own response to critics was that, "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence." Yet grief makes itself heard, especially in the central section of the “Menuet.” There, a somber woodwind chorale gives way to a brief but passionate outpouring of grief in the strings, an outpouring that lies at the structural midpoint and the very heart of this symmetrical dance.
Mutations from Bach
Samuel Barber
Despite its warming colors and peaceful, even joyful character, Barber’s 1968 work for brass ensemble was born of a dark time for the composer and his country. America was in the throes of the Vietnam War, and the abject failure of Barber’s 1966 opera Antony and Cleopatra had sent the composer into isolation, depression, and alcoholism. Perhaps it is no surprise that Barber’s next two compositions would borrow from previously successful material and be inspired by the “Agnus Dei” – a Christian prayer for mercy and peace. The first of these works was a 1967 choral setting of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, with the liturgical text in Latin. A year later Barber wrote Mutations from Bach, a quasi-collage of settings of the hymn melody for “Christe, du Lamm Gottes” (“Christ, Thou Lamb of God,” also known as the German or Lutheran Agnus Dei). The work begins with a setting of Joachim Decker’s 1604 harmonization of that melody. It continues through several transformations of settings by Bach – taken especially from his Cantata No. 23 and Chorale Prelude for organ No. 21. The work concludes with a return to the Decker harmonization. For Lutherans of Bach’s time, the melody under transformation was inseparable from the text, “Christ, Thou Lamb of God…have mercy on us…grant us Thy peace…” Barber’s mutations sound forth as pleas for peace, prayers for mercy, and hymns of supplication.
Appalachian Spring Suite
Aaron Copland
When in 1942 Martha Graham and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned Copland to write a ballet with “an American theme,” the United States was still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the tide of World War II was just beginning to turn. According to musicologist Marta Robertson, Martha Graham wanted to illustrate “the American Dream [that] was being threatened by Nazism.” Indeed, the work’s domestic, romantic, religious, and “pioneer” themes call up a mythical vision of American history. Copland described the setting as,
A pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.
If Gould’s American Salute is about coming home, and if Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is about those lost to war, then Copland’s iconic work is about the life that many seek to build together in moments of peace. Graham’s bride and groom are literally building a house in the ballet, and as Copland said upon receiving Graham’s initial script, “This is a legend of American living. It is like the bone structure, the inner frame that holds together a people.”
Copland’s music calls upon the sounds of Appalachian fiddle playing and the Shaker melody “Simple Gifts” to create the overall sense of Americana. Yet he was also thinking about a singular American individual: Martha Graham. “Nobody else seems quite like Martha,” wrote Copland, “she’s so proud, so very much herself. And she’s unquestionably very American: there’s something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her which one tends to think of as American.” It is perhaps this quality of strength and restraint that we hear at the music’s very beginning and end. At the same time, these gently glowing harmonies are a sunrise-in-sound. Copland called it “a suffused light.” In its first and last moments, the sounds of Appalachian Spring lift up the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the land, the rising strength of family, and the possibility of a life lived in community.
Meet the Conductor
Dr. Brian Edward Dowdy is Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra and the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to symphonic performances, Dowdy has recently conducted productions of Don Giovanni, Hänsel und Gretel, Susannah, Le tragédie de Carmen and The Rape of Lucretia, and he has led performances with the University of Minnesota Campus Singers, Chorus Polaris and the Sanctuary choir of Richmond, VA. In 2012 he joined Sanctuary in recording Music for Compline, an album of plainchant and renaissance motets, and in 2014 he directed and sang in Pesher Compline at the Walker Art Center with members of Cantus. As an advocate for new music, Dowdy has led premier performances for the Switchboard and Hot Air Music Festivals in San Francisco, and in 2013 he conducted the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble in “Project Beck,” a night of 20 premiers inspired by Beck Hansen’s Song Reader. Dowdystudied at Oberlin College, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of Minnesota. He holds degrees in conducting, classical guitar performance, English literature and East Asian Studies.
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