Scenes from the Louvre
(The Portals, Children's Gallery, The Kings of France, The
Nativity Paintings, Finale)
Norman Dello Joio (b. 1913)
Norman Dello Joio was born in New York City and descended from
three generations of organists; he himself was a church organist and
choir director at age fourteen. He attended the Julliard School
for three years, then transferred to Yale, where he studied with Paul
Hindemith. He held positions at Sarah Lawrence College (NY) and
at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, where he was
Professor of Composition. In 1972, he moved to Boston, and from
1972 to 1979, was Dean of the School of Arts at Boston University.
Dello Joio has composed for virtually every medium, including
television. In addition to winning an Emmy in 1965 for the
original version of "Scenes from the Louvre" and the New York Music
Critics Circle Award, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for
"Meditations on Ecclesiastes."
"Scenes from the Louvre" was originally written for orchestra to
accompany an NBC television special on the Louvre gallery.
Broadcast in November 1964, the version for band was
commissioned by Baldwin-Wallace College for its Symphonic Band,
conducted by Kenneth Snapp. The transcription was completed and
premiered in 1966 with the composer conducting. The composition
is a suite of the television music, portraying the museum's
development during its construction. Cast in five movements,
classical forms are used such as binary, strophic, and theme with
variations. The composition does not have a particularly
modernistic sound due to its original purpose as descriptive music,
but Dello Joio uses a liberal dash of chromaticism, adding spice to
his accompaniments. Parallels to "Variants on a Medieval Tune"
are apparent, especially in the forth movement. A chorale and
cantus firmus treatment of development figure
prominently in the third movement.
(Edited by Richard Miles)
The Gathering of the Ranks at Hebron
by David R. Holsinger (b. 1945)
Holsinger was born December 26, 1945 in Kansas City, Missouri.
He received his Bachelor of Music degree from Central Methodist
College in Fayette, Missouri in 1967, and his Master of Music degree
from Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg in 1974.
He did further post-graduate study at Kansas University from
1979-81 where he also served as staff arranger for the University
Bands and was Director of the Swing Choir. Holsinger was twice
the recipient of the prestigious Ostwald Award for band composition,
sponsored by the American Bandmasters Association. He currently
serves as assistant to the Chief Musician at Shady Grove Church in
Grand Prairie, Texas. Among his activities, he arranges and
produces worship music albums, directs the Academy instrumental music
program with his wife, Winona, and teaches theory in the
church-affiliated Bible College. Holsinger serves annually as
an instructor at several church music conferences and visits
several universities yearly, serving as guest composer-conductor.
He has held similar temporary posts in Poland and Guatemala.
He was commissioned by Kappa Kappa Psi, national honorary band
fraternity, to compose a work for their National Intercollegiate Band
and conduct its premiere performance at their national convention in
1989.
Hebron was a prominent city of the Old Testament. It was a
dwelling place for Abram; the site where Abraham's wife, Sarah, died;
a "city of refuge' under the leadership of Joshua; a gift to the
descendants of Aaron, the Levite Priest; and the capital city King
David chose from which to rule Judah for seven and one-half years.
The Gathering of the Ranks of Hebron depicts that time in
biblical history when almost 350,000 men came together, armed for
battle, determined to make David king over all Israel, eventually
making the first ill-fated attempt at bringing the Arc of the
Covenant back to Jerusalem.
Cajun Folk Songs
I. La Belle et le Capitaine
by Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)
Frank Ticheli (born January 21, 1958 in Monroe, Louisiana) has
composed works for a variety of media, including band, wind ensemble,
orchestra, chamber, and theatre-music. His works have been
performed by numerous ensembles throughout the United States, Canada,
and Japan, including the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie
Hall, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, the orchestras of Austin,
Colorado, Frankfurt, Memphis, Nashville, and San Antonio, and many
university, high school, and middle school ensembles.
His music has been described as "lean and muscular...and above
all, active, in motion", "showing an unabashed self-assuredness
arising from a great foundation of orchestral technique", and
expressing "direct emotion, creating dramatic visceral impact."
He received his Doctor of Musical Arts and Masters Degrees in
Composition from the University of Michigan where he studied with
William Albright, George B. Wilson, and Pulitzer-prize-winners Leslie
Basset and William Bolcom, and his Bachelor of Music in Composition
from Southern Methodist University where he studied with Donald
Erb.
He is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of
Southern California, and is now in his fourth year as
Composer-in-Residence of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. He
previously was an Assistant Professor of Music at Trinity University
in San Antonio, Texas, where he served on the board of directors of
the Texas Composers Forum, and on the advisory committee for the San
Antonio Symphony's "Music of the Americas" project.
Cajuns are descendants of the Acadians, a group of early French
colonists who began settling in Acadia (now Nova Scotia) around 1604.
In 1755 they were driven out by the British, eventually
resettling in South Louisiana and parts of Texas, preserving many of
the customs, traditions, stories, and songs of their ancestors.
Although a rich Cajun folksong tradition exists, the music has
become increasingly commercialized and Americanized throughout the
twentieth century, obscuring its original simplicity and directness.
In response to this trend, Alan and John Lomax traveled to
South Louisiana in 1934 to collect and record numerous Cajun
folksongs in the field for the Archive of Folk Music in the Library
of Congress. By doing so, they helped to preserve Cajun music
in its original form as a pure and powerful expression of Louisiana
French Society.
"La Belle et la Capitaine" tells the story of a young girl who
feigns death to avoid being seduced by a captain. Its Dorian
melody is remarkably free, shifting back and forth between duple and
triple meters. In this arrangement the melody is stated three
times. The third time an original countermelody is added in
flutes, oboe, clarinet, and trumpet.
"Merry Mount" Suite
by Howard Hanson (b. 1896-1981)
Howard Hanson is one of the most important figures in the American
music world. He has exerted widespread influence as a composer,
conductor, and educator. Born in Wahoo, Nebraska, in 1896,
Hanson studied music at Luther College, at the Institute of Musical
Art (Juilliard School of Music) in New York, and at Northwestern
University. At the age of twenty, he accepted an appointment as
dean of the Conservatory of Fine Arts, College of the Pacific in San
Jose. In 1921 he was the first composer to enter the American
Academy in Rome, having won its Prix de Rome. Upon his return
to the United States in 1924, he became the director of the Eastman
School of Music, a position held until 1964. In 1936 he was
elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters
in New York, and in 1938 to fellowship in the Royal Academy of Music
in Sweden. In 1944 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his
Symphony No. 4. In 1945 he won the Ditzen Award, followed in
1946 by the George Foster Peabody Award, and in 1951 by the Award of
Merit of the Alumni Association of Northwestern University. He
holds thirty-six honorary doctorates from American colleges and
universities, in addition to many other honors and distinctions
received both in this country and abroad.
Hanson's major works include his opera Merry Mount, six
symphonies, many choral and chamber works. Among his principle
works for band are March Carillon, Dies Natalis, Young Person's Guide
to the Six-Tone Scale, and Laude. Hanson's style is romantic,
tonal (although enhanced by euphonious dissonances), with asymmetric
rhythms at times, and a preference for the low instrument
registers.
The Merry Mount is an opera based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's short
story, The Maypole of Merry Mount. Hawthorne's has an
historical basis in conflict between the Puritans and Cavaliers,
which in recently-settled New England resulted in the conflict
between settlers of Plymouth and the Cavalier group led by Thomas
Morton, who had established Merry Mount at what is now Quincey,
Massachusetts. The plot of the opera is anything but merry: set
in a Puritan town in old New England, it concerns a pastor's romantic
obsession with a visiting Lady, and the unleashing of his repressed
hedonism. The story was a natural for Hanson, combining his
love for "warm-blooded music," poetic description, and Puritan
history. The opera had its stage premiere on February 10, 1934
at the Metropolitan Opera; four years later, Hanson prepared an
orchestral suite from the work. The dazzling Merry Mount, with
its lush orchestration, elicited 50 curtain calls in its operatic
premiere at the Met.
The austere Overture, which describes the Puritans, makes
extensive use of the modal writing Hanson considered "very much in
keeping with the Puritan character...I have always been passionately
devoted to the great modal melodies which have come down to us from
the past. As a boy, I heard countless Swedish folk-songs and
folk-dances, most of which were in the Aeolian or Dorian modes...In
church I was impressed with the chorale melodies which form so
important a part of the Lutheran service, many of which are so
strongly influenced by the Gregorian chant."
The playfulness of the second movement Children's Dance is
deceptive; it reflects the disruptive presence in town of the
hedonistic Cavaliers. The third movement, Love Duet, would not
be out of place in Hanson's Romantic Symphony, with its passionate
account of Pastor Bradford's desire for Lady Marigold Sandys; while
the exhilaration Maypole Dances use original themes written in "the
old modes" to depict the erection of the maypole, an object that
scandalizes the Puritans-and reflects the human sensuality that leads
Pastor Bradford to murder.