Ly still and sleep (World Premiere) by Daniel Ott; conducted by Paul Bain
Channel: South Sound Symphonic Band
Date: 2019-01-21

Intro of piece ends, music begins 8:05.

Dan Ott writes, “In honoring Tom Anderson, my junior high band director at Ferrucci Junior High, I wanted to accomplish two things: 1) Compose a piece that would have some personal meaning for Tom, and 2) Compose a piece that I think Tom will like! Tom was my first real musical mentor. He started me on French horn in the 7th-grade beginning band, and by the end of the year had moved me up to Concert Band to play at contest. I remember nearly every piece we played over the years. That year it was the Persichetti’s Pageant. That was the very first “contemporary” music I had really heard, and this was the same year I had started to compose. So, in a way, Tom was the first person to introduce me to American music. 

Tom [Anderson] is proud of his Scottish heritage. (He may not know this, but I am also an Anderson!) I wanted to somehow incorporate this, perhaps with some kind of folk melody of Scottish origin. But I didn’t want to write a transcription of a folk tune. I wanted this to be an original piece. And I started to compose a few ideas even before I really had a sense of how to tie all this in. I researched Anderson-related folk themes, but I couldn’t find any. But somehow I kept coming back to this piano piece by Johannes Brahms (of all people), who, as an Austrian composer, had a real affinity for Scottish folk songs and poetry. One of his late piano works is a group of three Intermezzos (op. 117), the first of which is in E-flat and has a little bit of German poetry inscribed at the beginning.

The melody is very Scottish sounding, however, and it turns out that the poetry is a translation of the opening lines of the Scottish ballad Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament which actually also has a folk song associated with it ("Baloo, my boy”). Weirdly, Brahms’s “Scottish” melody is not this folksong, but one of his own composing. 
All this is very roundabout, but gives you an idea of how I think as a composer and where I draw my inspiration... My piece opens with these repeated chords, which I think of as a conversation between mother and child. Then the horns and tenor sax introduce the Brahms melody from op. 117 no. 1. Of course, I re-harmonized it and take it in new directions, but it’s Brahms’s tune, not mine.

Next the solo trumpet plays a melody which is my own. I wanted to acknowledge that Tom played trumpet with this tune. This is also a kind of development section. The saxes enter with a little choral tune that is actually based on the “Baloo, my boy” tune, and things sort of transition to the minor section that follows.

The E-flat minor section which follows is loosely based on the corresponding section in the Brahms piano original. With the return to E-flat major, we have a full-blown statement of the Brahms tune which is the climax of the piece. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear the Glockenspiel play the first two phrases of “Baloo, my boy” on top of it all. The piece returns to the opening text, with one last statement of “my” trumpet melody. I end the piece not on the tonic, but on a kind of ambiguous open fifth on the Dominant. The open fifth undergirds some much folk music of the British Isles and I also want the story to sound unfinished. There’s more music yet to come in the listener’s mind, I suppose...” 

Program note from composer Daniel Ott. 

May 19, 2018: Remembrances
Performed at Graham-Kapowsin High School
Directed by Paul Bain
http://southsoundsymphonicband.org