Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-second Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

Sixty-first American Music Festival

2, 9, 16, and 23 May 2004

Sunday Evenings, 7:00 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
The sixty-first American Music Festival

is made possible in part by a generous gififiom

the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones, pagers,

and other electronic devices are turned off.

For the convenience of concertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 pm.

2,495th Concert

2 May 2004, 7:00 pm

Mark O’Connor, violinist, fiddler, composer

Carol Cook, viola, violin

Natalie Haas, cello

Pre-concert talk, 6:15 pm

National Public Radio music director

Benjamin Roe and a member ofthe ensemble

will discuss the music of Mark O’Connor.

Program subject to change; Mark O’Connor will

announce and comment on the musicfrom the stage.

Mark O’Connor (b. 1963)

Old Country Fairy Tale (1993)

Chief Sitting in the Rain/College Hornpipe (1995)

Poem for Carlita (1999)

Caprice for Three (1997)

Appalachia Waltz (1993)

Blackberry Mull (2003)

Intermission

F.C.’s Jig (1996)

Brave Wolf (1997)

Limerock (1989)

Vistas (1999)

Olympic Reel (1996)
The Musicians

MARK O’CONNOR

Violinist, composer, and fiddler Mark O’Connor is widely recognized as one

ofthe most gifted contemporary composers in America and surely one of

the brightest talents of his generation. An excerpt from a recent feature in

the New York Times eloquently describes his effect on his audiences: “The

audience was on its feet....They were moved by Mr. O’Connor’s journey without maps, cheering for the only musician today who can reach so deeply first

into the refined, then the vernacular, giving his listeners a complex, sophisticated piece of early twenty-first-century classical music and then knocking

them dead with the brown-dirt whine of a Texas fiddle.”

A product ofAmerica’s rich aural folk tradition, O’Connor’s journey

began at the feet oftwo violin masters: Texas fiddler Benny Thomasson and

French jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. Finding a place between their marvelous musical extremes, O’Connor absorbed knowledge and influence from

a multitude ofmusical styles and genres. Now, at age forty-one, he has melded and shaped these influences into a new American classical music. Among

the many famous musicians who have sought collaboration with O’Connor

are Yo-Yo Ma, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, John Williams, Wynton Marsalis, 

double bassist Edgar Meyer, and the Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun. In

cooperation with these and many other musicians, O’Connor has produced a

rich and varied discography on the Sony Classical and omac Records labels. 

His Appalachian Journey won a Grammy award in 2001.

One of O’Connor’s earliest commissions came in 1998 from the McKim

Fund ofthe Library of Congress, resulting in a sonata for violin and piano.

With more than 150 performances since it was written, O’Connor’s Fiddle

Concerto No. 1 has become the most frequently performed violin concerto by

a contemporary composer. His The American Seasons: Seasons ofan American

Life was commissioned to celebrate the twentieth anniversary ofTroy Savings

Bank Music Hall in Troy, New York. The work was featured in a twentyeight-city tour with O’Connor as soloist with the Metamorphosen Chamber

Orchestra. It was broadcast nationally on New Year’s Day 2002 in a pbs

program in which it was paired with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. O’Connor’s

Concerto No. 2 for violin and orchestra was commissioned by the Academy of

Saint Martin in the Fields and received its premiere performance at the bbc

Proms concert in 2003. Mark O’Connor has earned a reputation as a generous donor of his time to schools ofmusic and to organizations that promote

music education and outreach. He is the founder ofthe Mark O’Connor

Fiddle Camp in Nashville, Tennessee, and the Mark O’Connor String

Conference near San Diego, California, where he resides with his wife and

two children. Mark O’Connor and the Appalachia Waltz Trio appear at the

National Gallery by arrangement with Columbia Artists Management, llc,

of New York City.

CAROL COOK

Violist Carol Cook comes from Scotland, where she studied at Saint Mary’s

Music School in Edinburgh and performed as soloist with the Edinburgh

and Guildhall Symphony Orchestras, the Cambridge Sinfonia, and the

Edinburgh Players. She has also played with the New York Philharmonic,

the London Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and

the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra. She holds the artist diploma from

the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio, and the master

ofmusic degree from the Juilliard School in New York City.

3
NATALIE HAAS

Cellist Natalie Haas, age nineteen, has performed in festivals and concerts

in Scotland, France, and the United States for the last three years and has

been a touring member ofthe San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers Orchestra for 

five years. She is currently studying at the Juilliard School with Fred Sherry.

A California native, she performs with her sister Brittany in a fiddle-cello 

duo, as well as with the piano quintet Polaris, the Juilliard Symphony, and

pianist Susie Petrov. She teaches privately and at the Mark O’Connor Fiddle 

Camp and Strings Conference.

4

2,496th Concert

9 May 2004, 7:00 pm

Ann Schein, pianist

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Piano Variations (1930)

Richard Danielpour (b. 1956)

The Enchanted Garden from Preludes, Book I (1992)

Promenade

Mardi Gras 

Childhood Memory

From the Undergound

Night

Sydney Hodkinson (b. 1934)

Minor Incidents: Four Character Pieces for Solo Piano (1981)

Con energia e audace

Con leggierezza

Con duolo

Con violenza

Intermission

Elliot Carter (b. 1908)

Piano Sonata (1945-1946)

Maestoso—Legato scorrevole 

Andante—Misterioso—Andante
The Musician

ANN SCHEIN

Thrilling audiences since her sensational first recordings for the Kapp label

and the highly acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut that launched her career,

pianist Ann Schein has received critical praise ofthe highest order in major 

American and European music centers. She has performed in more than

fifty countries and collaborated with such renowned conductors as George

Szell, James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, James de Priest, David Zinman, Stanislaw

Skrowacewski, and Sir Colin Davis. In 1980, in an inspiring artistic triumph,

Schein extended the legacy of her teachers, Mieczyslaw Munz, Arthur

Rubinstein, and Dame Myra Hess, by presenting the complete major Chopin 

repertoire in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in the course of one season.

Schein’s recent performances have included concerts at the 92nd Street Y

in New York City and a reading of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with

the Concert Artists of Baltimore, conducted by Edward Polochick.

Ann Schein has also left an impression on the concertgoing public

through her many tours ofthe United States and Brazil with soprano Jessye

Norman. Their musical collaboration can be heard on a release from Sony

Classical in early songs of Alban Berg. Schein’s recording ofsolo piano 

works of Schumann was released in 2001 on the Ivory Classics label and

drew acclaim from reviewers in the United States, Europe, and the Far East.

From 1980 to 2000, Ann Schein was on the faculty ofthe Peabody

Conservatory in Baltimore. She gives lectures and master classes across

the United States and frequently serves as an adjudicator in major music

competitions.

6

Program Notes

Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations is a masterpiece oftwentieth-century

piano writing and a work of enormous importance in the realm of

American piano music. The format consists of a theme often measures’

length that is followed by twenty variations and a coda. The texture of the 

work is acerbic, rigid, and thrifty, but the work rises to energetic climaxes—

a clear example of Copland’s genius. “An austere method of musical constructivism” is Nicolas Slonimsky’s judicious description ofthis twentiethcentury gem (Music since 1900). Copland completed the variations in 1930

and played the premiere performance on 4 January 1931 at a concert given

by the League of Composers in New York City. The critic who reviewed

the performance in the New York Herald Tribune wrote: “Mr. Copland,

always a composer ofradical tendencies, has in these variations sardonically thumbed his nose at all ofthose esthetic attributes which have hitherto been considered essential to the creation ofmusic.” In his book,

The Anatomy ofMusical Criticism, music historian Alan Walker includes

Copland as an example when he makes the following statement about the

creative process: “A master unconsciously harnesses musical principles 

in the service of his genius. They are the ‘hidden persuaders’ which prompt

us to recognize him.”

Richard Danielpour, a faculty member ofthe Manhattan School of

Music since 1993, has established himself as one ofthe most gifted and 

sought-after composers of his generation. In a conversation with music

publisher Mary Lou Humphrey, Danielpour stated: “My music combines

the traditions of European classical music [and] the American vernacular

ofthe early twentieth century. Frequently my music evokes sounds of

nature, and has the sense of developmental narrative; I like to develop ideas

in ways that suggest some kind of drama.” About The Enchanted Garden,

Danielpour says: “This set of preludes for solo piano was inspired by my

7
dream life: the juxtaposition of and contrast between my experience ofsubconscious dreams and conscious reality. In a sense, this work is ‘a garden of

the mind.’ The first movement, Promenade, was inspired by my daily practice ofwalking through Central Park before or after working hours.

Mardi Gras, the second movement, resulted from a dream I had ofthe 

Berlin Philharmonic and its late music director dancing and marching,

instruments in hand, down the streets ofthe French Quarter in New

Orleans (or was it the West Village in New York?). The third movement,

Childhood Memory, includes [the work’s] most vivid musical description of

waking from a dream. Here I recall a childhood dream in which I discovered nature as nurturer. At the sound of six chimes (depicting six a.m.),

the dream ends; an evocation of birdsong serves as the coda to this song 

without words.

From the Underground, the fourth movement, remembers a nightmare

from my childhood ofimaginary gremlin-like creatures skittering and slithering under the ground in New York. The fifth and last movement, Night,

pays homage to both the consoling and frightening aspects ofthings nocturnal. A chant of bells (transcribed from those which sound at sunrise and 

sunset each day in the northern Italian town of Bellagio) is heard in the 

piano’s upper registers during the work’s final minutes. Thus the beginning and the end ofthe day are perceived as one.” The Louisiana School

of Music commissioned The Enchanted Garden for its annual piano festival

in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Sydney Hodkinson’s Minor Incidents: Four Character Piecesfor Solo Piano

contains short and relatively light pieces of contrasting character written

for the advanced player. A brieffragment from Chopin’s Mazurka, Op 17,

No. 4, serves as the genesis for the entire composition, and each ofthe

four studies is, in effect, a variation on this material. Hodkinson resides 

in Ormond Beach, Florida, and has been recently appointed to the Artistic

Policy Committee ofthe Daytona Beach Symphony Society. He teaches 

composition and conducts the Contemporary Ensemble at the Aspen,

Colorado, Music Festival and School.

8

Elliott Carter’s Sonatafor Piano (1945-1946) has elicited divergent criticism, as have most of his works, but it has taken its place as a masterpiece of

twentieth-century music and earned lasting enthusiasm on the part of connoisseurs of his music. Ann Schein has performed this work often and has 

come to know and relish the challenges it offers. Notes from a recorded 

version ofthis work by the American pianist and teacher Beveridge Webster

(1908-1999) include Carter’s own statement about how his magnum opus 

came into being: “The composition uses many ofthe resources and sonorities ofthe modern piano and is thought of as being completely idiomatic for

that instrument, with no attempt to use the virtuoso style ofthe piano writing in a personal way to express my own thoughts and feelings.” Time signatures, together with rhythmic experimentation, are the means by which 

Carter was able to create a new musical idiom that was unique to the music

ofthe Western world. He attempted to free himselffrom traditional forms by

deriving his basic motives from the interrelations between the tone colors

and playing techniques ofthe piano itself. The octaves, fifths, fourths, and 

thirds that predominate come from the characteristic overtone resonances of

the piano. Among living composers, Elliott Carter has certainly attained a

place of honor and makes every list ofthe foremost American composers of

the twentieth century.

Program notes by Elmer Booze

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the 

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones, pagers,

and other electronic devices are turned off.

For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 pm.

9
2,497^ Concert

16 May 2004, 7:00 pm

The Colorado String Quartet

Julie Rosen, violin

Deborah Redding, violin

Marka Gustavsson, viola

Diane Chaplin, cello

Elliot Carter (b. 1908)

Elegy (arranged for String Quartet) (1946)

Robert Maggio (b. 1964)

Songbook for Annamaria (String Quartet No. 1) (2001)

1. “We’re Bound Away...”

2. “When You Wake...”

3. “Jimmy Crack Corn...”

4. “All the Live-Long Day”

Intermission

Joan Tower (b. 1938)

Quartet No. 2 (“In Memory”) (2001)

(In one movement)

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

String Quartet No. 2 (1911-1913)

Discussions (Andante moderato—

Andante con spirito—Adagio molto) 

Arguments (Allegro con spirito)

The Call ofthe Mountains

(Adagio—Andante—Adagio)

10

The Musicians

COLORADO STRING QUARTET

In one ten-day period in 1983, the Colorado String Quartet made history by

winning two ofthe music world's highest honors: the Naumburg Chamber

Music Award and the first prize at the Banff International String Quartet

Competition. Since then the Colorado String Quartet has earned praise on

four continents as one ofthe finest quartets of our time. From the rave

reviews in major American media come comments such as these: “The

Colorado Quartet presented a spectacularly accomplished performance...

tight, flawlessly balanced ensemble” (Los Angeles Times); “The quartet

played with a brio and resonant, impassioned sound that was extraordinary”

(Chicago Sun-Times); and “This is a first-class ensemble that rises with

panache to meet every challenge in the music” (Washington Post). The

Colorado Quartet has premiered compositions by established composers,

such as Ezra Laderman and Karel Husa, as well as composers ofthe

younger generation. It has received grants from the National Endowment

for the Arts, the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, and the Aaron Copland

Fund for music. The Colorado Quartet is currently quartet-in-residence

at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and appears at the

National Gallery by arrangement with Arts Management Group, Inc., of

New York City.

JULIE ROSENFELD

Violinist Julie Rosenfeld, a native of Los Angeles, received her training

at the Curtis Institute, the University of Southern California, and Yale

University. Her teachers included Szymon Goldberg, Nathan Milstein,

and Yukiko Kamei. A member ofthe Colorado String Quartet since 1982,

Rosenfeld often performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln 

Center and at the Santa Fe and La Jolla Music Festivals. In 1992 she

became the first woman judge at the Banff International String Quartet

competition, and in 1996 she was artist-in-residence at both the Marlboro

Music Festival and the International Mozart Festival in Poland.

11
DEBORAH REDDING

A native of New York City, violinist Deborah Redding grew up in Colorado

and founded the Colorado String Quartet while attending the University of

Colorado at Boulder. She holds a bachelor ofmusic degree from that institution, where her principal instructor was Oswald Lehnert, and a master

of music degree from The Juilliard School of Music, where her principal

instructor was Szymon Goldberg. A committed marathon runner, Redding

raises scholarship money for the Soundfest Institute of String Quartets

through her participation in marathons.

MARKA GUSTAVSSON

Violist Marka Gustavsson holds degrees from Indiana University and the 

Mannes College of Music and is a doctoral candidate at the City University

of New York. She has studied with Mimi Zweig, Joseph Gingold, Felix

Galimir, and Daniel Phillips. She has performed in many chamber music

events, including the Festival Presence at Radio-France and the Pundaquit

Festival in the Philippines. Gustavsson has served on the faculties of

Hofstra University and the Kinhaven Music Festival.

DIANE CHAPLIN

A native of Los Angeles, cellist Diane Chaplin holds a bachelor offine arts 

degree from the California Institute ofthe Arts, where she was a student of

Cesare Pascarella, and a master ofmusic degree from the Juilliard School of

Music, where she studied with Harvey Shapiro. A member ofthe Colorado

String Quartet since 1988, Chaplin has concertized throughout the United

States and Europe. She has a large class of private students and is administrative director ofthe Soundfest Chamber Music Festival and Institute of

String Quartets.

12

Program Notes

Elliot Carter’s Elegy began its existence as a work for viola or cello and piano 

in 1943. The composer arranged it for string quartet in 1946, transcribed

it for string orchestra in 1952, and revised it once again in 1961. Carter

disowned much ofthe music he composed before the 1940s, but by the 

time he wrote Elegy, he was already in his forties and well beyond his early

experimental period. Elegy represents both inspired neoclassicism and overt

Americanism, a combination exhibited by many artists and composers

as they responded to the social and political crises ofthe Second World

War. Elegy is perhaps Carter’s closest realization ofthe teachings of Nadia

Boulanger (1887-1979). Its continuous arch of melody is set in a restrained

contrapuntal context. It has become fashionable to comb Carter’s earlier 

music for hints of his mature style, but Elegy is more remarkable for the 

ways in which it differs from his later compositions.

Robert Maggio’s Songbook for Annamaria was commissioned by the

Colorado String Quartet in 2001 and is among a number ofrecent commissions from such sources as the ascap Foundation, the American Composers 

Forum, the Barlow Foundation, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and the Lesbian

and Gay Chorus ofWashington, D.C., in collaboration with D.C.’s Different 

Drummers. Maggio is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pew

Fellowship in the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’

Goddard Lieberson Fellowship. Critics have remarked that Maggio’s music

gives an overall impression of freshness and exuberance, conveying a joy

in making music that carries through to the listener.

Joan Tower’s String Quartet No. 2 (“In Memory”) was written in 2001

and was commissioned by the Tokyo String Quartet. The thirteen-minute,

one-movement piece is about death and loss. It was written in memory

of one ofthe composer’s longtime friends, Margaret Shafer, who passed

U
away the summer the piece was begun. About two months later, the tragedy

of ii September 2001 occurred, expanding the composer’s specific loss to

include all those who lost their lives on that day.

This amplified feeling of pain in the world played a major role in 

increasing the intensity ofthe music. It contains high, sustained, ethereal 

passages, some of which culminate in a slow descent. This is paired with 

more forceful and driving repetitive musical ideas that try to express the

anger resulting from the loss ofloved ones. Tower said at the time she was

composing this work that she was “honored to be writing this piece now 

for the Tokyo Quartet. I love the string quartet medium; it is one ofthe 

most creative in the music world, and I very much look forward to working 

with such a high level group.” The work received its premiere performance

in February 2002 in New York City.

In the long list of Charles Ives’ works for small ensembles, only two are

for the conventional string-quartet instrumentation, yet nothing about these

pieces is conventional. Quartet No. 1, completed in 1896 when Ives was

still an undergraduate at Yale, may have been improvised at the organ. The 

quartet contains so many references to popular hymns that Ives at one 

point titled it From the Salvation Army (Not Quite). Quartet No. 2 grew out of

music Ives wrote between 1907 (when parts ofthe second movement were

begun) and 1913, but its first public performance did not take place until

11 May 1946, when the quartet was played in New York at a concert given at

Columbia University. The composer Lou Harrison (1917-2003) said that, 

in helping Ives edit the score for performance, he was called upon to fill in

a few measures of music himself.

As he does in many ofhis other works, Ives here completely abandons 

the classical notions of musical structure and formal relationships among

the elements of musical discourse. He noted the work’s origins in a memorandum: “After one ofthose Kneisel Quartet concerts, I started a string 

quartet—half-mad, halfin fun, and halfto try and have some fun with making those men fiddlers get up and do something like men.” The idea was

not deemed inappropriate at the time, although Ives was somewhat harsh on

the Kneisels; they were the first long-lived American string quartet (1885 —

1917) that played the new music oftheir time, including the music ofsome 

American composers. A later memorandum identifies this as a string quartet “for four men who converse, discuss, argue (in re ‘politicks’), fight, shake

hands, shut-up, then walk up the mountainside to view the firmament.”

In the first movement, Discussions, the “politickal” subject may have

been slavery and the Civil War, for there are references to The Red, White,

and Blue, Dixie, Marching through Georgia, and other songs ofthat war.

In the second movement, Arguments (in a preliminary version, it was entitled Arguments and Fight), there are bits of patriotic song struggling with 

fragments from the symphonies ofTchaikovsky, Brahms, and Beethoven.

The slow, contemplative music ofthe Call ofthe Mountains brings the

quartet to an end.

Programs notes provided by Arts Management Group, Inc.

Adapted and edited by Elmer Booze

15
2,49^th Concert

23 May 2004, 7:00 pm

Joseph Smith, pianist

Presented in honor ofthe exhibition American Mastersfrom

Bingham to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908)

Sonata no. 3 (“Norse”) Op. 57

(i899)

Impressively; at times 

with impetuous vigor

Mournfully, yet with

great tenderness

With much character 

and fire

Harold Arlen (1905-1986)

Bonbon Ode

Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949)

From the Southland (c. 1907)

No. 2: The Frolic

No. 6: A New Hiding-Place

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Piano Variations (1930)

Intermission

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)

Bethena: A Concert Waltz (1905)

Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967)

Valse

Charles Tomlinson Griffes

(1884-1920)

Sonata (1918)

Feroce; allegretto con moto

Molto tranquillo 

Allegro vivace

(Movements played without pause)

Ethelbert Nevin (1862-1901)

At Home: June Night

in Washington

16

The Musician

JOSEPH SMITH

The New York Times called pianist Joseph Smith’s playing “eloquent,” and

the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung found him a “richly sensitive interpreter.”

Through performances, recordings, broadcasts, lectures, and magazine

articles, Smith has enjoyed bringing many little-known pieces to the attention ofthe public, especially from the American repertoire. His recordings

ofthe piano music of Griffes for Musical Heritage Society also drew high

praise: “a persuasive, thoughtful interpreter” (American Record Guide), “He

projects these pieces with complete mastery” (High Performance Review),

and “he displayed consummate understanding and sensitivity” (Stereophile).

Smith’s most recent cd is Familiar Melodies (Brioso 126). Brioso will also

be releasing a new cd ofwaltzes from Beethoven to Poulenc, including

the Strayhorn Valse.

Smith’s feature, “Joseph Smith’s Piano Bench,” ran monthly on 

National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” for two years. His column,

“Rare Finds,” has appeared in Piano Today magazine since 1993, and he 

has written for the British magazine Piano. Smith is editor of Four Early

Twentieth-Century Piano Suites by Black Composers (G. Schirmer), which 

brought Burleigh’s From the Southland back into print after decades of

neglect, as well as American Piano Classics (Dover Publications), which 

includes a wide variety of music from the Civil War era through the early

1920s. He is the author of Piano Discoveries (Ekay Music) and has edited 

volumes of Latin American dances and works by Percy Grainger. He is

working on a volume of romantic music for the Steinway series of publications and a volume of piano waltzes for Dover.

17
Program Notes

Concertgoers are invited to enjoy both this American Music Festival concert 

and an exhibition that offers a parallel encounter with nineteenth- and early

twentieth-century American creativity: American Mastersfrom Bingham

to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection. Showcasing one ofthe most

important private collections of nineteenth-century American art, the exhibition consists offifty-one paintings by twenty-six American artists. Works

by such masters as George Caleb Bingham, Frederic Edwin Church, 

Thomas Eakins, Alvan Fisher, William Stanley Haseltine, Martin Johnson 

Heade, Fitz Hugh Lane, John Marin, John F. Peto, and William Trost

Richards represent four decades of collecting in an area of particular scholarly interest to John Wilmerding, former deputy director at the National

Gallery and currently Christopher B. Sarofim ’86 Professor for American

Art at Princeton University. The exhibition includes landscapes, marine

painting, portraits, genre scenes, still lifes, and figure paintings. The life

spans ofthe artists (George Caleb Bingham was born in 1811 and Andrew 

Wyeth, who is still living, in 1917) roughly coincide with those ofthe 

American composers represented on this program (MacDowell was born

in i860 and Copland died in 1990). These composers made many ofthe 

same aesthetic choices as the artists ofthe time: they gradually emerged

from the domination oftheir European master teachers; they experimented

with sounds previously unimagined; they challenged inherited forms; and

they searched for specifically American symbols. Both the composers

and the artists ofthe period were deeply affected by symbolist poetry and 

by the theory of correspondences, as espoused by Charles Beaudelaire 

(1821-1867). According to this theory, many aspects of music and the visual arts are closely linked. Charles Griffes was not only a gifted composer

but also a talented artist who produced delicate watercolors, etchings, and

drawings. One of Edward MacDowell’s legacies to American culture was

18

the establishment ofthe MacDowell Colony at his home in Peterborough, 

New Hampshire; it has served as a meeting place for musicians, writers, 

and artists since 1907.

MacDowell provided a poetic epigraph for his “Norse” Sonata (1899):

Night had fallen on a day of deeds.

The great rafters in the red-ribbed hall

Flashed crimson in the fitful flame

Ofsmoldering logs.

And from the stealthy shadows 

That crept ’round Harald’s throne,

Rang out a Skald’s strong voice,

With tales of battles won; of Gudrun’s love

And Sigurd, Siegmund’s son.

The sonata does not relate a specific tale but is infused with the idea of epic

storytelling. Accordingly, every movement ranges from pianissimo to fortissimo. The work might better be described as a “symphony for piano” rather

than as a sonata. The idea of narrative is reflected not only in its content, 

but also in its form. Opening with a dark, brooding passage, the sonata 

gradually increases in tempo to burst into an exultant theme. One has the 

impression of a slow introduction, followed by the beginning of a sonata 

form. The recapitulation makes clear, however, that the “introduction” is

actually the first thematic group and the exultant theme the beginning of

the second. Melodic motifs reappear in all movements. Yet, since the motifs 

are disguised by variation, the sonata does not seem cyclical in form but

instead bound together by a characteristic melodic language. Themes with 

strong trochaic stresses energize the rhythm of all three movements.

MacDowell was readily embraced in his own time as “America’s first

great composer.” Later generations rebelled at this easy acceptance, and his 

musical identity as “American” was questioned, or even simply denied, by
several generations of musicologists. Indeed, the first edition ofthe New

Grove Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians asserted flatly: “It is hard to find anything distinctively American about [MacDowell’s] music.” But MacDowell

himself wrote: “What we [American composers] must arrive at is the youthful optimistic vitality and the undaunted tenacity ofspirit that characterizes 

the American man. This is what I hope to see echoed in American music.”

Thus, despite its Norse associations, the third sonata is also American by

virtue ofits heroic aspiration and excess of virile energy.

The catalogue of Harold Arlen’s works testifies not only to the incredible number of memorable songs he composed, but also to their variety and

adventurousness. A great innovator in popular song—he could ignore 

the conventional thirty-two-bar pattern and still write a hit—Arlen never 

tackled the large instrumental forms. The two piano pieces on this program

date from i960, late in his career. They are modest, but instrumentally

conceived and characteristic. Bon-Bon contrasts two themes: the first is

sharp-edged and cocky, the second extended in indolent legato phrases full

oflarge downward leaps to far-fetched tones. The Ode exemplifies Arlen’s

predilection for free, flexible lines that resemble jazz improvisation.

The African American composer and singer Harry T. Burleigh is best 

remembered for his celebrated arrangements ofspirituals for voice and

piano, which made it possible to include this glorious body offolksongs in

conventional recitals. However, even before the first of his solo spirituals 

appeared in 1917, Burleigh had established himself as one ofthe leading 

American art-song composers of his day. He produced only a single work for

piano, the suite From the Southland. Its sixth movement, A New Hiding-Place,

is based on two spirituals: the famous My Lord, What a Morning, and the virtually forgotten A New Hiding-Place (although it is quoted by W. E. B. du Bois

as an epigraph to a chapter of his classic book, The Souls ofBlack Folk).

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The very first notes of Copland’s Piano Variations proclaim its compositional premise. The theme is in single notes, punctuated by heavy chords.

The pauses between the phrases contribute to the starkness ofthe theme.

The absence of harmony and rhythmic pulse implies that the intervals are

the constant to be varied. The repetitions ofshape within the theme and its

constant return to the note C-sharp lend an insistent character. Other sets

ofvariations may vary in the general shape ofthe theme, the harmonies, or

the bass line, but Copland focuses on melodic intervals and the chords that

accompany them. Not only all the melodic lines but also the most fleeting

and colorful passages are formed from these intervals, giving the work its

obsessive power. The high degree of dissonance and the strictness ofform in

this work have led some Copland scholars to consider it atypical. However,

in other respects, such as in his use ofjazz-inspired rhythms, strong tonal

center, characteristic wide spacing of chords, grandeur, tenderness, and

humor, it is as characteristic ofthe composer as his most popular works.

The energy of Scott Joplin’s rags is tempered by Copland’s melodic 

warmth. Conversely, the affectionate sentiment of Bethena: A Concert Waltz

is enlivened by lilting, raggy syncopation. Its five strains are resourcefully 

differentiated in mood and phrase structure, as well as by curious contrasts

oftonality. The conflation ofthe two most characteristic American turn-ofthe-century genres, sentimental waltz and ragtime, doubles the nostalgic

poignancy of Bethena.

The jazz composer Billy Strayhorn was particularly associated with

pensive, elegiac moods, as they appear in works such as Passion Flower,

Chelsea Bridge, and Blood Count. His Valse, composed around 1933 when

he was still in high school and had not yet discovered his bent for jazz,

shows how early the characteristic Stravian melancholy asserted itself.

Nothing that Charles Griffes wrote before his Sonata (1918) would suggest that he aspired to large musical forms, let alone that his only piano 

sonata would prove to be a masterpiece. In scope, content, and form, the 

sonata is unlike anything else by Griffes. He employs, both melodically

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and harmonically, a synthetic mode—a scale containing two augmented

seconds, as well as half and whole steps. Here, due to the scale’s disjunctive intervals, the dense piano textures that enriched his previous writing 

become harsh and threatening. The first of the three continuous movements (Feroce; allegretto con moto) is introduced by a series of enraged roars. 

The gnarled, asymmetrical first theme mixes small intervals and large

tortured leaps. The second theme is smooth and pensive, but its occasional

foreshortened bars (10/8 instead of 12/8) give it an anxious undertone.

Throughout the movement the texture is richly contrapuntal. Rather than a

simple hierarchy of melody and accompaniment, we find a number of

simultaneous voices alternating in prominence. Often, these voices seem 

bent on anarchic independence, impulsively veering off in different directions and conflicting with one another rhythmically. The movement’s wild,

rhapsodic character notwithstanding, it fulfills the requirements of an 

utterly traditional sonata-allegro form.

The austere theme ofthe slow movement (Molto tranquillo), barely

harmonized at all, has an archaic cast. An agitated interlude leads to a new 

ethereal theme, heard over a faintly undulating broken fifth. The movement’s close hurls us into the finale (Allegro vivace) with a series ofscreaming chords. The first theme ofthe finale epitomizes Griffes’ use of old

forms toward new ends. Here, Jugato is not employed as an allusion to

baroque tradition. Rather, the voices seem to pursue and harry one another

in a violent frenzy. The other themes contrast with one another in meter

as well as in character. In its cataclysmic final pages, so many accents and 

implied meters are combined that, despite the heavy chordal textures, the 

sonata seems to exult fiercely in its strength, having liberated itselffrom 

the confines of meter altogether.

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Ethelbert Nevin was one ofthose rare composers who enjoyed

immense popular success during his lifetime. His songs The Rosary and

Mighty Lak’ a Rose and his insidiously catchy piano piece Narcissus were 

familiar to a vast American audience in the last decade ofthe nineteenth

and the first decade ofthe twentieth centuries. Nevin described his sweet,

unpretentious music with endearing modesty and accuracy: “While I am 

doing nothing great, I am doing the best I can, and I’m going to leave a

stream ofsunshine, ifit is possible.” In 1899 Nevin composed a piano 

piece entitled At Home and published it as the last movement of a suite, En

passant, Op. jo. Most of his piano pieces depict picturesque subjects from 

foreign lands, but this one finds the picturesque in a domestic setting:

a June night in Washington, D.C. Nevin’s piece consists of a lilting 6/8

siciliana that is interrupted by an interlude in African American style. The 

interlude begins with a section ofstrumming marked “like a banjo,” followed by a passage, marked Song, that features trochaic syncopation. The 

song quoted, My Love’s Waitin’, is one of Nevin’s own tunes. The interlude

continues with a section simply marked “Quartet” in the range of male 

voices. Recent research has confirmed what Nevin may have meant to imply 

in this music, namely that barbershop singing is African American in

origin. The interlude continues with a nostalgic outburst followed by the 

return ofthe opening material.

Program notes by Joseph Smith, adapted and edited by Stephen Ackert

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The use of cameras or recording equipment during the 

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones, pagers,

and other electronic devices are turned off.

For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30 pm.

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