Symphonic Band - BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS AND COMMUNICATIONS School of Music presents Symphonic Band Kirt Saville, conductor 7:30 p.m. 11 April 2015 de Jong Concert Hall Harr.s Fine Arts Center PROGRAM The Star Spangled Banner The Crosley March arr. John Philip Sousa Henry Fillmore 1881–1956 Victory at Sea Song of the High Seas Submarines in a Calm Sea Tango “Beneath the Southern Cross” The Guadalcanal March The Sunny Pacific Islands The Approaching Enemy The Attack Death and Debris The Hymn of Victory Symphonic Songs for Band Richard Rodgers 1902–1879 arr. Robert Russell Bennett Rober Russell Bennett Spiritual1894–1981 Celebration Satiric Dances for Band Allegro Pesante Adagio Mesto Allegro Spumante Overture to El Cid Norman Dello Joio 1913–2008 Miklós Rózsa b. 1907–1995 arr. J. D. Morsch The Willows of Winter Suite from Candide The Best of All Possible Worlds Westphalia Chorale and Battle Scene Auto-Da-Fe (What a Day) Glitter and Be Gay Make Our Garden Grow B. J. Brooks b. 1975 Leonard Bernstein 1918–1990 Flute Contrabass Trombone Amelia Bruce* Annie Farnbach Kristen Blackham Austen Walker Bassoon Jill Hammer* Sadie Smith Isaac Mitchell Victoria Wirthlin Kaylie Brown Ali Olson Kevin Llewellyn* Rachel Gibson Hannah Richey Travis Howden Hyrum Eddington Emily Lehman Paige Kimball Daniel Meiners Alto Saxophone Piccolo Nathan Adams* Bass Trombone Kaitlin Landen Alex Thomson Daniel Burt* Kaley Brinkerhoff Oboe Tenor Saxophone Charlotte Harrison* Clarke Keele Euphonium Baritone Saxophone Deven Halcomb* MiKae Osborn Candace Gunn Lauren Rosenauer Mark Henderson Ari Coleman Elizabeth Wheeler Horn Mary Bishop English Horn Brent Duford Kyli Humphreys* Clarinet Jessica Moore Tuba Jason Cannon* Jacob Watabe Rebekah Kjar Christine Rollins (E-flat) Jenna Whitworth Cassidy Young Brianna Nay Gavin Gordon Jeremy Wells Kristi DeMoss Sam Schiess* Michael Andersen Skylar DeWeese Joshua Palmer Percussion Travis Nelson Andrew Larsen Trumpet Aubrey Milligan* Grace Algecra Mary Casto Rachel Holbrook* Benjamin MacArthur Coleman Scholz Megan Sherman Stephen Bade Amanda Lee Jacob Huff (Trumpet I) Kody Euteneier Hannah Schoendorfer Jessica Bone Jacob Hanna Piano T’shara Keil Jacob Whitchurch (Trumpet II) Kyra Vanhoven Bass Clarinet Harp Kyra Vanhoven Haley Dunkley Michelle Anderson Lethicia Soares *principal Program Notes The Crosley March During a career that stretched across half of the 20th century, Henry Fillmore probably wrote, arranged, and edited more band music than any other composer/bandmaster in history. A far more colorful personality than the reserved John Philip Sousa, Fillmore’s early career as a bandmaster in his native Cincinnati led to a personal friendship with Powell Crosley (for whom he wrote this march), owner of radio station WLW in Cincinnati. In addition to broadcasting, Crosley was also a noted inventor and industrialist, with products including radios, automobiles, and refrigerators bearing his name. He eventually purchased the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, and their home field was renamed in Crosley’s honor. —Program Note by the Kagoshima Joho High School Wind Orchestra Victory at Sea Victory at Sea was a documentary television series about naval warfare during World War II. It was originally broadcast by NBC in the United States in 1952– 1953. It was condensed into a film in 1954. Excerpts from the music soundtrack, by Richard Rodgers and Robert Russell Bennett, were re-recorded and sold as record albums. The series, which won an Emmy Award in 1954 as best public affairs program, played an important part in establishing historic compilation documentaries as a viable television genre. Richard Rodgers’s 12 themes— short piano compositions a minute or two in length—were scored by Robert Russell Bennett, transforming Rodgers’s themes for a variety of moods, and composing much more original material than Rodgers had provided. Bennett nonetheless received credit only for arranging the score and conducting NBC Symphony Orchestra members on the soundtrack recording sessions, and many writers still refer erroneously to “Rodgers’s thirteen-hour score.” Symphonic Songs for Band In a career spanning more than five decades, Robert Russell Bennett (1894 –1981) arranged more than 300 Broadway musical scores; in musical comedy’s golden era of the 1920’s he orchestrated up to twenty-two shows a season. Among his credits were Show Boat; Roberta; Sunny; Rose-Marie; No, No, Nanette; Girl Crazy; Of Thee I Sing; Face the Music; Carmen Jones; Finian’s Rainbow; Kiss Me, Kate; My Fair Lady; and Camelot. He orchestrated seven of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musicals, including Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music; his arrangements for the 1955 film version of Oklahoma! earned him an Academy Award. A classically trained composer, Bennett’s prolific output of original compositions includes symphonies, sonatas, a ballet, a concerto and an opera. He is the posthumous recipient of a 2008 Special Tony Award in recognition of his historic contribution to American musical theatre. A three-movement suite, the Symphonic Songs for Band was composed in 1957 on a commission from the national band fraternity, Kappa Kappa Psi, and was premiered by the National Intercollegiate Band in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in Salt Lake City on August 24, 1957, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel William F. Santelmann, retired director of the United States Marine Band. The band comprised 112 musicians from Utah, Florida, Maryland, Colorado, Ohio, Texas, Indiana, and New Mexico. In the composer’s words: Symphonic Songs are as much a suite of dances or scenes as songs, deriving their name from the tendency of the principal parts to sing out a fairly diatonic tune against whatever rhythm develops in the middle instruments. The Spiritual may possibly strike the listener as being unsophisticated enough to justify its title, but in performance this movement sounds far simpler than it really is. The Celebration recalls an old-time county fair in cheering throngs (in the woodwinds), a circus act or two, and the inevitable mule race. Satiric Dances Norman Dello Joio, dean of Boston University’s School for the Arts wrote this piece as part of a 1975 commission for the Concord Band, Concord, Massachusetts to commemorate the Bicentennial of April 19, 1775. Dello Joio stipulated that the music would be based on a piece he had used as background music for a comedy by Artistophanes. The most famous comic dramatist of ancient Greece, Aristophanes was born an Athenian citizen about 445 BC. His plays commented on the political and social issues of fifth century Athens and frequently employed satire. The first dance movement is annotated as allegro pesante. The brass entry signifies the importance of the work, but the brisk tempo keeps the simplicity of “peasantry’’ from being ponderous. Taking a much slower adagio mesto tempo, the second dance begins with a melancholy tune from the flutes and low brass. The movement has light and delicate features that are quite exposed. Its central theme might evoke thoughts of a dance in a meadow that eventually reverts into a more solemn theme. Without a break in the music, the final movement is introduced by repeated 16th’s in the percussion. The tempo is indicated as allegro spumante and is the fastest of the composition. The quick turns and dynamics evoke images of the objects that were the titles of Aristophanes’ plays: Clouds, Wasps, and Birds. Overture to El Cid Miklós Rózsa was a Hungarian-born composer trained in Germany (1925– 1931), and active in France (1931–1935), England (1935–1940), and the United States (1940–1995), with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953. Best known for his nearly one hundred film scores, he nevertheless maintained a steadfast allegiance to absolute concert music throughout what he called his “double life.” Rózsa achieved early success in Europe with his orchestral Theme, Variations, and Finale (op. 13) of 1933 and became prominent in the film industry from such early scores as The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). The latter project brought him to America when production was transferred from wartime Britain, and Rózsa remained in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1946. His notable Hollywood career earned him considerable fame, including Academy Awards for Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959). His concert works were championed by such major artists as Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, and János Starker. In 1945, Rózsa was hired to compose the score for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound, after Bernard Hermann became unavailable due to other commitments. The score, notable for pioneering the use of the theremin, was immensely successful and earned him his first Academy Award. However, Hitchcock disliked the score, saying it “got in the way of his direction”. Two of his other scores from that year, The Lost Weekend and A Song to Remember, were also nominated, making Rózsa, to date, the only composer to have won against two of their own scores. His final two nominations (one each for Best Original Score and Best Original Song) were for the 1961 Samuel Bronston film El Cid. The Willows of Winter Dr. Brooks is assistant professor of music theory and composition at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas. The Willows of Winter was first written for piano in December 1997, and was then arranged for band by the composer in 2004. The work was originally titled Lazy Day and was premiered by the Wichita Falls (Texas) Community Band in May 2004. Prior to publication, the composition was renamed with a title suggested by the composer’s wife. In describing the work she said, “Though a willow may be bowed beneath the weight of winter, its beauty is still seen as the promise of warmth and hope emanate from within.” —Program Note by publisher Suite from Candide The son of a Russian immigrant, Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990), began life in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He studied composition at Harvard, where he first met Aaron Copland. Their friendship was cemented in the early 1940s in the workshops at Tanglewood. Bernstein achieved instant conducting fame when, at the age of twenty-five, with sixteen hours notice, he conducted a broadcast of a New York Philharmonic symphony after the scheduled guest conductor, Bruno Walter, became suddenly ill. His vast talents, charming personality, and mastery of semantics succeeded where many have failed in communicating to others his own intense enthusiasm for and love of music. Bernstein wrote symphonies, ballets, an opera, a film score, works for violin and chorus with orchestra, four Broadway musicals, and several smaller works for solo and chamber music groups. He divided his affections between traditional classical music and the jazz and Tin Pan Alley sound of popular America. Bernstein incorporated the element of jazz in many of his compositions, including his Mass and the score to West Side Story. Other notable works are Candide, Fancy Free, and Chichester Psalms. William Schumann said of Bernstein: “He is an authentic American hero, a new breed of hero, an arts hero, showing that America does honor her artists.” In 1990, the musical world lost both Bernstein and his teacher and friend, Aaron Copland. Candide is an operetta that was adapted by Lillian Hellman from Voltaire’s 18thcentury satire on blind optimism. Opening on Broadway on December 1, 1956, Candide was perhaps a bit too intellectually weighty for its first audiences and closed after just 73 performances. Bernstein was less concerned over the money lost than the failure of a work he cared about deeply. The critics had rightly noted a marvelous score, and Bernstein and others kept tinkering with the show over the years. With each revival, Candide won bigger audiences. In 1989, the already seriously ill Bernstein spent his last ounces of vital energy recording a new concert version of the work. “There’s more of me in that piece than anything else I’ve done,” he said. —Program note by San Luis Obispo Wind Orchestra This musical event is the 169th performance sponsored the BYU School of Music for the 2014–15 season.
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