Peter Boyer: Rolling River (Sketches on “Shenandoah”)
"Though I’ve composed many original orchestral works, I’d never before created an orchestral setting of an American folk song, so this invitation from John Morris Russell and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra came as something of a surprise, and a challenge. I was aware of Shenandoah, and had heard various vocal versions of this folk tune, but had never studied it. My approach in creating Rolling River (the title comes from a lyric in the song) was to put this beautiful tune front and center, and to use the richness and colors of this marvelous symphony orchestra to surround and highlight that tune. JMR asked for something sweeping and “cinematic,” and I attempted to deliver that in my setting, including some “tone painting” suggesting a rolling river in the woodwind writing."— PB
“Rolling River has become a new American classic and core repertoire for the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Peter’s eloquent variations on Shenandoah are masterfully woven into a work of profound beauty and heart. The centerpiece of the latest Cincinnati Pops recording “American Originals,” Rolling River displays sophisticated orchestration that is both virtuosic and subtle, and an innate sense of quiet drama that has left no audience unmoved.” — John Morris Russell
"Though I’ve composed many original orchestral works, I’d never before created an orchestral setting of an American folk song, so this invitation from John Morris Russell and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra came as something of a surprise, and a challenge. I was aware of Shenandoah, and had heard various vocal versions of this folk tune, but had never studied it. My approach in creating Rolling River (the title comes from a lyric in the song) was to put this beautiful tune front and center, and to use the richness and colors of this marvelous symphony orchestra to surround and highlight that tune. JMR asked for something sweeping and “cinematic,” and I attempted to deliver that in my setting, including some “tone painting” suggesting a rolling river in the woodwind writing."— PB
“Rolling River has become a new American classic and core repertoire for the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Peter’s eloquent variations on Shenandoah are masterfully woven into a work of profound beauty and heart. The centerpiece of the latest Cincinnati Pops recording “American Originals,” Rolling River displays sophisticated orchestration that is both virtuosic and subtle, and an innate sense of quiet drama that has left no audience unmoved.” — John Morris Russell
Christopher Tin: Courage (from To Shiver the Sky)
To Shiver the Sky is an oratorio about the history of flight, and mankind's quest to conquer the heavens told through the words of 11 of our greatest astronomers, inventors, visionaries and pilots. Long before Amelia Earhart become an aviation icon, she wanted to be a poet and her poem 'Courage' was one of her first published writings.
Courage was first performed live May 15, 2022 at The Anthem in Washington D.C., by the US Air Force Band, Choral Arts Society of Washington, and ModernMedieval, conducted by Christopher Tin. The first Virtual Premiere of 'Courage' had been performed by Danielle de Niese and the US Air Force Band, with Christopher Tin conducting, on August 29, 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To Shiver the Sky is an oratorio about the history of flight, and mankind's quest to conquer the heavens told through the words of 11 of our greatest astronomers, inventors, visionaries and pilots. Long before Amelia Earhart become an aviation icon, she wanted to be a poet and her poem 'Courage' was one of her first published writings.
Courage was first performed live May 15, 2022 at The Anthem in Washington D.C., by the US Air Force Band, Choral Arts Society of Washington, and ModernMedieval, conducted by Christopher Tin. The first Virtual Premiere of 'Courage' had been performed by Danielle de Niese and the US Air Force Band, with Christopher Tin conducting, on August 29, 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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'Courage'
A poem by Amelia Earhart. |
Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not knows no release From little things: Knows not the livid loneliness of fear, Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear The sound of wings. How can life grant us boon of living, compensate For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate Unless we dare The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay With courage to behold the resistless day, And count it fair. |
Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004) - Guitar Concerto
It is not all that far to go from Alex North's Cleopatra to Elmer Bernstein's Guitar Concerto. There are similarities in the careers of the two American composers, of course. More important, these pieces share a Mediterranean inspiration - overtly in the case of Cleopatra, sublimated in Bernstein's exploitation of Moorish influences on Spanish music and the guitar.
Born in New York, Elmer Bernstein was trained as a pianist; he attended Juilliard, where he studied composition with Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, and arranged and composed music for numerous program of the Armed Forces Radio Service. Further radio work lead to film offers; beginning with Saturday's Hero in 1951, he has composed over 130 film scores. He made a major impact on the art of film scoring with his use of jazz in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and became well-known for action and adventure films such as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963). Bernstein won an Oscar in 1967 for Thoroughly Modern Millie.
More recent scores include Devil in a Blue Dress; Wild, Wild, West; and several films with director Martin Scorsese: Cape Fear (arranging music by Bernard Herrmann), The Age of Innocence, and Bringing Out the Dead. An interviewer once asked Scorsese why he chose to work with Bernstein. "My first thought was: How could I not work with Elmer, when I had the chance? Simply put, he's the best there is - the very best."
Bernstein has also written for the concert hall, including two song cycles, three suites for symphony orchestra, a concertino for Ondes martenot and orchestra, and a string quartet. His guitar concerto was composed for Christopher Parkening and premiered by Parkening in 1999. The note that Bernstein wrote for that performance includes the following remarks:
"The guitar is an instrument that lives happily in the diatonic world, a world in which I am most comfortable. I have made no attempt to force the instrument into what I consider to be unnatural harmonic territory and have instead elected to let the guitar sing comfortably and joyously where it feels most natural. The entire process of the
creation was worked through with Christopher Parkening.
"The concerto is in three movements. The piece is harmonically conservative. The beginning of the first movement is based completely on the notes of the open strings of the guitar… Each of the first two movements has a broad melodic line as its centerpiece. The first movement is energetic in character, the second movement is more reflective. The last movement is the shortest of the three and is basically in rondo form."
"The rhythms of the man who wrote The Magnificent Seven are heard throughout the first movement, and the misty gardens of Spain at night seem to haunt the second," says conductor John Mauceri. "The deceptively simple last movement carries on the traditions of Rodrigo, whose Concierto de Aranjuez remains the most popular concerto composed in the 20th century.
It is not all that far to go from Alex North's Cleopatra to Elmer Bernstein's Guitar Concerto. There are similarities in the careers of the two American composers, of course. More important, these pieces share a Mediterranean inspiration - overtly in the case of Cleopatra, sublimated in Bernstein's exploitation of Moorish influences on Spanish music and the guitar.
Born in New York, Elmer Bernstein was trained as a pianist; he attended Juilliard, where he studied composition with Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, and arranged and composed music for numerous program of the Armed Forces Radio Service. Further radio work lead to film offers; beginning with Saturday's Hero in 1951, he has composed over 130 film scores. He made a major impact on the art of film scoring with his use of jazz in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and became well-known for action and adventure films such as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963). Bernstein won an Oscar in 1967 for Thoroughly Modern Millie.
More recent scores include Devil in a Blue Dress; Wild, Wild, West; and several films with director Martin Scorsese: Cape Fear (arranging music by Bernard Herrmann), The Age of Innocence, and Bringing Out the Dead. An interviewer once asked Scorsese why he chose to work with Bernstein. "My first thought was: How could I not work with Elmer, when I had the chance? Simply put, he's the best there is - the very best."
Bernstein has also written for the concert hall, including two song cycles, three suites for symphony orchestra, a concertino for Ondes martenot and orchestra, and a string quartet. His guitar concerto was composed for Christopher Parkening and premiered by Parkening in 1999. The note that Bernstein wrote for that performance includes the following remarks:
"The guitar is an instrument that lives happily in the diatonic world, a world in which I am most comfortable. I have made no attempt to force the instrument into what I consider to be unnatural harmonic territory and have instead elected to let the guitar sing comfortably and joyously where it feels most natural. The entire process of the
creation was worked through with Christopher Parkening.
"The concerto is in three movements. The piece is harmonically conservative. The beginning of the first movement is based completely on the notes of the open strings of the guitar… Each of the first two movements has a broad melodic line as its centerpiece. The first movement is energetic in character, the second movement is more reflective. The last movement is the shortest of the three and is basically in rondo form."
"The rhythms of the man who wrote The Magnificent Seven are heard throughout the first movement, and the misty gardens of Spain at night seem to haunt the second," says conductor John Mauceri. "The deceptively simple last movement carries on the traditions of Rodrigo, whose Concierto de Aranjuez remains the most popular concerto composed in the 20th century.
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957): Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43
Sibelius is hard to pigeonhole. Was he a staunch conservative whose devotion to tonality put him at odds with the nascent Modernists? The critic Virgil Thomson thought so, describing Symphony No. 2, nearly 40 years after its Helsinki premiere, as “vulgar, self-indulgent, and
provincial beyond all description.” Was Sibelius a nationalist composer, whose overtly patriotic works earned him a generous government stipend for most of his adult life? Or was he more daring than both fans and detractors assumed, subtly subverting symphonic conventions to meet his own expressive goals? In 1900 the critic Karl Flodin asserted that “in reality he composes for at least a generation ahead.”
More recently, scholars have emphasized the ways that Sibelius defied the expectations of sonata form, such as his affinity for brief, almost fragmentary motifs that cunningly connect and cohere in the development section, only to shatter unexpectedly. Describing his compositional method, Sibelius wrote, “It is as though the Almighty had thrown the pieces of a mosaic down from the floor of heaven and told me to put them together.”
Partisans of all stripes can find much to debate in Sibelius’s Second Symphony. An immediate success in the composer’s homeland, it was hailed as a “Symphony of Independence,” a defiant rebuke to Tsarist Russia in response to recent sanctions. It was completed in 1902, just two years after the fervently patriotic Finlandia, and the composer’s political convictions were well known. Several of his previous works had been censured by the authorities for inciting rebellion. His favorite conductor, Robert Kajanus, understood the Second as “the most broken-hearted protest against all the injustice that threatens at the present time,” while simultaneously acknowledging “confident prospects for the future.”
But the bulk of the symphony’s themes were written during a vacation in Italy, and some were originally intended for a tone poem based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Sibelius, for his part, described Symphony No. 2 in more personal terms as “a struggle between death and salvation” and “a confession of the soul.”
Sibelius is hard to pigeonhole. Was he a staunch conservative whose devotion to tonality put him at odds with the nascent Modernists? The critic Virgil Thomson thought so, describing Symphony No. 2, nearly 40 years after its Helsinki premiere, as “vulgar, self-indulgent, and
provincial beyond all description.” Was Sibelius a nationalist composer, whose overtly patriotic works earned him a generous government stipend for most of his adult life? Or was he more daring than both fans and detractors assumed, subtly subverting symphonic conventions to meet his own expressive goals? In 1900 the critic Karl Flodin asserted that “in reality he composes for at least a generation ahead.”
More recently, scholars have emphasized the ways that Sibelius defied the expectations of sonata form, such as his affinity for brief, almost fragmentary motifs that cunningly connect and cohere in the development section, only to shatter unexpectedly. Describing his compositional method, Sibelius wrote, “It is as though the Almighty had thrown the pieces of a mosaic down from the floor of heaven and told me to put them together.”
Partisans of all stripes can find much to debate in Sibelius’s Second Symphony. An immediate success in the composer’s homeland, it was hailed as a “Symphony of Independence,” a defiant rebuke to Tsarist Russia in response to recent sanctions. It was completed in 1902, just two years after the fervently patriotic Finlandia, and the composer’s political convictions were well known. Several of his previous works had been censured by the authorities for inciting rebellion. His favorite conductor, Robert Kajanus, understood the Second as “the most broken-hearted protest against all the injustice that threatens at the present time,” while simultaneously acknowledging “confident prospects for the future.”
But the bulk of the symphony’s themes were written during a vacation in Italy, and some were originally intended for a tone poem based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Sibelius, for his part, described Symphony No. 2 in more personal terms as “a struggle between death and salvation” and “a confession of the soul.”