PROGRAM NOTES SPONSORED BY THOMAS WARD

The United States may not be able to boast as many native master composers in the classical tradition as Europe, and most still included on concert programs today – Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, Babbit, Carter, and Glass, to name a few – were active only during the last 100 years. It is also noteworthy that so many American composers proudly embraced their homosexual identity and became important leaders in a quest for equal rights. Because members of the LGBTQ community have been marginalized (and worse) for generations, it is important to recognize gay artists who have helped shape America’s cultural landscape. Three composers on tonight’s program were not American by birth, but Britten, Coward, and Tchaikovsky had meaningful connections to musical life in the New World.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) is noted for his creation of a recognizable “American” sound marked by simple, slow-changing harmonies, lush orchestrations, and memorable melodies. Of course, we should not forget that his style evolved to embrace many other trends. But the expansive, optimistic mood of works like Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, and Fanfare for the Common Man remains the most recognized dialect in Copland’s voice. Fanfare, moreover, has become an oft-quoted soundbyte used in all manner of broadcasts from news to sports to advertisements. It was commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony in 1942 to memorialize – but not celebrate – America’s entry into World War II. The simple main theme bears a similarity to Taps, the traditional bugle call used at military funerals. As Fanfare is usually heard in non-concert settings, most listeners may know only the first minute or so. The later material, punctuated by timpani blasts, is richly harmonized for full brass and winds and has become an unofficial anthem for American heroism.

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) has written several of the most acclaimed works of recent years, earning her numerous Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize in 2010. Higdon came to music rather late, though she credits that delayed exposure to helping cement a personal bias toward the most contemporary classical style rather than traditional masterworks. Following an undergraduate degree at Bowling Green University, she studied at Curtis and the University of Pennsylvania under avant-garde master George Crumb. The number of prominent commissions she has garnered is too numerous to relate, but her intimate setting of Amazing Grace for strings comes from a more personal place. Written in 1998 soon after the death of her younger brother, this extended meditation on the spiritual includes both literal and transformed variations on the familiar melody.

Of all the composers on tonight’s program, Rufus Wainwright (b. 1973) will probably be the least familiar. Born in New York but raised in Canada, Wainwright grew up in a musical family. In fact, his first serious musical experiences involved playing with a kind of family band touring local music halls and cafés. During his teenage years, Rufus developed a deep interest in classical music, studying opera and German art song. These elements continue to influence his crossover, eclectic style. Now in his early 50s, he has already released a dozen albums, many to great acclaim. Wainwright’s second studio album, Poses (2001), opens with a signature song: “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.” The album’s material drew inspiration from time Wainwright spent living in Manhattan’s historic Chelsea Hotel, a building famous for housing generations of artists sometimes in quite substandard conditions. Wainwright’s lyrics move between trivial and poignant just as easily as the music merges classical and pop aesthetics. Arranger Zachary Wadsworth calls the song a “love letter to those minor addictions that add pleasure to our days while slowly causing us harm.”

During a time of deep artistic upheaval and avant-garde experimentalism, American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) navigated his own quiet course between extremes. Conservative by temperament, Barber typified a trend in composition that sought inspiration from abroad, but blended it with a deep interest in American folk music and poetry. His best-known work, the searing and serene Adagio for Strings, dates from 1936. Just 26 at the time, Barber was spending two years in Europe as winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome. Such success did not surprise his family. Samuel had been a child prodigy, composing musicals and light opera by age 10 and, four years later, was one of the first students to enter the new Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

In 1959 Barber teamed up with librettist Gian Carlo Menotti to write one of the shortest operas ever created. In less than ten minutes, A Hand of Bridge reveals the interwoven desires and deceptions felt by two unhappy couples playing cards. Barber creates four short arias, one for each main character: Sally and her husband Bill, followed by Geraldine and her husband David. Barber uses contrasting forms and musical styles to differentiate each role. A short introduction in jazz rhythm sets the game in motion, but Sally quickly spins off into her vacuous internal monologue about whether to buy a particular hat. Barber then pivots to Bill’s daydream: a graceful waltz that grows increasingly unsettled as he fantasizes about his mistress. Geraldine, who once enjoyed Bill’s flirtations, finds herself unloved by either man at the table. A striking change occurs when she speaks about her aged mother, whose love is perhaps the one she misses most of all. Finally, we meet David, a successful businessman with ambitions to be richer than his boss and escape to Palm Beach for all manner of luxurious debauchery. At the end, he admits it’s all a pipe dream: “Were I as rich as Morgan, I’d still play bridge each evening with Sally and Bill.”

Charles Wuorinen (1938-2020) produced an immense amount of music in addition to being an influential teacher at the Manhattan School of Music, Rutgers University, and Columbia. Wuorinen’s father was a noted historian at Columbia, and Charles grew up in the thriving cultural milieu of New York’s Upper West Side. His own musical abilities developed very early. Wuorinen spent his teenage years working as a church organist, but as a singer and pianist he also got involved in opera productions. As a 16-year-old Wuorinen received the coveted Young Composers Award from the New York Philharmonic. From there, he progressed quickly, bolstered by strong friendships with a group of avant-garde American composers, the formation of The Group for Contemporary Music, and a Pulitzer Prize at age 32. His modernism has had its critics, but the great variety of his work and its sheer amount make Wuorinen an important voice in American music after 1960.

The Percussion Quartet was written in 1994. Its second movement gets going with great energy that barely relents. Given Wuorinen’s academic training, there is no doubt that a sophisticated strucure is at work. But the sheer exuberance and sonic variety of this movement garner our attention.

At one point in the interwar years, Sir Noël Coward (1899-1973) was the most highly-paid playwright in London. He had risen from humble beginnings to carve out a place among British aristocracy as the life of the party, always up for a scandalous turn of phrase. In addition to writing, Coward composed songs, was a cabaret performer of note, and appeared in numerous films. Exposure to London’s theatre scene as a boy proved decisive; when he made it to Broadway in 1921, he found the vibe captivating though his work did not fare as well. One of Coward’s most beloved songs, “Someday I’ll Find You,” which he performed with Gertrude Lawrence, debuted in 1930 in the play Private Lives. Coward wrote the play while bedridden with flu in Shanghai. It centers on Elyot (played by Coward) and Amanda (Lawrence), divorced from each other but who meet on a hotel balcony while honeymooning with their new spouses. The chance encounter quickly reignites their old love. A softly romantic tune drifts up from the orchestra playing below, and Amanda yields to its allure with the popular “Someday I’ll Find You” lyric – a classic ballad of the era.

A towering figure among 20th-century English musicians, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) enjoyed success as a composer, conductor and pianist. His compositional oeuvre consists of 15 operas (including The Turn of the Screw, performed next Saturday evening), vocal music, orchestral and chamber works, and film scores. Britten studied with Frank Bridge and entered the Royal College of Music in 1930, immersing himself in the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mahler and Stravinsky. He also made a careful study of British folksongs. His devotion to song was only strengthened by a lifelong relationship with tenor Peter Pears, who helped premiere many of Britten’s works.

In the late 1930s Britten contributed music for a stage play co-written by W. H. Auden, The Ascent of F6. Britten and Auden had already collaborated and would go on to create several more major works. In 1938, as war loomed in Europe, Auden emigrated to Hollywood, and Britten – now accompanied by his new partner Pears – followed a year later. Britten’s experience with songwriting in The Ascent of F6 suggested a possible future in Hollywood films. That never materialized, but the effort spilled over into a series of Cabaret Songs for voice and piano. Not published until after Britten’s death, they show his easy command of light, popular song. “Tell Me the Truth About Love” opens with a pseudo-recitative prior to each verse. Britten’s setting points to the tongue-in-cheek lyrics with a rollicking accompaniment and richly chromatic melody dripping with satire.

American songwriter Cole Porter (1891-1964) enjoyed all the blessings of a rich education both in music (beginning with violin and piano at a young age) and other liberal arts. He penned melodies and lyrics to a hundred songs during his college years at Yale. The experience of writing revues and light operetta served Porter well when he turned to Broadway and film in the late 1920s. Author of such massive hits as “Night and Day” and “I Get a Kick Out of You,” he became one of the most successful songwriters of all time. Many of Porter’s songs are beloved for their witty poetry, an aspect that abounds in “The Tale of the Oyster.” Written in 1929, it mirrors and mocks Gilded Age’s obsession with social climbing. Porter writes a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek saga of our little hero, his rise to high society and (literally) wretched return back to the sea. Consider just one stanza of Porter’s comic genius:

See that bivalve social climber
Feeding the rich Mrs. Hoggenheimer
Think of his joy as he gaily glides
Down to the middle of her gilded insides

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s (1840-1893) life was filled with turmoil. Some of it stems from childhood, when he dreaded being separated from family while away at private school. A major event occurred with his mother’s death, and it is from this time that his first serious compositional efforts date. Throughout his teens and early twenties, Tchaikovsky vacillated between intense attachments and feelings of complete isolation. He also wrestled with his homosexuality, going so far as to marry a doting female admirer in 1877 to cover or even suppress his true feelings. The situation, as can be imagined, was a complete disaster.
Years later, nearing the end of his life, Tchaikovsky had attained a measure of personal peace and – to be sure – professional acclaim. In 1891 he toured North America and conducted several of his symphonic works at the opening of New York’s new Carnegie Hall. After conducting a performance of his Piano Concerto No. 1, he stated that he never received such an ovation in Russia. This rapturous tour interrupted work Tchaikovsky had recently begun on a new ballet, The Nutcracker. Today one of the staples of popular culture, the ballet floundered at the start, being criticized for poor choreography and a “lopsided” libretto. Tchaikovsky’s music fared slightly better.

Tonight we hear a version of The Nutcracker made by Zachary Wadsworth. As Wadsworth notes:

As I thought about re-orchestrating this familiar piece . . . I wondered what happened to the piece’s titular nutcracker when it wasn’t December? Perhaps it sat on a shelf in a child’s bedroom, taking in the ordinary, less fantastical fixtures of childhood. In this more mundane reality, a soldier’s march might become a friendly competition with a neighbor (“Duelling Mallets”). The cool tinkling of a sugar-plum fairy might be played on a toy piano (“Toy Nocturne”). A dance of reed-pipes might sound from a circling train set (“Circle Dance with Train Set”). The goal here is not to recreate the full technicolor splendor of Tchaikovsky’s original, but rather to tease out its dancing rhythms in unexpected instruments and at an unexpected time of year.


INTERMISSION


Composer, conductor, concert pianist, educator – the multi-talented Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) remains uniquely synonymous with American music, from the New York Philharmonic and Young People’s Concerts to film scores like On the Waterfront and West Side Story. He also composed arguably the most beloved American opera of the past century, Candide, based on Voltaire’s novel.

Less well-known is a set of twelve songs Bernstein wrote for the American Bicentennial in 1976. Songfest draws upon powerful texts by great American writers – an intentionally diverse selection of male and female writers of different ethnicities and eras, from Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe to Gertrude Stein and June Millicent Jordan. In contrast to today’s hyped-up “Freedom 250” celebrations, Bernstein chose the occasion in 1976 to honor the knotty complexities of America’s cultural legacy. He selected poems that focus on love and artistic creativity as well as the plight of oppressed racial groups, women’s rights, and society’s unequal stance toward homosexuality.

In his own words, Bernstein regarded the binding element in the cycle to be “an unabashed eclecticism, freely reflecting the pluralistic nature of our most eclectic country.” He envisioned a grand tapestry of voices from America’s past as a way to celebrate the events of July 4th, 1976. However, when the big day arrived, he had only completed four songs. Thus the cycle of twelve songs was not performed until a year later when it finally debuted on October 11, 1977 at the newly-opened Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. (Tonight’s performance omits songs 6, 8, 9, 10 and 12.)

Songfest opens with a quasi-martial fanfare for chorus and orchestra – and because of its grand tone, we use this movement as our final selection from the set. Bernstein features a recurring motive that is passed around in counterpoint, combining a soaring mood with moments of less assuredness and outright satire of traditional hymns. The early baritone solo (No. 2) evokes a jazzy, syncopated style familiar from Bernstein’s Broadway past; think “Something’s Coming” from West Side Story. In a kind of musical experiment, Bernstein adopts the avant-grade twelve-tone method of Arnold Schoenberg for the quirky words of poet Lawrence Ferlenghetti. A more developed song follows, this time in the tumbling acrobatic Spanish of Maria de Burgos (No. 3). Burgos voices her anger about the conflict between being a liberated female poet as well as a “conventional” woman.

Unpublished and only discovered many years after it was written, Whitman’s “To What You Said” (No. 4) inspires a lyrical effusion from Bernstein. Using humming and lush strings to support the tender bass solo, this piece embodies repressed love in gesture after gesture. As an example, note how Bernstein quietly sustains C minor harmony at the outset below brash chords in other keys. Song No. 5 combines texts from two African-American authors. But rather than presenting them successively, one after the next, Bernstein interleaves phrases from Langston Hughes’ defiant “I, too, Sing America” with June Jordan’s raucous “Okay ‘Negroes’.” The jarring result, as one critic notes, forces a marriage “of operatic recitative with ‘scat’ singing.”

No. 7 provides a humorous interlude, delivered as syllabic pitter-patter between soprano and bass voices. Gertude Stein’s deadpan homage to H.M. (Henri Matisse), a frequent guest at her Paris salon, depicts “impossible marriages.” Stein’s rhythmic stream draws forth a glib short duet in which Bernstein uses a perpetual motion accompaniment below operatic vocal gestures. Edna St. Vincent Millay is included with her famous elegy to lost loves, “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” (N0. 11). Bernstein commented that this song was probably his favorite in the set. The influence of Mahler, one of the composer’s heroes, lingers over the work, from the dark orchestral timbre and tightly circling chromatic melody to the striking contrast of intimacy and dramatic outbursts.

This is hardly the music and poetry one would expect for a piece tied to America’s bicentennial celebration – even less so in today’s reactionary climate. But for Bernstein, the eclectic musical style and vibrant poetry of Songfest successfully captured his best effort to glorify our nation’s pluralism.

Jason Stell, © 2026