PROGRAM NOTES UNDERWRITTEN BY THOMAS WARD

It is not usually hard to find subjects around which to organize a concert of music. Among many particularly fruitful themes are love – probably the most fruitful of all – as well as night, water and the sea, journeys, and the supernatural. Last Sunday we presented a program tied together by evocations of “magical creatures.” Tonight we head back to the natural world for a concert of plant-based works: roses and wildflowers, leaves and trees, celebrations of spring.

The name of Strauss is synonymous with Viennese dance music. And though there are many such dances and also many such Strausses, the name usually refers to Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899), “The Waltz King.” Strauss was immensely popular as a dance band leader in Vienna, but he also achieved great success and fame for his stage works. This evening’s selection comes from one of those larger theatrical works. In 1880 Strauss premiered a new operetta, Das Spitzentuch der Königin (The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief). Shortly after, he excerpted several themes from the operetta to create his fantasy of waltz material, Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses from the South).

The work opens with hushed introduction, gradually swelling to life as future themes are foreshadowed in succession. These include the charming first waltz idea, showing how effectively Strauss could combine contrasting styles within a single melody (here detaché first phrase, followed by lyrical continuation). The second theme blossoms with lyrical ease, while the third and fourth insert a bit of martial pomp – more audible, to be sure, in Strauss’ original orchestration, which calls for cymbals and brass. To round things off, Strauss writes a two-minute coda that revisits bits and pieces of all preceding themes. Roses from the South may be less well-known than its famous cousins (Blue Danube, Emperor Waltz), but certainly not for lack of melodic allure or color.

The allure of nature for 20th-century American maverick composer John Cage (1912-1992) mounted to a kind of religion. Cage helped promote Dadaist anti-art tendencies in the stuffy realm of classical art music in the post-WWII era. Indeed, his works pushed the boundaries of what could even be called music. Cage delved deeply into Eastern philosophy and was a recognized “father figure” of artists who gravitated to his iconoclastic genius. Above all, he forced a reconsideration of sounds all around us. Cage had no reservations about making audiences uncomfortable. He encouraged – even challenged – people to discover an openness, a receptiveness that was not common in concert settings.

Child of Tree is an aleatoric piece Cage composed in 1975 while touring with the Cunningham Dance Company in Arizona. A dancer from the company sparked the creation of this work by bringing a dried cactus to the composer and plucking the spines near his ear. Two of the ten instruments (a pod from a tree and an amplified cactus) are required by the score. The other eight instruments are selected by the performer, but must be plants or plant matter. While Child of Tree is a composed improvisation, the performer uses I-Ching chance operations prior to each performance to determine the length of sections and instruments to be used. Each section of the piece is demarcated by the transition between instruments.

In August 2024 Staunton Music Festival had the distinct pleasure of welcoming Grammy-nominated and Latin Grammy winner Roberto Sierra as composer-in-residence. For more than four decades, Sierra’s works have been part of the repertoire of many of the leading orchestras, ensembles and festivals in the USA and Europe. Roberto was born in 1953 in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. He studied composition both in Puerto Rico and Europe, including stints at London’s Royal College of Music and a year devoted to electronic and computer music in The Netherlands. He spent several years working with György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. These diverse experiences help to illuminate Sierra’s richly expressive style, combining elements of his Latin heritage with a command of European modernism.
In 1994 Sierra wrote his collection of Flower Pieces for flute and harp. The composer himself states the inspiration for Flower Pieces “came from the garden of my former home in Ithaca, New York. In these miniatures, I sought to evoke the colors, shapes, and even the fragrances of flowers found growing in the wild or cultivated in our own gardens. Like the flowers themselves, each piece in the set possesses its own distinct character.”

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was understandably drawn by the allure of the touring virtuoso. Ironically, he ruined his own chances for such a career by overstraining his right hand, turning instead to composition and criticism. Such efforts, combined with his life-changing marriage to Clara Wieck in 1840, pulled Schumann into realms well outside the bravura solo piano realm. However, in the late 1840s, he returned to his origins with a collection of character pieces for solo piano.

The nine Waldszenen, Op. 82, transcend younger Schumann’s cheery gallantery. Having already experienced debilitating mental breakdowns – which would lead to a suicide attempt and confinement to an institution in 1853 – Robert brought a realism to these Forest Scenes that even his wife found upsetting. He took care over the selection of titles applied to each movement; most originally included accompanying poems that Schumann later suppressed.

The collection opens with a brief lyrical “Introduction” in B-flat major. It is followed immediately by a spirited D-minor romp meant to suggest Hunters on the Lookout (Jäger auf der Lauer). Schumann maintains a pattern of contrasting gestures throughout, as forceful chords interrupt passages of fleeting moving scales. Later in the set we find the uniquely alluring Vogel als Prophet (Bird as Prophet). A standard three-part (ABA) character piece, this unique work finds novelty in striking tonal gestures – none more significant than the surging main motive that begins on a chromatic C-sharp. Schumann manages to create music that seems literally to take flight before finding a more grounded chorale topic during the middle section. The vigorous Hunting Song (Jagdlied) in E-flat major closes our selection in a triumphant rush of chords. As in the earlier Hunters on the Lookout, Schumann relies on triplet rhythms to inject a galloping urgency, and superfluous handcrossing action adds just a touch of virtuosity.

Folk musician and songwriter Pete Seeger (1919-2014) was born into a deeply cultured family. Seeger’s parents were professional musicians, and many siblings and relatives became folk singers. From very early years, music and social awareness went hand in hand for Seeger. Despite being blacklisted during the McCarthy Era for communist sympathies and pro-union activism, he continued to produce chart-topping songs throughout the 1950s and 60s.

Seeger’s most famous anti-war ballad, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” did not begin life as a Vietnam protest song. In fact, its origins predate Seeger by centuries. The melody was reshaped from an Irish folksong, and the traditional Cossack lyrics crossed Seeger’s path after he read And Quiet Flows the Don by Soviet author Mikhail Sholokov. The song took shape in 1955, well before America’s active combat operations in Vietnam. In 1960 and again in 1962, Seeger made definitive recordings of the song followed by numerous covers from The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, & Mary, Joan Baez, and others.

Tonight’s performance presents an arrangement made by American modernist George Crumb (1929-2022) for the sixth volume in his epic American Songbook series (2007). Works in this collection maintain the melodic integrity of the underlying folksong, hymn, or spiritual, but the tunes are surrounded by an incredible array of atmospheric instrumental timbres, prominently featuring percussion. Crumb also creates aesthetic tension by juxtasposing successive phrases in different keys and using sotto voce echo incantations.

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.
In 1919 Porter composed both the lyrics and music for “Old-Fashioned Garden.” At the time Porter was deeply engaged with Linda Lee Thomas, an American socialite whom he had met the year prior. The pair shared artistic interests and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. Porter accompanied Thomas into social gatherings, while she provided cover for Porter’s homosexuality. The song, originally written for a musical revue called Hitchy-Koo (1917-1922), was Porter’s first commercial success; eventually over 100,000 copies of the sheet music were sold. Even Cary Grant sang it during the 1946 film Night and Day.

INTERMISSION

The medieval abbess Hildegard of Bingen (ca. 1098-1179) is one of the most well-known early composers for her extensive corpus of sacred vocal works, as well as for her written contributions to religious and scientific literature. As an important religious figure and mystic, her writings attracted interest from powerful individuals across the region. Impressively, she was also the first western European composer known to have personally overseen hand-written copying of all her musical manuscripts, completed entirely by fellow nuns. All of Hildegard’s extant music is monophonic, meaning that, while her songs are often performed by a group of singers, all of these voices sing the same melodic line in unison – no harmonies here. The resulting texture is both stunningly sparse and serenely meditative, effects that are compounded by the straight tone (in other words, singing without vibrato) with which singers today perform her music.

Around 1150 Hildegard created a morality play Ordo Virtutum (The Order of the Virtues), dealing with the perennial battle for one’s soul between good and evil. It is the earliest such work for which we know the identity of both the poet and the composer; in this case, they are one and the same – Hildegard. After the devil has failed to prevent the Virtues from aiding a troubled soul to attain salvation, the play closes with a musical epilogue, “In principio omnes.”

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a significant shift took place in European aesthetics. This shift impacted all forms of artistic expression, including drama, painting, literature, poetry, and music. Nature and outdoor settings became the defining center of spiritual activity, moreso than the church. A new worship and a new mysticism emerged that found every significant emotion – hope, longing, love, despair, transcendence – in the midst of fields and forest, rivers and mountains. Composers like Franz Schubert (1797-1828) were deeply influenced by this trend. From individual songs to the great song cycles, natural features provide the backdrop and sometimes the companion to a protagonist’s psychological journey. This is patently true in the two great song cycles Schubert composed on texts by poet Wilhelm Müller: Die Schöne Müllerin (1823) and Winterreise (1827).

Stemming from Schubert’s final period in a sickly short life, Winterreise carries a gravity that is both evident in the music and amplified by the composer’s imminent death. The cycle overall functions as a monodrama told by a nameless wanderer. His beloved has fallen for another man, and he goes off alone into the bleak winter snows, encountering only a hurdy-gurdy player in the penultimate song. Of course, he will be prone to moments of blissful escape, recalling sunnier days, as in both “Der Lindenbaum” (No. 5) and “Frühlingstraum” (No. 11). In dreamy E-major phrases, the former song lovingly recalls hours spent under the branches of a linden tree. But as our hero passes it now, the music turns to E minor and becomes agitated. Tellingly, the present is depicted as painful, and only the tantalizing call of the linden – “Here, under my branches, will you find your rest” – brings us back to the calming major mode. Similarly, “A Dream of Spring” dances forward in sunny A major after a dolorous C minor song (“Rest”). Our fellow vacillates all too easily between pleasant dreams and reminders of his painful reality, and therein lies the genius of Schubert’s simple, transparent settings for voice and piano.

Leah Reid (b. 1985) is a New Hampshire-born composer, sound artist, researcher, and educator, whose works range from opera, chamber, and vocal music, to acousmatic, electroacoustic works, and interactive sound installations. In her works, timbre acts as a catalyst for exploring new soundscapes, time, space, perception, and color. Reid has earned countless awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022, and many high-profile commissions. She is currently on faculty at the University of Virginia.

Completed in 2023, Reid’s Dream of Green is described as a micro-opera scored for soprano, cello, piano, percussion, and electronics. It was premiered by the Art Song Collaborative Project and centers on environmental activism and peaceful protest. The work’s protagonist is a 16-year-old school-strike activist named Julia, inspired by Greta Thunberg and other environmental advocates but named after Julia Butterfly Hill, an American environmental activist known for living in a 180-foot-tall, approximately 1,500-year-old California redwood tree for 738 days in the late 1990s to prevent loggers from cutting it down.
The work begins with Julia taking in the current state of the world by reading and listening to the news. The audience hears fragments of news reports discussing wildfires raging in California, hurricanes in Florida and South America, and other recent natural disasters, interwoven with sounds of fire, crackling wood, and wind. A clock bell is struck eleven times, signaling the eleventh hour.

Julia decides to join an environmental protest taking place in her city. Across the work’s eight sections, she chants, sings, and speaks about the global environmental crisis, her fears, and the need for change. Each section is structured around an accelerating gesture and a decelerating gesture, both derived from the number eleven. The ensemble and electronics create a sonic landscape that evokes the elements Julia describes. Some of these sonic imaginings allude to climate-related disasters, while others focus on hope and the beauty of the Earth. The work concludes with both a warning and a call to action.

German Romantic composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) grew up in affluent and musical surroundings. His father was one of the finest horn players in Europe; he also loathed Richard Wagner, even though his son would secretly idolize and imitate Wagner’s style. Young Strauss gradually ascended to higher and higher positions as a conductor, met the leading figures of the musical world, and began producing his own operas and symphonic works at Weimar, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna. One of Strauss’s most successful works, Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose), was first performed in January 1911. Quickly it became an international hit as Strauss allowed a translation into Italian for a performance at Milan’s La Scala. The work also features several beloved characters, most of which were intended to be performed by female singers/actors (something of a novelty for its day). Tonight’s arrangement comes from the brilliant and fluid pen of Zachary Wadsworth. Wadsworth adds the following thoughts about his take on Strauss:

In an unforgettable scene from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, the unpleasant Baron sends Octavian as a cavalier to present a traditional silver engagement rose to the Baron’s new fiancée Sophie. With the glittering rose between them, Octavian and Sophie unexpectedly fall in love with each other. Strauss’s music for this scene is decadent, sparkling, and achingly beautiful. In arranging it here for chamber ensemble, my primary goal was to preserve its richness of color and lyricism, and to show how Strauss projects the scene in the orchestra so clearly that, even without singers, the moods of simultaneous nostalgia and optimism survive.

Jason Stell, © 2026