The Program:


Ives: The Unanswered Question
Debussy: Premiere Rhapsodie
Dvorak: Symphony No. 8 in G Major






American classical music had a lengthy childhood and adolescence, only maturing at the dawn of the 20th century. With one foot in the flowering nationalist European tradition and one in the uniquely American mix of native and immigrant cultures, American composers would become as adept as their continental peers in referencing the music they heard around them in the streets and fields, churches and dance halls. It would take a Czech, the nationalist Antonin Dvorak, to lead the way – to point out how the authenticity of those sounds could contribute to a genuine American style.



Drawn here in 1892 by Jeanette Thurber to direct her National Conservatory of Music in New York, Dvorak embraced the culture and folk traditions he found in the city and in the Midwest during his travels. His ability to translate the American experience into a national voice was precisely what his benefactress had hoped for. Writing at the cusp of the Romantic and Modern periods of classical music, Dvorak spent less than three years in the United States, but in that time, he wrote what was considered the symphony that best captured the emerging American spirit, Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”



Encouraged by the freshness of Dvorak’s approach -- a European who found American culture fascinating and valid -- a new generation of American composers finally arose to take their place alongside their European peers, helping usher in the Modern period of classical music.



Like Thurber, Charles Ives intentionally went about the business of fomenting a genuine American sound; it just so happened that he was also a composer. He was, in fact, a businessman – a salesman who would be more famous in his lifetime for authoring a book on insurance than composing music. He was a tinkerer, an innovator; he loved the juxtaposition of the new with the old – like the New World itself.



There is a direct lineage from Dvorak to Ives (and then to a champion of Ives, Aaron Copland). Ives could give us the sound of the New World thanks in part to the nationalistic fervor of Antonin Dvorak, who experienced the United States anew, finding beauty and originality in the music of the people – and re-interpreting it in the classical style.



In a happy accident, this season’s Derryberry Concerto Competition winner also performs a piece by a composer, the Frenchman Claude Debussy, striving to define a national style away from that of the Germanic tradition.







THE UNANSWERED QUESTION



By Charles Ives (1874-1954)



The most recognizable of Ives’s compositions, The Unanswered Question, is a sound-scape of two distinct parts: A gorgeous and poignant melodic background created by a string section, interrupted by the “questioning” melody of a solo trumpet and the agitated answers of a flute quartet that grow more and more strident as the piece progresses.



Interpretations abound to describe the enigmatic program. Leonard Bernstein believed that the woodwinds represent human impatience and desperation. Ives himself described the work as a “cosmic landscape” against which the flutes and trumpet ask questions that are never resolved.



He experimented with sound, with polytonality -- two or more keys played simultaneously – and he invented a non-typical chamber orchestra of strings, trumpet and four flutes. He tried to capture an aural experience in the “real” world and put it in the concert hall. In the string parts of The Unanswered Question, for instance, he sought a distant or faraway quality, and orchestras achieve that effect in various ways. Some music directors remove the string section from the stage altogether; in today’s performance, the strings will be muted, dampening their resonance.



The Unanswered Question is as beautiful as it is philosophical. Ultimately, Ives asked the audience to interpret his work for themselves. His innovations are among the hallmarks of the “American century” of classical music. Like Dvorak, he was deeply influenced by popular songs – hymns, in particular, which can be heard in the solemnity of the strings in The Unanswered Question. He was a beneficiary of Dvorak’s visit to America – as are we all.







PREMIERE RHAPSODIE



By Claude Debussy (1862-1918)



The rhapsody form – generally a one-movement instrumental inspired by a national or folk melody – grew to prominence in the 19th century. With its air of spontaneity and improvisation, the form particularly suited the musical style of Frenchman Claude Debussy, who wrote Première Rhapsodie, or “first rhapsody,” for accompanied solo clarinet in 1910. It was among his later pieces and was to be followed by a second rhapsody, this one for saxophone and orchestra, but that piece was never completed. Proudly French, or “musicien français,” Debussy intentionally departed from the titans of classical music, the Germans, who he believed left no room for new composers; his reputation for innovation began while a student and continued throughout his career.



Every year, the winner of the Joan Derryberry Memorial Concerto Competition chooses the composition he or she will perform with the orchestra, so there’s always a surprise for us on this program. Clarinetist Sara Rupe could not have chosen a more apt addition to today’s program than a piece by the nationalistic and innovative Debussy.







SYMPHONY NO. 8 IN G MAJOR



By Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)



In the late 19th century, nationalism became prevalent in areas outside the political and artistic seats of power. For a long time the “capitol” of music -- and the Austro-Hungarian empire -- was Vienna, where even composers who weren’t Viennese ended up, including Brahms, Beethoven and Schumann. Nationalism was a reaction to this centralization of style and exclusion of the “other.” One great so-called “Viennese” composer who helped broaden the interest in other music was Johannes Brahms. A central figure himself, he recognized the genius and authenticity of Antonin Dvorak, a fine Czech composer. Just as Brahms had contributed to a national sound by transcribing what he called “Hungarian Dances” (actually music of the Roma culture), Dvorak sprinkled his own music with Czech national style and created dances in the Slavonic style; he would also open up the American frontier for the next century.



From the music of Native Americans to African-American spirituals and folk tunes, the vernacular delighted Dvorak; he understood “source” music and eagerly incorporated it into his work. Beloved by American audiences almost as much as by the Czechs, Dvorak’s best-known symphony is his 9th, “From the New World.”



But his 8th Symphony, written in 1889 before his sojourn to the U.S., is perhaps more typical of the body of his work. Dvorak was a great orchestrator; his understanding of formal structure makes his music extremely satisfying, because there are no loose ends. The questions he asks in early movements are answered in later ones; he doesn’t start anything he can’t finish. He takes a tune and puts it through its paces through each section and each movement; part of the enjoyment in listening to – or performing -- a Dvorak composition is its seeming familiarity and completeness.



And yet, foreshadowing the modernity of Ives, Dvorak was true to the world around him; he worked from life. He coupled the rigid structure of classical music with bursts of cacophony, a combination true to nature – like chaotic birdsong punctuating the steady sound of wind in the trees, a theme in the 8th Symphony’s first movement.



The 8th Symphony also reflects Dvorak’s attachment to popular music – in this case, Czech folksongs and dance. Collecting the music of an entire culture – from the upper class to lower class – and incorporating it into the formal structure of classical music has kept the form fresh, its influences spacious, not inbred. It’s a form of interpretation that has remained relevant for more than a century now, from Dvorak through Ives and Copland – and even including our own Charles Faulkner Bryan, whose work resonated as much with the music he heard in the hills of Tennessee as with the music of the European masters.







-- Notes by Laura Clemons and Dan Allcott