Program Notes by Jim Priebe Eine Kleine Nachtmusik – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) “Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province…Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.” – Aaron Copland It is difficult to put one’s finger on just what it is that makes Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) such a terrific piece of music. It isn’t particularly profound and, unlike much of the world’s classical music, it’s not about anything. It must be that rightness of which Copland spoke. It is music whose greatness is purely musical. Worth noting as a commentary on Mozart’s genius, is that this graceful and good humored music was composed in the midst of Mozart’s work on the opera Don Giovanni, wherein the principal character’s bad behavior resulted in his being dragged down to Hell with an appropriately dark and sinister musical accompaniment. Written for two violins, viola, cello and double bass, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was probably intended for a quintet of strings. Eighteenth century performance practices were quite flexible, however, and it is not unlikely that Mozart would have been comfortable with today’s common practice of using a chamber orchestra for its performance. Five movements were originally written: an Allegro, a minuet, a Romance, a second minuet and a finale. Sometime before 1800 the first minuet was removed from the manuscript – no one knows why or by whom it was removed and lost – thus a four-movement work remains. Unknown also is the occasion for which Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was composed. Some have speculated that it was written to satisfy Mozart’s need to “cleanse his musical palate” after having composed the deliberately clumsy Ein Musikalischer Spass (A Musical Joke) some six weeks earlier. This seems unlikely given his ability to “multitask” in different moods as evidenced by his concurrent efforts on Don Giovanni. Whatever his impetus, the purity and clarity of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik has enchanted audiences since its composition in 1787. It will undoubtedly charm us as well. The Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre – Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883) “Kill the wabbit.” If you weren’t certain about the theme of The Ride of the Valkyries prior to reading this, now you know. The 1957 Bugs Bunny cartoon What’s Opera Doc is an icon of our culture, firmly associating in American minds this wonderful operatic motive with the voice of Elmer Fudd. Don’t be ashamed; we all love the cartoon! But there’s much more to Wagner’s music than can be discerned from Bugs and Elmer’s performance. Die Walküre is the second of four operas (or “music dramas” as Wagner preferred to call them) that make up Der Ring des Nibelungen. “The Ring Cycle” is the monumental achievement of

Wagner’s lifetime. Wagner began writing the librettos in 1848, and completed the score of the final opera, Götterdämmerung in 1874. Die Walküre was completed in 1856 but didn’t receive its first performance until June 26, 1870 at the National Theater in Munich. The premiere of the Ring in its entirety took place August 13 – 17, 1876 at the Festspielhaus (designed by Wagner specifically for the purpose of staging the Ring) in Bayreuth. The Ring is considered to be an allegory of the social and political conditions of Wagner’s era. A panoply of gods, dwarves, giants and humans populate the story, dramatizing themes concerning redemptive love and death and the consequences of the exercise of individual freedom outside the bounds of higher authority. The plot of Die Walküre concerns love of the hero Siegmund and his twin sister Sieglinde (that’s Wagner for you) and the refusal of Wotan’s daughter, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, to see to the death of Siegmund as ordered by Wotan. For her disobedience she is sentenced to become mortal and left to sleep on a rock surrounded by magic fire until a hero rescues her. The famous Ride of the Valkyries serves as the orchestral prelude to Act III of the opera. It portrays Wotan’s daughters, the Valkyries with their winged helmets and shields, assembling on their mountaintop after completing their task of scouting a battlefield for fallen warriors. Wagner’s musical portrayal relies heavily on the brass and wind sections of the orchestra. Writer Ted Libbey, in describing Wagner’s use of orchestration, states that “Wagner literally stood the orchestra on it’s head – where before the strings had dominated and the winds and brass augmented the orchestra’s sound, in Wagner’s music the winds and an expanded brass section are kept in constant use and do the heavy lifting, while the strings are given a more atmospheric role.” Libbey cites The Ride of the Valkyries as a “classic example” of this orchestration. Justifiably among classical music’s “greatest hits,” The Ride of the Valkyries has left many an audience breathless with its sweeping intensity. Hold on for the ride! Pavane for a Dead Princess – Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937) Ravel wrote his solo piano version of Pavane pour une infante défunte in 1899 as a twenty-four year old student at the Paris Conservatory. It quickly attained immense popularity – popularity which endured to such an extent that in 1910 he penned the orchestration heard in our performance. The title has caused much speculation. Who was this dead princess? What was her connection with Ravel? Sadly for those who love mystery and intrigue there was no princess. Ravel said that he just liked the alliterative quality of the title – the sound of it as it rolled off the tongue. It is simply a piece whose form and style was based on that of a courtly Renaissance dance – the pavane. It is curious that in later life Ravel expressed dissatisfaction with his Pavane. He was, markedly, a perfectionist, a fact evidenced by the small number of his compositions in comparison with other composers. He fretted that the work was too “sectional” in nature and that, because of Chabrier’s early influence, it was imitative. His sensitivity on the topic of originality may well

have come about as a result of frequent insinuations by his critics that his music often imitated that of Debussy – insinuations that the perspective of time has shown to be largely without merit. It is worth noting that he was also surprised by the success of Bolero, believing that it was unmusical. The Pavane’s ABACA form unfolds with a stately eighth note pulse. The initial melody is stated by the horn above quiet, sustained chords and pizzicatos. The woodwinds present the second theme with the oboe taking the melody. Strings complete the B section with quiet dignity. The return of the original melody is introduced with unison flute and oboe. The third section is characterized by the alternation of a delicate woodwind melody with expansive flourishes in the strings. In its final iteration, the melody is played by the flute with the strings and harp accompanying. Soon the oboe and violins join in, then the horn with strings. Following a final restrained crescendo the work fades quietly with a gentle morendo. A recitation of formal structure cannot begin to convey the essence of any piece of music and Ravel’s Pavane is certainly no exception. As a piano piece it is exceptional. With the addition of the orchestral timbres of Ravel’s skillful orchestration it can be exquisite. It is no wonder that, despite Ravel’s unease, it has retained its place in the standard concert repertoire for almost one hundred years. Program Notes by J. Mark Scearce Having been born in Edina, Missouri, having grown up in Kirksville, and attended Truman when it was more geographically known as simply Northeast Missouri State, I am pleased to serve as Guest Composer in residence with the Southeast Iowa Symphony in a part of the world I know well. Who says you can’t go home again? Though I now make my home in North Carolina, these four works of mine you’ll hear are as much a product of my Midwestern roots as they are a kind of musical travelogue of where I’ve been. Yes, Urban Primitive and Endymion’s Sleep were written in Hawaii, and XL and Benediction were created for North Carolina, but the experiences they reveal and the emotions they recall are as much a part of me now as then, and, I believe, a part of us all always—something we share and have always shared throughout time. Urban Primitive and XL are energetic and celebratory while Benediction and Endymion’s Sleep are memorials for those departed too soon. Thus I give you two extroverted works and two introverted; and both emotions universal and, I hope, personal for each listener. For within these notes, in this music, I hope you find yourselves or those you once loved. —J. Mark Scearce ***** XL was commissioned by the North Carolina Symphony in 2000 to honor the 20th anniversary of their former conductor Gerhardt Zimmermann and to open their new concert hall in Raleigh. After its premiere, critic John Lambert wrote: “Scearce’s XL is short, compact and loaded with kaleidoscopic delights. It bubbles and seethes with energy and is richly colored and brilliantly

scored. It raised the roof, as Scearce had told his pre-concert audience it would do. It’s a good piece to celebrate a new hall, a new beginning, and a period of renewed growth for our orchestra, our community and our nation. The title reflects the composer’s expectation that our orchestra will continue to excel. It also happens to have been his age, in Roman numerals, at the time it was completed and—he says—his shirt size. It seems to evoke the best of all the great American composers who have preceded him without ever once quoting any recognizable bits. One might say it is a summation, a distillation of all that came before it, but that would undercut its importance.” XL was premiered one week after 9/11 in the new Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh, North Carolina, under Maestro Zimmermann. Endymion’s Sleep is a line from a poem by Longfellow entitled "Keats", commemorating the poet who died so young with his most famous poem, "Endymion". The myth of Endymion is to me (and to Longfellow apparently) a perfect metaphor for dying young. The Moon, Selene, fell in love with Endymion, and because she could not bear the idea of his death, put him to sleep forever, beautiful in his youth. Endymion’s Sleep is about the pain of loss and the perseverance of Memory, keeping in our hearts those of our loved ones taken away from this world so young, beautiful in their youth, now sleeping Endymion's sleep. Urban Primitive was written for the Honolulu Symphony in the inaugural season of Music Director Sam Wong. The work was begun in December 1995 at the Atlantic Center for the Arts where I was in residence working with noted American composer Donald Erb, to whom the work is dedicated. When I returned to Hawaii, having only laid out nine pages of score and a few pages of notes, I shared these with Sam Wong and he encouraged me to complete the work by programming it in his first season–which I did, finishing it in May 1996. Originally the title was a response to the Urban Primitive furniture of designer Robert Sonneman, who wrote of it in 1992: "What I tried to do was develop a lightness of scale and more of a whimsical quality...at the same time developing a grid...that delineated the faces light." This struck me as a very musical description and so, from this description my piece was born. However, as I wrote my music it went further, reflecting other Urban Primitive movements from the Black Folk Art that lead to the birth of the Harlem Renaissance with its exaltation of jazz in serious art to the modern Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi – a return to the primitive, the simple in our lives after the complexity of the postmodern. In short, Urban Primitive is an affirmation of who we were as we approached the New Millennium. Benediction was my first experience of the power of music to facilitate social change. When we first lived in North Carolina, right out of graduate school, I taught at several historically black colleges in Raleigh while serving as composer-in-residence at the very school where I now direct the department. Across the street from one of those schools, fifteen years ago, a young unarmed

black man was shot by a police officer. Suspended briefly, the police officer was, a month later, awarded a medal for the act. Incensed by the injustice, and moved by the daily grief I witnessed in the young man's mother with whom I worked at NC State, I composed this short orchestral work with three antiphonal trumpets, dedicating it to the memory of my colleague's slain son, and hoping my music could, in some small way, help to assuage her grief. Benediction was premiered at the opening of the 1993 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ceremony and was followed by the opening remarks of the white mayor. At the performance, placards of the young man's photo were mounted behind the orchestra as they played this brief work of mine, and afterwards, the mayor promised to reopen the case, a lawsuit was filed, and justice was given another chance.