All-Campus Orchestra / Concert Band 03.07.2024

2009 marked the 100th anniversary of the First Suite in E-flat by Gustav Holst, now considered one of the masterworks and cornerstones of the band literature. Although completed in 1909, the suite didn’t receive its official premiere until 11 years later on June 23rd, 1920, by an ensemble of 165 musicians at the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall. However, the work was originally conceived to be performed by ensembles significantly smaller than the one at Kneller Hall. During this time period there was no standardized instrumentation among the hundreds of British military bands of the day, and as a result no significant literature had been previously written for the band medium; most British bands up to then performed arrangements of popular orchestral pieces. In order to ensure the suite would be accessible to as many bands as possible, Holst ingeniously scored the work so that it could be played by a minimum of 19 musicians, with 16 additional parts that could be added or removed without compromising the integrity of the work.

There are three movements in the suite: Chaconne, Intermezzo, and March. Holst writes, “As each movement is founded on the same phrase, it is requested that the suite be played right through without a break.” Indeed, the first three notes of the Chaconne are Eb, F and C, and the first three notes of the melody when it first appears in the Intermezzo are Eb, F, and C. In the third movement, March, Holst inverts the motive: The first note heard in the brilliant opening brass medley is an Eb, but instead of rising, it descends to a D, and then a G; the exact opposite of the first two movements.

The Chaconne begins with a ground bass reminiscent of those written by Henry
Purcell or William Byrd. It is performed by tuba, euphonium and string bass and is repeated throughout the ensemble sixteen full times as varying instrumental textures and variations of the theme are layered within it. Following a delicately scored chamber setting of the theme, the music steadily builds to a brilliant Eb Major chord that concludes the movement.

The Intermezzo is light and brisk and features soloistic passages for the cornet, oboe and clarinet. Holst prominently displays the agility and sensitivity of the wind band through transparent textures and passages where the melody and accompaniment are woven into a variety of instrumental settings.

The March begins suddenly. It consists of two themes, the first of which, performed by brass choir and percussion, is a march light in character. The second theme is dominated by the woodwinds and is composed of a long, lyrical line reminiscent of the original Chaconne melody. The movement concludes with both themes intertwining as the band crescendos to a climax.

– Program Note by Esmail Khalili

Sources from: https://www.windrep.org/First_Suite_in_E-flat

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was a British composer and educator. He learned piano at an early age, but was stricken with a nerve condition that affected the movement of his right hand, forcing him to give up the piano for the trombone. He received his degrees from The Royal College of Music in London, where he met fellow composer (and lifelong friend) Ralph Vaughan Williams and became interested in Hindu mysticism and spirituality, interests that would later shape the course of his compositional output. In 1901 Holst married Isobel Harrison, who would remain with him the remainder of his life.

Before Holst became a well-known composer, he relied on income from playing the trombone in the Carl Rosa Opera Company and the White Viennese Band, a popular orchestra specializing in “light music.” In 1905, Holst became director of music at the St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, London, and in 1907, he also became director of music at Morley College, retaining both positions until his death in 1934.

Holst’s compositions for wind band, although only a small portion of his total output, have made him a cornerstone of the genre.
Sources from: https://www.windrep.org/Gustav_Holst

Journey Through Orion was commissioned by the Association of Concert Bands (ACB) and premiered at their national conference in 2006 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The piece was inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Giroux elaborates in this excerpt from her program notes:

“Photographs from the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, simply put, are out of this world. Pictures of the Great Orion Nebula, Barnard’s Loop, M78, M43, the Molecular Clouds 1 & 2 (OMC-1, OMC-2) and The Horsehead Nebula never cease to capture my imagination. I have
journeyed there many times in my mind, so I decided to sketch that journey with notes. Travel with the music 1,500 light years away into the constellation Orion the Hunter, into the Molecular Cloud Complex and through the Great Orion Nebula where Stars and Ideas are born.”

She also refers her listeners to the Hubble Telescope website, which features an ever-updating gallery of these amazing images.

Sources from: https://www.windrep.org/Journey_Through_Orion

Julie Ann Giroux was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts on December 12, 1961. She graduated from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA in 1984. She started playing piano at 3 years of age and began composing at the age of 8 and has been composing ever since. Her first published work for concert band, published by Southern Music Company was composed at the age of 13.

Julie began composing commercially in 1984. She was hired by Oscar winning composer Bill Conti as an orchestrator, her first project with Conti being “North & South” the mini-series. With over 100 film, television and video game credits, Giroux collaborated with dozens of film composers, producers, and celebrities including Samuel Goldwyn, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Celene Dion, Paula Abdul, Michael Jackson, Paul Newman, Harry Connick Jr. and many others. Projects she has worked on have been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Golden Globe awards. She has won individual Emmy Awards in the field of “Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Direction”. When She won her first Emmy Award, she was the first woman and the youngest person to ever win that award. She has won it three times.

Giroux has also published a large category of classical works with emphasis on original compositions for Wind Band which are published by Musica Propria and distributed internationally. She is greatly sought after as a composer and recently completing her 5th Symphony “Sun, Rain & Wind” which premiered in June, 2018. Her music has been recorded and reviewed internationally receiving top reviews and her music has been performed at major music festivals the world over.

Giroux has been a true force in a male dominated field and has accrued many previously male only awards. She is a member of ASCAP, The Film Musicians Fund, Kappa Kappa PSI, Tau Beta Sigma and a member of the American Bandmasters Association. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Service to Music Medal Award, Emmy Awards and was the first female composer inducted into the American Bandmasters Association in 2009.

Sources from: https://www.juliegiroux.org/bio-discs

The Planets, composed for orchestra in 1915, is a suite of seven tone poems, each describing symbolically a different planet. The work has insistent odd meters of five and seven beats, thick streams of parallel triads, and an opulent instrumentation. The entire suite was first performed for a private audience in 1918 and in public, without Venus and Neptune, in 1919.

Mars – The Bringer of War was complete in the composer’s mind in the early summer of 1914, when the First World War was but an emerging threat. The work is dominated by a relentless hammering out of a 5/4 rhythm which suggests the relentless destruction of war. The opposition of harmony and rhythm is skillfully used to produce a startling aural and emotional effect.
Source from: https://www.windrep.org/Suite_from_%22The_Planets%22

Together with his friend and follow composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, Holst played a major role in re-energizing English concert music by injecting it with the spirit, and at times the letter, of the country’s folk music. Both composers also created music in a more cosmopolitan style, such as this engaging, brilliantly scored suite for orchestra. The Planets is widely thought of as Holst’s most popular composition, much to his chagrin.

When it came to outside interests, Holst usually concerned himself only with those that stimulated his creative imagination. During a tour of Spain in 1913, a fellow traveler, author Clifford Bax, introduced him to astrology. Soon afterwards, Holst wrote a friend, “…recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely.”

The large-scale orchestral suite that resulted from this interest depicts the astrological characters of seven planets in our solar system (he didn’t include Earth since it is astrologically inert, and Pluto had yet to be discovered). These characters differ from their mythological personalities, although Holst’s portrait of Venus manages to conjure both her mythological beauty and her astrological peacefulness.

Until recently, there was no complete transcript of the suite in existence for concert band. Holst himself had arranged (not transcribed) Mars and Jupiter for concert band, but had not arranged any of the other movements for such an ensemble. This current work is unique in that it is a true and complete transcription of the suite, where Merlin Patterson took everything from the original orchestral work and represented it in its original key, with nothing omitted or changed.

– Program note by Kathy Boster

https://www.windrep.org/Planets,_The_(Patterson)

John Williams’ menacing musical signature for Darth Vader and the Empire from George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy remains one of the most iconic symphonic themes in all film music.

Like many of Williams’ award-winning scores to these classic films, this theme is instantly recognizable, both as a portrait of Darth Vader, one of the most unforgettable characters in Star Wars, as well as an exciting and dramatic symphonic march. Though the Imperial March is one of the most memorable themes from the Star Wars film scores, it is often overlooked that it is not present in the first Star Wars movie. Instead, the Imperial March made its debut in The Empire Strikes Back, the second film released. It immediately became synonymous not only with Darth Vader, but with the feelings of fear, evil, and impending doom.

– Program Note from U.S. Marine Band concert program, 2 June 2022

In a career that spans five decades, John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and for the concert stage. He has served as music director and laureate conductor of one of the country’s treasured musical institutions, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and he maintains thriving artistic relationships with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. Williams has received a variety of prestigious awards, including the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honor, the Olympic Order, and numerous Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. He remains one of our nation’s most distinguished and contributive musical voices.

Mr. Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than one hundred films. His 40-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T.: The Extra- Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, four Indiana
Jones films, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Munich, Hook, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Empire of the Sun, The Adventures of TinTin, and War Horse. Their latest collaboration, The BFG, was released on July 1, 2016. Mr. Williams has composed the scores for all seven Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman: The Movie, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Memoirs of a Geisha, Far and Away, The Accidental Tourist, Home Alone, Nixon, The Patriot, Angela’s Ashes, Seven Years in Tibet, The Witches of Eastwick, Rosewood, Sleepers, Sabrina, Presumed Innocent, The Cowboys and The Reivers, among many others. He has worked with many legendary directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler and Robert Altman. In 1971, he adapted the score for the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, for which he composed original violin cadenzas for renowned virtuoso Isaac Stern. He has appeared on recordings as pianist and conductor with Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jessye Norman and others. Mr. Williams has received five Academy Awards and 50 Oscar nominations, making him the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. His most recent nomination was for the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He also has received seven British Academy Awards (BAFTA), 22 Grammys, four Golden Globes, five Emmys, and numerous gold and platinum records.

Born and raised in New York, Mr. Williams moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1948, where he studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. After service in the Air Force, he returned to New York to attend the Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Madame Rosina Lhevinne. While in New York, he also worked as a jazz pianist, both in nightclubs and on recordings. He returned to Los Angeles and began his career in the film industry, working with a number of accomplished composers including Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Franz Waxman. He went on to write music for more than 200 television episodes for anthology
series Alcoa Premiere, Kraft Suspense Theatre, Chrysler Theatre and Playhouse 90. His more recent contributions to television music include the well-known theme for NBC Nightly
News (“The Mission”), the theme for what has become network television’s longest-running series, NBC’s Meet the Press, and a new theme for the prestigious PBS arts showcase Great Performances.

In addition to his activity in film and television, Mr. Williams has composed numerous works for the concert stage, among them two symphonies, and concertos for flute, violin, clarinet, viola, oboe and tuba. His cello concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood in 1994. Mr. Williams also has filled commissions by several of the world’s leading orchestras, including a bassoon concerto for the New York Philharmonic entitled The Five Sacred Trees, a trumpet concerto for the Cleveland Orchestra, and a horn concerto for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Seven for Luck, a seven-piece song cycle for soprano and orchestra based on the texts of former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, was premiered by the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in 1998. At the opening concert of their 2009–2010 season, James Levine led the Boston Symphony in the premiere Mr. Williams’ On Willows and Birches, a concerto for harp and orchestra.

In January 1980, Mr. Williams was named nineteenth music director of the Boston Pops Orchestra, succeeding the legendary Arthur Fiedler. He currently holds the title of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor which he assumed following his retirement in December 1993, after 14 highly successful seasons. He also holds the title of Artist-in-Residence at Tanglewood.

One of America’s best known and most distinctive artistic voices, Mr. Williams has composed music for many important cultural and commemorative events. Liberty Fanfare was composed for the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. American Journey, written to celebrate the new millennium and to accompany the retrospective film The Unfinished Journey by director Steven Spielberg, was premiered at the “America’s Millennium” concert in Washington, D.C. on New Year’s Eve, 1999. His orchestral work Soundings was performed at the celebratory opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. In the world of sport, he has contributed musical themes for the 1984, 1988, and 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and the 1987 International Summer Games of the Special Olympics. In 2006, Mr. Williams composed the theme for NBC’s presentation of NFL Football.

Mr. Williams holds honorary degrees from 21 American universities, including The Juilliard School, Boston College, Northeastern University, Tufts University, Boston University, the New England Conservatory of Music, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, The Eastman School of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the University of Southern California. He is a recipient of the 2009 National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the United States Government. In 2003, he received the Olympic Order, the IOC’s highest honor, for his contributions to the Olympic movement. He served as the Grand Marshal of the 2004 Rose Parade in Pasadena, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor in December of 2004. Mr. Williams was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2009, and in January of that same year he composed and arranged Air and Simple Gifts especially for the first inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama.

Sources from: https://www.johnwilliams.org/reference/biography

The Fingal’s Cave Overture, also known as the Hebrides Overture, is not an introduction to a larger work, but rather a standalone concert piece. Like many musical compositions of the Romantic period, it was inspired by something beyond music, although it does not tell a story. It was simply inspired by the composer’s emotions in the presence of certain experiences, similar to how Mendelssohn’s visit to Italy in 1830 inspired his “Italian” Symphony.
In 1829, Mendelssohn traveled to Scotland where he toured extensively and visited Sir Walter Scott. Together, they made a trip to the western coast, overlooking the Hebrides. On August 7, Mendelssohn conceived the main theme of the overture. The next day he visited Fingal’s Cave on the desolate island of Staffa, as well as the island of Iona. It wasn’t until 1830, during a visit to Rome, that Mendelssohn completed the Scottish overture and dedicated it to his father as a birthday present.
The first theme of the work, heard right away, is a descending figure played in the low strings, and it gives an admirable evocation of the loneliness of the image. The other main theme, an arresting one, announced by a kind of fanfare in the brass, is soon heard in the cellos and bassoons. It suggests the inversion of the first and remarkably calls to mind the action of wind and waves. The overture is in sonata form, and the development section depicts a maelstrom of nature. The recapitulation continues this stormy mood, which is broken with a quiet clarinet duet. The storm resumes, and finally, soft woodwind figures restate the opening themes, softly ending this remarkable evocation of the rugged Scottish coast.

– Wm. E. Runyan (Edited)

Vocalise is a song composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1912 and later revised in 1914 at the age of 41. It was published in 1915 as part of a collection called 14 Songs, Op 34. Unlike the other 13 songs in the collection, Vocalise does not have any lyrics. Instead, it relies on a soloist’s wordless vocalization, which can be chosen by the vocalist. When explaining his decision to soprano Antonina Nezhdanova, Rachmaninoff said, “Why use words when you can convey everything better and more expressively with your voice and interpretation?” Some critics have questioned the absence of lyrics in the song, but others believe it contributes to its emotional intensity and sorrow. Rachmaninoff and Nezhdanova premiered Vocalise on January 24, 1916. After the premiere, the composer arranged the piece for orchestra and soprano, as well as for orchestra alone. Since then, others have arranged the work for various combinations of instruments.

– William Driver (Edited)

Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry), is an opera composed by Italian musician Pietro Mascagni. It was first performed on May 17th, 1890, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. The libretto was written by Giovanni-Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, based on a short story by novelist Giovanni Verga. Mascagni submitted Cavalleria Rusticana to a contest for the best unpublished one-act opera, sponsored by the music publisher Casa Sonzogno. It won first prize and was considered a great success at its first performance. However, none of Mascagni’s 14 subsequent operas met with great success. Due to its short length, Cavalleria Rusticana is often paired with another one-act opera, usually Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.
The opera tells the story of two lovers, Lola and Turiddu, who are separated when Turiddu is called away for military service. During his absence, Lola marries a local man named Alfio. When Turiddu returns, he is angry and starts an affair with another woman to make Lola jealous. Despite their relationships with others, Lola and Turiddu resume their love affair. When Alfio finds out, he challenges Turiddu to a duel, and Turiddu is killed. The Intermezzo is the most famous melody from Cavalleria rusticana, and depicts a rare moment of peace and calm before the opera’s tragic final scene. It is scored for strings and the organ of the small church on stage.

-Nikk Pilato (Edited)

The iconic waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” premiered in 1867 both in Europe and in New York as an orchestral piece. The original version, written the previous year, was a choral work with words submitted by the Vienna Men’s Choral Association resident poet, Joseph Weyl. The song sings of the wondrous river in ten verses, “giving your blessing to everything. A picture of peace for all time.” The song tells the story of mermaids whispering amid the dancing waves, a boat with lovers traveling along, and unity for Vienna being assured by the river’s presence. The music was created by Johann Strauss, whose lighthearted music beguiled Vienna throughout the latter part of the 19th century. He was commissioned to write something for the Paris exhibition. The waltz became so well known that some called it the unofficial Austrian national anthem.
The waltz begins with bustling strings and a romantic horn call, a melodic forecast, followed by a response by winds before the first melody emerges in totality. There are five melodies in succession with a beautiful coda. Listen for the einschliefen, one of the most tantalizing features of the waltz performance, a slowing down, or hesitation of the tempo, and then a re-gliding into the waltz tempo. According to Maestro Raymond Leppard, this is often “greatly affected by orchestras,” but it actually happened naturally in the dance after the left foot moved and the right foot “dragged in a bit later.”

-Marianne Williams Tobias (Edited)