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Robert C. Smithwick Theater
Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, CA
2:30 PM, Sunday, March 22, 1998
Julie Callahan, Horn Soloist
I. Grand Entrance
II. Simply Grand Minuet
III. Romance in The Grand Manner
IV. Rondo Mucho Grando
Encore: Colossus of Columbia by Russell Alexander
One of Sousa's favorite sayings was "A horse, a dog, a gun, a girl, and music on the side. That is my idea of heaven." When all of his march titles are examined, Sousa's appreciation of the fairer sex is obvious. In this instance, the subject was a pretty girl who worked at the annual Boston Food Fair. Even though the March King never met the young lady, her memory inspired this title when he was preparing a new march for the food fair in 1908. It was the only march that Sousa composed that year, but it is generally regarded as one of his most melodic and best-written marches, with its light, bouncy opening and harmonic Trio ending.
The name of John Philip Sousa (1854 - 1932) is almost synonymous with band music in America. Child of a Portuguese father and Bavarian mother, he showed musical aptitude at an early age. At ten, he was studying violin and harmony, soon learning to play wind instruments as well. He played with the Marine Band at thirteen, and later was appointed leader of the same band, a position he held for a dozen years before setting out to organize his own band. Along with his ability to organize and conduct superb musicians, Sousa developed a distinct flair for writing marches. He seemed instinctively to know how to compose for band instruments, and his style, full of bouncing rhythms, brilliant instrumentation, and catchy tunes, earned for him the name of The March King.
As a child, Ira Hearshen was stirred and fascinated by the music of John Philip Sousa. Later, as a composer, he felt the challenge to develop a symphonic work that would pay homage to the March King. Originally conceived as a light concert suite of four to six movements, it was recast into a full-scale symphony, in response to the audience reaction to a premier of another movement, The Thunderer. Searching for a unifying melodic theme that would bridge the movement, Hearshen explains: "I found the solution in Sousa's scores. There was a four note melodic fragment common to virtually every tune I wanted to use, the same four notes that begin the Dies Irae portion of the Catholic Mass. The intervals are a minor 2nd down, a minor 2nd up, followed by a minor 3rd down. In the key of C major or A minor these notes would be C-B-C-A. This melodic motive occurs in the trios of both Hands Across The Sea and Washington Post as well as the introduction to Fairest of the Fair. In fact, these are the first four notes one hears in The Stars and Stripes Forever.''
Ira Hearshen received his Bachelor of Music degree in applied theory and composition from Wayne State University. In 1972, he moved to Los Angeles to study orchestration at the Grove School of Music and counterpoint under Allyn Ferguson. He also studied under film composer, Albert Harris. His arrangements have been featured in the Detroit Symphony's Pine Knob Summer Series, The Summer Pops Series for John Denver, the Jacksonville (FL) Symphony, and the Air Combat Heritage Band. His orchestrations have appeared in the feature films Guarding Tess, The Three Musketeers, and All Dogs Go To Heaven 2, the television series Beauty and the Beast, and the Broadway show ``Into the Light''.
Morceau de Concert translates as "concert piece''. It is a solo horn tour de force that was written in 1880 as a part of a virtuoso tradition developed in France, upheld mainly by the faculty of the Paris Conservatoire. In the tradition, continued to this day, each study period ends with a competition in which the first prize is awarded to the winner as a symbol of excellence. Saint-Saëns' composition was dedicated to the horn virtuoso Chaussier, who won the Premier Prix in 1880.
Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 - 1921), was born of a rural but genteel family. At the age of six, he was playing Beethoven sonatas and was delighted with receiving the gift of a complete opera, which he promptly learned. In adult life, he became accomplished in astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, and other fields of advanced learning. He wrote musical and literary criticism and was the author of a book on mysticism. He traveled extensively and was familiar with most of the countries of Western Europe and the Mediterranean. He was known as a great wit and a gifted caricaturist. All this was in addition to playing organ in the famous Church of the Madeleine, Paris, teaching in the conservatory, and composing in almost all forms of music.
Julie Callahan earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Penn. State University in 1982. While there, she won several competitive performance scholarships and, during her senior year, she soloed with the Pittsburgh Symphony as winner of Penn. State's Young Artists Competition. Since college, Ms. Callahan has performed and taught semi-professionally, holding orchestra and conservatory positions in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. She moved to the Bay Area in 1989, at which time she took a six-year hiatus from music to pursue a career in technical writing. She returned to playing the horn in 1994, after starting her own technical publishing company, Only Excellent Material, located in San Jose, California. She has studied with Michael Hatfield and Jonathan Ring. Her festival participation includes the Aspen Music Festival, 1996 International Horn Society Workshop, 1996 International Brassfest, Humboldt Brass Chamber Music Workshop, and the 1997 American Solo Horn Competition. In addition to the Foothill Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Ms. Callahan is also a member of the Peninsula Symphony and a horn quartet that is currently looking for a name.
The Marche Hongroise is based on a folk tune that dates from the time of Ferencz Rákóczy II (1676-1735), a Hungarian national hero for whom this march is named. The march was popularized by Rákóczy's army and was later reset, by János Bihari around 1809, into a march used by the Hungarian regiment as they went into battle against Napoleon. In 1846, Berlioz was preparing for a concert tour in Hungary; it was a time during which the Hungarian independence movement was growing ever more volatile. He was advised to include a Hungarian tune in his repertoire and he scored his own setting of the Rákóczy March, which premiered in Budapest. In his autobiography, Berlioz wrote: "When the day came my throat tightened, as it did in time of great perturbation. First the trumpets give out the rhythm, then the flutes and clarinets softly outlining the theme, with a pizzacato accompaniment of the strings, the audience remaining calm and judicial. Then, as there came a long crescendo, broken by dull beats of the bass drum, like the sound of distant cannon, a strange restless movement was to be heard among the people; and as the orchestra let itself go in a cataclysm of sweeping fury and thunder, they could contain themselves no longer, their overcharged souls burst forth with a tremendous explosion of feeling that raised my hair with terror. I lost all hope of making the end audible, and in the encore it was no better; hardly could they contain themselves long enough to hear a portion of the coda.'' Berlioz later inserted the march into his opera La damnation de Faust, it is believed, to gain more acceptance for the oratorio. He had to take liberties with the original Faust legend, to divert Faust to a Hungarian plain, where a band was playing the Rákóczy March.
Hector Louis Berlioz (1803 - 1869) was the son of a provincial French doctor, with a practice near Grenoble. His father enrolled him in a Paris medical school in 1821, but after only one year his love of music grew so strong that he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire. His early attempts at composition were not well received, having rebelled against the rigorous methods of his teachers, and he had to support himself as a chorus singer at a vaudeville theater. On his fourth attempt, he won the Prix de Rome for his Sardanapale. He finally gained fame and some financial security with his Symphonie Fantastique, considered autobiographic and finished during the revolution of 1830, and his Harold en Italie, which grew out of a work written for the violinist Paganini, but spurned by him as lacking difficulty. Berated by his contemporaries Bizet, Debussy, and Ravel, Berlioz found support during his tours of Germany, Russia, and England, eventually gaining the recognition and appreciation of a great composer. His Treatise on Instrumentation became popular as a textbook.
This overture was written for the U.S. Army Field Band and it is dedicated to its conductor at the time, Chester E. Whiting. The piece is written in a neo-modal style being flavored strongly with both Lydian and Mixolydian modes. Its musical architecture is a very free adaptation of sonata form. The musical material borders on the folk tune idiom, although there are no direct quotes from any folk tunes. The work calls for skilled playing by several sections, especially the French horns. Although American Overture was Jenkins' first band piece, it remains his most successful work, and in his words, he is "hard-pressed to duplicate its success.''
Before deciding on music as a career, Philadelphian Joseph Willcox Jenkins (b. 1928) received a pre-law degree at St. Joseph's College. Jenkins studied composition under Vincent Persichetti at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. He earned his Bachelor and Masters of Music degrees at the Eastman School of Music and his Doctorate at the Catholic University of America. Jenkins began his musical career as a composer and arranger for the United States Army Field Bands and the Armed Forces Network. He is Professor of Theory and Composition at Duquesne University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1960. He has received numerous prestigious commissions and has nearly 200 original compositions, works for band, orchestra, chorus, solo instruments and theatrical pieces, plus hundreds more vocal and instrumental arrangements to his credit. The ASCAP Serious Music Award has been awarded annually to Jenkins for nearly two consecutive decades.
This work was commissioned and first performed in 1967 by the Ithaca High School Band, under the leadership of Frank Battisti, in memory of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The chorale prelude was an organ form popular in Bach's day. Persichetti, a church organist like Bach, served in the Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for nearly 20 years after his appointment at the age of 16. Based on a tune of his own, which appears in his Hymns and Responses for the Church Year, this chorale prelude begins in a calm and reflective manner. It builds with tension and it becomes plaintive about the life and circumstances to which it is dedicated. Finally, the melody resolves into a repose, reminiscent of the feeling of hearing Taps played from a distant knoll.
Philadelphia-born Vincent Persichetti (1915 - 1987) established himself as a leading figure in contemporary music. He was a virtuoso keyboard performer, scholar, author, and energetic teacher. To his credit are more than eighty compositions, including major works in almost every genre. Dr. Persichetti was graduated from Combs College, Philadelphia Conservatory, and Curtis Institute. He was head of the composition department of the Philadelphia Conservatory (1942-62) and joined the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music in 1947. The influence of his musical mind is widely felt, thanks to his expert teaching and his book on harmonic practices of this century.
The Grand Serenade was composed on commission from Prince Fred of Wein-am-Rhein, for some sort of outdoor occasion. P.D.Q. Bach had originally wanted to write a really big work of thirty-five or forty minutes duration, but he agreed to make it only a third as long when Prince Fred offered to triple the fee. Soon after it was played, a member of the Prince's household used the pages of the score to wrap six large sausages, which were sent to Paris to be presented as a gift to Benjamin Franklin, from whom the Prince was anxious to obtain the specifications for building a glass harmonica, which Franklin had recently perfected. Eventually, the manuscript made its way to an attic in Boston, where Peter Schickele found it among the belongings of an eighteenth century Tory, in a box marked "Seditious Material.'' Some adjustments have been made to the arrangement for the lack of a dill piccolo, which is now obsolete and litte is known.
Little is known of P.D.Q. Bach (1807 - 1742 ?) due to a conspiracy of silence perpetrated by his own parents. The last and least of the great J. S. Bach's twenty-odd children, he was certainly the oddest. His father completely ignored him, setting an example for his family and posterity. He finally attained total obscurity at the time of his death. His musical output would be lost but for the efforts of Professor Peter Schickele, who in 1954, rummaging around in a Bavarian castle in search of musical gems, happened upon the original manuscript of the Sanka Cantata, being employed as a strainer in the castle caretaker's percolator. A cursory examination of the music immediately revealed the reason for the atrocious taste of the coffee. Other works attributed to P.D.Q. Bach are The Abduction of Figaro, Oedipus Tex, Wachet Arf, The Seasonings, The Short-Tempered Clavier, Art of the Ground Round, and The Magic Bassoon.
Peter Schickele (b. 1935) grew up in Ames, Iowa, Washington, DC, and Fargo, North Dakota. As a teenager, he studied and emulated Spike Jones' performances. Originally a clarinetist, urgency dictated that he become Fargo's only bassoonist; he went on to be Swathmore's only music major. He completed his schooling with an M.S. from The Juilliard School of Music, where he studied under Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma. Besides performing and explaining away the music of P.D.Q. Bach, Prof. Schickele has written and arranged for classical, jazz, rock, and folk ensembles, providing music for concerts, films, television, radio, and the stage.
Literally translated as "The Royal Road" or "The King's Highway", El Camino Real was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, the 581st Air Force Band (AFRES) and its Commander, Lt. Col. Ray E. Toler. Composed during the latter half of 1984 and completed in early 1985, it bears the subtitle: A Latin Fantasy. The music is based on a series of chord progressions common to countless generations of Spanish flamenco guitarists, whose fiery style and brilliant playing have captivated millions of music lovers throughout the world. The first section of the music is based upon the dance form known as the Jota, while the second, contrasting section is derived from the Fandango, here altered considerably in both time and tempo from its usual form. Overall, the music follows a traditional three-part pattern: fast-slow-fast.
Growing up in a musical home in Manhattan, Alfred Reed (b. 1921) became well acquainted with most of the standard symphonic and operatic repertoire while still in elementary school. Beginning formal music training at the age of ten, he studied trumpet and was playing professionally while still in high school. Reed became deeply interested in band music while a member of the 529th Army Air Force Band during World War II, producing nearly 100 compositions and arrangements for band before leaving military service. After the war, he studied with Vittorio Giannini at the Juilliard School of Music. Reed's academic degrees were earned at Baylor University, where he was conductor of the university's orchestra. With over 200 published works for band, wind ensemble, orchestra, chorus, and various smaller chamber music groups, Reed is one of the nation's most prolific and frequently performed composers.
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