DIALOGUE IN ELOQUENCE

Jessie Montgomery’s growing body of works have promulgated her into a prominent world-wide career as a composer and violinist. The Washington Post describes her works as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life.” Her music interweaves classical music with elements of the vernacular, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Since 1999 Montgomery has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African-American and Latinx string players. She serves as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s professional touring ensemble. The Sphinx Organization commissioned Banner to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star Spangled Banner,” penned by Francis Scott Key and declared the American National Anthem in 1814.

Scored for solo string quartet and string orchestra, Banner is a rhapsody on the theme of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Montgomery draws upon musical and historical sources from various world anthems and patriotic songs in an attempt to answer the question: “What does an anthem for the 21st century sound like in today’s multicultural environment?”

Montgomery continues:

The Star Spangled Banner is an ideal subject for exploration in contradictions. For most Americans the song represents a paradigm of liberty and solidarity against fierce odds, and for others it implies a contradiction between the ideals of freedom and the realities of injustice and oppression. As a culture, it is my opinion that we Americans are perpetually in search of ways to express and celebrate our ideals of freedom — a way to proclaim, “we’ve made it!” as if the very action of saying it aloud makes it so. And for many of our nation’s people, that was the case: through work songs and spirituals, enslaved Africans promised themselves a way out and built the nerve to endure the most abominable treatment for the promise of a free life. Immigrants from Europe, Central America and the Pacific have sought out a safe haven here and though met with the trials of building a multi-cultured democracy, continue to find rooting in our nation and make significant contributions to our cultural landscape. In 2014, a tribute to the U.S. National Anthem means acknowledging the contradictions, leaps and bounds, and milestones that allow us to celebrate and maintain the tradition of our ideals.

The structure of Banner is loosely based on traditional marching band form where there are several contrasting sections preceded by an introduction. Montgomery uses a variety of cultural anthems, American folk songs, and popular idioms, which all interact to form various textures, contributing to a multi-layered fanfare.

Previn’s Honey & Rue unites the strengths of three exceptional artists: Novelist and poet Toni Morrison’s evocative poetry, André Previn’s wide range of musical styles (he won four Academy Awards and ten Grammy Awards), and the voice of American soprano Kathleen Battle, who commissioned and premiered the work at Carnegie Hall in 1992.

Morrison’s set of six poems are not about a particular story, but instead use “images of yearning, satisfaction, and resolution” throughout. The lives of women and African Americans inspired her words. In Morrison’s eyes, the opening song “First I’ll Try Love” is the proclamation of a “pitiful little person who is going to try and fall in love.” She intended the lyrics to reveal the unrequited expectations of love. The second song “Whose House Is This?” depicts the alienation inherent in the African-American experience. The poem is based on Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) - a feminist writing that deals with 19th-century sexual politics. The music contrasts with the upbeat first song: it is intensely atmospheric, slow, and deliberate.

Morrison found “The Town Is Lit,” the cycle’s third song, particularly difficult to pen. She states she was “trying to talk about the glamor of street versus domestic life.” Previn parallels Morrison’s intentions by bringing in a jazz ensemble to contrast between slow and sleepy domesticity and the vibrancy of the nightlife in an exciting big city.

Morrison encourages the singer to think of the text to “Do You Know Him?” as either a religious song or a love song. The phrases “My God” and “My Lord” are parenthetical, allowing for flexible interpretation. Musically, this song stands apart as the only unaccompanied piece in the cycle. It acts as a stark transition between the grandness of “The Town is Lit” and the forthcoming, somber “I Am Not Seaworthy.”

The speaker in “I Am Not Seaworthy” is Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Before dying in Act IV of Hamlet, Ophelia was heard chanting “snatches of old tunes.” Morrison imagined that the lyrics to the fifth song in this cycle might be Ophelia’s thoughts while in the water. More hauntingly, these words can be seen as a sad reflection on how an entire class of people were forcibly migrated from Africa to the Americas. The voice stands apart in its loneliness from the mass of the orchestra.

The final song in the cycle “Take My Mother Home” evokes the repetitive and unwritten oral tradition of African-American spirituals. Morrison’s lyrics bring out the symbolic language used when slaves referred to escape via the Underground Railroad. The protagonist in the song has no hope of going home; however, she wishes for the well-being of her family.

Both Fauré and Debussy held the French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-96) in high esteem. Verlaine’s collection of poems Fêtes galantes (1869) provided the inspiration for some of their most revered works, including the two works on today’s program. Both composers' multiple settings of Verlaine’s poem Clair de lune (Moonlight; from Fêtes galantes) remain quintessential 19th-century French repertoire.

Fauré took up the Fête galante theme for the theater work Masques et bergamasques (from which comes the orchestral suite by the same name). In 1918 Prince Albert of Monaco commissioned a theatrical piece for the Monte Carlo Theater. Then 73, Fauré had recently retired from his position at the Paris Conservatory and was battling a curious form of deafness. Rather than compose an entirely new piece for the occasion, Fauré assembled various earlier compositions, both vocal and instrumental, some already in print. The orchestral suite on today’s program contains four pieces from this larger work, all of them otherwise unpublished at the time. The vigorous yet lighthearted “Overture” comes from his Intermezzo for Orchestra (1868), and the energetic “Gavotte” comes directly from one of his unpublished symphonies. The final movement “Pastorale” is the only new movement that he composed, perhaps as a final farewell to orchestral writing - this suite was his last symphonic composition. Though the movement originally came near the beginning of the theatrical work, it is the most striking and deeply moving movement of the suite, and Fauré deservedly placed it last when he created the orchestral suite in 1919.

The curious title once again takes us back to Verlaine’s dreamy Clair de lune: “Your soul is a chosen landscape bewitched by mummers and maskers (masques et bergamasques) who play the lute and dance, almost sad under their crazy fancy-dress.” The 1918 program for the Monte Carlo sets the stage: “The characters Harlequin, Gilles, and Columbine, whose task is usually to amuse the aristocratic audience, take their turn at being spectators at a ‘Fêtes galantes’ on the island of Cythera. The lords and ladies, who as a rule applaud their efforts, now unwillingly provide them with entertainment by the coquettish behavior.”

Many concert goers associate Debussy with his impressionist works - music that focuses on mood, atmosphere, and scenes, most famously Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894) and La Mer (1903-5). We see some foreshadowing of the Impressionist composer Debussy was to become in his Petite Suite.

Debussy’s Petite Suite is probably the least characteristic work of his that found a place in the enduring repertoire. An early work, Debussy originally wrote Petite Suite as a series of pieces for piano for four-hands right after he completed his studies at the Paris Conservatory. He had recently won the Prix de Rome in 1884, which helped seal his status as an emerging French composer; but it would be another year after the completion of Petite Suite until Debussy’s sound and style settled into the soundscapes we associate with his music. However, there are momentary glances toward the later Debussy in this work, particularly in the opening movement, “En Bateau” (In a Boat; from Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes). Debussy hints at his fascination with the sonic depiction of water in his efforts to characterize the text, whose scene is set on a skiff that floats across dreamy, moonlit water.

Based on another poem from Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes collection, “Cortège” manages to be both musically energized and nonchalant. Its melody suggests the genteel lady and her pet monkey and the comedic aspects of their walk as portrayed in Verlaine’s poem. The third and fourth movements have no specific connections to Verlaine. The “Menuet” evokes the same enchanted landscapes that inspired much of the poetry in Fêtes galantes (notably Antoine Watteau’s paintings, which gave name to the artistic genre), while remaining true to the 18th-century galant style of the graceful and elegant dance. The final movement “Ballet” remains lively and energetic and brings the Petite Suite to an optimistic close.

Composer Henri Büsser (1872-1973) is responsible for catapulting Debussy’s Petite Suite to its permanence within the popular orchestral repertoire. The prominent position of the brass and winds help to color the scenes that evoke Debussy’s own use of orchestration. Debussy himself was fond of this orchestration and programmed the work when touring as a conductor.