Ravinia 2023 Issue 3

TIM NUTT (PRICE HOUSE) I I Annual Rodman Wanamaker Contest in Musical Composition for Composers of the Negro Race. At stake were $1,000 in cash prizes for compositions in three categories: songs with words, piano, and orchestra. Price entered her Symphony No. 1 in E minor and Ethiopia’s Shadow in America in the orchestral category and the Sonata in E minor and Fan- tasie nègre No. 4 in B minor in the piano cat- egory. Astoundingly, her four entries received top honors and shared Honorable Mention in both orchestral and piano categories, earning cash awards totaling $750. Her former student Margaret Bonds, then a student at Northwest- ern University, won the song category (and a $250 award) with “Sea Ghost.” News of Price’s virtual sweep of the Wana- maker awards spread nationally and attracted attention a short distance north in the Chica- go Loop, where Frederick Stock, music direc- tor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, took note of her triumphs. The opening of the Chi- cago World’s Fair was just eight months away, and the CSO was scheduled to perform with- in the first few weeks, in June 1933. Stock pro- grammed back-to-back performances of or- chestral music written almost exclusively by American composers. The first concert fea- tured music by Henry Handley, Deems Tay- lor, and George Gershwin, who appeared as soloist in his Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue . The CSO and Stock offered a program highlighting Black artists the following eve- ning. The world premiere of Price’s Sympho- ny No. 1 in E minor occupied center position both on the program and in music history— never before had a major American orchestra performed a composition by a Black woman. While the Symphony No. 1 enjoyed its mo- ment in the spotlight, the other orchestral score from that period followed a differ- ent course. Price apparently packed away Ethiopia’s Shadow in America , which was never performed during her lifetime, and it remained hidden for decades. In 2009, Vic- ki and Darrell Gatwood discovered musi- cal manuscripts, personal documents, and The abandoned house in Saint Anne, IL, where Florence Price scores and documents were found books in an abandoned house that they had recently purchased in Saint Anne, IL, 72 miles south of Chicago. The building lay in a state of decay: saplings grown wild around the perimeter, windows broken, a hole in the roof from a fallen tree limb, and its contents strewn across the floors. The name “Florence Price” appeared frequently and, after an on- line search, the Gatwoods realized that their new real estate had once been the compos- er’s summer cottage. Ethiopia’s Shadow in America emerged from the miraculously re- discovered cache of primary documents. The University of Arkansas Symphony Orchestra under Robert Mueller gave the first perfor- mance of the Andante from Ethiopia’s Shadow in America on January 31, 2015, at the Flor- ence Price Music Festival. Ethiopia’s Shadow in America offers a rare ex- ample of descriptive music in Price’s compo- sitional catalog, a three-movement orchestral work tracing the experience of an enslaved person: “The Arrival of the Negro in Amer- ica when first brought here as a slave,” “His Resignation and Faith,” and “His Adaptation – A fusion of his native and acquired impuls- es.” The solo clarinet’s melancholic tune gives way to orchestral writing that is both majes- tic and ominous. The strings, accompanied by woodblock and snare drum played with wire brushes, introduce a livelier Allegretto melody. The syncopated double-bass pattern, which switches rapidly between pizzicato and arco, contains a rhythmic motive that appears in all three movements. The hymn-like An- dante initially assigns the melody to solo vio- lin. Its folk-like tune travels effortlessly to the cello, horn, clarinet, and oboe as Price contin- ually varies the orchestral coloration. The fi- nale begins with a vibrant orchestra dance—a hand-clapping, knee-slapping juba dance in all but name—before recalling the first move- ment’s ominous orchestral music. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, op. 58 Scored for flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, strings, and solo piano Beethoven completed five concertos for pi- ano and orchestra in Vienna between 1795 and 1809 to display his phenomenal talents as a pianist, although he apparently never performed the final work in public. He had established a reputation in the city initially as a virtuoso pianist and only later as a compos- er. Following the tragic signs of his increasing deafness, first noticed in 1798 and secretly confessed in the Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802, Beethoven concentrated more intensely on composition. Rather than reflecting the somber realities of his physical condition, the products of this creative period are remark- able for their hopeful, heroic nature: the Sym- phonies No. 3 (“Eroica”) and No. 5, the “Ap- passionata” Piano Sonata, the opera Fidelio , and the Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5. Composition of the Concerto No. 4 began in 1805, five years after its predecessor, and con- cluded the following summer. The first pri- vate performance with Beethoven as soloist took place in March 1807 at the home of his patron, Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian Lob- kowitz. The following year, the concerto re- ceived its official public premiere at the The- ater auf der Wieden on December 22, 1808. That all-Beethoven program lasted for four hours and included Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6, the Choral Fantasy, and improvisations by the composer. Although Beethoven had prom- ised to dedicate the concerto to Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein, the published score ap- peared with an inscription to his longtime friend Archduke Rudolph. The three-movement design of the Classical concerto established by Mozart provided a strong framework for Beethoven’s works for piano and orchestra. The first three concer- tos display a particular indebtedness, but in the final two works, Beethoven manipulated the form to his own expressive requirements. Both pieces broke from standard practice by introducing the solo piano at the beginning of the first movement instead of after an or- chestral segment. Piano Concerto No. 4 shares an expressive lyricism with other compositions from Bee- thoven’s “heroic” period. An unaccompanied piano introduces the Allegro moderato’ s first theme. There is some resemblance between the repeated eighth-notes of this idea and the characteristic rhythmic motive at the begin- ning of the Symphony No. 5. The orchestra restates the same phrase in another key, then completes the theme in the tonic. A constant- ly modulating melody built from an arpeg- giated chord provides thematic contrast. The piano reenters with transitional music before assuming the first theme. Orchestra and pia- no mutually present a dolce theme. The mod- ulating second theme returns as a dialogue between the orchestra and the soloist. De- velopment explores the first theme’s rhythm and second theme’s arpeggios. An orchestral Ludwig van Beethoven by Blasius Höfel (1814) crescendo presages the dramatic return of the original theme in the piano. This dolce idea begins in major before changing to minor. A piano cadenza leads to the climactic coda. The Andante con moto has inspired in an interpretive tradition that views its music broadly as “an antique tragic scene” (Carl Czerny, pianist, composer, and Beethoven’s student) or more definitively as the “Infer- nal Scene” from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Adolph Bernhard Marx, critic and Beetho- ven biographer, who wrote: “Hardly could two poems at their very basis have a closer relation to one another than that Gluck scene and this Beethoven Andante .”) Two opposing ideas—a forceful, staccato unison in the or- chestra and the quiet, cantabile simplicity of the piano chorale—appear. These alternate as if struggling for control of the music or the listener. In the end, an understated piano theme emerges but not without a final hint of the orchestral theme whispered by the cellos and basses. The music proceeds without in- terruption into the final movement. The Vivace rondo opens with a refrain pre- sented pianissimo by the strings. The piano plays its ornamented version, followed by several varied statements. Beethoven pro- vides an elegant contrasting theme in the piano. After a flourish, the solo instrument brings back the first theme in its original key. A lengthy development follows. The piano recalls the expressive second theme. An un- accompanied section for piano is followed by a varied return of the first theme and further development of the second theme. The piano cadenza builds to a brilliant close. AARON COPLAND (1900–1990) Symphony No. 3 Scored for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, two tenors trombones and bass trombone, tuba, timpani, bass drum, tam-tam, crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, xylophone, glockenspiel, wood block, slap stick, ratchet, anvil, claves, tubular bells, snare drum, tenor drum, celesta, two harps, piano, and strings A distinctively American school of composi- tion emerged during the 1920s and ’30s, led by a shy, bespectacled Brooklyn-born musi- cian named Aaron Copland. As a teenager, he received a firm grounding in piano from Victor Wittgenstein and Clarence Adler as well as theory and counterpoint from Rubin Goldmark. He forsook college for four years’ study in France (1920–24) at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger. “Mademoiselle” insisted that stu- dents achieve absolute mastery of musical technique before undertaking original com- position. She then encouraged each musician to discover their individual creative voice. In Copland’s case, that personal search led to his much-heralded “American” idiom, as RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 41