ROWAN UNIVERSITY FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
Program Notes
Program Notes
Lili Boulanger Nocturne
Lili Boulanger was born into a distinguished family of French musicians. Her grandfather, Frédéric Boulanger (b. 1777) had been a professor at the Paris Conservatoire and was married to Marie-Julie Haligner (1786-1850), a mezzo-soprano at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique who had sung in the premiere of Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment in 1840. Lili’s father, Ernest Boulanger (1815-1900), was also a professor at the Conservatoire and a composer of numerous comic operas, having won the prestigious Prix de Rome award at the age of only 19.
But perhaps the most famous and influential member of the family was Lili’s sister, the musical pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), whose students included some of the leading composers, arrangers and performers of the 20th century, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass, Burt Bacharach, Quincy Jones, Dinu Lipatti and Astor Piazzola, to name but a few. Lili, a musical prodigy like her father, won the Prix de Rome in 1913, the first woman ever to do so. But whatever musical gifts she might have received by family inheritance, they did not extend to her physical health. An early case of bronchial pneumonia when she was a child, and the Crohn’s disease which she later developed, left her severely immunocompromised and in frail health throughout her short life. She died at the age of 24 in 1918, the same year as Debussy.
Virtually all of her surviving compositions date from the period 1910-1918, her Deux Morceaux for violin or flute being composed in 1911 and 1914 respectively. In these pieces she displays an interest in the finely nuanced tone colours typical of French impressionism. The nighttime stillness of Nocturne is conveyed in the lulling drone of its slow-moving harmonies, underpinned with long-enduring pedal tones in the bass that shift harmonic interest to the delicately nuanced tone colours of the upper voices. These pedal tones echo up and down through three octaves of the texture to swaddle the piece’s thoughtful, wandering melody in a warm harmonic glow throughout. Just before the end, connoisseurs of all things Debussy will no doubt notice a sly quotation from The Afternoon of a Faun, prompting an exchange of raised eyebrows and knowing glances with their fellow Debussyists sitting nearby.
-https://vanrecital.com/2022/11/program-notes-randall-goosby-and-zhu-wang/
Carl Reinecke Undine Flute Sonata, Opus 167
Carl Reinecke's Sonata in E Minor is based on the German romantic tale by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. The tale is of the water spirit Undine, who longs for an immortal soul which can be obtained only through uniting in love with a mortal man. The first movement portrays Undine in her underwater world. She leaves the water kingdom in search of love with a mortal man and is discovered as a child by a fisherman and his wife, who raise Undine as a daughter. The second movement paints a picture of Undine's life with her foster parents. It begins with a musical chase between the flute and piano. The piano's carefree folk-like solo section represents the knight Hulbrand who seeks shelter from a raging storm and falls in love with Undine. The wonder surrounding Undine's awakening to love can be heard in the relaxing flute melody preceding the final burst of energy. The third movement represents the couple's years of marriage filled with contentment. The peacefulness is interrupted when a fountain is uncovered and water spirits rush out and beckon to Undine, represented in the raging middle section of the movement. All is stilled suddenly by the dropping of a boulder over the fountain. In the fourth movement, the couple takes a trip on the Danube, which rouses the anger of the water spirits. Undine falls overboard and sinks to the bottom. Thinking she is dead, Huldebrand makes plans to remarry. On the night of his wedding Undine returns as a spirit, veiled and shrouded like a bride. Knowing he is to die, he begs Undine to show him her face. She unveils herself and kills him with a kiss.
-https://www.classicalconnect.com/Flute_Music/Reinecke/Flute_Sonata_Undine/1473
Heitor Villa Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras
Music to evoke the style of Johann Sebastian Bach using the folklore of Brazil does not at first blush seem a legitimate venture of a serious composer. Yet that is just what Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) set out to do when he wrote the variously scored nine compositions he called Bachianas Brasileiras. The partnership of Bach and Villa-Lobos seems a curious one indeed, but not in the estimation of the composer.
Not given to modesty, Villa-Lobos declared that the only two great composers in the world are “Bach and I.” The eighteenth-century German he believed to be like himself in drawing inspiration from folk impulses, a [strange] conviction which he felt aligned him spiritually to the Baroque master. In addition to the Bachian source, Villa-Lobos drew upon musical impulses bast counting, from Brazilian music with its roots in African and Indian music, to the wide range of the European product, and on to American jazz. For years before going to Paris in 1923, he played guitar, then cello, with the small instrumental groups that performed at parties, weddings, etc. Although he studied composition formally for only a brief period, he began early on a portfolio of works that eventually numbered in the thousands, works which, in the words of his biographer Vasco Mariz, “surpassed the stages of national music and explored the spiritual depths of Brazilian character.”
The present work, composed in 1939, has two movements, both with titles relating to the period of Bach: 1) Aria (a choros), described by the composer as “a new form of musical composition in which a synthesis is made of different types of Brazilian music, Indian and popular, reflecting in its fundamental elements the rhythm and characteristic melodies of the people,” and 2) Fantasia. Villa-Lobos has written as follows about Bachianas No. 6: “This suite … is the only one composed in the form of chamber music. I chose the combination of these two instruments to suggest the old Brazilian serenade for two instruments, and I substituted the ophicleide with the bassoon because this instrument is nearer to the spirit of Bach and I wanted to give the impression of improvisation as in serenade singing. This suite is more Bachian in form than Brazilian.”
The writing for both instruments is extremely demanding, particularly so for the flute. The first movement hews to a perceptibly contrapuntal texture, with melodies and countermelodies strongly delineated – thus the relationship to Bach. The Fantasia movement is the one that gives the impression, as the composer describes it, of serenade singing. The bassoon, not earthbound by any means, is still asked to function as controlling force for the flute, a role in which it fails until the very end of the piece, however, for the high wind is not to be detained from taking many wild, impulsive flights of fancy.
-https://www.hollywoodbowl.com/musicdb/pieces/1058/bachianas-brasileiras-no-6-for-flute-and-bassoon
Valerie Coleman Fanmi Imèn
Recognized by Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Music Woman of the Year, Valerie Coleman’s music is frequently “on air" with Sirius XM, NPR’s Performance Today, All Things Considered, and MPR’s Saint Paul Sunday. She has a growing body of national and international commissions and awards. By the age of fourteen, had written three symphonies. She is the founder, creator, and former flutist of the Grammy® nominated Imani Winds, winners of the Concert Artists Guild competition.
Ms. Coleman has carved a unique path with her artistry. With works that range from flute sonatas that recount the stories of trafficked humans during Middle Passage and orchestral and chamber works based on nomadic Roma tribes, to scherzos about moonshine in the Mississippi Delta region and motifs based from Morse Code, her body of works are deeply relevant to modern music. She is perhaps best known for UMOJA, recently arranged for and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The title Fanmi Imen is Haitian Creole for Maya Angelou's famous work, Human Family. Both the musical and literary poems acknowledge differences within mankind, either due to ethnicity, background or geography, but Angelou's refrain: " we are more alike, my friends, than we are unlike," reaffirms our humanity as a reminder of unity. Coleman's work draws inspiration from French flute music blending with an underlying pentatonicism found in Asian traditions, a caravan through Middle Eastern parts of the world merging with Flamenco, and an upbeat journey southward into Africa with the sounds of Kalimba (thumb piano). The flute imitates the thumb piano as it playfully taps out a tune that spells out a morse code message of U-N-I-T-Y within the rhythm. The many twists and turns come together to create a sound that symbolizes a beautifully diverse human race. Fanmi Imèn was commissioned by the National Flute Association and premiered in 2018.
-https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-music/assets/concert-programs/2021/program-notes-for-phenomenal-woman-music-at-noon-concert-march-4.html
Lili Boulanger was born into a distinguished family of French musicians. Her grandfather, Frédéric Boulanger (b. 1777) had been a professor at the Paris Conservatoire and was married to Marie-Julie Haligner (1786-1850), a mezzo-soprano at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique who had sung in the premiere of Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment in 1840. Lili’s father, Ernest Boulanger (1815-1900), was also a professor at the Conservatoire and a composer of numerous comic operas, having won the prestigious Prix de Rome award at the age of only 19.
But perhaps the most famous and influential member of the family was Lili’s sister, the musical pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), whose students included some of the leading composers, arrangers and performers of the 20th century, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass, Burt Bacharach, Quincy Jones, Dinu Lipatti and Astor Piazzola, to name but a few. Lili, a musical prodigy like her father, won the Prix de Rome in 1913, the first woman ever to do so. But whatever musical gifts she might have received by family inheritance, they did not extend to her physical health. An early case of bronchial pneumonia when she was a child, and the Crohn’s disease which she later developed, left her severely immunocompromised and in frail health throughout her short life. She died at the age of 24 in 1918, the same year as Debussy.
Virtually all of her surviving compositions date from the period 1910-1918, her Deux Morceaux for violin or flute being composed in 1911 and 1914 respectively. In these pieces she displays an interest in the finely nuanced tone colours typical of French impressionism. The nighttime stillness of Nocturne is conveyed in the lulling drone of its slow-moving harmonies, underpinned with long-enduring pedal tones in the bass that shift harmonic interest to the delicately nuanced tone colours of the upper voices. These pedal tones echo up and down through three octaves of the texture to swaddle the piece’s thoughtful, wandering melody in a warm harmonic glow throughout. Just before the end, connoisseurs of all things Debussy will no doubt notice a sly quotation from The Afternoon of a Faun, prompting an exchange of raised eyebrows and knowing glances with their fellow Debussyists sitting nearby.
-https://vanrecital.com/2022/11/program-notes-randall-goosby-and-zhu-wang/
Carl Reinecke Undine Flute Sonata, Opus 167
Carl Reinecke's Sonata in E Minor is based on the German romantic tale by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. The tale is of the water spirit Undine, who longs for an immortal soul which can be obtained only through uniting in love with a mortal man. The first movement portrays Undine in her underwater world. She leaves the water kingdom in search of love with a mortal man and is discovered as a child by a fisherman and his wife, who raise Undine as a daughter. The second movement paints a picture of Undine's life with her foster parents. It begins with a musical chase between the flute and piano. The piano's carefree folk-like solo section represents the knight Hulbrand who seeks shelter from a raging storm and falls in love with Undine. The wonder surrounding Undine's awakening to love can be heard in the relaxing flute melody preceding the final burst of energy. The third movement represents the couple's years of marriage filled with contentment. The peacefulness is interrupted when a fountain is uncovered and water spirits rush out and beckon to Undine, represented in the raging middle section of the movement. All is stilled suddenly by the dropping of a boulder over the fountain. In the fourth movement, the couple takes a trip on the Danube, which rouses the anger of the water spirits. Undine falls overboard and sinks to the bottom. Thinking she is dead, Huldebrand makes plans to remarry. On the night of his wedding Undine returns as a spirit, veiled and shrouded like a bride. Knowing he is to die, he begs Undine to show him her face. She unveils herself and kills him with a kiss.
-https://www.classicalconnect.com/Flute_Music/Reinecke/Flute_Sonata_Undine/1473
Heitor Villa Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras
Music to evoke the style of Johann Sebastian Bach using the folklore of Brazil does not at first blush seem a legitimate venture of a serious composer. Yet that is just what Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) set out to do when he wrote the variously scored nine compositions he called Bachianas Brasileiras. The partnership of Bach and Villa-Lobos seems a curious one indeed, but not in the estimation of the composer.
Not given to modesty, Villa-Lobos declared that the only two great composers in the world are “Bach and I.” The eighteenth-century German he believed to be like himself in drawing inspiration from folk impulses, a [strange] conviction which he felt aligned him spiritually to the Baroque master. In addition to the Bachian source, Villa-Lobos drew upon musical impulses bast counting, from Brazilian music with its roots in African and Indian music, to the wide range of the European product, and on to American jazz. For years before going to Paris in 1923, he played guitar, then cello, with the small instrumental groups that performed at parties, weddings, etc. Although he studied composition formally for only a brief period, he began early on a portfolio of works that eventually numbered in the thousands, works which, in the words of his biographer Vasco Mariz, “surpassed the stages of national music and explored the spiritual depths of Brazilian character.”
The present work, composed in 1939, has two movements, both with titles relating to the period of Bach: 1) Aria (a choros), described by the composer as “a new form of musical composition in which a synthesis is made of different types of Brazilian music, Indian and popular, reflecting in its fundamental elements the rhythm and characteristic melodies of the people,” and 2) Fantasia. Villa-Lobos has written as follows about Bachianas No. 6: “This suite … is the only one composed in the form of chamber music. I chose the combination of these two instruments to suggest the old Brazilian serenade for two instruments, and I substituted the ophicleide with the bassoon because this instrument is nearer to the spirit of Bach and I wanted to give the impression of improvisation as in serenade singing. This suite is more Bachian in form than Brazilian.”
The writing for both instruments is extremely demanding, particularly so for the flute. The first movement hews to a perceptibly contrapuntal texture, with melodies and countermelodies strongly delineated – thus the relationship to Bach. The Fantasia movement is the one that gives the impression, as the composer describes it, of serenade singing. The bassoon, not earthbound by any means, is still asked to function as controlling force for the flute, a role in which it fails until the very end of the piece, however, for the high wind is not to be detained from taking many wild, impulsive flights of fancy.
-https://www.hollywoodbowl.com/musicdb/pieces/1058/bachianas-brasileiras-no-6-for-flute-and-bassoon
Valerie Coleman Fanmi Imèn
Recognized by Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Music Woman of the Year, Valerie Coleman’s music is frequently “on air" with Sirius XM, NPR’s Performance Today, All Things Considered, and MPR’s Saint Paul Sunday. She has a growing body of national and international commissions and awards. By the age of fourteen, had written three symphonies. She is the founder, creator, and former flutist of the Grammy® nominated Imani Winds, winners of the Concert Artists Guild competition.
Ms. Coleman has carved a unique path with her artistry. With works that range from flute sonatas that recount the stories of trafficked humans during Middle Passage and orchestral and chamber works based on nomadic Roma tribes, to scherzos about moonshine in the Mississippi Delta region and motifs based from Morse Code, her body of works are deeply relevant to modern music. She is perhaps best known for UMOJA, recently arranged for and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The title Fanmi Imen is Haitian Creole for Maya Angelou's famous work, Human Family. Both the musical and literary poems acknowledge differences within mankind, either due to ethnicity, background or geography, but Angelou's refrain: " we are more alike, my friends, than we are unlike," reaffirms our humanity as a reminder of unity. Coleman's work draws inspiration from French flute music blending with an underlying pentatonicism found in Asian traditions, a caravan through Middle Eastern parts of the world merging with Flamenco, and an upbeat journey southward into Africa with the sounds of Kalimba (thumb piano). The flute imitates the thumb piano as it playfully taps out a tune that spells out a morse code message of U-N-I-T-Y within the rhythm. The many twists and turns come together to create a sound that symbolizes a beautifully diverse human race. Fanmi Imèn was commissioned by the National Flute Association and premiered in 2018.
-https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-music/assets/concert-programs/2021/program-notes-for-phenomenal-woman-music-at-noon-concert-march-4.html
Human Family, by Maya Angelou
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.