Listening: Program Notes

Jazz Ensemble Listening:

The Intimacy of the Blues is a classic Duke Ellington composition, a slow blues that still captivates modern audiences. Its relaxed feel truly lives up to the title, bringing the listener deep into the music. Such is the essence of Ellington.

Friday the 13^th is a Thelonious Monk tune that contains only four bars of material that shifts and repeats throughout. What seems like a simple little tune however really sets up a painting of tonal hues creating both bright and darkened moods, twisted together like a circus on Halloween. This piece provides all the elements of a mood painting in a short song that grows and wanes progressively, enticing both the cheerful melody and the bizarrely creepy harmonies that lie beneath. Friday the 13^th provides a sonic portrait of weird superstition behind a seemingly normal and yet fearful day.

Program notes by Adam Pippert


Wind Ensemble Listening:

Dr. Howard Hanson (1896-1981) is one of the great American composers of the second quarter of the twentieth century. Known for a style called American Romanticism, he wrote and influenced others to write expressively in their music. Dr. Hanson directed the Eastman School of Music from 1924-1964, helping to make it one of the most respected music schools in the country. Hanson won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1944 for his Fourth Symphony. Chorale and Alleluia, written in 1952, is one of many Hanson works with a religious theme. This piece has two styles. The Chorale begins with a brass choir melody with the woodwinds coming in a slow celebration. The second style is of a faster tempo with the woodwinds playing the slow celebration from the Chorale style, only this time with much more enthusiasm while the french horn and euphonium herald in the Alleluia section. The piece returns to the Chorale section with the familiar celebration theme and brass choir section. Finally, the piece ends in a joyful frenzy of brass heralds and woodwind dances.

Charles Ives (1874-1954) was the son of a bandleader who enjoyed experimenting with music and sound. Ives’ father often made young Charles sing the folk tune Swanee River in one key and accompany Charles in a separate key on the piano. Ives, unlike most composers, did not compose full time. He was an insurance salesman who pioneered in such areas as estate planning while he composed in the evenings and on weekends. Many of Ives’ works include familiar folk tunes in the melody. Ives also composed using polytonality or separate key signatures at the same time as well as other "abstract" musical elaboration, often predating other musical pioneers in such areas by as many as twenty years. Ives ironically married a woman named Harmony and is quoted as having said "My God, what has sound got to do with music?" Country Band March, originally included in a sonata for chamber orchestra and arranged for band by James Sinclair, is done in the style of an old town band. The piece is written with tunes like Yankee Doodle and London Bridge buried amidst intentional miscues, polytonal melodies, and asymmetric rhythms. Oddly enough throughout this, an organized piece of music is heard.

Program notes by Chris Berndsen

 

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