"Symphony at Sunset"
September 27th, 2009
Program Notes
The Star-Spangled Banner
Lyrics By: Francis Scott Key
Music: Based on a traditional song
Arr. By: D. Cope
Until 1812, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" was
generally used as the United States Anthem. The melody was based on the British
national anthem. The Star Spangled Banner was put into use by the U.S. Navy in 1889,
by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and was officially made the national anthem
by a Congressional resolution on March 3, 1931.
The lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner come from a poem penned by poet Francis
Scott Key. The poem was titled "Defence of Fort McHenry",
and written after the bombardment the Chesapeake Bay fort during the Battle
of Baltimore in the War of 1812. The melody, sometimes difficult to reach in its one and one-half octaves, comes
from a traditional (here again...British) drinking song - "The Anacreontic Song"
written by John Stafford Smith, one of the first serious collectors of manuscripts
of works by Johann Sebastian Bach.
O! say can you see
by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed
at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched
were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
An Outdoor Overture
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
I. Maestoso-Allegro
Last SEKSO Performance: April 19, 1961
First Performed: December, 1938, High School of Music and Art, NYC
Program notes are posted as they become available.
On the Trail, from the "Grand Canyon Suite"
Ferdinand (Ferde) Rudolph von Grofé (1892-1972)
Moderato - Allegretto
Last SEKSO Performance:
Completed/Written In:
First Performed: info
Arr. By: C. Paul Herfurth
Program notes are posted as they become available.
Spirit of Freedom
Tracey Rush (1955- )
Allegro
Last SEKSO Performance:
Completed/Written In:
First Performed: April, 1998, Phoenix, AZ
Another Fact: more info
Tracey Rush [ b. 1955 ] is founder
and Executive Director of the Northeast Iowa School of Music in Dubuque, Iowa. She
holds and MME and has taught music at Northeast Iowa Community College and in the
Dubuque Community School District. In 1998, she formed the Dubuque Community String
Orchestra for adults which she still conducts.
As Composer-in-Residence of the Dubuque Symphony's 1996-97 season, the DSO commissioned
"Spirit of Freedom", a rousing concert fanfare which was
chosen to be performed at the MENC 56th National In-service, April, 1998, in Phoenix,
Arizona. The Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Nicholas Palmer,
performed "Spirit of Freedom" at the Kentucky governor's inaugural in December,
1999. "Angels in the Snow" for choir, children's choir and orchestra, was commissioned
and premiered by Kirk Trevor and the Knoxville (Tennessee) Symphony Orchestra in
1998. It received performances by the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1999, and the Naples
Philharmonic in 2001, under the direction of Erich Kunzel.
The musical-comedy review, "Mothering Heights," which Rush co-wrote with Des
Moines playwright Rebecca Christian, is now published by Dramatic Publishing in
2001, and the pair collaborated on a second musical, "A Piece of Cake," which premiered
in Wisconsin and Iowa in the fall of 2003. Her song-cycle for treble choir, "The
Butterfly Garden," with texts by elementary students, won the 1999 Francis J. Pyle
Commission Award, sponsored by the Iowa Composers Forum.
Tracey has been a finalist in the Continental Harmony Project and Faith Partners
Commissions of the American Composers Forum. She is former principal violist with
the Dubuque Symphony and served 4 years on the board of the Dubuque Arts Council
Artists in Residence. She was elected to four terms as Chair of the Iowa Composers
Forum. Her other professional affiliations include the American String Teachers
Association, Music Educators National Conference, Kato Havas Association for the
New Approach, American Viola Society, the Iowa Viola Society, the Conductors Guild,
and ASCAP.
She received her BS in Music Education from Bob Jones University where she studied
with Dwight Gustafson, is completing her MME from the University of Northern Iowa,
and is working on a certificate in Arts Administration from the University of Massachusetts -
Amherst. She is also the owner of Fountain Park Music Publishing. A native of Milwaukee,
Tracey lives in Dubuque where she and her husband raised two sons.
Our Town
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Moderato, with calm
Last SEKSO Performance: November 11th, 2001
Film Score: 1939
Suite Arr. In: 1940
First Performed: 1944, Boston Pops, Leonard Bernstein
Program notes are posted as they become available.
Jubilee
Ron A. Nelson (1929- )
Allegro
Last SEKSO Performance:
Written In: 1960
First Performed: info
Another Fact: more info
Program notes are posted as they become available.
America the Beautiful
Allegro energico
Words By: Katharine Lee Bates
Music By: Samuel A. Ward
Words With Music: First Published 1910
Arr. By: J. Frederick Müller
The words to America
the Beautiful were written by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, after
a trip to the top of Pikes Peak in 1893. The poem, simply entitled "Pikes Peak", was first
published two years later in the Congregationalist. The
words, of course, express the beauty and majesty of the landscape that had unfolded
around her on her trip to Colorado Springs, and during her stay there.
Just as Katharine had been inspired, so had Samuel Ward, who wrote the melody
in 1882 after a ferry boat ride from Coney Island to New York City, the gateway
to America. Samuel would not know the ultimate fate of his melody, he died in 1903,
a year before it was first used with Katherine's lyrics.
O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.
Hoe Down from "Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes"
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Allegro
Last SEKSO Performance: Nov. 20, 2005
Written In: 1942
Ballet Premiere: Metropolitan Opera House on October 16, 1942
Symphonic Suite Premiere: Boston Pops Orchestra, 1943
Written in 1942, originally composed
as one of "Four Dance Episodes" for string orchestra, and based in part on the
American folk song "Bonaparte's Retreat".
Scored for: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, 2 bassoons,
4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion, timpani, and strings. [3[1.2.pic] 3[1.2.opt Eh] 3[1.2.opt bcl] 2-4331-tmp+3-pf-str]
Summer Evening, from "Three Small Tonepoems"
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Adagio quasi Andante
Last SEKSO Performance:
Completed/Written In:
First Performed: info
Ed./Arr. By: Sir Thomas Beecham
Program notes are posted as they become available.
Theme from "The Magnificent Seven"
Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004)
I. one
Last SEKSO Performance:
Completed/Written In:
First Performed: info
Another Fact: more info
Program notes are posted as they become available.
Keltic Lament
John Herbert Foulds (1880-1939)
Lento eroico
Last SEKSO Performance: November 16th, 2003
Written In: 1911
From: Keltic Suite, for orchestra, Op. 2
Arr. By: Charles Woodhouse
John Foulds began his musical training
at the age of four on piano and started composing by age seven. After a time on
the oboe, Foulds switched to the cello and ran away from home at 13 to play in local
orchestras and bands before joining the Halle Orchestra in 1900. Well traveled from
such an early age, Foulds met a number of European composers (Mahler, Bartok, Strauss...)
that influenced his music.
Foulds "Keltic Suite" was based on a number of his Keltic Melodies, written for
harp and strings a few years previously. Foulds wrote a number of works, and was
perhaps the first English composer to utilize micro tonality. A string quartet,
now lost, and a cello sonata using quartertones were written in the late 1890's,
some time before Bartok started to incorporate them. He also wrote the "World Requiem",
for a huge orchestra and chorus of over a thousand. Even with his experience and
wide range of writings, his Keltic Lament is perhaps his best remembered and most
recognized piece up to modern time.
William Tell Overture
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868)
Andante-Tranquillo-Allegro vivace
Last SEKSO Performance:
Completed/Written In:
First Performed: info
Arr. By: Jerry Lehmeier
Program notes are posted as they become available.
Home on the Range
I. one
Last SEKSO Performance:
Completed/Written In:
Words By: Dr. Brewster M. Higley
Music By: Daniel E. Kelley
Program notes are posted as they become available.
Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam
Where the Deer and the Antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the sky is not cloudy all day.
Chorus
Home, home on the range,
Where the Deer and the Antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the sky is not cloudy all day.
