| Program Notes -
Concert - October 12, 2001 Jackson Symphony Orchestra By Composer in Residence Bruce Brown Bizet - Symphony #1 in C Georges Bizet (1838-75) once wrote “I have the courage to prefer Raphael to Michaelangelo, Mozart to Beethoven, and Rossini to Meyerbeer.” At a time when Romanticism was the rage, he wrote sparkling music that amply demonstrated his preference for classical balance and clarity. His ebullient Symphony in C is a perfect case in point Bizet’s life was tragically short, just a few months longer than Mozart’s, and it was stormy and difficult despite his abundant talent. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1848 at the age of nine. He was an outstanding performer, but focused on studies of composition and counterpoint with the composers Jacques Halevy and Charles Gounod. In 1858 he won the Prix de Rome. In the years that followed he wrote many wonderful pieces, including his operas The Pearl Fishers and Djamileh, but he failed to achieve great success during his lifetime. Bizet suffered from poor health, and in 1870, one year after his marriage to Halevy’s daughter Genevieve, he was compelled to serve in the military during the Franco Prussian War. In 1875 he completed the exotic, Spanish-tinged score of Carmen. When critics decried the opera as obscure, colorless and obscene he went into a deep depression and suffered a bout of quinsy and two heart attacks. He died in early June at the age of thirty-seven, not knowing that Carmen would soon become one of the most popular and highly respected operas of all time. Bizet completed his ingenious Symphony in C at the age of seventeen while he was a student at the Conservatoire. The score was lost for many years. Perhaps it received little attention because it was clearly modeled on Gounod’s Symphony #1 in D, which had appeared just earlier. The fresh, crisp sound that distinguishes Bizet’s musical style is already abundantly clear in this youthful symphony, which clearly surpasses his teacher’s model. The score was discovered in the archives of the Conservatoire almost eighty years after its composition, and the piece was first performed on February 26, 1935 under the direction of Felix Weingartner. David Peshlakai first approached me some time in 1996 or 97 about writing a piece for cello and piano. The result was a work called Arioso that David first performed at a Friday evening recital at Albion College on April 11, 1997. Something about that music captured my imagination, and over the next few years I was drawn back to it time and time again in between other composition projects. After experimenting with a few small variations on the basic concept, I decided to transform the piece into a version for eight-part cello ensemble. That may seem like an odd combination, but the International Cello Society was sponsoring a competition for a piece that a massed group of hundreds of cellists was to play at their international convention that year. I naturally thought my Arioso would be a thrilling choice, but the judges disagreed and I went back to the drawing board. I found I was unable to leave the music alone and soon decided to expand it into an orchestral piece. The original Arioso has remained basically unchanged, and forms the center of the new piece. The opening and closing sections are newer material, hopefully providing a colorful, energetic surrounding for the lyric, introspective Arioso music. I am indebted to Stephen Osmond and the JSO for a reading of the music last spring that encouraged me to make some further refinements and add a solo cadenza. The music opens with delight and exuberance, as if a human being could take wings, surge up into the sky like an eagle, and circle hundreds of feet above the earth with a breathtaking view of all that lies below. As the imaginary flight continues buffeting gusts of wind blow and dark clouds gather. In the magnificent freedom and isolation of the upper air there is time to think, and feelings of wonder and awe emerge. Dark stormy clouds mirror struggles within the heart and trigger memories of sadness and grief. The original exhilaration returns, tempered a bit with wisdom. It is clearly impossible to answer every question in life, but it is better to choose daring adventure over despondency, and the freedom of the air over what may seem like safety on the ground. The Inextinguishable Symphony Like Bizet, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) preferred the restraint and purity of classical ideals to overwrought Romanticism. “The plain and simple has become mysterious,” he once said, “because the world of art as a whole has been so full of unrest, din, excitement and delirium for so long… the drunkard finds it hard to be content with spring water.” Nielsen was one of the most important figures in musical life in Denmark, and the rise of his international reputation helped put Denmark on the map, musically speaking. When Bizet died in 1875, the ten-year old Nielsen was just starting to explore his potential as a musician and composer. His first piece was a polka for violin written when he was nine. By the age of fourteen Nielsen was playing trombone in a regimental band and also studying violin and the music of Bach. He entered the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen when he was nineteen. During Nielsen’s distinguished career he served as the conductor of the Danish Royal Theater, conductor of the Copenhagen Philharmonic and the director of the Copenhagen Conservatory. In 1914 Nielsen wrote to his wife a very excited letter, telling her had just been inspired to write a symphony that celebrated “that which is life,’ or “that which craves life.” As he worked on the music over the next two years he came up with the title The Inextinguishable, and wrote a more elegant summation of the work’s subject matter for the program: “With the title ‘The Inextinguishable’ the composer has sought to indicate in one word what only music has the power to express in full: The Elemental Will of Life, music is life and like it, inextinguishable.” Shortly after that he wrote a letter to his friend Julius Röntgen that clarified his thoughts even further: “If the whole world was destroyed, Nature would once again begin to beget new life and push forward with the strong and fine forces that are to be found in the very stuff of existence … These “inextinguishable” forces are what I have tried to represent.” The music celebrates the resilience of life, but also the eternal, elemental struggle to survive and flourish. The four movements are usually performed without a break. The symphony was completed in 1916, during the conflagration of World War I, and the first performance was given on February 1st of that year by the orchestra of the Copenhagen Music Society with Nielsen conducting. |