Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Four Sea Interludes from PeterGrimes, Op. 33a
Approximately 17 minutes
Composer: Benjamin Britten (Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk,
England in 1913; Died in Aldeburgh, England in 1976)
Work composed: 1945
World premiere: Premiered in summer 1945 by the London
Philharmonic Orchestra at the Cheltenham Festival,
conducted by Britten.
Instrumentation: 2 flutes (+ 2 piccolos), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, chimes, xylophone, tambourine), harp, strings
Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a
I. Dawn
II. Sunday Morning
III. Moonlight
IV. Storm
Christopher Theofanidis (1967 - )
Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra
Approximately 23 minutes
Composer: Christopher Theofanidis (Born in Dallas, Texas in 1967)
Work composed: 2013 and arranged for orchestra in 2024
World premiere: Marimba soloist William Moersch premiered the original version (Concerto for Marimba and Wind Sinfonietta) on April 30, 2013, with the University of Illinois Wind Symphony under the direction of Robert W. Rumbelow. This concert marks the world premiere of the newly arranged orchestral version, performed by the Colorado Springs Philharmonic.
Instrumentation: solo marimba, piccolo, flute, English Horn, bassoon, contra-bassoon, 2 clarinets, 2 trumpets, 2 horns, 2 trombones, percussion, harp, strings
Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra
I. Prologue
II. Allegro
III. Simplice
IV. Vivace
V. Epilogue
Texas-born composer and teacher Christopher Theofanidis has a rich musical pedigree, holding degrees from Yale, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Houston. He is one of America’s most commissioned writers, and his works have been performed abroad from London to Moscow and by many of the major orchestras in the United States. He’s also won an impressive number of awards, including Guggenheim and Fullbright Fellowships, as well as being nominated in 2007 for a Grammy for best new composition for his piece for chorus and orchestra, The Here and Now. He has composed in many classical genres, from ballet to chamber works, orchestral and choral pieces, and he is particularly recognized for his superb concertos. These concertos are for a wide array of soloists and instruments – and very notable are those for instruments which are less often in the concerto spotlight, such as his 2013 Marimba Concerto.
The marimba’s history dates back to ancient Central Africa when local musicians dug holes in the ground and laid small slabs of wood, each with an approximate pitch, above them. Striking the hardwood slabs with a stick would make them ring, which was somewhat amplified by the earthen holes underneath. Later, dried hollow gourds were hung beneath the pitched wooden slabs instead, making even better resonators as well as making the marimba mobile. This instrumental variant then traveled to Central and South America in the mid-1500s with the slave trade, and the marimba became extremely popular there. Around the turn of the 20th century, the gourds were replaced with metallic resonating tubes, and became popular in Europe and the United States, especially for dance numbers. A modern concert marimba is typically half the size of a grand piano with a range of 4 ½ to 5 octaves, and its variety of sounds and its ability to blend with other orchestral instruments, its percussive and organ-like qualities, as well as the drama of a great marimba soloist dancing around her instrument, make it a fantastic solo instrument to hear and see.
Theofanidis describes his Marimba Concerto:
I wrote this concerto for marimba and nineteen wind instruments for Robert van Sice, [“considered one of the world’s foremost performers of contemporary music for marimba” and the teacher of marimba soloist, Ji Su Jung], and at the time he was dealing with some health issues, so the work took on a kind of biographical form. I originally wrote a three-movement marimba concerto, but somehow the nature of the piece was affected by the knowledge of his circumstance, so I wrote two more movements which were contemplative to surround that work – a prologue and aria – so the work became a five-movement piece: prologue, three-movement concerto, and aria. It somehow seemed a little more personal that way.
The character of the piece kind of grows out of how I think of the physicality of the marimbaist – as a kind of ballet dancer. Also, each note played by a marimba feels like a water droplet to me, and so each note is precious, and felt. This piece has a lot of silence in it, which for my mind also accentuates the preciousness of each note. One of the other qualities which I love in marimba playing are low tremolos, which are those undulating rolled notes. They are ghostly when played quietly and warm when played more fully, and this piece is full of them, built around a harmonic progression which keeps coming back.
The opening of this Concerto, the Prologue, begins with the marimba and the winds slowly trading off a simple chord between them. The marimba soloist starts this quiet dialogue by rolling (a tremolo made by quickly restriking the given bars repeatedly) on the pitches of this chord with four mallets, showcasing one of the marimba’s most lovely qualities – a sustained set of pitches that create a sound like an organ, yet pattered with an almost inaudible sound of softly struck wood. The marimba fades and the winds then take up this same chord, creating a feeling of a larger instrument inhaling (the marimba) then exhaling (the wind instruments). Soon, at about one minute, the soloist, the harp, and various percussion instruments begin to play single notes, in semi-random patterns, as if a soft rain is just beginning.
In the next movement, Allegro, the soloist and the ensemble quickly enter into a dialogue that surprisingly evokes both a sense of urgency and yet, simultaneously, a deep sense of contentment. Theofanidis does this with an interesting motive – the marimba soloist plays loud, repeated chords, that are repeated by the brass, with rhythms that sound syncopated and out of time with the rest of the ensemble, creating a kind of cognitive dissonance for the listener. And yet, the chords that the marimba plays are open fourths and fifths – intervals that are uncannily pleasing to the ears when they emanate from the earthy-sounding marimba.
The next movement, Simplice (with simplicity), begins with an unadorned melody in the soloist’s right (upper) hand, and accompanied in a simple manner in the left hand. These opening bars sing a gentle tune, which is soon answered by deep and resonating tremolo chords played in the low registers of the instrument. As the ensemble joins the soloist, this song blossoms with ever-surprising timbres as the winds blend with the marimba.
The next movement, Vivace (very lively), features always-changing colors of rhythmic incessance as well as a showstopper of dazzling virtuosic techniques from the soloist. It begins with a short set of fast notes starting off a cascade of rhythmic activity that flows all around the ensemble, and back through the soloist, like a rhythmic electrical circuit. The movement ends, tongue-in-cheek, with a final little rhythmical sound emanating not from the marimba soloist, but the percussion section.
The final movement, Aria, begins with the same chord as began the opening Prologue, but now with more force, and played by the marimbaist together with the ensemble. The movement explores sounds, and, as Theofanidis wrote, silences. At about four minutes into the movement, the soloist begins a brief cadenza, but rather than being filled with blazing technical wizardry, Theofanidis explores the lyrical qualities of the marimba, and casts the music into a world of inner beauty. The last bars are gentle and fading, the marimbaist rolling on beautiful chords, while a solo muted horn, then a solo clarinet, climb into a serene quiet.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Symphony No. 5 in D Major
Approximately 40 minutes
Composer: Ralph Vaughan Williams (Born in Down Ampney,
England in 1872; Died in London in 1958)
Work composed: 1936 – 1943
World premiere: Vaughan Williams conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra for the premiere at one of London’s famous Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on
June 24, 1943
Instrumentation: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), oboe,
English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 French horns,
3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings
Symphony No. 5 in D Major
I. Preludio
II. Scherzo
III. Romanza
IV. Passacaglia
Ralph Vaughan Williams became a kind of “Dean of English music” in his lifetime. He spearheaded a deep study and collection of English hymns and folk music, as well as the music of his forebears, among them the Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis (1505–1585) and the Baroque composer Henry Purcell (1659–1695). He also achieved fame in his lengthy career as England’s premier writer of symphonies, although he was often reluctant in the genre, with each of his nine symphonies taking years to write. Such it was with his Fifth Symphony. Vaughan Williams had just completed his highly dissonant Fourth Symphony (premiered in 1935) and began sketching ideas for his Fifth a year later in 1936.
The Symphony gestated slowly. In the meantime, Vaughan Williams was also deeply committed to writing his opera based on British author Paul Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), on which he had begun work in 1921. He began to fear that this opera would never be completed – and indeed it took him over 30 years to complete and premiere it in 1952. In the interim, he decided to incorporate some of the opera’s musical ideas and themes into his Fifth Symphony. As ideas were brewing for a few years on the Fifth, Britain then entered into World War II in 1939, and Vaughan Williams was even further delayed from completing his Symphony as he dutifully volunteered for many causes during the War. When he finally completed his Fifth in 1943, not only were the spiritual ideas from his opera infused into its fabric, but so, too, were his feelings of sadness about the War. The result was one of Vaughan Williams’s most gentle expressions – fermented in spiritual meditation, and in reaction, to the terrors that all of Europe faced in the War.
After its premiere in 1943, a review in the London newspaper, The Times, described the Fifth as a Symphony that:
“…belongs to that small body of music that, outside of late Beethoven, can properly be described as transcendental … this is music not only of contemplation but of benediction.”
The finished score of the Fifth first bore an important dedication: “Dedicated without permission, with the sincerest flattery, to Jean Sibelius, whose great example is worthy of imitation.” The later published version is simply dedicated to Sibelius (permission was eventually obtained, however, and with deep gratitude from Sibelius) – it appears that Vaughan Williams was initially hindered from asking due to wartime circumstances. But rather than any outright “imitations” to Sibelius’s music, it’s clear that Vaughan Williams’s Fifth was written in the sincerest homage to Sibelius, whose music Vaughan Williams was a great admirer.
The Preludio first movement is a uniquely fluid movement. It opens with the low strings bowing a long and low C, while overtop the two horns play a slowly rocking motive in D Major, creating a dissonance (a tritone) between the strings’ and the horns’ pitches (a dissonance that will wait until the very last bars of the Symphony’s finale to be resolved). The upper strings then answer with a simple rising, then falling, motive. From this point, the two motives branch out, become slightly more complex rhythmically and harmonically, and essentially grow in a kind of magical expansion of sound. The motives feel independent, yet intertwined, and spreading outwards – while the upper string’s rising-falling motive inhabit the winds, so do the horns’ simple rocking motive imbue the strings, and then the winds – and the fabric of sound becomes denser and more colorful. To keep the simplicity from growing tedious, Vaughan Williams continually shifts the key, ever reaching upwards, and occasionally speeds up the tempo and quickens the rhythms. The culmination of this kind of “vining” happens at about eight-and-a-half minutes, when the brass, and then the timpani, erupt into some of the most majestically spine-tingling music in any of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies. The movement then begins to gradually shift harmonically lower, and at last, to return to the opening motives, in quiet, and in a kind of harmonic stasis, until the last bar fades into soundlessness.
The next movement, Scherzo, is a celebration of delightful rhythmic chaos. Though the movement begins with the typical scherzo whirlwind of three quick notes to the beat, Vaughan Williams continually befuddles the beat. The three beats often collide with only two beats, and the length of the musical phrases often change, making it feel as though we are riding a fast-galloping horse – and it’s deliriously fun. The middle portion of the Scherzo hardly lets up on the excitement, but Vaughan Williams makes its theme sound antique, as though Thomas Tallis himself has joined us on the ride. This happens at about thirteen-and-a-half minutes into the movement, when, as the strings are whirling about underneath, the brass and the lower winds begin a tune cast in what sounds like a Medieval mode and out of rhythm from the rest of the orchestra. The Scherzo then recovers and quietly propels itself to its final bars.
One last influence on Vaughan Williams for this Symphony was his meeting of Ursula Wood in 1938, his soon-to-be wife, and that newfound love finds a reserved reflection in this Romanza. But inspiration also relies in part on his opera The Pilgrim’s Progress. In the unpublished score, Vaughan Williams inscribed this movement with a few lines from Bunyan:
“Upon that place there stood a cross and a little below a sepulchre … Then he said ‘He hath given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death’”
When the score was officially published, however, these lines were omitted, as Vaughan Williams said he wanted the Symphony to stand without any kind of a program (or, storyline). But, after the strings open with several measures of beautiful, muted, and ethereal chords, the English horn enters with a ruminative solo that Vaughan Williams took directly from music he wrote for his opera. The movement then flows in a timeless and gorgeously meditative way. A particularly lovely moment, reflective of both inner contentment as well as bittersweet remembrances, occurs at about four minutes into the movement when the oboe and English horn have an extended duet. This Romanza is the emotional soul of the Symphony, evoking both newfound love, but also, a eulogy to those lost to the terrible war.
The finale, Passacaglia, is initially based on an old musical structure of the same name, known best in its Baroque-period form where a bass line is played repeatedly, and used as the structure for a set of variations upon it. And indeed, the basses begin the movement with a jaunty, rather happy-go-lucky theme, lasting seven measures and which repeats for some time. The musical variations thereafter take on an increasing air of joyousness, bubbling up in several mighty moments with brass and timpani. When, at about five-and-a-half minutes, the horns’ rocking motive from the first movement returns, now ablaze with grandeur, everything then begins to soften and become more tranquil, until the final, tender bars. As eloquently described by musicologist Michael Steinberg (1928–2009), the Symphony ends:
“…in peaceful meditation… the music arrives at its destination: a luminous D major close, hushed, beatific, with an ineffable sense of peace. Here, if anywhere in music, is transcendence.”
© Max Derrickson
