Third Concert of the 60th Season

Sighs and Meditations
Wonder
Articulations

Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
Make Believe
You Are Love
Ol' Man River
Why Do I Love You?

Virgil Thomson is an American composer...not just by birth, but by conviction. There are successful American composers of international cast, people such as Wallingford Riegger and Roger Sessions, who are to American music what Walter Gropius and Philip Johnson are to American architecture. They represent a kind of musical Bauhaus, showing perhaps an American energy, but an international style. Thomson, on the other hand, put an American stamp on his music.

Like Aaron Copland, Thomson studied in Paris with the famous Nadia Boulanger. He was soon a regular visitor to the salon of the American expatriate poet Gertrude Stein, who served as his librettist for some of his most memorable music.

Thomson's earlier experience as organist and choir director reveals itself in his penchant for hymn-tunes and modal relationships. Apart from Nadia Boulanger, his strongest musical influence was that of the Frenchman, Erik Satie, from whom he learned the virtue of simplicity.

Like Copland, Thomson wrote for the films. He considered film music akin to opera, a view shared by few American critics, who argue that if film music is memorable, it is bad film music! In his attitude to film, Thomson has more in common with European composers such as Vaughan-Williams, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Saint-Saëns, who believed that music should be a partner to the picture rather than a subdued background.

The suite we hear today is from the film The River, a documentary about the Mississippi, its uses and abuses. The sections are titled: The Old South, Industrial Expansion in the Mississippi Valley, Soil Erosion and Floods, and the Finale.

There are several easily recognized references to popular tunes, and many members of the audience will recall that it was used (among other sources) as background music to Memory Speaks, the sesquicentennial pageant.

Sighs and Meditations is an expressive piece which moves from dissonance to consonance. As a teacher of music theory and piano, I often tell my students that dissonance is really what makes a piece beautiful, because when there is dissonance the resolution that follows can be all the more dolce. Dissonance in this movement begins with an expressive duet between tuba and violins which seem to be moving independently, but end up coming together with clashing Major sevenths. As the piece moves forward the dissonance gradually gives way to sweeter melodies accompanied by major and minor triads, ending in G Major.

The second movement grew from the sound of the tone cluster. I've sung 20th Century choral music built around the idea of the cluster, and the sound of the choral cluster has always elicited a sense of awe in me. The sound itself is so resonant, full, expansive, and expressive, that it reminds me of the wonders of the natural world in which we live, hence the title of the movement. The cluster also can be expressive of human emotion, however, it's not always a "beautiful" sound. We don't always have "beautiful" emotions. The sound of the forte cluster has been used by many composers, including Krzysztof Penderecki whi used it to imitate the sound of the simultaneous screams of many people and the sound of a bomb dropping.

I use two ideas in this movement, a chant-like melody reminiscent of Gregorian chant, and the sound of the tone cluster. The cluster itself is organic, growing outward from the chant as it is repeated and transposed by step.

The melodies in Articulations are set in mixed meters, unexpectedly shifting from simple to compound meter, and then back again. The notes themselves could all be placed in common time (4/4), but the accents and groupings of the notes suggest a more complicated rhythmic structure. The movement is in three parts, with the first part returning at the end. The middle section is a longer developmental section which plays with mixed meter and the two melodic ideas established in the first section.