Second Concert of the 77th Season

Felix Bernard is one of those composers whose music is very well known, but whose name is not. He was born in New York and died in Los Angeles. In his own day, he was very successful, producing one-act musical comedies for vaudeville, and touring in the States and abroad. He had his own radio show, and he wrote songs for such notables as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Sophie Tucker. His best-known song is Winter Wonderland, published in 1934, and is probably the only song most people can remember. The lyricist was Richard B. Smith.

In case I am wrong about audiences not having heard of most of the other pieces Bernard wrote, here is a partial list: The Mailman's Got My Letter, Jane, You Opened My Eyes, I'd Rather Be Me, Cutest Kid in Town, Tomb Thumb and Tiny Teens, and The Whistlin' Cowboy.

The distinctive and creative style of Bob Krogstad's arranging is apparent once again with this delightful and heartwarming holiday showcase for orchestra. With the clever weaving of several classic carols and holiday songs, this medley sparkles from beginning to end. Songs are: Carol of the Bells; Ding Dong Merrily on High; Jingle Bells; I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day; and Silver Bells.

Alan Silvestri is a prolific composer of film scores, and surely all of you have heard his music. Among his film scores are Forest Gump, Back to the Future I, II, III, Cast Away, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her, Contact, What Lies Beneath, Romancing the Stone, Cat's Eye, Fandango, The Abyss, Father of the Bride, The Bodyguard, Blown Away, Richie Rich, Judge Dredd, Contact, Stuart Little, The Mummy Returns, and, of course, The Polar Express. I could have gone on, but I'm low on ink.

The music for those movies is mostly orchestral, but he has also worked with electronic music in such films as The Clan of the Cave Bear, Delta Force, No Mercy, and The Flight of the Navigator.

Alan Silvestri was born in New York City and grew up in nearby Teaneck, New Jersey. Unlike so many successful composers, he did not come from a very musical family. He says that his family was "not interested in music." He began to show an interest in drums when he was three (but who didn't?). Some people credit this early interest in drumming to his notable sense of rhythm in his later years. By the time he was in high school, he had taught himself to play a number of instruments, but mostly the guitar.

He ascribes his career in films to an accident. He and his jazz band thought they had a contract, which turned out to be a fraud. To extract themselves, they went to Hollywood, where they made contact with a friend who wrote lyrics for some well-known performers. The friend got a phone call from a low-budget producer who mistakenly thought the friend was a composer instead of a lyricist. The friend put the caller on hold, and asked Silvestri if he wanted to do a film score. The deal was made. Silvestri was twenty years old.

Having no experience in composition, Silvestri went to a bookstore and bought a book called, How to Score a Film. He spent the night reading it, and met the director the next day. He was given two weeks to score the film. The film was called The Doberman Gang, and received fairly good reviews. Silvestri's career was launched.

Leroy Anderson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1908, and died in Woodbury, Connecticut, in 1975. He studied composition at Harvard with George Enesco and Walter Piston. Anderson became very active in musical circles. He was chairman of the board of review of the American Society of Composers, and was a board member of the New Haven and Hartford symphony orchestras. He was a linguist, fluent in nine languages, but specializing in German and Scandinavian ones. He served with U.S. Intelligence in Iceland and in the United States during the Korean War in 1951. He was stationed at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. While working there in Military Intelligence, he found time to write several of his most popular works, such as Blue Tango.

He is best known for his attractive melodies and jaunty rhythms in such pieces as The Syncopated Clock and Sleigh Ride. He was also notable for his use of unconventional instruments, as in The Typewriter and The Sandpaper Ballet (yes, a typewriter and sandpaper were both used as instruments).

Anderson had been discovered by Arthur Fiedler, director of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and was championed by Fiedler, who invited him to conduct his own works with that orchestra. When he conducted The Typewriter, he did so wearing a green visor, with his sleeves rolled up, and pretending to be typing in time with the music.

Sleigh Ride is perhaps the most often performed Anderson work. The Manchester Symphony Orchestra plays it very often during the Holidays.

George (or Georg) Frideric Handel (or Händel), that German-born British subject who wrote Italian music, was a bundle of contradictions. The varied spelling of his name reflects the mobility of artists and composers common to that period. Names were often spelled according to the practice of the country of residence. He spelled his name "Handel" on his petition for British citizenship.

Handel had a complex personality. On the one hand, he was pious and sentimental to the point of crying over his own music when it dealt with the sufferings of the Lord. On the other hand, he had an uncontrollable temper which prompted associates to play practical jokes on him, sometimes resulting in violence. A prankster once untuned all the instruments just before a concert for the Prince of Wales, and Handel was so enraged that he picked up a kettle-drum and threw it at the concertmaster. He was persuaded to continue the concert only after the Prince made a personal plea.

Handel had no patience with incompetence, but he did have a sense of humor. When a singer complaining about Handel's style of accompaniment threatened to jump on the harpsichord and smash it to pieces, Handel calmly replied that if the singer gave ample warning, he would publicize the event, because he was sure that more people would come to watch the singer jump on a harpsichord than to hear him sing.

Handel was an almost exact contemporary of J.S. Bach, born in the same year and dying nine years later than Bach. They had similar backgrounds, came from the same part of Germany, were both devout Protestants, but they were temperamentally quite different. While Bach remained steadfastly middle class and spent his meager earnings on raising a large family, Handel was a cosmopolitan who traveled widely, made and lost fortunes, and mingled with the aristocracy and the intellectual elite.

He was overwhelmed by Italy, where he spent much time. His Italianate operas were very successful, and brought him great fame in England soon after he arrived there. In the span of less than forty years, he wrote forty-six operas, all in Italian style. When the public's interest in Italian opera began to wane, Handel began to work more in the oratorio form. His "second career" made him even more famous, and today he is known mostly for his oratorios, of which his Messiah is the most performed.

ACC = Manchester University A Cappella Choir

Debra Lynn, director
Alan Chambers & Elizabeth Smith, pianists

FHS = Fairfield High School Choir

Benjamin Kambs, director
Larry Becker, pianist

MHS = Manchester Junior-Senior High School Choir

Marily Sexton Mason, director & pianist

MSC = Manchester Symphony Chorus

Debra Lynn, director
Pamela Haynes, pianist
MSO, Alan Chambers, organist

WHS = Wabash High School Choir

Susan Keefer, director
Gayle Vaughn, pianist