Fall Orchestral Concert Program Notes

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 Although William Grant Still was known as the “dean of African-American composers” during his lifetime, and has since come to be recognized as an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the significance of his contributions to music far exceed those limited labels. Coming from a family of teachers, Still’s outlook was in line with the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance, that flowering of African-American culture during the decade of the 1920s that was encapsulated in the idea of the “New Negro,” who, through intellect and art overcomes the challenges and oppression of the past and present to take their rightful place in American society. Still was a friend of Alain Locke, whose anthology The New Negro was intended to demonstrate the breadth and vitality of African-American culture and became a touchstone of the movement. Still was mentioned in the book and associated with several other figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including the poet Langston Hughes, with whom he collaborated on the opera Troubled Island (1939). The movement was propelled to a great extent by the Great Migration in the early years of the twentieth century when many African-Americans migrated from the rural South to Northern cities, creating a cultural ferment between the rural Southern traditions and the more urbanized aspirations of Northern Blacks. Still himself experienced this migration, having been born in small-town Mississippi, raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, educated at Wilberforce University and the Oberlin College Conservatory in Ohio, before settling in New York and eventually Los Angeles.

The 1920s and 1930s were a time when African-American culture was suddenly gaining the interest of many white Americans. This was the period when the likes of George Gershwin went up to Harlem to hear jazz at the Cotton Club, and when Black subjects were taken up in the theater and eventually film. It was also a time when the NAACP office put up a black flag each time they heard of another lynching. And while African-Americans had left Jim Crow in the South, they still faced segregation and racism in many Northern cities. Despite the very real cross-cultural influences that were happening in both popular and classical music, musical institutions remained largely segregated. It was a barrier that Still himself would help to break. He aspired to classical composition, but was drawn to the beauty of African-American music such as spirituals, hymns, blues and jazz. He was equally at home in the world of commercial music, becoming a sought-after arranger and orchestrator for bands as diverse as W. C. Handy and Paul Whiteman. He performed with both the classical Harlem Orchestra and in the pit orchestra for the hit 1921 revue Shuffle Along. He wrote popular songs under the pseudonym Willy S. Grant, but studied composition with George Whitefield Chadwick, eminent composer of the post-Romantic New England School, and Edgard Varèse, the avant-garde modernist. Ultimately, neither of these styles would suit Still, whose aspiration was to write a symphony based on African-American musical idioms. This became his Afro-American Symphony, premiered by Howard Hanson and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra to great acclaim in 1931, the first symphony by a Black composer performed by a major American orchestra and still his best-known work.

After several heady but turbulent years and a divorce from his first wife, Still relocated to Los Angeles in 1934 and eventually married the pianist and writer Verna Arvey, of Russian Jewish descent, settling into a more tranquil life in which he could concentrate on composition. His style evolved beyond the “racial” music he had produced during his New York years to what he considered a “universalist” style. This is the context in which the Symphony in G Minor, his second, was composed. It was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1937. Stokowski, who considered the work an advance on Still’s previous symphony, gave the work its subtitle, “Song of a New Race,” a not inappropriate appellation when one considers what Still himself wrote about the symphony: “It may be said that the purpose of the Symphony in G Minor is to point musically to changes wrought in a people through the progressive and transmuting spirit of America. I prefer to think of it as an abstract piece of music, but, for the benefit of those who like interpretations of their music, I have written the following notes: “The Afro-American Symphony represented the Negro of days not far removed from the Civil War. The Symphony in G Minor represents the American colored man of today, in so many instances a totally new individual produced through the fusion of White, Indian and Negro blood.

“The four movements of the Afro-American Symphony were subtitled “Longing,” “Sorrow,” “Humor” (expressed through religious fervor) and “Sincerity,” or “Aspiration.” In the Symphony in G Minor, longing has progressed beyond a passive state and has been converted into active effort; sorrow has given way to a more philosophic attitude in which the individual has ceased pitying himself, knowing that he can advance only through a desire for spiritual growth and by nobility of purpose; religious fervor and the rough humor of the folk have been replaced by a more mundane form of emotional release that is more closely allied to that of other peoples; and aspiration is now tempered with the desire to give to humanity the best that their African Heritage has given them.”

Stokowski’s assessment notwithstanding, the critical response to the symphony was mixed and the symphony has never achieved the popularity of its predecessor. Yet it is one of the most beautiful of American symphonies. While the folk and blues elements are not as prominent as in the Afro-American Symphony, they permeate the symphony on a deeper level, along with rhythms and harmonies derived from jazz and popular music. Still himself came to see the work as the third part of a trilogy comprising the symphonic suite Africa (1930) and his first two symphonies. The principal theme of the first movement is, in fact, derived from the principal theme of the last movement of the Afro-American Symphony. While the impression is one of lyrical melody chiefly carried on in the strings, there is an underlying rhythmic vitality that drives the movement forward. Verna Arvey remembered getting a phone call from Still to play for her the beautiful theme of the second movement at the moment he composed it. The theme that has some of the character, indeed fragility, of a popular ballad of the period, supported by jazzy harmonies and interrupted briefly by a quicker section. The end of the movement transitions abruptly to the lively third movement, which is blusier and closer to the mood of the  Afro-American Symphony. The fourth movement returns to a moderate pace and a lyrical expression, yet for all that is a dramatic movement that gains in intensity, culminating in a powerful conclusion. Yet a soft lingering chord in the violins, gradually dying away, suggests that the story is not over.

Take several piano pieces by Rossini, clothe them in orchestral garb by Respighi, season them with sets and costumes by the artist André Derian and choreography by Léonid Massine and filter it all through Sergei Diaghilev’s celebrated Ballets Russes and you have La Boutique Fantasque (The Magic Toyshop), the ballet that was an instant hit on its first performance in London on 5 June 1919.

Massine, a lead dancer and choreographer for Diaghilev, attributed the origins of the ballet to Respighi, already one of Italy’s top composers, who introduced Rossini’s Péchés de viellese (Sins of old age) to Diaghilev. Rossini was arguably the most famous opera composer of the early nineteenth century. His early success with The Barber of Seville (1816) led to an international career and eventual relocation to Paris, where his final opera Guillaume Tell premiered in 1829. The effort of composing Tell exhausted Rossini and illness and political upheavals in France prevented him from realizing plans for further operas, even leading him to return to Italy for a period. By 1855 he had returned to Paris, where he lived out his remaining years. It was during this time that he began to compose many smaller works for voice, choir, piano, and various chamber ensembles that were performed at soirées in the composer’s home. He collected them in albums, some of which he referred to as Sins of Old Age. Several of these volumes contain “56 semi-comical pieces for piano” which he dedicated to “pianists of the fourth class, to which I have the honor of belonging.”  He gave many of these pieces whimsical titles such as Pickles, Radishes, Butter, Almonds, Castor Oil, and Abortive Polka. Some, such as Capriccio Offenbach, are parodies of fashionable composers. Respighi chose several of Rossini’s late piano pieces as well as the 1835 tenor song “La Danza” to arrange for the ballet and supplied transitional passages to create a score of around forty minutes in length. The suite from the ballet became one of Respighi’s most popular compositions and consists of eight sections:

 1. Overture (Tempo di Marcia) – played before the curtain rises. We are then introduced to the toymaker and his automated dolls that delight the customers in the shop.

2. Tarantella – an arrangement of Rossini’s “La Danza,” employing the rhythm of the southern Italian folk dance inspired by the bite of the tarantula.

3. Mazurka – danced by four dolls dressed as playing cards.

4. Cossack Dance – dolls in the folk dress of the Eastern Slavic people known for their military prowess perform a lively dance.

5. Can-Can (Capriccio Offenbach) – the toymaker brings out his greatest inventions, two can-can dancers, one male and one female, who charm the customers dancing to Rossini’s parody of Offenbach, whose can-can number from Orpheus in the Underworld, remains the tune most associated with this dance. The customers are so taken with the dancing dolls that different families purchase them and they are boxed up to be delivered the next morning.

6. Valse Lente – the clock strikes ten, long after the toyshop has closed. The dolls begin to come to life and we learn that the can-can dancers are lovers who dread their impending separation. The dolls dance a slow waltz.

7. Nocturne – danced by the can-can dancers before they escape to the strains of a:

8. Galop. Here ends the suite, but the ballet continues for a last scene when the customers return the next morning to pick up the dolls and find empty boxes. Suddenly all the dolls spring to life, no longer automatons, and drive the customers from the store, dancing around to the amazement of the toymaker.