Cityscapes

Eugene Migliaro Corporon, conductor
Harmonie del Sur^
Lauren Murray, English horn
Robert Murray, Trumpet

Program

Star-Spangled Banner, Arr. by John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
Cityscapes, Scott Boerma (b. 1964)
Paris Sketches, Martin Ellerby (b. 1964)
Chicago Tribune March, W. Paris Chambers (1954-1913)
Machu Picchu, Satoshi Yagisawa (b. 1975)
Quiet City^, Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Popcopy, Scott McAllister (b. 1969)

Program Notes

Written and compiled by David Robinson and Robert Schwartz

Cityscapes (2005)
Scott Boerma

Cityscapes is a fanfare for winds and percussion. It was written for and dedicated to James F. Keene and the University of Illinois Wind Symphony. This symphonic fanfare was designed to make a bold opening statement for the ensemble’s 2006 performance in New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Intense, clashing harmonies and tight, vertical rhythms combine with moments of calm yet unsettled release to depict the atmosphere within the endless canyons of metal and cement in the heart of the city.

Paris Sketches (1994)
Martin Ellerby

Paris Sketches is the composer’s personal tribute to a city that he loves. Each movement pays homage to some part of the French capital and to other composers who lived, worked, or passed through it –as did Ravel in his own tribute to the work of an earlier master in Le Trombeau de Couperin. Running like a unifying thread through the whole score is the idea of bells – a prominent feature of Paris life.

I. Saint-germain-des-Prés – The Latin Quarter famous for artistic associations and bohemian lifestyle. This is a dawn tableau haunted by the shade of Ravel: the city awakens with the ever-present sense of morning bells.

II. Pigalle: the Soho of Paris – This is a burlesque with scenes cast in the mold of a balletic scherzo – humorous in a kind of “Stravinsky-meets-Prokofiev” way. It’s episodic, but everything is based on the harmonic figuration of the opening. The bells here are car horns and police sirens!

III. Pére Lachaise – This is the city’s largest cemetery, the final resting place of many a celebrity who had once walked its streets. The spirit of Satie’s Gymnopedies – themselves a tribute to a still more distant past – is affectionately evoked before; what is in effect, the work’s slow movement concludes with quotation of the Dies Irae. The mood is of softness and delicacy, which the composer attempted to match with more transparent orchestrations. The bells are gentle, nostalgic, and wistful.

IV. Les Halles – A fast, building finale: the bells triumphant and celebratory. Les Halls are the old market area, Parisian Covent Garden, and like Pigalle, this is a series of related but contrasting episodes. Its climax quotes from Berlioz’s Te Deum, which was first performed in 1855 at the church of St. Eustache – actually in the district of Les Halles. A gradual cresendo, initiated by the percussion, prefaces the opening material proper, and the work ends with a backward glance at the first movement before closing with the final bars of the Berlioz Te Deum.

Chicago Tribune (1892)
W. Paris Chambers
Arr. by John Boyd

W. Paris Chambers, known for his highly distinctive and sufficiently complex marches, wrote the Chicago Tribune March for one of America’s leading newspapers. The Chicago Tribune was founded in 1847 and has since played a leading role in the development of what was then know as the West. From 1855 to 1899, Joseph Medill set the policy of the newspaper. A bitter foe of slavery and a strong supporter of Abraham Lincoln, Medill was involved with the Republican Party from its founding in 1854. The paper has traditionally been strongly nationalistic in foreign affairs and conservative in outlook. Chicago Tribune March has undergone several revisions and editions since its original publication.

Machu Picchu (2004)
Satoshi Yagisawa

Machu Picchu was commissioned for the thirtieth anniversary concert of the Ensemble Liberte Wind Orchestra, Kawaguchi City. Machu Picchu is a mountaintop Incan city that was discovered 378 years after the Spanish conquistadors invaded and destroyed Cuzco, the capitol of the great sixteenth-century empire that unified most of Andean South America. At the central high point of the city stands its most important shrine, the Intihuatana, or “hitching post of the sun”, a column of stone rising from a block of granite the size of a grand piano, where a priest would “tie the sun to the stone” at winter solstice to insure its seasonal return. It is believed that the royal lineage of the empire may have escaped to Machu Picchu during the Spanish invasion. Yagisawa writes the following about the composition:

“After considering these remarkable ideas I wished to musically describe that magnificent citadel and trace some of the mysteries sealed in Machu Picchu’s past. Three principal ideas dominate the piece: 1) the shimmering golden city of Cuzco set in the dramatic scenery of the Andes, 2) the destructiveness of violent invasion, and 3) the re-emergence of Incan glory as the city in the sky again reached for the sun.”

Quiet City (1939)
Aaron Copland

Quiet City was composed as a piece of incidental music for a play written by Irwin Shaw. It was reset by Copland the following year for trumpet and English horn and string ensemble. The mood of the work contrasts questioning lines and long cantilena phrases in the two solo voices with an accompaniment at once still subdued, and later alternately fervent and moving.

Popcopy (2009)
Scott McAllister

Popcopy is a work in three movements that is inspired by famous catchphrases. The work’s title in itself is also a catchphrase from a Dave Chappelle skit that deals with a local copy center, to which every composer can relate. McAllister writes:

“The first movement, “More Cowbell!”, is based on the popular “Saturday Night Live” skit featuring Will Ferrell as a fictional cowbell player for the band Blue Öyster Cult. Ferrell’s character, Gene Frenkle, fervently tells the band that since there are no songs that feature the cowbell, he would be doing a disservice to himself and the band if he didn’t “play the hell out of this” cowbell. The producer then coins the famous phrase: “Guess what?! I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is… more cowbell!” In this movement, four cowbell parts surround the band to emulate the struggle of balance between the band and the cowbells, but the cowbells also help in keeping the band together during complex rhythmic sections.

The second movement, “One Time at Band Camp,” is a catchphrase from the movie American Pie. The character Michelle Flaherty is an eccentric nerd who tells many annoying stories about her experiences at band camp. The character in the movie plays the flute, so a flute soloist is featured. This movement portrays reminiscences of summer love found and lost.

“Serenity Now” is inspired by an episode from the final season of “Seinfeld.” George’s father, Frank Costanza, is advised to say “serenity now” aloud every time his blood pressure is in danger. Instead of calmly saying the phrase, Frank yells it each time. The character Kramer also uses the catchphrase, but when he finally has a mental meltdown, he discovers that saying this phrase only makes things worse. Like the episode itself, the music deals with the line between sanity and insanity with at least four other story lines going on at the same time. There are multiple band quotes scattered in the music (shrouded tributes to Holst, Hindemith, Sousa, and Wood), aleatoric and non-metered sections, and a schizophrenic form to this final movement.”