A Far Cry's season opener explores how we develop music and ideas as a way to process change and to adapt and grow.

Andrea Casarrubios (b.1988)
Overture & Chorale

Spanish-born cellist and composer, Andrea Casarrubios’ Overture and Chorale is a delicately sublime work bearing the dedication, “…to my mother, and her obsession with J.S. Bach.” Clear, and heartfelt, the work roots itself in the past, not unlike Bach. Because of his modern status as one of the most revered and beloved composers of all, it can be hard to remember that during his lifetime he was old fashioned, continually mining deeper and deeper into the old forms to unearth jewels while most of his contemporaries were hurtling forward toward the Galant on their way to the classical (only six years separate the death of Bach and the birth of Mozart). Now, Bach is timeless, living on in his own works as well as others written through his influence. Casarrubios remarks in her own program note:

“Originally for cello quartet, the work is also available for two violas and two cellos. The first movement, Overture, was written for CCCMF in 2020 and it highlights the interplay between the four instruments. French rhythms from the baroque style are mixed with harmonies from the 21st century, accentuating the time and space that there is in between. The Chorale adds equilibrium and an emotional depth that lift us from a darker place. The Chorale was written taking J.S. Bach’s Chorale BWV 390 in C major as inspiration.”

Shelley Washington (b. 1991`)
Say for String Orchestra, arr. Washington

In Say, Shelley Washington explores one of the most complex aspects of being: identity. Who are you? Who do others say you are? Who gets to decide? Speaking from her own experience as a person of mixed race in 21st century America, Washington shines a bright light on the myriad of complicated emotions through a poem that prefaces the score. It is preceded by a dedication to “all lives lost through hands of misconception, and to all the lives safe at home who face challenges without question, dedicated to our history, and our future which is brighter, dedicated to those who taught me to always be a fighter.”

Emphasizing that our experiences are embodied, that what we look like, the sounds of our voices, and the regional or cultural accents we are perceived as having, influence or change the way others interact with us, Washington writes extensive passages highlighting the body through making it a dominant percussive element throughout the music. Utilizing the power of text, the performers rhythmically speak in short, direct, phrases, that ask us to reflect on ways we encounter others in the world, pause to consider the reality of others, and exhorts us to speak up. Musically, the work is dotted with sections strongly reminiscent of the sing-song play tunes of children’s playground games—an arena where our earliest memories and confusions about identity are often formed—juxtaposed with reflective, lyrical passages, and dense contrapuntal passages.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Chaconne from Partita in D Minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004, arr. Wiancko

When it comes to Bach’s solo works for strings, his most famous are arguably the six cello suites, but another set of six works for solo strings, in this case for the violin, deserve equal attention. Mixing things up, Bach alternated formats for the treble instrument, producing three violin sonatas and three violin partitas. The former were structured in the model of the church sonata, while the latter were organized like dance suites. In the case of the Partita No. 2 in D minor, it contains an Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabanda, Giga, and Ciaccona, or Chaconne, which has become famous as a stand-alone work.

Exact composition dates for the solo violin sonatas and partitas are unknown, but Bach wrote out cleaned up copies of them in 1720, which places their genesis likely during his time in Cöthen. There, between the years 1717-1723, Bach was employed as Kapellmeister for the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen (presently in Northeast Germany), a principality located about nineteen miles away from Halle, the hometown of Bach’s contemporary, George Frideric Handel. Leopold had a great love of culture and music and was apparently a talented amateur musician as well. According to Philipp Spitta, one of Bach’s 19th century biographers, the prince “...played not only the violin, but the viol-di-gamba and the clavier; and he was also a very good bass singer. Bach himself said of him later, that he had not merely loved music, but had understood it.” The prince was also a Calvinist, and as such did not use instruments in religious services, so Bach found himself in the position of writing only music for court entertainment—both public and private—for the first, and only, time in his career. It follows that several of Bach’s great secular works that come from the period in Cöthen. In addition to the solo works for violin, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Clavier-Büchlein (“Little Clavier Book”) for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, another similar titled collection for Anna Magdalena, the Brandenburg Concertos, and the six Cello Suites.

Contextually, the Chaconne stands out from the other four movements of the Partita No. 2 for its sheer size—about 100 measures longer than the four previous movements combined—as well as the tremendous intensity and depth of its feeling, neatly summarized by Johannes Brahms who commented,  “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings.” As a genre, chaconne is a type of variation form that builds upon a repeating harmonic pattern in the baseline. This allows the composer nearly endless creative freedom, and Bach maximizes this aspect to the fullest, alternating between intensely virtuosic passages of harmony and counterpoint, and lyrical passages of immense pathos.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810, “Death and the Maiden,” arr. Irons

As Schubert entered his twenties, he was already a seasoned composer of five symphonies, four masses, several string quartets, and 300 songs, including two that would become among his most famous, Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814) and Erlkönig (1815). It has been calculated that at one point he was writing an average of 65 new measures of music per day. During this time of intense artistic activity, however, Schubert approached a crossroads about his future: should he follow in the footsteps of his family and become a teacher, or should he follow an artistic path? Initially taking the practical route, he enrolled in a teacher’s college, but it left him deeply unsatisfied. As he wrestled with his choices, he continued producing psychologically and emotionally chargedcharge works, including Der Tod und das Mädchen, or Death and the Maiden, from 1817. The song lasts barely two minutes, with its brevity underscoring the astonishing directness of the content. In just two stanzas, Schubert delivers a dramatic scene where a girl frantically resists death with her cries, “Pass by!...I am still young; leave me, dear one and do not touch me.” Death answers cooly as a dispassionate funeral march accompanies, “Give me your hand…I am not cruel; you shall sleep softly in my arms.” 

Several years later, in 1824 Schubert returned to this song, but now the text had gained an uncomfortable urgency in light of the composer’s own health crisis. During the previous year, his body began to display signs of syphilis. The news was devastating, and Schubert knew it meant an uncertain future of indeterminate duration. In a letter to his friend, Josef Kupelwieser, he lamented, “I find myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair continually makes things worse and worse instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom the felicity of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain at best, whom enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating variety) for all things beautiful threatens to forsake…upon retiring to bed each night I hope that I may not wake again, and each morning only recalls yesterday’s grief.” 

Around the time he penned the heart wrenching letter to Kupelwieser, Schubert composed the String Quartet in D minor. A work of intense feeling, it bursts open with strident, unison chords immediately communicating a sense of urgency that pervades the movement. The centerpiece of the work is the second movement, where Schubert takes the funeral march melody from his song Death and the Maiden and transforms it into a cri de cœur expressed in a set of variations (the nickname, referencing use of the song, was applied later by others). A brief, stately Scherzo with a gorgeously lyrical contrasting section acts as a bridge into the fiery, defiant, finale. Interestingly, Schubert may have musically underscored his point by laying allusions to another early song in the concluding movement: flashes of death’s invitational verse melody (“Sweet child, come with me”) from Erlkönig can be heard in the violins.

Kathryn J. Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.