PROGRAM NOTES
Julius Eastman (1940-1990)
JOY BOY
“If we make a survey of classical music… we would be led to believe that music was born in 1700, lived a full life until 1850 at which time music caught an incurable disease and finally died in 1900,” Julius Eastman wrote in 1979. “The composer must become the total musician [and] reestablish himself as a vital part of his/her community. To be a composer is not enough.” And through his work as a visionary composer, spellbinding performer and prodigious collaborator, Eastman fully lived this call to a richer musical life in his brief 49 years.
Born in Ithaca New York, Eastman made his way to Curtis Institute of Music where he studied both piano and composition. He then journeyed to SUNY Buffalo, to work with the Creative Associates, led by Lukas Foss, at the time a leading center of experimental music. Yet, in this circle, his identity as an unapologetically Black and gay man at times put him at odds with the establishment. John Cage famously publicly admonished Eastman after a performance of the elder composer’s Song Books, about which George Lewis writes: “Eastman’s performance that day may have constituted an intersectional testing of the limits of his membership – or, in American racial parlance, his ‘place’ – in the experimental scene.”
Joy Boy was composed in 1974, and is written for an indeterminate collection of instruments. It operates on Eastman’s principle of organic composition, with layer after layer being added as a shimmering totality slowly morphs and emerges. Aside from being a structural technique for his compositions, Eastman’s vertically additive approach expresses a deeper, profoundly emotional, desire toward wholeness—to embrace his entire being and embodied experience as a gay Black man in the mid-20th century. As he defined it: “What I am trying to achieve is to be what I am to the fullest—Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, and a homosexual to the fullest. It is important that I learn how to be, by that I mean accept everything about me.”
-Miki Cloud, A Far Cry violinist & Kathryn Bacasmot, program note annotator
Ottorino Resphighi (1879-1936)
”IL TRAMONTO” (THE SUNSET)
205 years ago, in April 1815, a volcano erupted in what is now Indonesia. So much ash spewed up into the atmosphere that the global temperature lowered and crops failed. Surviving documents from the era reported eerily beautiful sunsets as the light filtered through lingering atmospheric debris. This phenomenon, and the natural disasters that followed in its wake, must have seemed like a cruel exclamation point at the end of decades of revolution, war, and sweeping societal changes across Europe.
The following year, Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the 2nd generation of English romantic poets, wrote The Sunset, a work of haunting beauty about two young lovers. After an evening walk, the man comments that he strangely never saw the setting sun before night settled in. He dies suddenly in the night, leaving his partner to live out the rest of her days in a miserable state of suspended mourning. Shelley was likely working out his own fears within its lines. The woman in the poem was almost certainly Mary Wollstoncraft, a teenager for whom he left his wife (who was pregnant with their second child), and death’s shadow already hovered over them: Mary had become pregnant but lost her baby. Shelley’s own health declined. Though he would recover from his illness, the poem did weirdly presage his own unexpected death. Shelly died at age 29, drowning during a storm at sea while sailing.
100 years later in 1914, while the world teetered on the edge of war, Ottorino Respighi wrote Il Tramonto (The Sunset) for mezzo and strings using Shelley’s poem for the text. Respighi adored the works of Shelley, using them numerous times. Brilliant storytelling and deep sentiment were distinct traits of Respighi’s works, and with Il Tramonto Respighi gave the words a brilliant setting, like a jeweler showcasing a gem to maximize its natural beauty. Relying on simplicity by stripping down much of the vocal line to recitative and providing contrast through the lilting lyricism of the strings, the story comes alive. We feel the cool of the gloaming as the young couple walks through the field, sense the unease settling in when he doesn’t see the sunset, are lulled by the tranquil happiness of their love, and absorb the terrible shockwave of horror when he dies.
Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994)
MUSIQUE FUNÈBRE
Lutosławski produced a sound to be reckoned with, the intensity of which reflected the struggle it took to create it. As a child, his father and uncle got caught up in the politics of the age. Both were executed for overtly supporting Polish independence in Moscow, Russia, where they had fled from Warsaw during the German invasion at the outset of World War I. Like Shostakovich in Russia, Lutosławski fell in and out of favor with the communist government in Poland. He was caught in an exhausting game of totalitarian control. His first symphony was dismissed under that vague critique, “formalist,” for being too “difficult” for broader, popular entertainment. However his Concerto for Orchestra, which used folk melodies, was celebrated and he was given two awards. Lutosławski later asked it be made clear for posterity that his use of folk melodies in the concerto was not for appeasement, but a purely artistic decision.
Dedicated to the memory of Béla Bartók, who had died in 1945 of leukemia, Music Funèbre was intended to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death. However, it took four years for Lutosławski to finish, so it was first performed in 1958. One reason for the delay might have been Lutosławski’s decision to write using the 12-tone row system instead of tonal harmony. “...it is the first word—though obviously not the last one—spoken in what is a new language for me,” the composer remarked in the program at the premiere. In other words, instead of using keys (C major, A minor, etc.) as a framework, the music holds together with a set of patterns made up of whichever 12 notes the composer chooses for the “row.” This is highly effective for music of mourning. The lack of a tonal center, or “home” key where tension can resolve and rest, means the music can sound unmoored.
Music Funèbre is structured as one continuous piece of music, though it is divided up into four movements, Prologue, Metamorphoses, Apogee, and Epilogue. The ensemble is divided so there are 10 parts being played. Similarities between this work and Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste are sometimes pointed out, but Lutosławski denied any intentional correlation.
Vicente Lusitano (c. 1520-1561)
"ASPICE DOMINE,” TRANSC. BY ANDRUS MADSEN
In the Medieval era music was categorized alongside arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry in the Quadrivium of the liberal arts. Practically, this was expressed by the work of theorists and scholars who viewed the mathematical ratios between notes and harmonies to be no less than part of the fabric of the universe. For those moving in these circles there were many agreed-upon rules for exactly how music should be written and used, and differing opinions were grounds for fierce debates. One of the most famous arguments took place in Rome, 1551, between the theorists Vicente Lusitano (who was also a priest) and Nicola Vicentino over opposing aspects of ancient and contemporary theoretical systems. Lusitano won the debate, and Vicentino retaliated by writing such an unflattering—even slanderous—account of his opponent, which some historians point to as the reason Lusitano fell out of historical discussion.
After centuries of near dormancy in academic circles, Lusitano (not a surname, but a descriptor of where he was from—Portugal) regained attention through increasing research interest in the late 20th century. Around the 1960s Dr. Robert Stevenson began publishing about Lusitano and in 1982 authored a seminal article “The First Black Published Composer,” laying out evidence for his argument that Lusitano was of African-Portuguese descent. This information sparked renewed interest which continues to pick up pace today.
Aspice Domine (“Behold, O Lord”) represents one of only a handful of Lusitano’s works, many of which are motets like Aspice Domine, that are currently available to the public. Today, scholars continue to move forward and collaborate with publishers to provide easier access to more of his catalog so his music, which often features stunningly beautiful and unexpected harmonic shifts, can be enjoyed by increasingly broader audiences.
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
FANTASIA ON A THEME BY THOMAS TALLIS
Vaughan Williams came from a prestigious line of English families, particularly on his mother’s side. Margaret Vaughan Williams was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood III, grandson of the famous English potter Josiah Wedgwood, and Caroline Darwin, older sister of Charles. Unlike some young composers who were pressured to go into the family profession (in this case, law), Ralph was encouraged to indulge in his love for music. He studied piano, organ, violin, and viola, but it became increasingly clear that what he liked to do was compose. In addition to eventual studies at Cambridge University, he spent some time at the Royal College of Music, and also traveled to study with Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel.
Vaughan Williams’ talents were extremely adaptable. He wrote music for any situation, from the simple to the grand. One project was editing the English Hymnal. While researching, he came across 9 metrical psalm tunes that Thomas Tallis had written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. They were Tallis’ contribution to a similar hymn-like collection some 400 years earlier, Archbishop Parker’s Psalter. The melody that stuck with Vaughn Williams the most was number 3, Why Fum’th in Fight (Psalm 2). It became the theme of the fantasia, written in 1910. Brilliantly, instead of writing a fantasia for one group of musicians, Vaughan Williams divided the ensemble into three of various sizes. This layered effect is magnificent, and somehow seems to also re-create the phenomenon of music echoing around an old cathedral.
Another British composer, Herbert Howells, recalled his first impression of the Tallis fantasia, “It all seemed so incredibly new at the time, but soon I came to realize how very, very old it actually was, how I’d been living the music since long before I could ever begin to remember.” What Vaughan Williams does is frame our modern lives within the larger, ongoing narrative of humanity. In doing so, he reminds us that no matter how many sunsets come and go, and whatever transpires between them, there is beauty, and life goes on.
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.
