PROGRAM NOTES
Curated by Crier Michael Unterman, Side by Side & Upside Down playfully jabs at the tradition of beginning a concert with a ‘light’ Baroque work, easing into a contemporary piece, and closing with a meaty main course. Instead we start with cake: a rousing encore: Taraf de Haidouks’ Turceasca, arranged by Golijov and Ljova. From there, the ‘main’: Stravinsky’s Apollon musagete. Joan Tower’s White Water, takes its position at the top of the second half, and for the grand finale, we’ll showcase two dazzling concerti grossi by Arcangelo Corelli, works that helped establish the string orchestra as an entity and whose influence has echoed across the centuries.
Sapo Perapaskero aka Taraf de Haïdouks, Turceasca, arr. Osvaldo Golijov & Ljova
While folk music has played a vital role in the world of concert music for centuries, it was not until the advent of recording technology that it could be preserved and shared in a way that truly maintained its unique mannerisms and sounds. Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály were at the forefront of this movement, going into remote villages to document the local traditions, a process that inspired them to produce works that maintained more of the music’s originality. This inspired a new generation of composers to follow in their footsteps, utilizing and integrating folk traditions, rather than simply enmeshing them with classical idioms. It also expanded the field of anthropological studies and interest in the field of ethnomusicology. This has translated into a larger public interest in discovering and enjoying traditional music from around the world.
It was two musicians from Switzerland and Belgium who first encountered Taraf de Haïdouks, a band of traditional Roma musicians from a small town called Clejani, during a visit to Romania. After the Romanian Revolution ended Nicolae Ceauşescu’s dictatorship, the musicians were brought to Belgium to record their first album in 1991, introducing their traditional sound to a global audience. From there, they have been celebration and promoted by individuals as diverse as violinist Yehudi Menuhin, actor Johnny Depp, and designer Yohji Yamamoto.
Taraf de Haïdouks signature piece, Turceasca, was originally featured on their second album, Honorable Brigands, Magic Horses and Evil Eye, released in 1994. Later, it was arranged by Osvaldo Golijov for the Kronos Quartet’s 2000 album, Caravan. It was this album that members of A Far Cry heard during a road trip that inspired them to pursue an arrangement of this dynamic and infectiously exuberant work.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Apollon Musagète
Stravinsky’s ballet, Apollon Musagète (“Apollo, Leader of the Muses”), later simply called Apollo, was commissioned by renowned arts patroness, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, for a festival of contemporary music held in the music room at the Library of Congress in 1928. By then, Stravinsky was established as a masterful composer in the genre, having completed five ballets, The Firefird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, Les noces, and Pulcinella. Each of them demonstrated a different side to the composer, displaying colorful post-romantic orchestration, pulsating rhythms, and inspiration from Russian folk traditions. Beginning in the 1920s Stravinsky’s interest shifted to the elegant and melodious symmetry characteristic of 18th century European music, marking the beginning of his neo-classical period. With Apollon Musagète, Stravinsky underlined this transformation.
Intrigued by classical subjects and mythology (his opera-oratorio, Oedipus Rex, was completed just before the commission for the ballet) Stravinsky elected to base his new work on Apollo, god of music, poetry, light, and truth. Due to production restraints imposed by the small space of the theatre at the Library of Congress, Stravinsky chose to include only three of the nine muses: Calliope (poetry), Polyhymnia (mime), and Terpsichore (dance). Minimalism extended to the costuming, which would be “ballet blanc—a ‘white ballet.’” Reflecting on this decision Stravinsky noted, “the absence of many-colored hues and of all superfluities produced a wonderful freshness.” Interestingly, the ballet had two iterations. The original production performed at the Library of Congress was choreographed by Adolph Bolm. Shortly after, Stravinsky had his long-time collaborator, Sergei Diaghilev, create the European production with the Ballet Russes and their 24-year-old choreographer, George Balanchine.
The ballet is divided into two scenes. The opening heralds the birth of Apollo and features dotted rhythms pervading the music. In an interview, Robert Craft asked Stravinsky what significance they had, since this rhythmic pattern appeared in many of his Greek-subject pieces. Stravinsky explained, “Dotted Rhythms are characteristic eighteenth-century rhythms. My uses of them in these and other works of that period…are conscious stylistic references. I attempted to build a new music on eighteenth-century classicism…even evoking it stylistically by such means as dotted rhythms.”
The second scene begins with a solo variation for Apollo before he is joined by the three muses, bestowing each of them with their specific gifts. Here, each muse is given her own variation to dance, first Calliope, then Polyhymnia, and finally Terpsichore. Apollo then performs another solo variation before a pas de deux with Terpsichore. The ballet concludes with a coda and apotheosis in which Apollo escorts the muses to Mount Parnassus—their sacred home.
Joan Tower, String Quartet No. 5, White Water, arr. Randall Zigler
Throughout her extraordinary and long career, Joan Tower has proven to be one of the most important and respected musical artists of our time. A virtuoso pianist, she was a founding member of the award-winning ensemble Da Capo Chamber Players and has extended her influence into conducting and education. As a Grammy Award winning composer, Tower has written several works that have become staples of the modern repertoire, including her Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman, which have been played by over 500 ensembles to date.
In 2011, Chamber Music Monterey Bay commissioned four composers to contribute to a project called Arc of Life. Each composer was asked to view and respond musically to Going Forth by Day, a five-part video instillation by renowned artist Bill Viola, which took its name from the Egyptian Book of the Dead and explored the cycle of life. Tower’s installment was White Water. While viewing the videos, Tower was captivated by the imagery of water, a material that appears frequently in Viola’s work. Water is tied to a core sensorial memory in Viola’s childhood, the result of falling into a lake while the family were on vacation. He described the experience in an interview recalling, “I went straight to the bottom and saw the most beautiful world I’d ever seen: fish, shafts of light, plants waving in the breeze. I thought I was in heaven. I’d have stayed there had my uncle not pulled me up. That’s why my art has so much to do with water—because I dream about going back to that place.”
About the White Water, Tower has explained, “My piece is not directly associated by what he specifically did but it does have a strong connection to the image of water as a powerful basic idea and action. The many glissandos hopefully create a ‘fluid’ environment that connects the various ideas and registers together, while ‘white water’ somehow implies more rapid ‘cascading’ types of action which occur throughout the piece.”
Arcangelo Corelli, Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 3 and Concerto Grosso in D major Op. 6 No. 4
During a time when vocal works and opera reigned supreme, Arcangelo Corelli focused solely on instrumental music. He published works in only three genres in three genres, trio sonata, violin sonata, and concerto grosso. Yet, this limited output made him famous. Numerous composers, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff, were inspired by Corelli, even quoting his music in their own compositions.
In addition to being a virtuoso violinist himself, Corelli taught a long list of Italian violinists who would go on to have major careers. Another of Corelli’s foremost contributions was furthering the development of standardized practices for professional ensemble playing. It’s hard for us to imagine this now, given the impeccable precision of our twenty-first century ensembles, but in Corelli’s time it wasn’t expected that string players would bow in sync together. Insisting on uniform bowings improved the group’s unity of phrasing and expression, making a more impactful experience for the audience. Jean-Baptiste Lully had previously made similar demands on his musicians at the court of Louis XIV in France, and Corelli brought the practice to Rome, where spent the majority of his life.
Concerto has its roots in the Latin word concertare, which means to contend or strive together, and this is exactly what we see in the Baroque era concerto grosso that contrasts a smaller group of players against a larger ensemble (later, this form would evolve into the solo concerto we are more familiar with today). Concerti grossi are about texture and depth where the interplay of concertino (smaller group and solo passages) and ripieno (the entire ensemble) shift the focus, like a film scene moving between wide establishing shots to zeroing in to highlight specific conversations. Corelli completed six concerti grossi, all of which were published together as a set in his Op. 6—the last collection of his works written before his death and published one year after his passing.
The Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 3, begins with a slow opening, regal, and brooding. In the next movement, the pace quickens, and we hear the main theme expressed through points of imitation, being picked up and passed around the group. A tormented mood engulfs the third movement, which is interrupted abruptly with the arrival of the forceful energy of the fourth movement. This enthusiastic display continues into the final movement of the piece where we ride on a flurry of notes to the conclusion.
An introductory sequence of slow chords greets us at the opening of the Concerto Grosso Op. 6, No. 4. After this brief gesture, the music is overtaken by shimmering, brisk figurations, played with exuberance. The Adagio second movement that follows is reverent and pensive. In the third movement, the music takes on a lilting dance-like quality, which carries into fourth and final movement where it shifts into another gear, becoming even more lively and spirited before ending on two definitive chords—a callback to the opening, bringing the piece full circle.
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.
