PROGRAM
“…of a rare and special type…”
UMD Wind Orchestra
Michael Votta Jr., music director
William Lake Jr., assistant conductor
Members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, guest artists
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Serenade in Bb (“Gran Partita”), K. 361
I. Largo; Molto allegro
II. Menuetto
EDGARD VARÈSE
Density 21.5
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Serenade in Bb (“Gran Partita”), K. 361
III. Adagio
IV. Menuetto
EDGARD VARÈSE
Octandre
Assez lent
Très vif et nerveux
Grave; Animé et jubilatoire
UMD SCHOOL OF MUSIC
INTERMISSION
PRESENTS
EDGARD VARÈSE
Intégrales
Photo by Stan Barouh
“…of a rare and special type…”
UMD Wind Orchestra
Michael Votta Jr., music director
William Lake Jr., assistant conductor
Carl Albach and Julie Landsman, guest artists
Sunday, May 5, 2013 . 5PM
Elsie & Marvin Dekelboum Hall
68
CLARICE SMITH PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
William Lake Jr., conductor
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Serenade in Bb (“Gran Partita”), K. 361
V. Romanza
VI. Tema con variazioni
VII. Finale (Molto allegro)
Approximately 2 hours, which includes a 15-minute intermission.
“…of a rare and special type…”
69
PROGRAM
PROGRAM NOTES
UMD WIND ORCHESTRA
Flute
Trumpet
Chan Kim
Christi Rajnes
Neil Brown
Anne Kavarick
Oboe
Trombone
Samantha Crouse
Emily Tsai
Bass — John Crotty
Tenor — Kevin Downing
Casey Jones
Clarinet
Michael Casto
Gabriel Ferreira
Alaina Pritz
Basset Horn
Michael Casto
Gabriel Ferreira
Bassoon
Nick Ober
Erica Yeager
Saxophone
Tuba
Matthew Craig
Percussion
Robert Bowen
Jan Nguyen
Michael O’Neil
Logan Seith
Collaborating Artists
Carl Albach, Orpheus
Julie Landsman, Orpheus
Michael Votta, UMD Faculty
Drew Blais
Ernie Elizondo
Brendan Kelly
Herr Stadler, senior, in actual service of His Majesty the Emperor, will hold a musical
concert for his benefit at the Imperial and Royal National Court Theatre, at which will be
given, among other well-chosen pieces, a great wind piece of a rare and special type composed
by Herr Mozart.
— Advertisement in the newspaper Wienerblättchen, Vienna, March 23, 1784
Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind
theirs. Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs
new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor. Possible musical
forms are as limitless as the exterior forms of crystals. I do not write experimental music. It is the
listener who must experiment.
— Edgard Varèse
Mozart and Varèse both created music for wind instruments that explored new sonorities
for their time, and that were revolutionary in their own ways. Perennial challenges facing
performances of Mozart’s Gran Partita are the length of the work and the fact that it likely
was never intended to have all seven movements performed without a break — with the
exception of the third movement and the trios of the minuets and romanze, the entire work
is in the key of Bb. Juxtaposing these revolutionary works is our way of paying homage to
the ingenuity of the composers, and of presenting their works in a new “frame” that, we
hope, will make each come alive in “rare and special” ways. Enjoy!
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Serenade in Bb
Horn in F
JP Bailey
Matt Gray
Rachel Plantholt
Alex Rogers
This performance was made possible in part by support from the The MARPAT Foundation.
claricesmithcenter.umd.edu | 301.405.ARTS (2787)
To envision the Viennese wind music scene in the 1780s, think of jazz in New Orleans at
the turn of the century: late 18th-century Vienna had an incredible confluence of virtuoso
musicians, emerging instrument technology, artisan craftsmen and compositional geniuses
— each exploring new ways to expand a musical vocabulary within established traditions.
This was the setting for Mozart’s creation of the Serenade in Bb, K.361, a work
that encompasses emotions ranging from lyrical expressions of joy and longing to
raucous dance music and beer garden oompah — all presented by an unusual type
of wind ensemble.
Although the choice of these 13 instruments was somewhat unusual, in writing this
serenade Mozart was following well-established tradition. During the latter part of the
18th century multi-movement works of a predominantly light-hearted, entertaining
nature for various combinations of instruments were produced throughout the countries
of central Europe. Interchangeably titled “divertimento,” “cassation,” “notturno” or
“serenade,” and containing from four to seven movements, these works found their origin
in the desire for entertaining “background” music for court functions — not as concert
works. With the Serenade in Bb and the Serenade in C Minor (for the more typical
Harmonie), however, Mozart begins to transform works of this genre into genuine
concert pieces, albeit ones in which the “outdoor” origin of the musical style remains
clearly present.
“…of a rare and special type…”
71
PROGRAM NOTES
PROGRAM NOTES
The sound of wind instruments gave particular pleasure to Emperor Joseph II, and in
the spring of 1782, he determined to gratify this enthusiasm by drawing musicians from
his Burgtheater orchestra to form a wind band he called the Harmonie. While he dined, it
was to play arrangements of tunes popular in Viennese theaters — thus delighting the
imperial ears even as it aided the imperial digestion. To lead this ensemble, he chose one
of his most esteemed wind players who, fortunately for posterity, was also a close friend of
Mozart: the renowned clarinetist Anton Stadler.
At first, the emperor had envisaged his Harmonie as a sextet, and Mozart hoped that the
repertory of the new ensemble might expand to include the commissioning of serious
original works. Indulging this idea, he composed a sextet for winds (the Serenade, K. 375)
in the expectation that one of Emperor Joseph’s “Gentlemen of the Chamber” would
recommend it (and him) to the Emperor’s attention. Soon, however, the ensemble grew
into an octet (pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns), and Mozart hastened to revise
K. 375 for this new format.
Many aristocrats were quick to follow the Emperor’s example by setting up similar
groups, and so-called Harmoniemusik soon became established as one of the most popular
forms of musical entertainment throughout the 1780s and 1790s. Every major composer
(and hundreds of lesser ones) wrote both original works and made arrangements for the
combination: Musicologists have catalogued more than 20,000 works for Harmonie
written in the late 18th century, and still extant in libraries in Europe and the United
States. Occasionally this ensemble was varied by replacing clarinets with English horns;
a more common variant was the addition of string bass or contrabassoon.
The particular combination for which Mozart wrote his Serenade in Bb represents, of
course, a considerable expansion of the normal wind octet. Although several other
composers had previously written for an enlarged ensemble, none had done so on a scale
comparable to Mozart. By the addition of two more horns, as well as two basset horns,
the sonority of the middle register was considerably enhanced, providing a richer (and to
modern ears, a more “Romanic” sound). Mozart’s other innovation was to compose
a special part for the string bass instead of leaving it to ad hoc doublings of the second
bassoon part. Although Mozart explicitly calls for a string bass, the Serenade has often
been performed using a contrabassoon and is hence commonly, though erroneously,
referred to as the “Serenade for 13 wind instruments.”
Despite the firm place which Mozart’s works occupy in the concert repertoire,
the genesis of some of his greatest ones — including this serenade — remains shrouded in
mystery. Almost no other work of Mozart has been the subject of so many contradictory
theories concerning the history of its composition, and textual inconsistencies between
various sources present performers with difficulties in unraveling the composer’s
true intentions.
It was long thought that the Gran Partita was composed around 1780 for
a performance in Munich, but painstaking analysis of several critical factors (such as
watermarks, inks and handwriting) reveals that it was probably written in Vienna
somewhat later; the editors of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe suggest a time between the end
of 1783 and the beginning of 1784. There is a slight possibility that Mozart might have
composed the piece for the occasion of his own wedding in August 1782. However, if
this were the case, one wonders why Mozart’s letters to his father so uncharacteristically
fail to mention such a massive undertaking.
claricesmithcenter.umd.edu | 301.405.ARTS (2787)
The only reliable contemporary reference to a performance comes from the newspaper
advertisement of March 23, 1784 quoted above. Only four of the movements were played
on that day, but the critic Johann Friedrich Schink reported on their performance. In his
review, he described the exact instrumentation: two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns,
four horns, two bassoons and double bass. The movements he had heard could therefore
only have been drawn from the Serenade in Bb. Schink wrote: “At each instrument sat
a master — oh, what an effect it made — glorious and grand, excellent and sublime.”
It is interesting to observe that this concert was given during Lent, when the
participating musicians (who for the greater part of each year were employed by the
Viennese nobility) were all effectively on holiday. This circumstance made it easy for
Stadler to hand-pick the very best wind players, knowing that they would not otherwise
be engaged. Mozart’s own silence regarding this concert at the Burgtheater can probably be
explained by the fact that — Lenten holidays notwithstanding — his recently composed
Piano Concerto No 14, K. 449, was simultaneously receiving its first performance elsewhere
in Vienna.
Since only four movements had been played on the 1784 concert, it had been
thought that the work was composed as two separate pieces. Examination of the
autograph, however, shows that the seven movements were notated at the same time.
It may be, however, that the work was conceived with performance “options” in mind.
After an opening sonata-form movement, the remaining six movements comprise pairs of
slow movements, minuets and finales. One member of each pair tends to show Mozart at
his most elegant and compositionally sophisticated while the other tends toward rollicking
dance music more reminiscent of a “town band” than of the Emperor’s elegant Harmonie.
The Serenade in Bb is, therefore, a work that truly bridges the gulf between garden party
and concert music.
EDGARD VARÈSE
Density 21.5
Density 21.5 was written in 1936 for the debut of the platinum flute (the density of
platinum is 21.5 grams per cubic centimeter). The work is based on two contrasting
motivic cells heard at the outset of the piece, a falling minor second, then rising major
second (F-E-F#), and the interval of a tritone (C#-G), what Varèse called an “atonal”
and a “modal” idea.
Mediating between them is the interval of the minor third. From a calm, meditative
beginning the flute gradually unfolds these ideas into ever-higher registers. The texture
becomes increasingly fragmented with agitated interjections that are reminiscent of bird
song. The reappearance of the opening motive leads to a return that combines registral
extremes with the mood and more melodic style of the first part of the piece.
Density 21.5 is credited as opening the door for a variety of works in the following
decades that would explore the timbre and expressivity of the flute — from its dramatic
exploitation of the extreme upper ranges of the flute, to its percussive key clicks — in
unconventional and increasingly progressive modes of performance.
The work is presented this evening in an arrangement for three saxophones by Joel Pierson,
continuing the tradition of exploring new uses of wind instruments begun by Mozart
and Varèse.
“…of a rare and special type…”
73
PROGRAM NOTES
PROGRAM NOTES
EDGARD VARÈSE
Jerry Junkin of the University of Texas has stated:
Octandre
The title Octandre refers both to the eight-member ensemble and to the word’s literal
meaning, a flower with eight stamens. The premiere was given in New York on
January 13, 1924, under the direction of E. Robert Schmitz, founder of the Pro Musica
Society (dedicated to the presentation of works by living composers) and a renowned
interpreter of the piano music of Debussy.
This is the only multi-movement work by Varèse. Each movement begins with a solo
instrument and is in three parts with the last part being a tutti development of the
opening. The pitch material of the work is based on the half-step, transformed through
octave displacements into major 7ths and minor 9ths.
The first movement is launched by a chant-like oboe phrase (reminiscent of the bassoon
melody that opens Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring), employing the minor second and its
inversion, the major seventh. The clarinet responds with a chattering bundle of repeated
notes, succeeded by “pumping” sounds in the brass. Varèse’s score notes that the movement
ends “with the feeling of the beginning (a little anxious).”
The second movement begins as a wind-blown scherzo featuring the piccolo’s repeated
notes, which are pushed aside by the brass. The final chord is a fierce crescendo, which
winds dwindles to the solo double bass leading into the finale, which begins “grave” but
blossoms into an energetic fugue with the successive entries of oboe, bassoon and clarinet.
Octandre ends with what can be best described as a scream.
EDGARD VARÈSE
One of Varèse’s former students pointed out that this work was written in spite of
the limitations of conventional instruments and notation, that the world of sound
contained in this piece is not about the instruments, but the distinction of the timbres
between them. Instruments are intended to either blend or contrast with other
instruments depending on whether or not they are in the same sound ‘block.’
Many listeners feel that this ambivalence to instruments made Varèse better suited to
music that excludes them, such as tape music, which he eventually turned to as the
technology become available. The composer said that mathematics and astronomy
inspired him, and Intégrales lends itself to visual impressions of celestial bodies in
motion — the motion of planets revolving around a star is comparable to the blocks
of sound heard in this piece.
The premiere of Intégrales was peculiar because it was so well received by the general
public. At the Aeolian Hall in New York, Leopold Stokowski conducted it on
March 1, 1925 to an enthusiastic crowd that enjoyed the work so much Stokowski
was obliged to perform it again that evening. However, other than a few admiring
writers, critics disliked Intégrales and mocked the piece at length. It is possible that
this work offended the sensibilities of a writing community that had spent years
building a meaningful way of talking about new music, and that the work simply
eluded that vocabulary.
Intégrales
Intégrales was an important work for Varèse and was composed in 1924-25 — his most
creative period. Scored for woodwinds, brass and 17 different percussion instruments
played by four percussionists, Intégrales provides insight into the ideas of sound-mass,
spatial projection and zones of intensity that pervade all of Varèse’s works. These terms
are his way of describing music as a collection of coexisting sound properties (melody,
harmony, rhythm, etc.).
Varèse stated:
... Integrales was conceived for a spatial projection. I constructed the work to employ certain
acoustical means which did not yet exist, but which I knew could be realized ... In order to
make myself better understood — for the eye is quicker and more disciplined than the ear —
let us transfer this conception into the visual sphere and consider the changing projection
of a geometrical figure onto a plane surface, with both geometrical figure and plane surface
moving in space, but each at its own changing and varying speeds of lateral movement
and rotation.
claricesmithcenter.umd.edu | 301.405.ARTS (2787)
“…of a rare and special type…”
75
ABOUT THE CONDUCTORS
Michael Votta Jr. has been hailed by critics as “a conductor with the drive and ability to
fully relay artistic thoughts” and praised for his “interpretations of definition, precision and
most importantly, unmitigated joy.” Ensembles under his direction have received critical
acclaim in the United States and Europe for their “exceptional spirit, verve and precision,”
their “sterling examples of innovative programming” and “the kind of artistry that is often
thought to be the exclusive purview of top symphonic ensembles.”
He currently serves as Director of Wind Activities, Music Director of the University of
Maryland Wind Orchestra and Chair of the Wind and Percussion Division at the
University of Maryland where he holds the rank of Professor. Under his leadership, the
Wind Orchestra has been invited to perform at national and divisional conferences of the
College Band Directors National Association, and in collaborations with major artists such
as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, eighth blackbird, the Imani Winds and Daniel
Bernard Roumain.
His performances have been heard in broadcasts throughout the U.S., on Austrian
National Radio (ÖRF) and Southwest German Television, and have been released
internationally on the Primavera label. Numerous major composers including George
Crumb, Christopher Rouse, Louis Andriessen, Karel Husa, Olly Wilson, Barbara Kolb
and Warren Benson have praised his performances of their works.
Votta has taught conducting seminars in the U.S. and Israel, and has guest conducted
and lectured at institutions such as the Prague Conservatory, the Eastman School of Music,
the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the National Arts Camp at Interlochen.
He has also appeared at the Midwest Clinic, at conferences of the College Band Directors
National Association and the Conductors Guild.
He is the author of numerous articles on wind literature and conducting.
His arrangements and editions for winds have been performed and recorded by university
and professional wind ensembles in the U.S., Europe and Japan. He has served as Editor
of the College Band Directors National Association Journal, as a member of the Executive
Board of the International Society for the Investigation of Wind Music (IGEB) and on the
board of the Conductors Guild.
Before his appointment at Maryland, Votta held conducting positions at the University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Duke University, Ithaca College, the University of South
Florida, Miami University (Ohio) and Hope College.
Votta holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting degree from the Eastman School of
Music where he served as Assistant Conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble and studied
with Donald Hunsberger. A native of Michigan, Votta received his undergraduate training
and Master of Music degrees from the University of Michigan, where he studied with
H. Robert Reynolds.
As a clarinetist, Votta has performed as a soloist throughout the U.S. and Europe.
His solo and chamber music recordings are available on the Partridge and Albany labels.
claricesmithcenter.umd.edu | 301.405.ARTS (2787)
ABOUT THE CONDUCTORS
William L. Lake Jr. graduated from the University of Maryland College Park with
a Bachelor’s in Music Liberal Arts — Jazz Studies: Piano Performance degree in 2006.
While attending the University of Maryland, Lake studied with Jon Ozment, Dr. L.
Richmond Sparks, Director of Bands and Chris Vadala. He was Drum Major of the
“Mighty Sound of Maryland” for four consecutive years. After graduating in 2006,
he continued with post-baccalaureate studies in instrumental music education with
Dr. Bruce Carter.
Lake was hired by Prince George’s County Public School System as Director of
Bands at Gwynn Park High School in 2006. The Gwynn Park High School band
program grew from 12 to 65 students over the five years of his tenure as director and
music department chair. Notable achievements as Director of Bands include: Superior
Ratings at the Maryland State Band Director’s Association State Festival (2011), Superior
Ratings at the Prince George’s County Public School’s Instrumental Music Assessment
Festival (2010 and 2011) and a special invitation of the “Marching Yellow Jackets” to
Hamilton, Bermuda.
Lake completed the Master of Music Education Degree from Boston University in
2011. Currently, he is enrolled in the Master of Music — Wind Conducting Program at
the University of Maryland as a student of Michael Votta Jr. He has guest conducted the
Prince George’s County Summer Instrumental Music Camp and the Prince George’s
County Middle School Honors Band. He is a member of the Conductors Guild, the
College Band Director’s National Association, Kappa Kappa Psi, National Honorary
Band Fraternity, Inc. and Alpha Phi Alpha, Fraternity, Inc.
“…of a rare and special type…”
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