Brothers in Arts – Program Notes
Copland: Quiet City
In 1939, Aaron Copland wrote the score to an experimental dramatic work by the playwright Irwin Shaw.
Despite the direction of Elia Kazan and a fascinating premise, Shaw’s play failed after only a few
performances, and never made it out of previews. As the saying goes, “That’s show-biz for you.” Despite
its failure, portions of Copland’s score long outlived the play, which itself relied very heavily upon music
as its subject. In the play, the protagonist Gabriel Mellon, a businessman in his forties and living in New
York City, has shifted away from his true self: leftist, artistic, and Jewish – in many ways reflective of
Copland – to become a buttoned-up, “conventional” American, and to pursue the stereotypical
American dream. His brother David is his dramatic foil: a jazz trumpet player who, unlike Gabriel,
pursued his artistic dreams. Gabriel is plagued with insecurity, and in those moments in the play when
he remembers his past, he believes that he hears David’s trumpet, and the audience actually hears a
recreation of the music playing in Gabriel’s mind.
Copland’s score, with its lone trumpet soloist sounding against an austere and truly nocturnal musical
landscape scored for English Horn and strings, encapsulates the protagonist’s profile. He marks in the
score, for instance, that the soloist should play at times “nervously.” What’s more, it perfectly evokes
the image of someone alone in an expansive place. The city, with its millions of nameless faces, can
leave one feeling isolated. Copland’s evocative music, even without consideration of its dramatic
connection, captures this feeling of isolation in the titular Quiet City.
At the opening, the widely spaced upper strings recreate the darkness of the city at night: a faint whistle
of wind mixing with the white noise of traffic. Copland marks the score at half-note equals 60 beats per
minute, meaning that musical time moves at the same pace as the ticking second hand of real time, yet
because of the ambiguity of rhythmic values, musical time is hardly discernable. After this introduction,
the distant call of the trumpet quivers anxiously. The English Horn, perhaps another voice in our
protagonist’s mind, echoes the trumpet’s statement. It had snuck into the accompanying texture at the
opening of the score, yet takes on a far more active role after the trumpet’s initial statement,
responding to the voice inside our protagonist’s head. In the following episode, however, it is the English
Horn which first presents an expressive, sinuous new theme, to which the trumpet responds. The two
instruments interact in a sort of dialogue throughout the entirety of Quiet City: at times, in a sort of calland-response configuration, while at others, in imitative polyphony. If, in fact, these are two distinct
voices, then their interaction makes for a fascinating psychological portrait. When they speak over one
another, which voice is dominant, and what is its effect? It is the English Horn which has the last word in
the end. The nervous trumpet soloist, returning to its initial state of anxiety, fades away, leaving its
companion, along with the austere strings, alone on the unison C that began the work.
This orchestral extract from the incidental music of the play has been known in its present form since its
premiere, and is frequently performed in concert. However, in 2011, an unpublished version of the
score, in its original configuration and instrumentation, was unearthed and heard for perhaps the first
time in decades, at Copland House at Merestead in Mt. Kisco, New York. The work, for trumpet, clarinet,
saxophones, and piano, is, if anything, even more austere than this orchestral version: stark, modern,
and cold. In this day of smartphones, smart watches, and glasses with built-in computer screens, we can
perhaps relate to Copland’s Quiet City more than ever before. In this busy world of constant
technological interaction, are we more together, or more alone?
Brubeck: Brothers in Arts
It is no accident that the title Brothers in Arts bears a resemblance to the phrase “brothers-in-arms,”
used since the Middle Ages to signify allies fighting for a common goal. The term became particularly
significant in the First and Second World Wars, when soldiers from many nations united across borders
with a shared victory in mind. Brothers in Arts likewise was born of a cross-cultural union: that between
two composers and jazz musicians, the American Chris Brubeck, and the French Guillaume Saint-James.
The work was written in 2014 to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the Liberation of Paris.
From August 19 until August 25, 1944, over a grueling and hard-fought week, The French Forces of the
Interior, joined by the U.S. Third Army, under the leadership of General George Patton, ousted Nazi
forces, who had occupied Paris since 1940. Their surrender was followed by the re-instatement of the
Provisional Government of the French Republic, and its President, Charles DeGaulle, addressed the
public with the following deliverance:
The enemy is staggering, but he is not beaten yet. He remains on our soil. It will not even be enough that
we have, with the help of our dear and admirable Allies, chased him from our home for us to consider
ourselves satisfied after what has happened. We want to enter his territory as is fitting, as victors.
This is why the French vanguard has entered Paris with guns blazing. This is why the great French army
from Italy has landed in the south and is advancing rapidly up the Rhône valley. This is why our brave
and dear Forces of the interior will arm themselves with modern weapons. It is for this revenge, this
vengeance and justice, that we will keep fighting until the final day, until the day of total and complete
victory.
This duty of war, all the men who are here and all those who hear us in France know that it demands
national unity. We, who have lived the greatest hours of our History, we have nothing else to wish than to
show ourselves, up to the end, worthy of France. Long live France!
As DeGaulle’s words reveal, the war was far from finished, but the liberation proved a critical step in the
march towards victory, and demonstrated the degree to which the alliance between nations was vital to
victory. It was “with the help of our dear and admirable Allies” that France achieved this essential goal in
rousing morale.
Brothers in Arts – co-commissioned by the French Orchestre symphonique de Bretagne, Florida’s
Sinfonia Gulf Coast, and the Oakland East Bay Symphony – is scored for jazz quintet and orchestra. A
love of jazz music is just one of many things that has long been shared between France and the United
States. In fact, there was a time when jazz musicians, particularly black artists, found far greater success
in Paris than they would have found in New York City. The jazz quintet is the natural medium for
Brubeck and Saint-James, and is infused into the texture of the larger orchestra, almost in a manner akin
to a Concerto Grosso of the Baroque Period.
Truly the musical equivalent of a political and cultural collaboration, Brubeck and Saint-James each
composed four of the eight movements comprising the work, meaning that they retain, to a certain
extent, their own individuality as artists and musicians. However, in composing their respective
movements, they react to the work of their collaborator, assembling them together to create a unified
whole. In this sense, the work itself functions in the same way as the Liberation that it commemorates:
each nation working independently, yet in tandem and communication, to achieve a common goal.
For Brubeck – heir to a great musical legacy in jazz through his father Dave – and Saint-James, whose
father likewise introduced his son to music, the work is deeply personal, as the following anecdote told
by Brubeck describes:
“Brothers in Arts: 70 Years of Liberty" was co-written by me and by Guillaume Saint-James in honor of
the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of France. It tells our fathers' stories surrounding those events 70
years ago.
Guillaume's father was a young boy, whose life was saved when US field doctors performed an
emergency appendectomy on him. The young boy heard American jazz while recovering, and later
became a country doctor and amateur musician.
My dad was in General Patton's army and came through Normandy after D-Day. An Army captain heard
Dave playing piano and had him form a band - The Wolf Pack Band - which toured with the USO shows. It
was also the Army's first integrated band.
This work commemorates not only a critical event in the histories of the United States and France, but
also a critical moment in the family histories of its composers.