Contemporary Classics February 6, 2018 Music of Protest

Again ourintroductory music is from the work Nocturne by Kirsten Volness.  Tonight’s show has the theme of Protestand was inspired by a wonderful article by Alex Ross in the New Yorker aboutthe concert which  featuredmusicians on both sides of the border playing John Luther Adams”Inuksuit” in protest of the border wall.  There is so much to protest – border walls, nuclearstockpiles and conflicts over whose button is the biggest and growing fascismboth abroad and in our own government. So tonight’s show is PROTEST!!

John Adams Doctor Atomic Symphony

Nuclear stockpiles, the arming of North Korea and the debateover whose little hands has the biggest nuclear button has pushed us closer tothe 12 midnight.  Thanks to thisdebate with are now at 11:57:30 according to the Bulletin of AtomicScientists.  So lets begin with awork by John Adams based upon his opera “Doctor Atomic” which tells the storyof the development of the first atomic bomb.  It is a cautionary tale.  We will be playing tonight the Symphony based upon withwork.  You will be hearing therevised version in 3 movements played without pause  1. The Laboratory, 2. Panic and 3. Trinity. Music was takenfrom the overture, various interludes and orchestral settings were made ofarias like Oppenheimer’s signature “Batter My Heart.” 

Here is a performance of the Doctor Atomic Symphony withDavid Robertson conducting the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from the album J. Adams: Doctor AtomicSymphony & Guide to Strange Places       

 

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima byKrzysztof Penderecki

Threnody isa lament.  Penderecki later said,”It existed only in my imagination, in a somewhat abstract way.” Whenhe heard an actual performance, “I was struck by the emotional charge ofthe work…I searched for associations and, in the end, I decided to dedicateit to the Hiroshima victims”. The piece tends to leave an impression bothsolemn and catastrophic, earning its classification as a threnody. On 12October 1964, Penderecki wrote, “Let the Threnody express my firm beliefthat the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten and lost.”  And it should never be repeated.

 

Here is a performance of Krzysztof Penderecki’s  Threnody For The Victims Of HiroshimaFor 52 Stringed Instruments with Wojcieck Czepiel conducting the CracowPhilharmonic Orchestra from the album Penderecki: Orchestral Works Vol. 1          

 

 Canti di vita e d’amore: sul ponte diHiroshima by Luigi Nono

Canti divita e d’amore (Songs of Life and Love) covers three subjects: massdestruction, the tortured individual, and hope, both uncertain and impatient.  Here is the first movement “atHiroshima” which  has dramaticblocks of orchestral sound conjure up the 200 000 victims of the bomb that hitHiroshima and which is cursed for eternity in the song of a man whose face andhands are burnt by radiation.   

Here is aperformance of Canti di vita e d’amore: sul ponte di Hiroshima by Luigi Nono byCanti di vita e d’amore: sul ponte di Hiroshima (1962)  performedby soprano Monika Wiech            on the album Composers Through Time – Italy     

Arnold Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon 

But the growth of fascism and the seeming acceptance of dictatorialpolicies requires us to step up and oppose fascism.  Written during the Second World War the Ode to Napoleon byArnold Schoenberg was composed for Reciter, String Quartet, and Piano and waswritten to as a protest against tyranny. Lord Byron’s poem castigating Napoleon served the composer in expressinghis own feelings concerning latter-day tyrants. For this purpose a reciter isused, declaiming in the manner of inflected speech – resembling theSprechstimme of the composer’s Pierrot Lunaire, which is notated precisely bymeans of notes written above and below a single-line staff. Most of theprincipal musical figures are derived from these inflections, the Reciter oftenparticipating with the instrumentalists in the exposé of the musical ideas.  

Here is a performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleonby The Villers Quartet, René Leibowitz, Ellen Adler & Jacques Monod   fromthe album Arnold Schoenberg Premieres: Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41, String Trio,Op. 45           

John Luther Adams”Inuksuit”

We willclose with the inspiration for tonight’s show and that is John Luther Adams”Inuksuit”. Inuksuit is a work that fits seamlessly into theenvironment itself. Scored for 9 to 99 percussion players who are meant to bewidely dispersed in an outdoor area Inuksuit has been described by the New YorkTimes as “the ultimate environmental piece,” while the New Yorker’sAlex Ross hailed it as “one of the most rapturous experiences of mylistening life.”   The titlerefers to the Stonehenge-like markers used by the Inuit and other nativepeoples to orient themselves in Arctic spaces. Adams structured the rhythmiclayers in the score to mimic these stone shapes, but there’s an open-endednessto how the music is performed that reflects the sense of freedom behind it.  This recording  was recorded with 32 percussionists on June 12, 2012, in theforest surrounding Guilford Sound in Guilford, VT.