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John Williams
Star Wars Main Theme
Composer, conductor and arranger John Williams is probably the
most successful and best known film composer of all time, with
such blockbuster scores as The Poseidon Adventure, Jaws, E.T.,
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List and dozens
of others. But his scores to George Lucas’s Star Wars and
its sequels have become the all-time favorites.
George Lucas needed a composer to match his grand space epic.
Williams produced a grand Wagnerian score that became a smash
success. Lucas states “It took the genius of John Williams
to fully realize [my] vision. His brilliant score brought the
original trilogy to life beyond my wildest dreams...Every fan
of Star Wars – and of great music – is in
his debt.” It earned Williams an Oscar.
What many people do not know is that in addition to suites extracted
from his film scores, Williams has also composed extensively
for the concert hall. His symphonies, the Violin Concerto, Flute
Concerto, Bassoon Concerto and numerous chamber works, have been
performed around the world, especially by the Boston Pops, which
he conducted between 1980 and 1993.
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Gustav Holst
The Planets
Composer, educator and conductor Gustav Holst is known outside
his native England essentially as a one-work composer. The
Planets, composed between 1914 and 1916, gained him international
fame, but he detested its popularity. Snippets of its opulent
music with its broad orchestral palette have also been favorite
fodder for television commercials.
Holst came from a musical family and was taught the piano by
his father. He was a precocious, but not a particularly healthy,
child who started composing while in grammar school. As a teenager
he developed neuritis in his right arm, forcing him to give up
the piano, but he picked up the trombone as a cure for his asthma.
At the Royal College of Music, which he entered in 1893, he continued
with the trombone in addition to composition, and from 1897 to
1903 performed as a freelance trombonist, mostly with opera companies.
The experience inspired him to write numerous works for brass
band, including two Suites for Military Band and Hammersmith,
the latter written for the BBC Military Band.
Holst was influenced by mysticism and developed his own individual
blend of Indian music and English folksong. His early works were
inspired by the Vedas, Sanskrit holy verses, which he modified
and adapted for his own compositions. In 1908 he wrote a chamber
opera, Savitri, based on a story from the great Sanskrit epic
Mahabharata.
A quiet introverted person, for most of his life Holst devoted
his musical efforts to teaching. From 1905 until his death he
taught music at St. Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, where
many of his compositions were written for the school's orchestra
and chorus. In 1906, on his doctor's advice, he went on vacation
to Algeria and bicycled in the desert. The experience was the
inspiration for the orchestral work Beni Mora. When it was first
performed in England, one critic complained, "We do not ask for
Biskra dancing girls in Langham Place." Composer Ralph Vaughan
Williams once noted that had the piece been premiered in Paris,
it would have made Holst a household name some ten years earlier
than his success with The Planets. In 1932 Holst was visiting
lecturer in composition at Harvard; among his students was composer
Elliott Carter.
The inspiration for The Planets was not astronomy, but
astrology, to which Holst was introduced in 1913, when he began
studying the writing of the aptly named astrologer, Alan Leo.
He attempted to depict in music the clearly defined astrological "personalities" and
influences of the seven planets (Pluto was not discovered until
1930 and has now been demoted anyway.) His musical language was
strongly influenced by the new developments in music at the time,
especially by Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky and Edward Elgar.
Holst arranged the seven movements according to musical, not
astronomical, criteria. Thus their arrangement does not correspond
to their orbital distance from the sun:
Mars, The Bringer of War: This martial movement
with its brutally percussive machine rhythms, was actually
written a few months before the outbreak of World War I.  According
to Holst's directions, it is to be played slightly faster than
a regular march, to give it a mechanized and inhuman character.
Venus, The Bringer of Peace; is typical of the andante movement
in a four-movement symphony. After a long introduction, the movement
develops two lyric melodies, one initiated by a solo violin, the second
by a solo oboe. &
Mercury, The Winged Messenger is a scherzo with
a perpetual motion rhythm and sparkling orchestration.
Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity, with its broad central British
folk-like melody was strongly influenced by Edward Elgar.
Holst considered Saturn, The Bringer of Old Age, with
its serene and subtle orchestration, as the best movement.
Uranus, The Magician: This movement appears to owe quite
a lot to Paul Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but there
is a question whether Holst was familiar with that score. &
Holst added wordless female voices to Neptune, The Mystic,
recalling Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe as well as Debussy's "Sirenes" from Nocturnes. & |
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Claude Debussy
Claire de lune from Suite bergamasque (Arr.
Carmen Dragon)
As a budding composer, Claude Debussy disliked the piano because
its percussive tone did not allow for the subtle gradations in
dynamics and timbre he was seeking. Although most of his early
works are songs, he gradually mastered the piano’s shortcomings
until it became his major means of expression.
Debussy composed the Suite bergamasque in 1890 while he
was still fairly unknown and published it after extensive revisions
only in 1905. By that time, after L’après-midi
d’un faune, Pelléas et Mélisande and
the String Quartet, he had become famous – or notorious.
The order and number of movements in the Suite was probably affected
by publishing, rather than musical considerations, since even
the titles were not finalized until it went to print. The Suite
belongs to a tradition of French keyboard music dating back to
the eighteenth century with the keyboard works of the Couperin
family and especially Jean-Philippe Rameau. These are short pieces
evoking a mood, an image or even the personality of a specific
individual. Like so many of Debussy’s subsequent works,
they are deliberately referential, containing programmatic, visual
or musical allusions that would have been readily familiar to
his audience.
The significance of the title bergamasque is uncertain.
Bergamo is about 25 miles northeast of Milan, considered the
traditional home of white-faced clown Harlequin of the commedia
dell’arte, the street theater dating from the sixteenth
century; Debussy had always been a fan of the tradition.
The third movement, the famous Claire de lune, is Debussy’s
most used – and abused – composition. Because of
its familiarity, it can evoke superficial salon music, unless
played with great care. The movement was not born with this name;
the original title was Promenade sentimentale, which Debussy
changed just before publication. The title Claire de lune came
from Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine’s poem, which Debussy
had already set twice to music. In the poem appear the alliterative
lines “masques et bergamasques” perhaps giving
Debussy the idea for the title of the Suite.
Although the theme is
universally familiar to concertgoers and piano students, it may
not be so obvious that after the first statement of the main
melody this
five-minute piece has no harmonic resolution until the very end.
It wanders through a series of subsidiary melodies, maintaining
a high level of musical tension for such a languid piece.
Conductor, composer and arranger Carmen Dragon (1914-1984) was
conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in the 1940s and 50s,
during which time they performed on “Standard Oil Hour” on
NBC, a program aimed at elementary school children.
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Carl Nielsen
Helios Overture, Op. 17
The most important Danish composer of the post-Romantic period,
Carl Nielsen, influenced the course of Scandinavian music early
in the last century. He was a versatile composer, composing in
nearly all genres, but is best known outside Denmark for his
symphonies and concertos. In Denmark, his choral works and simple
songs are also extremely popular.
Nielsen came from a poor family, in a proud but poor country
trying to recover from the debacle of its war with the Prussian
might in 1864. His father was a house painter and amateur musician.
While he always expressed love for music during his childhood,
he never amounted to much as a performer, playing signal horn
and trombone in an amateur band until he was 14, at which point
he took up the violin. He received his first professional instruction
only at the age of 19 when he entered the Copenhagen Conservatory,
an education that landed him the undistinguished job as a second
violinist with the orchestra of the Royal Theatre. He remained
in this position until 1914 while continually developing his
skills as a composer. Already In the 1890s, his early compositions
started to draw attention, and in 1901 he was granted a modest
annual governmental stipend.
Nielsen’s limited education, however, only spurred him
on to learn everything he could about European culture, philosophy
and aesthetics and psychology. This informal but intense study
was a lifelong pursuit that resulted in a broad humanistic approach
to life, which is reflected in his works. Although he was virtually
unknown elsewhere in Europe, he gradually achieved recognition
in his native Denmark as composer, teacher, conductor – and
essayist,
Nielsen’s early works, including the first three symphonies,
were strongly influenced by Brahms and Dvorák. But his
comfortable Weltanschauung (world-view) was shattered
by the outbreak of World War I and the ensuing slaughter. It
changed his musical language radically, rendering it more austere
and somber. Probably his most frequently performed works today
are the Aladdin Suite and the Maskarade Overture.
In 1903 Nielsen and his wife, a successful sculptor, went on
a journey to Greece. On a cruise through the Aegean Islands he
was awed by the stunning spectacle of the rising and setting
sun, which became the inspiration for the Helios Overture,
with its evocative tone painting. He wrote over the score: "Stillness
and darkness – the sun rises with a joyous song of praise – traces
its golden way – then sinks silently back into the sea."
In keeping with the image of the sun’s trip from dawn to
dusk, the Overture is constructed as a grand arch. After a murmuring
of undulating basses and cellos, a horn theme signals
the sunrise, with a gradual crescendo bolstered by additional
instruments. There
follows a second melody that the composer nurtures until
a trumpet fanfare signals the Allegro section
and presumably high noon. A
second calmer theme suggests the winding down of the day into
afternoon. Finally
a jaunty little fugue paves
the way into a return, backwards, of the theme of the second
example and finally to the horn call, now getting softer and
soft until the low strings of darkness. |
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