In Voices of the Past, the Maryland Symphony Orchestra brings together four composers whose music speaks across centuries, cultures, and lived experience. From the lyrical warmth of Dvořák to the sharp historical reckoning of Louis W. Ballard, this program invites listeners to consider how music carries memory, identity, and meaning forward in time. Music Director and Conductor Elizabeth Schulze has shaped the program as a conversation between voices that might not often share the same stage, yet speak powerfully to one another. In this Behind the Score conversation, she reflects on the ideas that guided the program, the stories within the music, and what she hopes audiences will take with them.
Q: What first drew you to the idea of building a program around “Voices of the Past”?
A: Our February programs have often focused on music for a smaller orchestra or various chamber ensembles, openings up wonderful opportunities to present music not regularly heard by a symphonic audience. This entire season has been envisioned as a conversation among composers living and those of the past. Older familiar pieces serve as jumping off points for reflection, recognition and new insight. The newer, less familiar works rethink tradition in exciting and unexpected ways. Together they provide an opportunity to gain new perspectives and appreciation of the beauties and provocations that music affords its audience (and its players).
The four composers on our February program have such wonderful personal stories and each lived in a particular time and circumstance that shaped their compositional expression. Haydn was a trend setter. His ingenuity shaped what we understand as a “symphonic form.” And yet, he was constantly fiddling with that form and exploring the possibilities of expression within it. Dvorak was one of the most naturally gifted musicians of all time. Melodies came easily, but his passion for machines and modern technology found expression in the sophisticated ways those effortless melodies were set within his compositions. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, found a warm welcome in the American classical music conservatory of the 1950’s. As both a student and later, as a teacher and distinguished conductor in the New York centers of music, he gained recognition and standing as a versatile composer, who moved easily in the musical worlds of jazz, blues, ballet, theater and the concert hall. His early Sinfonietta has all the earmarks of a remarkable musical voice, embracing tradition, while giving familiar musical tropes a new context.
The Native-American Louis Ballard used the language and scaffolding of classical music to tell his particular story to an audience mostly unfamiliar with the culture of his people. His work “An Incident at Wounded Knee” provided the opportunity for classical audiences to enter a hidden (or ignored) world of ritual, conflict, prayer and profound connection to all creation. As a classically trained musician, Ballard used the rhythmic language of composers like Stravinsky (Rite of Spring) and Bartok, as well as the American declamatory music like that of Copland and Harris, but only so much as those musical gestures could provide a way to guide his audience into another world of sound and feeling. Connecting Ballard’s powerful and mystical work back to our particular program, I am reminded of something he included in a program note for his piece: “ Dvořák, in 1893, predicted that America should have a form of nationalistic music built upon Indian music and Black slave songs. So I felt that I was in good company when I took up my pen to express the sufferings of my people, their regeneration and hopes for a better future life … It is my hope that this work will be indelibly associated with the Indian movement and ideals, but also that the worth of the work itself shall rise above all political emotions of this epoch.”
Q: Dvořák’s Wind Serenade opens the concert. What role does it play in setting the tone for the evening?
A: Inspired after hearing a performance of a serenade by Mozart, Dvorak composed his own warm, brilliantly conceived work of immense beauty. Dvorak was still relatively young and unknown when he wrote this serenade. It’s publication, critical recognition and endorsement by Brahms set him on the path to world-wide esteem. Though modeled on an older form, Dvorak delights in adding the sounds of his time, particularly marching militias, organ-grinders and town hall dances – all refreshingly modern.
Q: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Sinfonietta No. 1 is less familiar to many audiences. What do you find most compelling about this work?
A: Though filled with the energy of his youth (20 or 21 at the time), this work is a mature, dynamic, gorgeous and infectious expression of compositional prowess and the pure joy of music making. Again, like Dvorak, he looks to the past, this time Handel and Bach, to find musical gestures that are reflected back through the language of jazz, American elegy and the sounds of 1950’s New York City.
Q: Incident at Wounded Knee by Louis W. Ballard carries significant historical weight. How do you approach a work with such powerful subject matter?
A: It’s a shame that the work has yet to be professionally recorded. There are only a few YouTube videos of live performances available to whet a listener’s appetite. Nevertheless, Ballard has put everything into the score and it’s a privilege to discern the mysteries of this work without reference to a well established tradition of performance. It’s a difficult and technically challenging work musically, but also because it occupies two worlds and musical traditions at the same time. While the specific historical event that motivated the work is still within some of our lived memory, having some decades of distance in time and emotional engagement from the violence and deep resulting sadness of those months in 1972 may allow us to do better justice to the ultimate message of strength and resilience that Louis Ballard wished to convey.
Q: Haydn’s Symphony No. 64 closes the program. Why was this the right work to conclude the concert?
A: Haydn wrote the following phrase “Tempora mutantur” on the title page of his score. The quote refers to an old adage: “Time changes and we change with the times.” Haydn perhaps is referring to the upending of norms in this specific symphony. The first movement surprises immediately with sharp and surprising dynamic contrasts. The second movement confounds the listener with phrases that sound unfinished with resolution only coming at the beginning of a new phrase. The last two movements have their own humor and exuberance. This is Haydn at his best, exploring, surprising and being his fascinating self.
So too, the whole program is about how time changes and the art of music changes with the times, with four remarkable voices, skillful and eloquent messengers of their personal circumstance, all speaking to us through a familiar lens that casts limitless light.
Q: How do these four composers speak to one another across such different eras and backgrounds?
A: This is the best part of the program for me: the conversation about the past, about tradition and what it means to express the present and the personal in that context. There’s no mistaking one compositional voice for the other and yet they use same instruments and notation on the page to create completely different and compelling sound worlds.
Q: Is there a moment in the program that you personally find especially moving?
A: Each work has its moments, stopping the breath, hastening the pulse or causing a smile or sigh of admiration. I can’t pick just one.
Q: What do you hope audiences feel as they leave the theater after Voices of the Past?
A: Music is such a compelling art, with entire worlds available to your ears and your imagination. I hope our audience will have their understanding of music widened with beauty, with confrontation, with reflection, comfort and humor – it’s all there and I hope, more!
Q: For someone attending this concert who may be newer to orchestral music, what would you want them to know?
A: This concert offers a more intimate connection to our musicians, with smaller ensembles and more solo writing for individual members of the group. At the same time, the music offers a connection to over 250 years of classical tradition – an incredible journey through an ever-changing sound world expressing human experience at its most personal and its most universal.
We hope these reflections offer a glimpse into the heart of Voices of the Past and the ideas that shape this program. We would be honored to welcome you in the audience and share an evening of music that reflects history, perspective, and enduring artistic voice. For tickets, visit tickets.marylandsymphony.org.
