Austin Symphonic Band
Texas Bandmasters Association Concert
July 25, 2024
PROGRAM NOTES
Vanity Fair (A Comedy Overture) (1924)
Percy Fletcher (1879–1932)
Edited by Brant Karrick
Program note by Brant Karrick:
Vanity Fair is a concise and refreshing overture that is a wonderful example of Percy Fletcher’s light melodic style and first-rate scoring. Described by the composer as “a comedy overture in which several characters from Thackeray’s novel are portrayed,” the fast-slow-fast, single-movement form includes three main thematic ideas.
The opening, vivace A section features a vigorously energetic melody that is permeated with scales, sequences, repeated motives, and a variety of color. The second theme, in the dominant key of F, is somewhat slower and delightfully pompous in character. The highly romantic middle section, now in D-flat major, showcases a beautiful melody complimented by exquisite scoring, and is to be played with “sentimental expression.” A transition leads to the return of the opening vivace theme with some variety of harmony and scoring. The stately second theme, now in tonic, leads to an extended and electrifying coda that gains tempo and places the highest technical demands upon musicians, particularly the upper woodwinds.
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Fletcher was an English composer and organist. While Fletcher was quite successful as a musical director in the theater, he was a performer on organ, piano, and violin as well. He composed numerous ballads, choral works, orchestral suites, piano music, marches, pieces for organ, and works for military band. Throughout the 20th century, several of Fletcher’s compositions were performed as test pieces for the British National Band Championships. In 1913, his tone poem Labour and Love was performed by the Irwell Springs Band, that year’s winner. In 1926, Fletcher was invited again to present a piece for the championships. He created what some consider his most serious work, An Epic Symphony, in three movements. It was brought back as a test piece for the National Championships of 1938, 1951, and 1976. An Epic Symphony and Labour and Love are played today on occasion, but sadly most of Fletcher’s repertoire is rarely performed.
Listen for:
An energetic opening with sparkling woodwind embellishment.
A stately second theme led by the brass.
Expansive, melancholic writing in the middle section.
A frenetic closing recap of all themes.
Lift Up Your Heads (1892, this arrangement 2022)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912)
Transcribed by Shiree X. Williams
After studying composition at the Royal College of Music in England, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was soon championed by Sir Edward Elgar. This led to three tours of the United States and associations with W.E.B. Du Bois, Laurence Dunbar and the U.S. Marine Band. His thriving career was cut short at the age of 37 when he succumbed to pneumonia.
Lift Up Your Heads is based on Psalm 24, which reads:
Lift up your heads, you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
the Lord mighty in battle.
Listen for:
A flowing chorale in 3/4, with harmonization typical of the period.
Theme first provided by low brass, then saxophones, and finally full ensemble.
Lyrical solos by euphonium and oboe.
San Antonio Dances, Mvmt. II (2010)
Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)
Program note by the composer:
San Antonio Dances was composed as a tribute to a special city, whose captivating blend of Texan and Hispanic cultural influences enriched my life during my three years as a young music professor at Trinity University. It has been 20 years since I lived in San Antonio, but the city still tugs at my heartstrings and lives in this music.
The second movement’s lighthearted and joyous music celebrates San Antonio’s famous Riverwalk. Inspired by the streets and canals of Venice, Italy, architect Robert Hugman proposed his idea of converting the San Antonio riverfront into a beautiful urban park back in the 1920s. It took decades to complete, but the Riverwalk eventually became a reality—a 2-1/2 mile stretch of stunningly landscaped waterfront lined with hotels, restaurants, night clubs and shops.
Picture a group of friends seated at an outdoor patio of one of the Riverwalk’s many Tex-Mex restaurants, enjoying the scenery, the food, the company. In time, the evening settles in, the air cools, the mood brightens, the crowd picks up, and music is heard from every direction. Before you know it, the whole place is one giant fiesta that could go on forever.
Viva San Antonio!
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Frank Ticheli has been and continues to be one of Austin Symphonic Bands biggest supporters. His music and personality have lifted the band and its audience since the inception of the group. We congratulate him on his retirement and commend his astounding 32-year tenure at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California.
Listen for:
A relaxed clave-driven opening featuring an alto saxophone duet
Mariachi-type scoring with heavily vested trumpet, keyboard percussion, and haunting woodwinds
A building intensity reminiscent of Ravel’s Bolero
Safely Rest (2020)
Nicole Piunno (b. 1985)
Program note from the composer:
Safely Rest combines the melodies of Amazing Grace and Taps. These two melodies are woven together so they can be perceived as a single unit.
“‘Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home” — from Amazing Grace
“All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh” — from Taps
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Nicole Piunno views music as a vehicle for seeing and experiencing the realities of life. Her music often reflects the paradoxes in life and how these seeming opposites are connected as they weave together. Her harmonic language and use of counterpoint mirrors the complexity of our world by acknowledging light and dark, past and present, beauty and brokenness, confinement and freedom, chaos and order, spiritual and physical, life and death.
Listen for:
Gradual and instrumentally colorful shifts from section to section and individual instrument to full ensemble
Consonance and lingering dissonance as both melodies intertwine
You’ll Come Matilda (Endlessly Waltzing) (2015)
Jess Langston Turner (b. 1983)
The song Waltzing Matilda has been called “the unofficial national anthem of Australia.” Like most folksongs, the lyrics of Waltzing Matilda are based on actual events that took place, in this case during the Australian Great Shearers Strike of 1891.
The song tells the story of a starving drifter who stole a sheep from his former master. When the owner of the sheep came to confront the drifter with three armed members of the Australian National Guard, rather than allow himself to be captured and hanged for the theft, the drifter jumped into the watering hole beside which he had camped. The weight of his knapsack caused him to drown, and it is rumored that his ghost still haunts the watering hole to this day.
In this setting of Waltzing Matilda, the composer successfully communicates the story surrounding the song, rather than just offering a straightforward arrangement of a nice melody. Like the lyrics, the music takes a dark ominous turn near the middle of the piece, and at the end we are left with the voice of the drifter’s ghost whispering to all those who pass by the location of his demise.
Jess Langston Turner has won numerous honors for his music. He was the 2005 National Winner of the Young Artist Composition Competition of the Music Teachers National Association for his Sonata for Trumpet and Piano. He has won numerous prizes for his choral music, including the 2008 John Ness Beck Award and the 2009 first prize of the Roger Wagner International Choral-Composition Contest. In June 2010, he was named to the National Band Association Young Composers Mentoring Project and was awarded the 2010 Walter Beeler Prize for Wind Composition for Rumpelstilzchen: A Fairy Tale for Wind Ensemble. In 2012, his work for young band The Exultant Heart was awarded the Merrill Jones Composition Prize for Young Bands sponsored by the National Band Association.
Listen for:
Theme and variation form on the melody.
A rich and colorful orchestration.
Compositional nods to Charles Ives, Maurice Ravel, and Frances McBeth.
A whispered word echoed repeatedly at the end.
Over the Moon (2023)
Frank Ticheli (b. 1958)
Program note by the composer:
Much as in the epic tales of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and George Méliès's iconic 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, I sought to take the listener on a brief musical voyage Over the Moon. At the start, the listener rides down a steep slide to the surface of the moon. At once a tango-like dance, glittery and light as silk, swims through the air. Instrumental solos appear and disappear like the characters of a story.
Suddenly the dance takes a on forbidding quality—plunger-muted growls appear as the work propels itself forward. Perhaps this is the dark side of the moon. Lines intermingle, the work lifts itself: Over the Moon, in joyful exuberance.
At the halfway mark, there is a brief respite, as if looking forward toward the peaceful blue planet: a hymn to life, to the Earth, the Moon, and towards the boundless energy of the Universe. A lone clarinet connects us to the return of the dance, reaching ever higher and brighter. A triumphant climax is suddenly quashed by a steep slide, back down to life on Earth.
Listen for:
An unsettling but groovy shift of meter as the band goes from 8/8 (3+3+2) to 10/8 (3+3+2+2)
A rich tapestry of instrumental colors provided by soloists and imaginative combinations of instruments.
Who’s Who in Navy Blue (1920)
John Philip Sousa (1854–1932)
Program note by Paul Bierley:
It is not often that a composer dedicates music to a wooden American Indian. Sousa did just that by dedicating this march to Tecumseh, whose stern figurehead adorns Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Until a cache of old letters was recently discovered among Sousa family holdings in 1975, there was no proof of a request for this march coming from the student body of the U.S. Naval Academy. From the letters it was learned that a request had been made by Midshipman W.A. Ingram, president of the class of 1920. At that time, it was customary for each class to have its own new song or march to be performed at graduation exercises.
The manner of choosing a title for the march bordered on the comical. Midshipman T.R. Wirth suggested “Ex Scienta Tridens” (“From Science to Sea Power”). Sousa’s response to this was that it sounded like a remedy for the flu or a breakfast cereal. He suggested an alternate, “Admirals By and By.” Wirth stood firm with his proposal and pointed out that one of Sousa’s most famous marches was “Semper Fidelis,” also taken from the Latin.
At this point, Sousa apparently was inclined to withdraw his offer to compose the march, but Wirth pleaded with him not to take this course of action. Wirth tried to compromise on a title, offering such names as “Gentlemen Sailors,” “Seafarers,” and “Admirals All.” Sousa did some compromising of his own, and “Who’s Who in Navy Blue” became the title.
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If you’d like to sing along with the trio medley, Sousa provided the following lyrics:
The moon is shining on the rippling waves.
The stars are twinkling in the evening sky.
And in our dreams Tecumseh softly tells us
We’ll be Admirals by and by.
In recognition of Sousa’s contribution to the Navy during World War I—and presumably in appreciation for this composition—he was presented a miniature class ring and made an honorary member of the graduating class of 1921.
Listen for:
A bugle call intro followed by melodies full of upbeats, with just a hint of syncopation.
Beautiful counter lines in the euphonium and mid-range reeds.