The fiddles start fiddlin’, a drum marks out a beat, someone shakes a tambourine, and you can’t help but move your feet. You tap your toes, and if the energy is high, stomp your foot. We are, as a species, deeply connected to rhythm and melody. It’s in our blood, bones, and feet. From rocking during a nighttime lullaby, to beating the drums of war, movement and music have gone hand in hand since time immemorial.
This evening we pull together music spanning almost a millenia. We hope it will at turns make you want to dance, sing, and maybe even have you saying, “I’m not crying, you’re crying.”
We begin with a little ditty that was but a dabble of one of the 13th century’s great monarchs, Alfonso X “el Sabio” (1221-1284) of Spain. He was renowned for his intellect, talents, and the sophistication of his court at Toledo (“el Sabio” means “the Wise”). There, he encouraged the development of math, the sciences, and the law. However, his grand plan to reorganize the Holy Roman Empire in Toledo, replacing the German emperor with himself, did not work out. Despite this setback, he left a lasting legacy, including a manuscript collection of more than 400 Cantigas de Santa Maria, including the lively Cantiga that launches today’s program.
Moving forward a couple hundred years, we encounter Joan Ambrosio Dalza (late 1400s, early 1500s, Milan, Italy). He was known only through a single published collection of dances, ricercares, lute arrangements of vocal works, and a few miscellaneous works. Among them is the sprightly Saltarello Alla Veneziana (Venetian Saltarello). A saltarello is a lively dance, typically in triple meter, that includes a distinctive leaping step. The work’s rhythm alternates between 2 and 3, creating a delightful swinglike feeling.
Continuing with the dance theme, Jean-Marie Leclair (born May 10, 1697, Lyon, France; died October 22, 1764, Paris) provides the jaunty Tambourin to keep the program moving. After studying violin and dance in Italy, Leclair returned to France for a job in Paris, where he was to remain, working in various court positions. He was a popular violinist and composer, and highly influential as the founder of the French school of violin playing. His life wasn’t all success. His first wife died in 1728, and his second marriage ended in divorce in 1758. Though he lived to be a good age for the time, his downfall wasn’t natural. Some say it was the ex-wife, bitter about their split, while others suspect a musician nephew desperate for work, but whoever it was left poor Leclair to die of stab wounds in his Paris home on a fall night in 1764.
Around the same time Leclair was wowing the Parisian elite, the seeds of Bluegrass music were being planted in areas of what are now North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia by immigrants hailing from Ireland, Scotland, and Denmark. As the centuries rolled on, this music took on a unique flavor, especially as elements of gospel and blues commingled with the music of black slaves, who brought their own traditions from Africa, also stretching back into the 1600s.
Mark O’Connor’s (born August 5, 1961, Mountlake Terrace, WA) Appalachia Waltz for Violin, Viola, and Cello is a touching work in three that is less of a waltz than it is a remembrance of a dance, seen in the mind of one looking out over the soft green Appalachian mountains. Originally scored for solo violin, the work has since been arranged for many ensembles, including the version we hear this evening.
Among America’s influential musical iconoclasts, Henry Cowell (born March 11, 1897, Menlo Park, CA; died December 10, 1965, Shady, NY) is one you don’t hear about very often. He was among the first composers to introduce tone clusters and play directly on the strings of the piano (listen to the incredibly creepy The Banshee from 1925 and see if you can sleep with the lights off), and was a profound influence on John Cage and Lou Harrison. Not all his music was clanging bombast and frightening soundscapes. His Two-Bits for Flue and Piano, on the other hand, are lovely settings of Irish folk tunes, which were a source of steady inspiration for Cowell.
African-American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (born June 14, 1932, New York, NY; died March 9, 2004, Chicago, IL) was most well-known as a conductor and composer, but was also steeped in dance, jazz, pop, and film music. Though his 2001 solo work Louisiana Blues Strut (A Cakewalk) is written in a classical rondo form, this virtuosic showpiece is a modern take on the blues, with bended notes and an unmistakable rhythmic groove.
Mark O’Connor’s vibrant Emily’s Reel for Violin, Viola and Cello follows. A reel has its roots in Irish and Scottish dances with an emphasis on the first and third beats. This particular reel was written as a gift to Yo-Yo Ma’s daughter, Emily.
We compare O’Connor’s reel with traditional Nordic tunes: Six Tour from Vendsyssel: The Topped Hen/The Peat Dance arranged by the Danish String Quartet. The ensemble included the following note about the work: “A six tour is a lively dance that closely resembles the Irish jig or classical gigue. “Den Toppede Høne” (The Topped Hen) is one of the most popular tunes from the Vendsyssel area of Denmark. “Tørvedansen” (The Peat Dance) is a Danish reel from the Roskilde area. In this dance the men would traditionally dance around pieces of peat on the dance floor. Later these peat pieces were substituted by women, who of course are much nicer to dance around.”
What follows is a virtuosic contemporary take on bluegrass and jazz from famed American composer John Corigliano (born February 16, 1938, New York, NY). The showstopping STOMP for Solo Violin, was written for a violin competition in 2011, and has taken on a life of its own for violinists brave enough to try it.
We end today’s exploration with Jennifer Higdon’s (born December 31, 1962, Brooklyn, NY) gorgeous take on Amazing Grace. Her tender and heartfelt treatment of the famous hymn reminds us that all the stompin’ and hollerin’ and hootin’ we do on this fine earth is, in the end, the expression of our individual needs and desires, and underneath it all is the great and beautiful unity of our greater humanity.
–ML