INTRODUCING KELLY CORCORAN

Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin

Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Grave of Couperin) is an orchestral suite by French composer Maurice Ravel, originally composed for solo piano between 1914 and 1917.    While the original work was in six movements, the orchestral version (created in 1919) is in four movements, based on those of a traditional Baroque suite.  While Ravel began work on the suite in 1914, World War I interrupted his composing as Ravel joined the front lines as an ambulance driver and medical assistant.  During the years that followed, Ravel’s mother passed away, he witnessed the suffering of war first hand, suffered from depression, and struggled to regain his creative energies.

When Ravel began writing the work, it was intended to celebrate French musical traditions, honoring Couperin (1668-1733) who had been the King’s organist and who was best known for the over 200 imaginative harpsichord works he had composed.  Still, Ravel said of Le Tombeau de Couperin, “The homage is directed less in fact to Couperin himself than to French music of the eighteenth century.”  Yet, when Ravel returned to writing the work in June of 1917, changed from the war experience, he dedicated each movement to the memory of specific friends that had died fighting in the war. This transformed Tombeau into a commemoration and the cover of the original piano work includes a drawing by Ravel of a memorial cloth and urn. The title “tombeau” also refers to a musical composition written as a memorial to a noteworthy person.  The orchestrated version came at the request of Ravel’s publisher in 1919, with the movements re-ordered, and the expert orchestrations of Ravel transforming the work with beauty and clarity. The four orchestrated movements are Prélude, Forlane, Menuet, and Rigaudon.

The Prélude is dedicated to the memory of Lieutenant Jacques Charlot, with a perpetual motion figure featuring the winds and the oboe in particular. The Forlane that follows is dedicated to the memory of Lieutenant Gabriel DeLuc. Originally a lively dance from northern Italy, the forlane skips along in 6/8 again featuring the winds. The Menuet, dedicated to the memory of Jean Dreyfus, the stepson of one of Ravel’s friends, again features the oboe in a stately, somber dance. The final movement, the Rigaudon is dedicated to the brothers Pierre and Pascal Gaudin, and is also hopping and vibrant.

Copland: Quiet City

Quiet City, a short work for strings, trumpet solo and english horn solo, was composed by American composer Aaron Copland in 1940, premiered in 1941, and originally intended as incidental music to a play by Irwin Shaw.  The play, titled Quiet City, was performed in collaboration with the Group Theatre and after a short run was dropped. The play told the story of two brothers, one who abandons his identity and creative spirit in pursuit of material success, the other, a trumpet player, who expresses his emotions through his playing and remains in touch with his artistic, expressive identity.  The trumpet playing brother would wander the city at night imagining the thoughts and feelings of those around him through his playing.  While the play was short-lived, the music lives on as a popular piece that Copland re-arranged into its current configuration.  Of the work, Copland says the piece is “an attempt to mirror the troubled main character of Irwin Shaw’s play” and “Quiet City seems to have become a musical entity, superseding the original reasons for its composition”.

Montgomery: Coincident Dances

Composer Jessie Montogomery (b. 1981) grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the sounds of New York inspired her work Coincident Dances which was composed in 2017 and commissioned by the Chicago Sinfonietta.  Montgomery was named Musical America’s 2022 Composer of the Year and is also Composer in Residence for the Chicago Symphony, the Sphinx Virtuosi, and Bard College Conservatory.  The daughter of creative parents working in music and theater, Montgomery studied at the Juilliard School and Princeton and, in addition to composing, is active as a violinist, educator and advocate.

Note from the composer: Coincident Dances is inspired by the sounds found in New York’s various cultures, capturing the frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood. The work is a fusion of several different sound-worlds: English consort, samba, mbira dance music from Ghana, swing, and techno.

My reason for choosing these styles sometimes stemmed from an actual experience of accidentally hearing a pair simultaneously, which happens most days of the week walking down the streets of New York, or one time when I heard a parked car playing Latin jazz while I had rhythm and blues in my headphones. Some of the pairings are merely experiments. Working in this mode, the orchestra takes on the role of a DJ of a multicultural dance track.

— Jessie Montgomery

Coleman: Seven O’Clock Shout

Valerie Coleman’s Seven O’Clock Shout was commissioned, and virtually premiered, by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2020 and written to honor frontline workers in the COVID-19 pandemic.  Coleman, founder of Imani Winds, and known for her work as a flutist and composer, also composed Umoja, Anthem for Unity for the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Her works have been performed and commissioned by ensembles throughout the world including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera.

Note from the composer: Seven O’Clock Shout is an anthem inspired by the tireless frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the heartwarming ritual of evening serenades that brings people together amidst isolation to celebrate life and the sacrifices of heroes.  The work begins with a distant and solitary solo between two trumpets in fanfare fashion to commemorate the isolation forced upon humankind, and the need to reach out to one another. The fanfare blossoms into a lushly dense landscape of nature, symbolizing both the caregiving acts of nurses and doctors as they try to save lives, while nature is transforming and healing herself during a time of self-isolation.

Ostinato patterns are laid down by the bass section, allowing the English horn and strings to float over it, gradually building up to that moment at 7pm, when cheers, claps, clangings of pots and pans, and shouts ring through the air of cities around the world! The trumpets drive an infectious rhythm, layered with a traditional Son clave rhythm, while solo trombone boldly rings out an anthem within a traditional African call and response style. The entire orchestra ‘shouts’ back in response and the entire ensemble rallies into an anthem that embodies the struggles and triumph of humanity. The work ends in a proud anthem moment where we all come together with grateful hearts to acknowledge that we have survived yet another day.

– Valerie Coleman

Sir Edward Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme (“Enigma”) op. 36

Elgar describes the work as having “commenced in a spirit of humor & continued in deep seriousness.”  The story goes that Elgar came home one evening in 1898 after a long day of teaching and sat at the piano improvising.  His wife Alice enjoyed one theme in particular and Elgar began playing improvised variations of the theme depicting their friends, their characteristics and personalities.  The “friends pictured within” are clearly known and identified through their initials and nicknames, yet the “enigma” of the work remains a mystery unsolved.  Elgar wrote, “The enigma I will not explain—its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes,’ but is not played—so the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas … the chief character is never on the stage..” Scholars have been speculating on the enigma since the premiere of the work by the German conductor Hans Richter in 1899.   Everything from popular tunes, to general themes of “friendship” and “loneliness,” have been put forward as solutions to the puzzle, yet Elgar’s intent remains unknown.  We do know that after the premiere, Elgar was hailed as a great English composer and the work provided him with worldwide recognition.

Elgar begins with the theme, followed by fourteen variations. Quotations below come from Elgar’s own descriptions of the variations.

Variation I  “C.A.E.”

Caroline Alice Elgar, the composer’s wife. Elgar wrote, “The variation is really a prolongation of the theme with what I wished to be romantic and delicate additions; those who knew C.A.E. will understand this reference to one whose life was a romantic and delicate inspiration.”

Variation II “H.D.S-P.”

Hew David Steuart-Powell was a pianist with whom Elgar, a violinist, played chamber music.

Variation III “R.B.T.”

Richard Baxter Townshend, an author. “Has reference to [Richard Baxter Townshend’s] presentation of an old man in some amateur theatricals—the low voice flying off occasionally into ‘soprano’ timbre.”

Variation IV “W.M.B.”

William Meath Baker, “a country squire, gentleman and scholar… This Variation was written after (he) had, with a slip of paper in his hand, forcibly read out the arrangements for the day and hurriedly left the music-room with an inadvertent bang of the door.”

Variation V “R.P.A.”

Richard Penrose Arnold, son of the poet Matthew Arnold. “His serious conversation was continually broken up by whimsical and witty remarks.”

Variation VI “Ysobel”

Isabel Fitton, an amateur violinist that switched to viola due to a shortage of violists.

Variation VII “Troyte”

Arthur Troyte Griffith, an architect and a piano student of Elgar’s. “The uncouth rhythm of the drums and lower strings was really suggested by some maladroit essays to play the pianoforte; later the strong rhythm suggests the attempts of the instructor (E.E.) to make something like order out of chaos, and the final despairing ‘slam’ records that the effort proved to be in vain.”

Variation VIII “W.N.”

Winifred Norbury. Yet, this variation is more about Sherridge, the eighteenth-century house where she lived with her sister Florence. “The gracious personalities of the ladies are sedately shown.”

Variation IX “Nimrod”

The most famous of the variations, “Nimrod” gains its name from August Jaeger, Elgar’s publisher and close friend. “Jaeger” is German for “hunter,” and Nimrod is one of the mighty hunters in Genesis.  Jaeger sustained Elgar through doubts about his work as a composer and would often accompany Elgar on long walks.  Elgar writes “the Variation . . . is the record of a long summer evening talk, when my friend discoursed eloquently on the slow movements of Beethoven, and said that no one could approach Beethoven at his best in this field, a view with which I cordially concurred.”

Variation X “Dorabella”

Dora Penny, a young, cheerful friend of the Elgars with a slight stutter.  Dora was William Meath Baker’s (Variation IV) sister’s stepdaughter and Richard Baxter Townshend’s (Variation III) sister-in-law.

Variation XI “G.R.S.”

Dr. George Robertson Sinclair, organist at Hereford Cathedral, and owner of the dog that this variation is based on.  Elgar writes, “The first few bars were suggested by his great bulldog Dan (a well-known character) falling down a steep bank into the River Wye; his paddling up stream to find a landing place; and rejoicing bark on landing.”

Variation XII “B.G.N.”

Basil G. Nevinson, the cellist in Elgar’s trio. “The Variation is a tribute to a very dear friend [Basil Nevinson] whose scientific and artistic attainments, and the wholehearted way they were put at the disposal of his friends, particularly endeared him to the writer.”

Variation XIII  “***”

The identity of this variation is disputed.  Lady Mary Lygon was on a voyage to Australia at the time of printing, and some scholars believe the asterisks are simply because Elgar could not secure permission to use the initials.  Others believe the identity is instead Helen Weaver, a former girlfriend of Elgar’s.  It is clear that the variation connects to Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage overture and conjures the feelings of the sea, a voyage and romantic longing.

Variation XIV (Finale) “E.D.U.”

This stands for Edu or Edoo, Alice Elgar’s nickname for her husband and is a self-portrait of Edward Elgar.  He writes, “Written at a time when friends were dubious and generally discouraging as to the composer’s musical future, this variation is merely intended to show what E.D.U. intended to do. References are made to two great influences upon the life of the composer: C.A.E. and Nimrod. The whole work is summed up in the triumphant broad presentation of the theme in the major.”