Sunday, December 6, 2020

Christmas Inside Out

12/6/2020 at 2:30 pm
Rapides Symphony Orchestra
Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center
Alexandria, Louisiana

PROGRAM

Boughs of Holly .... arr. B. Phillips
Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella .... arr. M. Naughtin
Greensleeves .... arr. M. Naughtin
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas .... R. Blane, arr. Ziegler/Molina
Christmas Holiday Medley .... arr. Brian Nozny
Veni, Veni .... arr. C. Davis/Longfield
All I Want for Christmas is You .... M. Carey, arr. Moore
Little Sea Gongs .... Gareth Farr
A Dickens Christmas Carol Suite .... arr. Dabczynski
    Kody Walker, Narrator
Classics for Christmas Pops .... arr. Cerulli
We Wish You a Merry Christmas .... arr. Brubaker



















Friday, December 4, 2020

Ojeda Ensemble Music Recital

12/3/2020 at 5:30 pm
Magale Recital Hall
Natchitoches, LA 

PROGRAM

Echo of Songs (Cypresses), B. 152 (1887) .... A. Dvorak
II. Death reigns in many a human breast
V. The old letter in my book
VII. I wander often past yonder house
XI. Nature lies peaceful in slumber and dreaming
XII. You ask why my songs

Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581 (1789) .... W.A. Mozart
I. Allegro
II. Larghetto
III. Menuetto. Trio I and II.
IV. Allegretto con variazioni

Ojeda Ensemble:
Jorge Ojeda Munoz, clarinet
Dania Briceno, violin
Aura Hernandez, violin
Ruth Garcia, viola
Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo, cello


L to R: Briceno, Hernandez, Garcia, Munoz, Cardozo





Monday, November 16, 2020

NNSO Concerto Competition

Sunday, 11/1/2020, at 2:30 pm 
Magale Recital Hall
Natchitoches, Louisiana

Volunteer judges: Ms. Leah Forsyth, Dr. Jeff Mathews, Ms. Terrie Sanders, and Dr. Douglas Bakenhus 

Winners: Edgardo David Paz Mancia, piano, Gershwin: Piano Concert in F, movement III, and Santiago Uribe-Cordona, cello, Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rocco Theme 

Finalists: Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo, cello, Haydn: Cello Concerto, movement III, and Mario Roland Gomez Orellana, piano, Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1, movement III.

L: Santiago Uribe-Cordona
R: Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo

Friday, November 13, 2020

Virtual Master Class with Olivia Blander

Thursday, 11/12/2020 at 12:15 pm

Room 304

Natchitoches, Louisiana

PROGRAM

Bach: Cello Suite #2 in D minor
Prelude

Aill Harris, cellist

Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Opus 33
Cadenza, Variation VI and VII

Santiago Uribe Cardona, cellist

Haydn: Cello Concerto #2 in D major
Movement III: Allegro

Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo, cellist

Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo











Aill Harris










Santiago Uribe-Cardona














Biography for Olivia Blander:

Originally from Ottawa, Olivia Blander completed her Masters of Music Degree at Yale University in the studio of professor Aldo Parisot. She received her Bachelor’s of Music Degree from the Harid Conservatory (Boca Raton, Florida) where she studied with Canadian cellist Johanne Perron.

Olivia has appeared frequently as a soloist and chamber musician on CBC radio, including the nationally broadcast “Debut Series”. She has been a participant in several major summer festivals including classes at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the fellowship program of the Tanglewood Music Centre.

After returning to Ottawa from the U.S. in 2000, Olivia enjoyed four months working with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra and joined the Vancouver Symphony in September 2001. She currently serves on the faculty of the VSO School of Music and the Saint James Music Academy.



Thursday, November 12, 2020

SAI National Art Associate

Beta Iota Chapter 
Sigma Alpha Iota
November 11, 2020, at 7:30 pm
Paul Christopher received an honorary membership as an National Arts AssociateA National Arts Associate is a person who is nationally recognized for distinguished contribution to the arts.
















Monday, October 19, 2020

Friday, October 16, 2020

Senior Cello Recital

Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo, cello

Assisted by Dr. Chialing Hsieh, piano and Mr. Michael Rorex, piano

October 15, 2020, at 5:30 pm

Magale Recital Hall


PROGRAM

Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major, Hob. VII/2, Op. 101 ... F.J. Haydn (1732-1809)

Allegro moderato
Adagio
Rondo (Allegro)


Cello Sonata, Op. 25, No.3 ... Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

Lebhalft, sehr markiert
Mäßig schnell, Gemächlich
Langsam
Lebhafte Viertel
Mäßig schenll


Après un Rêve, Op. 7, No. 1 ... Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)





Tuesday, September 8, 2020

9/10/2020 Works for Unaccompanied Cello

Faculty Recital featuring Cellist Paul Christopher

Thursday, September 10, 2020, 6:00 pm for students, and 7:30 pm for community members

Magale Recital Hall or live streamed at https://capa.nsula.edu/livestream

PROGRAM

 Three works for unaccompanied cello by Pulitzer Prize winning American composers: Donald Martino, Roger Sessions, and Charles Wuorinen.

Parisonatina al'dodecafonia for solo cello .... Donald Martino (1931-2005)

Six Pieces for solo cello .... Roger Sessions (1896-1985)

Cello Variations II for solo cello .... Chales Wuorinen (1938-2020)

Program notes:

Pulitzer Winners

An NSU Faculty Recital by Paul Christopher, cello

Program Notes by Jackson Harmeyer

 The Pulitzer Prize for Music is awarded annually “for distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.” Administered by Columbia University, this prize is one of the most prestigious awards available in American art music. Past winners have included William Schuman, the first recipient in 1943, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, John Adams, and Steve Reich. Although the prize has rightly acknowledged these and other distinguished composers of American classical music, the Pulitzer has often received criticism for being too restrictive in its selections and, more recently, too indiscriminating. Writing in 1998, composer and music critic Kyle Gann lamented, “The Pulitzer Prize is given only to Eurocentric composers… an extremely narrow slice of the current new-music spectrum.” Indeed, though the prize recognized its first jazz musicians in the 1990s, these winning works had clearly applied classical models to a jazz idiom, for example, Mel Powell’s concerto, Duplicates, and Wynton Marsalis’s oratorio, Blood on the Fields. The current prize description, quoted above, was adopted in 2004; while one past winner Gunther Schuller called the decision, “a long overdue sea change,” another John Harbison derided it as “a horrible development.” What is certain, however, is that aesthetic diversity has greatly expanded over the past sixteen years, so that recent winners include works in free jazz and even hip hop as well as more classical compositions; many also reflect on social, racial, and ecological concerns.

 The composers represented on tonight’s program are from the “old days” of the Pulitzer when it was very much the property of academia and the serialist idiom which was then orthodox. Donald Martino (1931-2005), our first composer, reacted to the 2004 criteria change, “The prize has already begun to go in the direction of permitting less serious stuff, wording or not. If you write music long enough, sooner or later, someone is going to take pity on you and give you the damn thing.” Martino had won the Pulitzer in 1974 for his chamber sextet, Notturno. Nevertheless, we must not be too quick to dismiss someone like Martino: while our era celebrates immediate appeal and a multiplicity of perspectives, in the third quarter of the twentieth century, intellectual rigor was the highest good. The more complicated a piece of music, the more challenges it offered patient listeners. Awards like the Pulitzer signaled that a composer had reached the top of his field, that his vantage point had triumphed over the musical discourse. Moreover, the three Pulitzer-winning composers whose music we hear tonight were among the most accomplished of American academic composers, rivalled only by their esteemed colleague Milton Babbitt. Martino was, from 1969 to 1981, chairman of the composition department at the New England Conservatory; afterwards he taught at Harvard, retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1992. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships, another three awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Scholarship, and a Kennedy Center Friedham Award; and was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Koussevitzky Foundation, and Coolidge Foundation.

 Just as accomplished but somewhat older, Roger Sessions (1896-1985) had been a teacher to both Martino and Babbitt as well as numerous others, including Harbison, Robert Cogan, Edward T. Cone, David Diamond, Tod Machover, Ursula Mamlok, Conlon Nancarrow, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and the British composer, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. His profound influence as a teacher places him in good company with Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg. His teaching career is commonly associated with Princeton, but he also did a stint at University of California, Berkeley following World War II and finally held a post at Juilliard from 1966 to 1983. Sessions was actually the recipient of two Pulitzers—a Special Citation “for his life’s work as a distinguished American composer” in 1974 and then the 1982 Prize for his Concerto for Orchestra. Otherwise, his honors include election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a MacDowell Medal, and the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard where he presented a lecture series titled, “Questions about Music.” Finally, Charles Wuorinen (1938-2020) taught at Columbia, seat of the Pulitzer, from 1964 to 1971 where he had previously been a student and had co-founded the Group for Contemporary Music with fellow classmates, flutist Harvey Sollberger and cellist Joel Krosnick. His Pulitzer-winning work, Time’s Encomium, an electronic composition, was developed at the pioneering Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. An outspoken and often controversial figure, Wuorinen won the Pulitzer in 1970 but was denied tenure by the same institution a year later. Rather than remain at Columbia, he taught at the Manhattan School of Music throughout the 1970s and later at Rutgers. He belonged to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and was commissioned by the New York City Opera, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Symphony, and Boston Symphony Orchestra. A late triumph was his operatic setting of Brokeback Mountain.

 Aside from these academic and professional successes, our three composers—Martino, Sessions, and Wuorinen—also share a common aesthetic. Specifically, their music is rooted in serialism and predominately atonal in character. Sessions, who was initially influenced by the neo-Classicism of Igor Stravinsky, befriended Schoenberg when they were both living in California in the late 1940s. Within the decade, Sessions had begun integrating aspects of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method into his existing idiom, always insisting the method was more a tool for him than an aesthetic in itself. Stravinsky and Copland made similar usage of the method at this time while his pupil Babbitt would instead endeavor to transform serialism into an encompassing aesthetic statement. Martino for his part transplanted the essentially tonal ideas of Heinrich Schenker to his atonal aesthetic, developing layers of structure in which pitch-class sets are distinguished by differences in register, dynamics, and tone production. Wuorinen, who borrowed his transparent instrumental textures from Stravinsky, re-established the pitch hierarchies of tonal music without compromising an atonal, serially-derived language. Wuorinen, however, has disparaged tonality’s continued usefulness as an idiom in itself: “While the tonal system, in an atrophied or vestigial form, is still used today in popular and commercial music, and even occasionally in the works of backward-looking serious composers… it has been replaced or succeeded by the twelve-tone system, first initiated by Schoenberg, subsequently developed into a world of chromaticism.” And, when hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize, Wuorinen called the occasion “the final disappearance of any societal interest in high culture.”

 Tonight’s program begins with Martino’s Parisonatina al’dodecafonìa, a 1964 work for solo cello. The cellist Aldo Parisot was the dedicatee and first performer; the composition’s title references his name while its music expands on a derived motto. Martino commented on the difficulty of his music, “It may be at the margin of playability for most performers at a given point in time, but ultimately it is negotiable.” Indeed, he protested when some of the original challenges he had posed to Parisot were overcome and made to look easy by later players: “The strain, the stress, is all part of the expressive content of the piece.” Parisonatina is in four brief movements. In the First, Agitato, register and timbral devices indicated with special noteheads setup a polyphonic structure which Martino likened to a conversation between six participants. The Second Movement, Scherzevole, reorients this conversation, so that timbral devices now distinguish successive sections in the manner of a rondo. The Third Movement, Motto. Agitato, is lyrical while the Fourth Movement, Cadenza sul Nome, makes room for limited improvisation. To accomplish this, Martino notated a “chart,” as he called it, meant to guide performers in their own realization of this material; he also provided a “sample solution” for performers who do not wish to improvise. With the success of Parisonatina, its dedicatee requested a concerto, although Krosnick, not Parisot, would eventually give the larger work’s premiere.

 Next we hear Six Pieces for solo cello by Sessions. This set was composed in 1966 between his Sixth and Seventh Symphonies and dedicated to his son, John, an accomplished cellist who later taught at Smith College. John gave its premiere at an all-Sessions concert held at Carnegie Hall on March 31, 1968 by the International Society for Contemporary Music. Krosnick, before performing Six Pieces himself at Juilliard, speculated on the set’s biographical elements, describing Dialogue as a friendly conversation between father and son and Berceuse as a lullaby for Sessions’s granddaughter. In order, the Six Pieces are Prelude, Dialogue, Scherzo, Berceuse, Fantasy, and Epilogue. These are familiar titles which will be self-explanatory to most listeners. Our last piece tonight was also the latest written—Wuorinen’s Cello Variations II, composed in 1975. This work, like much of Wuorinen’s cello music, grew out of the composer’s friendship with the cellist Fred Sherry. Known for his advocacy of new music, Sherry has been a member of Wuorinen’s Group for Contemporary Music and has co-founded his own ensembles, Speculum Musicae and the Tashi Quartet. As Wuorinen explained of Cello Variations II, “These are variations in the ‘modern’ sense: the piece is a continuously self-transforming fabric in which the initial materials (reminiscences of celloish behavior from past music) are reprocessed into new entities.” Indeed, unlike either Martino’s Parisonatina or the Six Pieces by Sessions, Wuorinen’s Cello Variations II does not possess internal divisions and continues unfolding, uninterrupted across its ten-minute span.

© Jackson Harmeyer 2020

About Jackson. Jackson Harmeyer is a freelance concert annotator based in Alexandria, LA. He serves as Director of Scholarship to the Sugarmill Music Festival and as Marketing Chair to the Chamber Music Society of Louisville. A project he is developing for next May’s Sugarmill Music Festival, “A Scholarly Presentation in Lecture and Music: Solomon Northup in the Central Louisiana Sugarhouse,” has been awarded a prestigious Rebirth Grant by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. As of August 2020, Jackson has begun a Master’s of Library Science with a specialization in Music Librarianship at Indiana University where he is the recipient of a May Copeland Fellowship and participates in the Midwest Chapter of the Music Library Association. Previously Jackson earned an M.M. in Music History and Literature from the University of Louisville with a thesis entitled, “Liminal Aesthetics: Perspectives on Harmony and Timbre in the Music of Olivier Messiaen, Tristan Murail, and Kaija Saariaho.” There he was a recipient of the Gerhard Herz Music History Scholarship and was employed at the Anderson Music Library where he did archival work for the unique Grawemeyer Collection of Contemporary Music. Jackson has shared research at two meetings of the South-Central Chapter of the American Musicological Society; the University of Tennessee Contemporary Music Festival; the Music by Women Festival; and the University of Louisiana System Academic Summit. Aside from his studies, Jackson is a music blogger, composer, choral singer, avid reader, and award-winning nature photographer.

 Read additional program notes by Jackson at www.JacksonHarmeyer.com. 

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Master Class with Alejandro Restrepo, Cellist

July 14, 2020 at 4:00 pm via Zoom
The School of Music of Comfenalco
Cartagena, Columbia

My masterclass is for any cellist who is interested in learning how to memorize more effectively, efficient routines of practice, and the value of orchestra and chamber music.

It’s going to be through Zoom, and this is the link: https://bit.ly/3grYJ0e



#PracticingAtHome Me retó Ojeda Diego a subir un fragmento de una obra. Reto a Cristian Pérez Alonso Jose Restrepo Cardozo Elegy op. 24 by Fauré. Little excerpt from Elegy, I wanted to upload it all by the video recording got cut because of lacking of memory 😐 but here it is. Pianist: David Berrocal
Posted by Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo on Sunday, July 12, 2020

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Peace One Day Performance

Danny Boy for violin and cello
St. Petersburg, Florida


Unkyoung Kim, violin
Paul Christopher, cello

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

5/28/2020 at 7:30 pm Livestream

Facebook Livestream Event with Colombian Musicians
Hosted by Fabian Correa

Jorge Ojeda ... Clarinet
Sadoc Silva ... Trumpet
Luis Gallo ... Oboe
Elias Castro ... Drum Set
Alejandro Restrepo ... Cello
Juan Angulo ... Trumpet
Maria Carmona ... French Horn


Thursday, May 21, 2020

Live performance

Ballade for the Hellenic Land for solo cello, LRC 159 .... Dinos Constantinides
Paul Christopher, cellist


Monday, March 9, 2020

Fourth Annual Interational Music by Women Festival


Thursday, 3/5/2020
Poindexter Hall
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus, Mississippi

9:00-9:25 am in room 211
Paper by Jackson Harmeyer (University of Louisville)
Intersections of Timbre, Harmony, and Melody in the Liminal Compositions of Kaija Saariaho for Flute and Cello

10:00 am Concert No. 1 in Kossen Auditorium
Folium 2 and Folium Squared for Flute and Cello (2015) ... Mara Gibson

Insomnia for Solo Cello (2013) ... Nilofaur Iravani

Converse with Rain (Yu Yu Yu) for Flute and Cello (2019) ... Tao Li

Zendra J. White de Velazquez, flute
Paul Christopher, cello




Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Invited Guest Artist Recital & Master Class

University of Louisiana at Lafayette
School of Music
Recital Hall
Lafayette, Louisiana
Monday, March 3, 2020

MASTER CLASS at 10:00 am














PROGRAM at 7:30 pm

Patterns in a Chromatic Field (1981) ... Morton Feldman (1926-1987)

Paul Christopher, cello
Dr. Chialing Hsieh, piano

Click here to read program notes by Jackson Harmeyer




Sunday, March 1, 2020

Celebrating 250th Anniversary of Beethoven's Birth

Shreveport Symphony Orchestra
Saturday, February 29, 2020 at 7:30 PM
RiverView Theater
Shreveport, Louisiana

PROGRAM

MILHAUD ....  Le Boeuf sur le Toit
   
MILHAUD .... La Creation du Monde

Orchesis Dance Company Dianne Maroney-Grigsby, artistic director

BEETHOVEN .... Symphony No. 7

You’ll be transported to 1920’s Paris by these jazz and Brazilian-inspired scores by Milhaud, including The Creation of the World,uniquely brought to life by Grambling’s Orchesis Dance Company. Then, we’ll celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth with his lively Symphony No. 7, appropriately dubbed The Apotheosis of the Dance.

Click here to read the program notes.

Dr. Paul Forsyth

Alumni Brett Andrews

NSU Cello Ensemble

MUS 1500 Student Recitals
3/3/2020 at 12:30 pm
Magale Recital Hall
Natchitoches, Louisiana

PROGRAM includes:

Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 ....  JS Bach
Courante
Sarabande


Aill Harris, Cello

Tango .... Carole Neuen-Rabinowitz

Canción de Sueños .... Carole Neuen-Rabinowitz

Mr. Christopher's Cello Studio Ensemble:
Aill Harris, Alejandro Restrepo, Kelton Spurgeon, Santiago Uribe-Cardona

L to R: Harris, Restrepo, Spurgeon, Uribe-Cardona

Monday, February 24, 2020

Invited Guest Artist Recital

Southeastern Louisiana University
Pottle Auditorium
Hammond, Louisiana
Wednesday, 2/26/2020, at 7:30 pm

PROGRAM

Patterns in a Chromatic Field ... Morton Feldman

Paul Christopher, cello
Chialing Hsieh, piano

Click here to read program notes by Jackson Harmeyer





Saturday, February 22, 2020

2/22/2020 at 7:30 pm

Texarkana Symphony Orchestra
Perot Theatre
221 Main Street
Texarkana, Texas

PROGRAM

Felix Mendelssohn: The Hebrides, op. 26 (“Fingal’s Cave”)

DJ Sparr: Violet Bond: Concerto for Orchestra and Electric Guitar

Anatoly Liadov: The Enchanted Lake, op. 62

Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird Suite (1919)

Dr. Thompson and Paul Christopher

Anthony Robinson

Best Friends!

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Contemporary Music Faculty Recital

2/17/2020 at 6:00 pm
LSMSA Recital Hall
715 University Parkway
Natchitoches, Louisiana

Paul Christopher, cellist
Chialing Hsieh, piano
Michael Young, piano

PROGRAM

Nocturne for Cello and Piano ... Michael Young

Cello Song Variations ... Christian Wolff (b.1934- )

Cello Sonata in E-flat Major .... Arnold Bax (1883-1953)

Natchitoches Parish Journal article




















NSU FACULTY RECITAL

PAUL CHRISTOPHER, CELLO • MICHAEL YOUNG, PIANO

Program Notes by Jackson Harmeyer

Tonight NSU Associate Professor of Cello, Paul Christopher,
plays three contrasting works written for cello since the turn
of the twentieth century. The first is by Natchitoches-based
pianist and composer Michael Young, who also serves as
Mr. Christopher’s musical partner tonight. Young has
written the following about his new piece, Nocturne for
cello and piano, which he and Mr. Christopher premiered at
the Sugarmill Music Festival in May 2019: “My Nocturne for
cello and piano is a lyrical piece in ternary form. After a brief introduction in the piano, the cello presents the principal theme, a nostalgic melody tinged with poignant
chromaticism. The piano soon abandons its accompaniment
role as the two instruments engage in a dialogue centered
around five motives that form the basis for the rest of the
piece. In the middle section, two features in the treble
broken chord figuration in the piano—one rhythmic and one
harmonic—contribute to the section’s rise and fall in
tension. The figuration progresses from six to eight
subdivisions of the beat and then slows to quintuplets.
Meanwhile, the figuration creates a harmonic arch from
seventh to thirteenth chords and then back to triads.
Throughout the middle section, the two instruments
continue their lively dialogue around the five motives, now
supplemented by their inversions. One of these motives
generates the chromatic key scheme of the middle section
(B major, C minor, A Lydian, B-flat minor, G major, and G-
sharp minor), which is supported by a series of bass pedal
points that outline the six notes of the whole tone scale. In
the final section, the principal theme dissolves into pensive
solos for the cello and then the piano. After a final
impassioned dialogue the music fades to a delicate end.”

The next piece we hear is Cello Song Variations (“Hallelujah,
I’m a Bum”) by American experimental composer, Christian
Wolff (born 1934). This work for solo cello, composed in
1978, reflects Wolff’s interests in political subjects and
protest songs which, in the 1970s, became significant
factors in his music. Previously, Wolff had, like his mentor
John Cage, kept his music “free of propaganda” and
concerned only with musical matters, although his works of
the 1960s already demonstrated a certain social
consciousness in the way they allowed performers to
contribute to decision-making processes. As of the 1970s,
however, Wolff’s social consciousness had aligned with the
new political awareness in folk music, jazz, and other
popular idioms as well as that of fellow experimental
composers, like his colleagues Cornelius Cardew and
Frederic Rzewski. These composers were particularly
concerned with workers’ rights, and Wolff, in a 1980 article
entitled, “On Political Texts and New Music,” comments on
their allegiance to democratic socialism. Yet, here, Wolff
also admits two problems that experimental composers face
when they assert political stances. These are extreme
individualism and esotericism, both of which can prevent
the music from communicating to the same mass audience
for whom it claims to advocate. These are issues which
ultimately drove Cardew to renounce his earlier
experimental music, although Wolff seems to have been
satisfied with a compromise of sorts.

Works by Wolff creatively integrate folk, work, and protest
songs into their musical fabric without abandoning the
experimental language. Often, as in Cello Song Variations,
the original song is heard straightforwardly before these
materials are, in the industrial terms used by Michael Hicks
and Christian Asplund in their biography of Wolff, melted-
down and recast. In other pieces where the songs are not
presented openly in this fashion, Wolff simply instructs his
players to perform the song itself prior to the new work. The
song, “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,” appears in Songs of Work and
Protest by Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer, a popular 1973 Dover
reissue of a 1960 anthology of folk music, as well as in Carl
Sandburg’s 1927 collection, The American Songbag.
“Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” is attributed to Harry McClintock, a
singer-songwriter associated with the labor union, the
Industrial Workers of the World whose members are known
as the Wobblies. McClintock claimed that he added the
irreverent text, which describes the beggar’s life asking for
handouts, to a Presbyterian hymn when he himself was a
hobo in the late 1890s; soon, it was so popular, it was
assumed to be an anonymous folksong and McClintock had
to sue for his authorship. In Wolff’s Variations, the cello
plays the presumably familiar melody stringently before
initiating variations which effectively deform the tune.

Throughout the piece’s more than ten-minute span,
fragments of the original can be heard and they become the
basis for Wolff’s disjoint variations. Eventually, the
independent parts build to an emotional intensity, although
the tune itself never truly returns.

Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953) has been called the most Celtic
of British composers. Although born in London, Bax found
his inspiration in the landscape, folklore, and literature of
Ireland and the elements of Celtic culture that still endured
on that neighboring island. It was through the poetry of his
Irish contemporary William Butler Yeats that Bax first
discovered Ireland and the wider Celtic tradition. Then,
while living in Dublin from 1911 to 1914, he adopted the
pseudonym Dermot O’Byrne, as if an Irishman, and began
publishing poetry, short stories, and plays. Although, in the
end, Bax made his career as a composer, his music shares
much in common with poetry: as one commentator has
remarked, “It is the musical equivalent of the lyrical impulse
in poetry, the attribute which causes utterance to take
spontaneously beautiful forms, irrespective of all else.” And,
while many other composers in the early twentieth century
were intent on breaking with the Romantic past, Bax was
content for his music to remain lush in its orchestrations and
driven in its harmonies. At the height of his popularity in the
1920s, he was briefly regarded as Britain’s leading
symphonist; indeed, he completed seven symphonies,
fourteen tone poems, and numerous other orchestral works
throughout his career. He composed fewer and less-
demanding works in his later years, wishing to “retire, like a
grocer” as he put it. Despite his knighthood in 1937 and
appointment as Master of the King’s Music in 1942, his
compositions fell into general neglect after his death, and
only recently have they seen a renewal of interest from
listeners, performers, and scholars alike.

The Cello Sonata in E-flat major, which concludes our
program tonight, was completed on November 7, 1923 and
premiered on February 26 of the following year by cellist
Beatrice Harrison and pianist Harriet Cohen. Harrison was a
revered cellist who was the soloist in the first festival
performances and recordings of Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
Cohen, meanwhile, was a formidable pianist and also Bax’s
lover, for whom he had abandoned his wife and children;
Cohen remained a steadfast advocate of Bax’s music
throughout her career and he would continue to write for
her, even after he became romantically involved with
another younger woman. The Sonata is in three movements,
the first marked, Moderato. It applies a rough sonata form,
complete with exposition, development, and recapitulation,
but with many contrasts between individual and often
conflicting materials. The opening is fearsome and troubled,
while the second subject has the delicacy of a nocturne;
later, the recapitulation begins, unexpectedly, as a slow
lament. The second movement, Poco lento, borrows from a
tone poem, Spring Fire, which Bax had written ten years
earlier but would not be performed until 1970. Bax
described the music of its opening section, reused here, as
suggestive of “the uncertain and pensive hour immediately
before daybreak in the woodland. It has been raining. The
branches drip softly, and a damp, delicate fragrance rises
from the earth.” The gentle passagework heard in the piano
evokes rainfall while the elegiac melody introduced by the
cello sets the mood and hour. The third movement, Molto
vivace ma non troppo, begins in a lively, folkdance fashion
unlike either the conflicted first movement or tranquil
second. After much excitement, the Sonata closes with a
reflective epilogue which incorporates familiar material, a
narrative device which Bax often employed.

© Jackson Harmeyer 2020

Read additional program notes by Jackson at
www.JacksonHarmeyer.com.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Sunday Afternoon Musicale

Sunday Afternoon Musicale
Shreveport, Louisiana
February 9, 2020, at 4:30 pm

Paul Christopher, cello
Dr. La Wanda Blakeney, piano

PROGRAM

Song without Words in D Major, Opus 109 .... Felix Mendelssohn

Sonata No. 1 in B flat Major, RV 47 .... Antonio Vivaldi
Largo
Allegro
Largo
Allegro


Insomnia for Solo Cello (2013) .... Niloufar Iravani

The Swan .... Camille Saint-Saëns

Allegro Appassionato, Opus 43 .... Camille Saint-Saëns

Brecceno String Quartet Recital

Wednesday, 2/12/2020 at 5:30 pm
Varnado Hall Ballroom
 Natchitoches, Louisiana 71457

PROGRAM


String Quartet No. 21 in D Major K.575 .... W. A. Mozart
Allegretto
Andante
Menuetto: Allegretto
Allegretto

Dania Briceno, violin I
Josias Ramos, violin II
Ruth Garcia, viola
Santiago Uribe-Cardona, cello

String Quartet No.3 in D Major Op.18, No.3 .... L. V.  Beethoven
Allegro
Andante con moto
Allegro
Presto

Josias Ramos, violin I
Dania Briceno, violin II
Ruth Garcia, viola
Santiago Uribe-Cardona, cello