Recruiting in East Texas, Again!

Tyler Legacy High School
Lisa Lininger, Orchestra Director

Marshall High School

Megan Parks, Orchestra Director

MUS 1500 Student Recital

10/19/2021 at 12:30 pm
Magale Recital Hall
Natchitoches, Louisiana

PROGRAM included:

Suite in G Major, BWV 1007 ... JS Bach

Sarabande

Erick Vega, cello

Texarkana Symphony Orchestra

10/16/2021 at 7:30 pm
Perot Theatre
219 Main Street
Texarkana, TX

PROGRAM

Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34 ... Prokofiev

Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 ... Mendelssohn
Allegro molto appassionato
Andante
Allegretto non troppo; Allegro molto vivace

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, "Eroica" ... Beethoven

Allegro con brio

Marcia funebre: Adagio assai

Scherzo: Allegro vivace

Finale: Allegro molto

Recruiting in East Texas on October 12, 2021

Kilgore High School at 8:00 am

Mitch Moehring, luthier

Tyler High School at 3:00 pm

Rapides Symphony Orchestra

New Orleans Ballet
Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center
Sunday, October 9, 2021, at 7:30 pm
Alexandria, Louisiana 

PROGRAM

Concerto for Two Cellos and Strings, RV 531 ... A. Vivaldi

Paul Christopher and Joy Bedillion, cellists

Concerto for Lute and Strings, RV 92 ... Vivaldi

Largo

Trio Sonata in D Major, RV 84 ... Vivaldi

Allegro

"Surrender the Sword" ... Mark O'Conner

Lin He, violinist

"The Swan" from Carnival of the Animals ... Camille Saint-Saens

Paul Christopher, cellist

Flower Festival in Genzano ... Saint-Saens

Pas de Deux

String Quartet, Op. 8 ... Samuel Barber

Molto Allegro e appassionato

Adagio

Santiago Uribe-Cardona's Senior Recital

Sunday, October 10, 2021, at 7:30 pm
Magale Recital Hall
Natchitoches, Louisiana

https://capa.nsula.edu/livestream

PROGRAM

Cello Suite N.6 BWV 1012 in D Major .... J.S. Bach       

Prelude

Allemande

Courante

Sarabande

Gavottes I & II

Gigue

Dyophonie Op. 241 for two cellos .... Ernst Krenek

assisted by Paul Christopher, cello 

Introduction & Polonaise Brillante Op. 3 in C Major ....  Frederic Chopin   

assisted by Dr. Chialing Hsieh, piano

Monroe Symphony Orchestra

October 2, 2021, at 7:00 pm

Kermit Poling, Conductor
Church of the Redeemer
Monroe, Louisiana

 PROGRAM

Concerto in E-flat "Dumberton Oaks" .... Stravinsky
Tempo guisto
Allegretto
Con moto

Appalachian Spring .... Copland

L to R: Christopher, Bueno, Alvardo, Garcia

MUS 1500 Student Recital

Tuesday, September 28, 2021
12:30 pm
Magale Recital Hall
Natchitoches, Louisiana

PROGRAM included:

Dyophonie for Two Celli .... Ernst Krenek (1900-1991)

Santiago Uribe Cardona, cello

Paul Christopher, cello

Marshall Symphony Orchestra

September 25, 2021, at 7:30 pm
East Texas Baptist University
Marshall, Texas

TCHAIKOVSKY PROGRAM

Capriccio Italian, Op. 45

Suite from the Ballet Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66a

    Introduction

    Adagio (Act 1, No. 8a)

    Pas de caractere (Act III, No. 24)

    Panorama (Act II, No. 17)

    Waltz (Act 1, No. 6)

Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra in B Minor, Op. 23

    Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso

    Adantino semplice

    Allegro con fuoco

Antonio Ajero, pianist

 

2021 Music Faculty Showcase Recital

Magale Recital Hall
Thursday, September 23, 2021, at 7:30 pm
Natchitoches, Louisiana

PROGRAM includes:

A Taste of Histoire du Soldat .... Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

The Soldier's March

Music to Scene 2

The Royal March

NSU Faculty Chamber Players:

Mr. Scott Burrell, narrator

Dr. Malena McLaren, clarinet

Dr. Douglas Bakenhus, bassoon

Mr. Galindo Rodriguez, trumpet

Dr. J. Mark Thompson, trombone

Dr. Oliver Molina, percussion

Dr. Andrej Kurti, violin

Mr. Justin Kujawski, double bass

Mr. Dan McDonald, conductor

Doluri .... A. Matchavariani (1913-1995)

Ms. Sofiko Tchetcheleshvili, viola

Sei Studi (1981-1983) .... Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012)

Joke

Mr. Justin Kujawski, double bass

D.E.S. In Celebration (2016) .... Thea Musgrave (b. 1928)

Mr. Paul Christopher, cello

 

L to R: Christopher & Kujawski

MUS 1500 Student Recital includes Aill Harris, cellist

 

Tuesday, August 31, 2021 at 12:30pm in Magale

  Allemande from Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008 .... Bach (1685-1750)

Aill Harris, cello

 

Faculty Cello Recital, 8/31/2021, Magale Recital Hall, at 7:30 pm

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Elégie, Op. 24 (1883)

Romance in A Major, Op. 69 (1894)

Sérénade, Op. 98 (1908)

John Price, piano

Vincent D’Indy (1851-1931)

 Sonata in D Major for Cello and Piano, Op. 84 (1924-1925)
          Gavotte en Rondeau: Tranquillement
          Air: Trés lent
          Gigue: Gaîment

          Entrée: Modéré

Chialing Hsieh, piano

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)

 Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 377 (1960)
          Aniné, Gai
          Lent, Grave
          Vif et Joueaux

Dan Ley, piano

 This program is dedicated to the memory of my beloved mother, Helen Christopher, who passed away on July 4. 

Program Notes by Jackson Harmeyer

This evening’s recital by cellist Paul Christopher features  music  by  three  French  composers,  each  of  whom  symbolized  a  different school  of  thought  in  the  opening  decades  of  the  twentieth  century.  While  Gabriel  Fauré  belonged  to  the academic establishment, Vincent  d’Indy was the true conservative, holding steadfast to Romantic  ideals  while  Fauré  pursued  new  modes  of  expression.  Their  younger  colleague,  Darius  Milhaud,  although  at  times  a  radical, melded  tradition  into  a  distinctive  voice  and  prolific  output.  Despite  their  differences,  however,  there is also much which connects these composers, all of  whom  sought  a  renewed  vision  of  French  music.  This recital is dedicated to the memory of Paul’s mother, Helen  Christopher, who passed away on July 4, 2021.

These  days  Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)  is  best‐
remembered for his Requiem—an hour‐long composition 
for  chorus,  two  vocal  soloists,  organ,  and  orchestra.  Yet 
Fauré  was  more  often  a  practitioner  of  small  forms  as 
evidenced by his charming songs and delightful chamber 
music. While some of his contemporaries considered him 
a dangerous Modernist, he never defied tonality as did the 
composers  of  the  next  generation. His musical  language 
was instead one of sensuous colors, subtle harmonies, and 
poetically‐crafted  melodies.  It  represents  a  French 
sensibility  far  removed  from  the  weighty  orchestrations 
and  fierce  drama  of  Richard  Wagner  and  the  Germanic 
ethos he exemplified, although the experience of Wagner 
had  been  essential  to  the  Frenchman’s  harmonic 
development. Fauré expressed his interest in music at an 
early age and, by nine, he was accepted to the renowned 
Parisian  music  school  Ecole  Niedermeyer.  Among  his 
teachers  was  Camille  Saint‐Saëns  who  would  become  a 
lifelong  friend.  After  graduation,  Fauré  worked  as  an 
organist and local music teacher, so that true recognition 
for his compositional abilities only came in 1896 when he 
was  appointed  professor  of  composition  at  the  Paris 
Conservatoire.  Ultimately  in  1905  Fauré  became  this 
institution’s director for a period lasting fifteen years until
1920. His pupils included Maurice Ravel, Nadia Boulanger, 
Charles Koechlin, and other prominent figures who would 
guide French music in the years after World War I.

Fauré wrote several pieces for cello and piano throughout 

his career. In addition to the two sonatas which are both 

late works, there are also five character pieces, spanning 

the years 1880 to 1908. His Élégie, Op. 24 is the earliest of 

these,  composed  in  1880  and  premiered  in  1883  by  its 

dedicatee, the cellist Jules Loëb. It was initially intended as

the  slow movement  of  a  cello  sonata,  a  response  to  his 

First  Violin  Sonata  completed  a  few  years  earlier.  Yet, 

when Fauré showed the finished movement to Saint‐Saëns 

and  Saint‐Saëns  programmed  it  at  a  concert  he  was 

hosting, it gained such immediate popularity there was no 

going back and crafting other movements around it. The 

somber  melody  offered  by  the  cello  is  expressive  and 

direct—one  of  the  last  times, according  to  scholar  Jean‐

Michel  Nectoux,  that  Fauré  permitted  “such  a  direct 

expression  of  pathos”  in  his  music.  Subsequent  works 

were  to  be  “more  introverted  and  discreet.”  From  the 

opening  statement  with  its  cool  restraint,  the  cello 

develops  this  melody  into  more  passionate,  less‐

controlled areas across the A section. The piano takes on a 

greater role in the intervening B section when it offers a 

consoling countermelody to the cello. The cello attempts 

to  make  this  melody  its  own  but  a  tumultuous  cadenza 

ensues. This  results in  the  return  of  the  first  theme at a 

stressful octave higher than the original. There is release 

as the piano reiterates its secondary theme and the cello 

reluctantly joins in. The  final moments are  desolate,  but 

the piano remains as caring companion to the cello.

Beyond the Élégie, we also hear Fauré’s Romance, Op. 69 

and  Sérénade,  Op.  98,  composed  in  1894  and  1908, 

respectively. Set in A major, the serene Romance provides 

a  marked  contrast  to  the  powerful  Élégie.  Apparently  it 

was envisioned as a work for cello and organ to be played 

in  one  of  the  church  settings  so  familiar  to  Fauré.  This 

original, nevertheless, was not rediscovered or published 

until the year 2000. The melody additionally appears in the 

song Soir of the composer’s Opus 83 where its text reflects 

on daylight passing into evening and the mysterious new 

world  that  emerges  in  the  darkness.  Something  similar 

happens in the version we hear where, even without this 

text, we enter  into a  nocturnal world  full  of  shades and 

subtleties.  Our  last  piece  by  Fauré,  the  Sérénade,  was 

written  as  a  gift  to  Pablo  Casals  upon  his  wedding 

engagement. This Catalan cellist had become a close friend 

and  advocate  to  Fauré,  performing  his  Élégie  frequently 

and  eventually  premiering  its  orchestral  arrangement  in 

1901.  He  seems  to  have  never  publicly  performed  the 

Sérénade, however, which is somewhat unsurprising given 

that  Casals  had  kept  the  Bach  Cello  Suites  private  for  a 

dozen  years,  studying  and  rehearsing  them  by  himself, 

after  he  had  discovered  their  forgotten  manuscript  in  a 

thrift shop. The Sérénade suggests a return to the Baroque 

with its middle section in particular resembling a rigaudon, 

a French dance which was popular in the seventeenth and 

eighteenth  centuries.  Its  outer  sections,  meanwhile, 

possess  Spanish  traces,  including  modal  intervals  and 

plucked,  guitar‐like  chords.  These  Baroque  and  Spanish 

elements can be taken to represent the work’s dedicatee, 

Casals, harking to his interests and his heritage.

If  in  Fauré  we  observe  a  conscious  attempt  to  remove 

Germanic  influence,  then  in  our  next  composer,  his 

contemporary  Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931),  we  find  an 

opposing allegiance to German aesthetic aims, indeed, an 

attempt  to  revitalize  French  music  upon  German 

scaffolding.  Like  his mentor  César Franck with whom  his 

studies began in 1872,  d’Indy  found  ties with Franz Liszt 

and  Richard Wagner.  Like Franck and  Liszt,  d’Indy wrote 

symphonic  poems,  including  several eloquent  depictions 

of the sea and landscapes of southern France. Here as well 

as  in  absolute  works,  d’Indy  applied  the  cyclic  forms 

investigated  by  these  predecessors.  In  1876  d’Indy 

attended  the  premiere  of  Wagner’s  Der  Ring  des 

Nibelungen  in  Bayreuth  and  found  this  experience 

emotionally overwhelming. His own music dramas would 

be of mixed quality, but still apply Wagner’s leitmotiv and 

his advances in orchestration. All four men further viewed 

Ludwig van Beethoven as a common ancestor in structural 

and  dramatic  matters,  although  Andrew  Thomas  has 

commented  of  d’Indy  that  “his  famed  veneration  for 

Beethoven  and  Franck  has  unfortunately  obscured  the 

individual  character  of  his  own  compositions.”  His 

frustrating  personality  must  have  something  to  do  with 

this too: he often expressed controversial political beliefs 

and crusaded against music that did not meet his approval. 

In  1892  he  refused a  position at  the  Paris  Conservatoire 

and instead founded the Schola Cantorum where he could 

instruct how he saw fit. Although his teaching was heavy 

on counterpoint and dismissive of what he considered the 

formlessness  and  harmonic  sensationalism  of  Claude 

Debussy,  d’Indy  became  an  important  mentor  to  Albert 

Roussel, for instance, while his writings had later influence 

on Olivier Messiaen and Heitor Villa‐Lobos.

The Cello Sonata in D major, Op. 84 is a relatively late work 

by  d’Indy,  composed  in  1924  and  1925.  It  is  in  four 

movements in a conventional nineteenth‐century pattern, 

and its musical content still owes much to that legacy. An 

additional  element,  however,  is  its  incorporation  of 

Baroque  dances—the  gavotte  and  gigue—as  well  as  an 

operatic air as its Third Movement. As had Fauré, his pupil 

Ravel,  and  indeed  many  French  composers  in  the  first 

decades of the twentieth century, d’Indy demonstrates an 

affinity for earlier music. His own affinity though has more 

to  do  with  a  devout  Catholic  faith  and  his  work  at  the 

Schola Cantorum where Gregorian chant and Palestrinian 

polyphony were practiced than a stern defiance of German 

Romantic  norms.  The  Sonata’s  First  Movement,  Entrée. 

Modéré,  moves  at  a  relaxed  pace  as  it  follows  several 

different  ideas  over  its  span.  Its  rhythmic  and  metric 

freedom  is  suggestive  of  the  Baroque,  even  if  more 

concrete  references  are  missing  from  this  opening 

movement. The Second Movement, Gavotte en Rondeau. 

Tranquillement,  has  a  wit  and  charm  about  it  expressed 

initially  in  the  cello’s  pizzicato  and  piano’s  matching 

staccato chords. The quick runs later in the piano part are 

particularly beautiful. The Third Movement, Air. Très lent, 

is almost sung with its long melody and sustained notes. 

Except for its chromaticism which recommends it more to 

a  seventeenth‐century  operatic  lament,  this  melody  has 

the mostly stepwise motion and even divisions of chant. 

Its  deep  melancholy  is  quickly  dispelled  by  the  cheery 

Fourth  Movement,  marked  Gigue.  Gaîment.  Here  the 

nobility and interplay of the first two movements return as 

cello and piano again trade ideas in a friendly dialogue.

The Cello Sonata in D major, Op. 84 is a relatively late work 

by  d’Indy,  composed  in  1924  and  1925.  It  is  in  four 

movements in a conventional nineteenth‐century pattern, 

and its musical content still owes much to that legacy. An 

additional  element,  however,  is  its  incorporation  of 

Baroque  dances—the  gavotte  and  gigue—as  well  as  an 

operatic air as its Third Movement. As had Fauré, his pupil 

Ravel,  and  indeed  many  French  composers  in  the  first 

decades of the twentieth century, d’Indy demonstrates an 

affinity for earlier music. His own affinity though has more 

to  do  with  a  devout  Catholic  faith  and  his  work  at  the 

Schola Cantorum where Gregorian chant and Palestrinian 

polyphony were practiced than a stern defiance of German 

Romantic  norms.  The  Sonata’s  First  Movement,  Entrée. 

Modéré,  moves  at  a  relaxed  pace  as  it  follows  several 

different  ideas  over  its  span.  Its  rhythmic  and  metric 

freedom  is  suggestive  of  the  Baroque,  even  if  more 

concrete  references  are  missing  from  this  opening 

movement. The Second Movement, Gavotte en Rondeau. 

Tranquillement,  has  a  wit  and  charm  about  it  expressed 

initially  in  the  cello’s  pizzicato  and  piano’s  matching 

staccato chords. The quick runs later in the piano part are 

particularly beautiful. The Third Movement, Air. Très lent, 

is almost sung with its long melody and sustained notes. 

Except for its chromaticism which recommends it more to 

a  seventeenth‐century  operatic  lament,  this  melody  has 

the mostly stepwise motion and even divisions of chant. 

Its  deep  melancholy  is  quickly  dispelled  by  the  cheery 

Fourth  Movement,  marked  Gigue.  Gaîment.  Here  the 

nobility and interplay of the first two movements return as 

cello and piano again trade ideas in a friendly dialogue. 

With  few  exceptions  it  seems  that  the  music  of  Darius 

Milhaud (1892-1974) is today more often written about 

than performed. Scholars like to discuss such topics as his 

explorations  into  jazz  and  Latin  American  music,  his 

pioneering experiments with percussion instruments, his 

unique approach to polytonality, and his radical early years 

as a member of Les Six. Yet only a handful of the more than 

four  hundred  compositions  Milhaud  wrote  are  regularly 

performed. Indeed his expansive catalog contains twelve 

symphonies,  numerous  concerti  for  a  wide  variety  of 

instruments,  eighteen  string  quartets,  and  more  than  a  

dozen  operas.  Milhaud  was  also  an  important  teacher, 

especially  after  World  War  II  when  he  taught  at  Mills 

College  in  California  and  at  the  Paris  Conservatoire.  His 

students included not only “serious” composers like Philip 

Glass, William Bolcom, and Iannis Xenakis but also figures 

more associated with popular music like Dave Brubeck and 

Burt  Bacharach.  Brubeck  even  named  his  son  Darius  in 

honor of this mentor. Perhaps one reason why the music 

of  Milhaud  is  underplayed  is  because  it  is  difficult  to 

contextualize.  Where  exactly  does  one  begin  exploring 

Milhaud’s  vast  catalog?  Paul  Christopher  has  naturally 

gravitated toward chamber music with cello, and over the 

past few years he has performed Milhaud's Élégie, Op. 251 

for  cello  and  piano  and  his  Piano  Trio,  Op.  428.  This 

evening he tackles Milhaud’s Cello Sonata, Op. 377.

The  Cello  Sonata was  composed in  1959 and  belongs  to 

Milhaud’s late period in which he synthesized the clarity of 

his early style with the feeling of his middle works. Milhaud 

once reflected of chamber music: “It is a form, the quartet 

above all, that conduces to meditation, to the expression 

of what is deepest in oneself […] It is at once an intellectual

discipline and the crucible of the most intense emotion.” 

Certainly we hear these contrasts in his Cello Sonata where 

there  is  much  rigor,  but  especially  in  the  slow  middle 

movement an outpouring of deep emotion. The Sonata is 

in  three  movements.  The  First  Movement,  Anime  ‐  Gai, 

emphasizes separation, both between its two players and 

also between the stream of musical ideas they convey. If 

the instruments are not exactly at odds, then there at least 

seems to be some disagreement with each asserting itself 

at  different  times  in  a  constantly  evolving  conversation. 

The  Second  Movement,  Lent  ‐  Grave,  finds  the  two 

instruments  echoing  each  other  in  elongated  melodic 

statements. These moments can be particularly expressive 

when the cello reaches inward to be answered equally by 

the piano or vice versa. The Third Movement, Vif et Joyeux, 

has all the intensity and joy its French title indicates with 

musical  motives  which  are  eccentric  yet  entirely 

committed.  After a  brief  prelude,  fugal writing  begins in 

the right hand of the piano, to be joined by the left hand 

and  cello  in  turn.  As  this  musical  landscape  reaches  its 

climax,  one  quick exchange  finally  brings  the movement 

and  piece  to  its  close. Despite  its  clear merits,  the  Cello 

Sonata remains one of those virtually unknown works by 

Milhaud, not receiving its  first recordings until the 1990s 

and still minimal attention since then.

Marshall Symphony Orchestra

 Spring Strings: The French Connection

Saturday, June 19, 2021, at 7:30 pm
East Texas Baptist University
Marshall, Texas

Sunday, June 20, 2021, at 3:00 pm

Cumberland Presbyterian Church

Jefferson, Texas

PROGRAM

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 ... J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

Allegro

Adagio in E Minor

Allegro

Lyric for Strings ... George Walker (1922-2018)

Concerto for Organ, Timpani, and Strings, in G Minor, FP 93 ... F. Poulenc (1899-1963)

Charles D. Gilbert Jr., Organist

St. Paul Suite in C Major, Op. 29, No. 2 ... G. Holst (1874-1934)

Jig

Ostinato

Intermezzo

Finale

New Music on the Bayou Festival

 New Music on the Bayou Festival
June 3, 4, and 5, 2021
Monroe and Ruston, Louisiana

PROGRAM of performances by Paul Christopher

Gravity by Noberto Oldrini
Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 10:00 am
University of Louisiana at Monroe
Biedenharn Recital Hall
200 University Avenue

Monroe, LA

Riverdaughter by Nick Virzi

Friday, June 4, 2021 at 11:00 am

Louisiana Tech University

F. Jay Taylor Visual Arts Center

Ruston, LA

Scherben by Jeanne Artemis Strieder

Friday, June 4, 2021, at 7:00 pm

Ruston Artisans

203 West Alabama

Ruston, LA

Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Cello by Mark Prince Lee

Saturday, June 5, 2021, at 10:00 am

Black Bayou Wildlife Refuge

480 Richland Place

Monroe, LA

Gravity by Oldrini

Trio by Lee

Scherben by Strieder

Composers Nick Virzi and Rob Smith

Charleston International Music Competition - Spring 2021 Results

Congratulations to Santiago Uribe-Cardona 

First Prize Winner in the Cello age group 20-24 years

Charleston International Music Competition

Santiago Uribe-Cardona NSU’23 was born in Cartagena, Colombia 20 years ago in a family of non-musicians and started his musical studies at age 6 playing the drums and taking private guitar lessons. At age 11 he started to take cello lessons at his high school music program under the tutelage of Prof. Andres Muñoz, with Mr. Muñoz Santiago attended the Cartagena International Music festival where he participated in master classes with renowned musician such as Denis Shapovalov, Alvaro Bitran, Santiago Cañón Valencia, Evelien Prakke among others. 

At age 16 he traveled to Paris, France where he was chosen to be part of the Binational Colombo-French Orchestra and performed on a side-by-side as assistant principal cellist at the Paris Philharmonie with musician from Les Siecles and The Paris Philharmonic, the next year he started his professional studies under Prof. Paul Christopher at NSU where he is pursuing a degree for Music Performance and Business Administration. In 2020 Uribe-Cardona performed at the CFIM with the Supernova Orchestra as assistant principal on a side-by-side with musician from the Royal Concertgebow and Camerata Austria. Uribe-Cardona likes to spends his free time running, swimming, reading, cooking and sleeping. His plans for the future are being part of a major symphony orchestra and to be a cello professor at a major conservatory.

Afternoon Musical Soiree featuring the Music of J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

Hosted by Wayne and Sally Halm

Ruth Garcia, violin, and Santiago Uribe-Cardona, cello

Natchitoches, Louisiana

May 8, 2021, at 5:00 pm

PROGRAM

Invention No. 1 in C Major, BWV. 772

Sonata No. 1 in G Minor for Violin Solo, BWV. 1001
Adagio
Presto

Suite No. 6 in D Major for Violoncello Solo, BWV. 1012
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gavotte 1 and 2
Gigue

Congratulations to alumnus Alonso Jose Restrepo Cardozo!

 Congratulations to Alonso Jose Restrepo Cardozo on his excellent Master's degree recital on March 29, 2021. In May he graduated with his Master of Music in Violoncello Performance from LSU School of Music studying with Dennis Parker. Alonso will be returning home to Cartagena, Columbia, where he accepted a fulltime position titled, Teacher of Violoncello, at the Escuela de Musica Ciudad Escolar Comfenalco Cartegena.

Congratulations to Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo!

 Alejandro Restrepo Cardozo graduated May 2021 with an Bachelor of Music in Violoncello Performance! Fall 2021, he will continue his studies at the University of Southern Mississippi as a graduate assistant to Dr. Alexander Russakovsky.

Guest Artist Recital at Louisiana Tech University

 

Faculty Recital: A Tribute to Luciano Berio

Magale Recital Hall

April 8, 2021, at 7:30 pm

Natchitoches, Louisiana

LUCIANO BERIO FESTIVAL

Adam Hudlow, trumpet • Paul Christopher, cello

Paul Forsyth, saxophone • Malena McLaren, clarinet

Justin Kujawski, double bass

Program Notes by Jackson Harmeyer, NSU Alumnus 2013

In 1957, in a lecture titled The Development of Serial Technique,the Italian composer Luigi Nono characterized himself, Bruno Maderna, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen as belonging to a so-called Darmstadt School whose role in history it was to extend the serial practices of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern into an overarching compositional aesthetic. Whereas the serialization of pitch was Schoenberg’s main concern, Webern had envisioned bringing serial structure to other musical elements, like rhythm and instrumentation. Yet, according to Nono, it was his own generation (i.e. the Darmstadt School) who had finally accomplished this feat in what has become known as integral serialism. Throughout the 1950s, this was the unified mission of the composers who would gather each summer in the German city of Darmstadt to discuss and share ideas. There were of course others in attendance, but Nono considered these four to be leaders and proceeded to demonstrate their accomplishments through analyses of their scores. Interestingly Nono had previewed that he would also discuss Luciano Berio (1925-2003), the composer whose music tonight’s Festival honors. In no surviving version of the text, however, does Nono analyze the music of Berio. In a written exchange, Berio had apparently recommended, You should secure the fact that the series is dead and buried: it is used only to prepare the material from which the music is invented. This suggests that perhaps Berio did not see himself as part of the logical, historical progression Nono theorized; that his music was separate from theirs. Indeed, soon after Nono delivered his lecture, disputes would arise to divide the Darmstadt School, so that the common purpose of the 1950s was replaced by a much-fragmented avant-garde in the 1960s.

Luciano Berio was born in the town of Oneglia in northwestern Italy. At the conclusion of World War II, he entered the Milan Conservatory where he studied with Giorgio Ghedini, gaining his first exposure to Modernist music primarily through the guise of the various neo-tonalities. Serialism was not emphasized, so after graduation Berio applied for the 1952 Tanglewood summer festival in Massachusetts where he could study with Luigi Dallapiccola who was then considered the foremost Italian exponent of serialism. While in the United States, Berio also encountered electronic music for the first time, and upon his return to Milan found employment at the Italian radio corporation, RAI. There he proposed the creation of an electronic music studio; when this Studio di Fonologia opened in 1955, he was made its co-director alongside Maderna whom he had met two years earlier at a conference dedicated to electronic music. Berio and Maderna became fast friends, and this initial connection would over time lead to many others. In 1956 Berio attended the Darmstadt summer courses for the first time. He regardless maintained his aesthetic distance, perhaps because he arrived relatively late after his own idiom had already formed through experiences in Milan and at Tanglewood. Still there were many parallel developments between Berio and the Darmstadt elite, like his utilization of open form in his celebrated piece Circles. This composition was written in 1960 for his first wife, the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, and it sets the poetry of e. e. cummings.

Even in his earliest works, Berio sought an approachability that the Darmstadt School stubbornly disavowed. His works accordingly won acclaim both in Europe and the United States, so that from the 1960s he was receiving prestigious commissions and teaching posts. The latter included stints at Mills College (as substitute for an ailing Darius Milhaud), Harvard, and Juilliard while his greatest compositional success came in 1968 with Sinfonia for eight amplified voices and orchestra. Commissioned by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic for the orchestra’s 125th anniversary, Sinfonia is one of very few works by an avant-garde composer to win popular approval. While its Second Movement honors the recently-assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., its Third Movement fully assimilates the Scherzo of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony. With this familiar material as undercurrent, additional quotes and allusions to Debussy, Ravel, Strauss, Stravinsky, and even his colleague Boulez (to name only a few) are overlaid into the crowded texture. With contemporaneous works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Peter Maxwell Davies, Sinfonia is one of the defining works of polystylism and early Post-Modernism; it would also inspire the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke as he made polystylism his trademark idiom over the following decades. Aside from Sinfonia, the series of fourteen Sequenzas is probably Berio’s other major compositional accomplishment, but more on these momentarily. Before his death in 2003, Berio would serve as director of the electro-acoustic section of IRCAM in the 1970s, found his own electro-acoustic center at the Villa Strozzi in the 1980s, premiere two operas at La Scala, and deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. Evidently Berio was someone who could straddle the intellectual, cultural establishment and the fierce polemics of the mid-twentieth century avant-garde.

Our program tonight begins with Gute Nacht, a 1986 work for solo trumpet. This short piece, lasting only one minute, was Berio’s contribution to a volume entitled Fanfares: New Trumpet Pieces for Young Players released by Universal Edition. The volume was edited by Edward H. Tarr, the American trumpeter who did so much to revive the early trumpet repertoire, especially the works of Giuseppe Torelli, while also passionately advocating for Modern music. Aside from Berio, other composers who contributed to this volume included Morton Feldman, Mauricio Kagel, and Wolfgang Rihm. The clear model for Gute Nacht is Taps, the bugle call used by the United States military and at funerals. Berio’s version, however, contains some rhythmic hesitation and chromatic distortion as if the young player has not quite mastered the desired tune. Afterwards we hear Les mots sont allés which Berio subtitled a recitative for solo cello. This work was commissioned and premiered by the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich in honor of Paul Sacher, the Swiss conductor and music patron, in celebration of his seventieth birthday. Pieces were commissioned from twelve prominent composers, including Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, and others. Most of these works were then premiered by Rostropovich at a special concert on May 2, 1976. Like others in this cycle, Berio’s piece translates Sacher’s name into pitch material, so that its letters are represented through the pitch classes, Eb-A-C-B-E-D. These six notes are played clearly and deliberately at the outset before variants on this theme begin. The texture becomes increasingly busier as the music proceeds. Only at the end does momentum slow as the first two pitches, Eb and A, are reiterated for tonal closure.

The majority of our program is dedicated to three Sequenzas. This series, begun in 1958, saw over the next forty-four years the completion of fourteen solo works for many of the instruments of the orchestra as well as a few outliers like piano, guitar, and accordion. They are at once virtuosic showpieces written for the premier players of their day and works concerned with the intelligent communication of musical ideas between composer, performer, and listener. They treat the solo instrument as cultural artifact and several explicitly engage with aspects of its performance and social history. Often this is done with humor and irony, challenging not only the performer’s technical ability but also their emotional resolve. We first hear Sequenza VIIb for soprano saxophone, an adaptation of the original work which was for oboe. Indeed several of the Sequenzas exist in multiple versions, and Berio sometimes integrated a Sequenza or its ideas into ensemble pieces. The oboist Heinz Holliger was the dedicatee and first performer of Sequenza VII at its completion in 1969. Berio maintained that all of his Sequenzas for monophonic instruments require a polyphonic listening. He commented of Sequenza VII, in particular, [Here] I carry on the research of a latent polyphony putting into perspective the complex sound structures of the instrument with an ever-present ‘tonic’: a B-natural that can be played pianissimo by any other instrument, behind the stage or in the audience. This drone provides a harmonic foundation from which sounds can emerge and against which the soloist can react. This remains true of the version for soprano saxophone, created by Claude Delangle in 1993 and premiered by him on May 20 of that year in Strasbourg. A second version for oboe, revised from this saxophone version, was created by Jacqueline Leclair in 2000 and termed Sequenza VIIa.

Sequenza IX for solo clarinet, composed in 1980, also exists in versions for alto saxophone and bass clarinet, although it is the original which we hear tonight. The clarinetist Michel Arrignon was the dedicatee and first performer, giving its premiere in Paris. According to Berio, Sequenza IX is concerned with melody and opposes a seven-note set whose register is largely fixed with a second five-note set which continues to change register. He wrote of the work, “It is essentially a long melody implying like almost every melody redundancy, symmetries, transformations, and returns. The contrast of the two sets forms the basis for melodic development. Our program concludes with Sequenza XIVb, an adaptation for double bass of the original for cello. Nevertheless in this case the two versions were only created two years apart: the original of 2002 was one of the final works Berio composed while its second version was an authorized adaptation by bassist Stefano Scodanibbio completed in 2004, a year after the composer’s death. Scodanibbio gave the premiere on June 15, 2004 in Stuttgart. The role played by the dedicatee of the cello version, Rohan de Saram, however, was crucial to the work’s composition and cannot be forgotten. This cellist of Sri Lankan origin introduced Berio to several instruments indigenous to this island nation in the Indian Ocean. The Kandyan drum, in particular, gave Berio the inspiration needed to approach the long history of the cello. Berio noted that All aspects of this piece live a double life, so that while the cello is often played in a traditional manner, the performer must also, for instance, tap the body of the instrument as if he were a percussionist. These aspects, as with previous Sequenzas, carry over into the version for double bass.

© Jackson Harmeyer 2021

About Jackson. Jackson Harmeyer is a freelance concert annotator based in Alexandria, Louisiana. 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 the 2021 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. In August 2020, Jackson began 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 serves as Secretary/Web Administrator to the Students of Music Librarianship Group. 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, CD collector, avid reader, and award-winning nature photographer.

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

Faculty Cello Recital

Three Works for Unaccompanied Cello

March 24, 2021 at 5:30 pm and 7:30 pm

Magale Recital Hall

Natchitoches, Louisiana

PROGRAM

Serenade for Cello (1949) ... Hanz Werner Henze

Suite for Cello (1939) ... Ernst Krenek

Sonata for Solo Cello (1968) ... Bernd Alois Zimmermann

 

PROGRAM NOTES:

In the Shadows of World War II

An NSU Faculty Recital by Paul Christopher, cello 

Program Notes by Jackson Harmeyer, NSU Alumnus 2013 

Our present era is one of political tension, racial strife, and economic catastrophe, all intensified by the devastating COVID-19 global pandemic and a persistent crisis of disinformation. Over the past year, we have become accustomed to socially-distanced and virtual concerts where our separation from each other is reinforced by a facemask or computer screen. Even these, however, can be luxuries as our larger musical institutions—our orchestras and opera companies—have often been unable to muster concerts at all. The three composers whose music cellist Paul Christopher plays tonight knew their own share of crises. Their age was torn asunder by World War II, a conflict arising from economic collapse and racial prejudices stoked by false prophets who used fear as their greatest weapon. Our composers Hans Werner Henze, Ernst Krenek, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, as Germans and an Austrian, had front-row seats to these calamities and each was forced to respond in a different way. While Henze and Krenek fled to countries they felt would be more hospitable to their music and ideas, Zimmermann ultimately committed suicide, after years of depression and physical illness. In their music, their recourse to neo-tonalities and then serialism represented efforts to attain a rationality absent from their chaotic era. Their interest in jazz and folk music, nevertheless, demonstrated a willingness to engage with the larger human community. As we begin to see some glimmers of hope in the vaccines and the promise of herd immunity, we also cannot forget the lasting consequences this moment will have on our art.

For the German composer Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012), the rise of Nazism was a personal story. As a boy, he watched as his father, a school teacher, embraced Nazism and how fascist, anti-Semitic, and anti-communist books gradually replaced those by banned authors. As for himself, Henze was enrolled in the Hitler Youth. Music was an escape for him, and in 1942 he entered the Brunswick State Music School where the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart became a lifelong passion. Although two years later he was conscripted into military service, his internment at a British prisoner of war camp allowed him to hear Modernist music for the first time via BBC radio broadcasts. Henze would later reflect, “Everything that the fascists persecute and hate is beautiful to me.” These early experiences led Henze to embrace communism and construct a politically-engaged music as he began composing in the post-war years. Encouraged by his mentor Wolfgang Fortner, Henze attended the Darmstadt summer courses in 1946, their first year. Although this annual meeting of the avant-garde introduced him to twelve-tone serialism, Henze rejected its subsequent transformation into integral serialism under classmates like Karlheinz Stockhausen as another dangerous regime to be resisted. Instead Henze employed twelve-tone materials non-dogmatically and often created a tonal scaffolding around them. By 1953, he had resettled to Italy as his Marxist views and homosexuality proved obstacles to his building a career in Germany. He created works honoring Hô Chí Minh and Che Guevara; he also taught in Fidel Castro’s Cuba for a year. Nevertheless Henze is well-regarded for his operas and other theatre works, including Boulevard Solitude, The Bassarids, El Cimarrón, and We Come to the River as well as his cycle of ten symphonies, several of which have literary associations of their own.

 Henze’s Serenade for solo cello was composed in 1949 and began as incidental music for a production of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing. The late 1940s and early 1950s was a time when Henze was involved in the creation of much stage between incidental music, ballets, and his first entries into opera. Indeed the plays of Shakespeare would inspire Henze throughout his career, prompting two guitar sonatas titled Royal Winter Music, the Eighth Symphony based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and an operatic setting of Venus and Adonis. The Serenade we hear is in nine brief movements, lasting only about eight minutes total. The First Movement, Adagio rubato, glides and wanders slowly as if uncertain of the direction it might take. Poco Allegretto is more resolute with pizzicato providing a steady accompaniment over which bowed material can dance. Pastorale resounds like a lonely horn call over a vast, echoing landscape while Andante con moto, rubato employs strong pizzicato to resemble a knock on a door. The Fifth Movement, Vivace, suggests the witty bantering and outright bickering of the reluctant lovers, Benedick and Beatrice—the aspect for which Much Ado is best-remembered. The Sixth is a Tango, although one which would be difficult to dance to. Allegro marciale is perhaps a further lovers’ quarrel which seems to further escalate in the dialogue of Allegretto. The final movement, Menuett, returns to the dance orientation of previous movements, now employing both pizzicato and staccato bowing to establish a steady accompaniment.

 The Suite, Op. 84 for solo cello by Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) is the earliest work on tonight’s program, having been composed in 1939. This Austrian composer of Czech parentage, however, was already well into his career, having worked in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, before relocating to the United States following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938. Although drastic aesthetic shifts characterized these early years, the most lasting influence was from his friendships with Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and the philosopher Theodor Adorno who exposed him to the twelve-tone serialism of their mentor, Arnold Schoenberg. Indeed Krenek composed the first serialist opera, Karl V, between 1929 and 1933, a work he saw as explicitly anti-Nazi and pro-Austrian in its depiction of its namesake emperor. His American pupil, the composer George Perle, has reflected, “Though Krenek insisted on the autonomy of the language of music, he always found an ideological rationale for the significant changes in his style …and it was a source of satisfaction to him that, in aligning himself with Schoenberg, he had adopted the musical technique that the tyrants hated most of all.” The planned premiere of Karl V in Vienna was canceled due to the interference of Nazi sympathizers; instead its premiere came four years later in June 1938 in Prague. By August, Krenek had emigrated to the United States where he began an influential teaching career. In the post-war years, he would lecture at Darmstadt and incorporate electronics, integral serialism, and chance operations into his ever-evolving compositional idiom.

Krenek’s Cello Suite is in five movements and lasts approximately ten minutes. The First Movement, marked Andante affettuoso, is characterized by motivic transformation. Gradually it intensifies from a tentative opening populated with isolated rhythmic figures into faster, more resolute material. Although there is at first an aspect of Webern’s pointillism, Krenek opposes and expands his motives so that they radiate energy and keep the music moving. There is further expansion in the Second Movement, Adagio, which now segregates its materials into several melodic lines identified by their timbre (arco or pizzicato) and range (low, middle, or high). The Third Movement, Allegretto, takes this yet a step further in its simulation of polyphonic writing. Motives here suggest fugal entrances and episodes, creating more of a collage of discarded archetypes than the implied counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach in his solo writing. The Fourth Movement, Andantino scherzando, at its outset alludes to the waltz with its characteristic steps captured in pizzicato. As the movement progresses, these steps grow increasingly distant as the bowed line seems too emotionally distracted to keep up. Especially in these two central movements, there are autobiographical elements as the intellectual rigor of Bach and a shared German past unravels in the Third Movement and the waltz with its strong Viennese associations becomes painfully undanceable in the Fourth. This fragmentation persists in the Fifth Movement, Andante, molto liberamente, which comes across as brittle and exhausted. Only near the end, at the marking Tempo I, does the music gain more resolve and fervor. Still there is no sense of resolution when the music finally terminates into silence.

Our final composer, Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), was the most tragic and his aesthetic, the most complex. Like Henze, compulsory military service in World War II exposed him to music which had been banned by the Nazi regime. In his case, a posting in occupied France gave him his initial acquaintance with the scores of Igor Stravinsky and Darius Milhaud. It also left him with a severe skin disease for which he was discharged in 1942. Formal musical studies in Cologne, begun before the war, now continued followed by three summers at Darmstadt from 1948 to 1950. Zimmermann too embraced basic serial techniques, although his primary expansion came in the temporal realm where he posited a “spherical shape of time.” By this he meant that time is perceived as a unity of past, present, and future where one is not separate from any other. In other words, the past coexists within the present and together they determine the future, so that collage and the simultaneous stratification of distinct elements become essential musical features. In his single opera, Die Soldaten (The Soldiers), composed from 1957 to 1964, Zimmermann demonstrates this pluralist vision by constructing scenes around Baroque genres, including the ciaccona, ricercar, and toccata; incorporating a wide array of musical idioms from jazz to Gregorian chant into his aural fabric; and staging multiple actions simultaneously, conveying some on film and pumping others through loudspeakers. Furthermore Zimmermann in his writings positions Die Soldaten as the inevitable descendent to Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck—a present to their past as well as a vision of opera’s future, especially in its multimedia exploits.

This spherical time also factors into a purely instrumental work like the Sonata for solo cello of 1960. Zimmermann subtitles his Sonata, et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub caelo—the familiar line from Ecclesiastes which in English reads, “…and a time to every purpose under Heaven.” The poem offers certainty in uncertain times in its reassurance that everything has a purpose and a natural consequent. Past experience assures us that present struggles resolve as time ticks toward the future. Zimmermann represents this cycle in a score where smaller time events like individual rhythms, meters, and tempi are fixed, but where overarching structure is left indeterminate. Staves are not linked as in a conventional score, but instead measures are grouped together individually and assigned numbers. Each group contains distinct musical ideas which can still be heard distinctively when played. In effect, particulars are deprived of larger meaning, so only the present is known while the context of past and future must be negotiated by performer and listener alike. Yet Zimmermann, as stand-in for God and the universe, assures his audience through his Biblical inscription that every particular has its purpose even if not presently or immediately known. Furthermore collage happens through the diversity of the materials, but without the actual stratification that the soloist instrument necessitates; materials must be and will be reassembled mentally. The Sonata lasts about sixteen minutes and is in five movements, each with a poetic title in Italian—Rappresentazione, Fase, Tropi, Spazi, and Versetto. The cellist Siegfried Palm, who was responsible for commissioning and premiering so many avant-garde works for cello in the second half of the twentieth century, premiered the Sonata on April 24, 1960 at the Stuttgart Days for Contemporary Music.

© Jackson Harmeyer 2021

About Jackson. Jackson Harmeyer is a freelance concert annotator based in Alexandria, Louisiana. 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 the 2021 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. In August 2020, Jackson began 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 serves as Secretary/Web Administrator to the Students of Music Librarianship Group. 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, CD collector, avid reader, and award-winning nature photographer. 

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