NCS 2022/23 Student Guide for Education Concerts

What Makes Music,

Music

NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY EDUCATION SUPPORTERS

The North Carolina Symphony gratefully acknowledges financial support from Wake County, the City of Raleigh, and the State of North Carolina.

NCS also gratefully acknowledges the following supporters:

EDUCATION SUSTAINERS

EDUCATION BENEFACTORS

Anonymous (2), Anonymous Trust / Simple Gifts Fund, The Bastian Family Charitable Foundation

EDUCATION PATRONS

The Backyard Foundation, Robert P. Holding Foundation, Inc., Samuel P. Mandell Foundation, James J. and Mamie R. Perkins Memorial Fund, Youths’ Friends Association Inc.

EDUCATION PARTNERS

Mark and Gayle Acuff Alamance County Government Anonymous Anonymous Fund

Bailey Endowment, Inc.

The Harold H. Bate Foundation

Bell Family Foundation

Bertsch Family Charitable Foundation, Inc. BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina

The Borden Fund, Inc.

R.A. Bryan Foundation, Inc. Mary Grey Burney Foundation Carteret Community Foundation

The Cole Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey A. Corbett Corning Incorporated Foundation Craven County Community Foundation

Curi

Edna Williams Curl and Myron R. Curl Charitable Fund

The Dickson Foundation, Inc. Dover Foundation, Inc.

William C. Ethridge Foundation, Inc.

The Lundy Fetterman Family Foundation Trust George Foundation, Inc.

Gipson Family Foundation Granville County Community Foundation Gregory Poole Equipment

The Hellendall Family Foundation of North Carolina

Iredell County Community Foundation

Harry and Virginia Killian Charitable Endowment

Lenoir County Community Foundation

Dr. Neil McLeod

Moore County Community Foundation

New Hanover County Government

Onslow Caring Communities Foundation

Onslow County Government

Outer Banks Community Foundation

Poole Family Foundation

Prescott Family Charitable Trust

W. Trent Ragland, Jr. Foundation

Rete Mirable Fund

Rockingham County Community Foundation

Florence Rogers Charitable Trust

E.T. Rollins, Jr. and Frances P. Rollins Foundation

The Norman and Rose S. Shamberg Foundation

The Eddie and Jo Allison Smith Family Foundation, Inc.

Southern Bank Foundation

Swearingen Foundation

Tannenbaum-Sternberger Foundation, Inc.

The Titmus Foundation

The Unifour Foundation, Inc. Endowment

Vance County Community Foundation

Alex and Barbara Wilson Charitable Foundation, Inc.

Margaret C. Woodson Foundation

MUSIC EDUCATION ENDOWMENT FUNDS

The Joseph C. and Diane E. Bastian Fund for Music Education

The Ruby and Raymond A. Bryan Foundation Fund

The Mary Whiting Ewing Charitable Foundation Fund

The Hulka Ensemble and Chamber Music Programs Fund

The Janirve Foundation Fund

The Ina Mae and Rex G. Powell Wake County Music Education Fund

The Elaine Tayloe Kirkland Fund

SCHOOL SYSTEM SUPPORTERS

Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools

Cumberland County Schools

Durham Public Schools

Edgecombe County Schools

Harnett County Schools

Lee County Schools

New Hanover County Schools

Orange County Schools

Wake County Public Schools

Supporters are current as of July 2022

Samuel

ColeridgeTaylor

BORN: August 15, 1875, London, England

DIED: September 1, 1912, Croydon, England

BIOGRAPHY

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London, England in 1875. His mother was also born in England, and his father in Sierra Leone. Coleridge-Taylor began studying violin at a young age and was admitted into the Royal College of Music in 1890, at age 15. He rose to success as a composer despite the rampant racism of the time. In 1899, ColeridgeTaylor first heard African-American spirituals, and soon began incorporating them into his own compositions. He toured America three times, in 1904, 1906, and 1910, and there met a large community of Black musicians who both admired and inspired him.

FUN FACTS

• At the Royal College of Music, ColeridgeTaylor studied music under Charles Villier Stanford, who also taught many other famous composers of the time, including Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was named after English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Many of his compositions were inspired by poetry, including poetry by his namesake.

• During a visit to America, Coleridge-Taylor was invited to the White House to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt.

In addition to composing, Coleridge-Taylor was also an activist. He was a prominent figure in the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900, which aimed to address the issues of racism and colonialism. Additionally, he sought to fight for respect for music of the African diaspora by featuring it prominently in his compositions.

Introduction

Listen to all the different instruments!

FEATURED WORK Othello Suite, Op. 79, Dance

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus

BORN: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria

DIED: December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart showed promise at an early age. Watching his older sister practice the piano helped shape his basic understanding of musical concepts. It wasn’t long before his father, an accomplished composer and musician, began tutoring him to advance his playing.

At just six years old, he and his sister started performing for audiences. The stress of touring presented frequent health issues within the family and made for a difficult childhood. These obstacles didn’t stop Mozart from carrying on as a composer and a performer.

FUN FACTS

• Mozart had many different pets, including a horse, a dog, and two songbirds: a starling and a canary.

• He was disorganized and would refuse to organize his music. Decades later, Ludwig Ritter von Köchel catalogued everything and saw how much music Mozart had written.

• He spoke 15 languages! Travelling the world as a musician helped him pick up languages at nearly every stop.

As he got older, Mozart eventually arrived in Vienna where he wrote music, taught lessons, and performed in various venues. His life wasn’t long, but he performed often and collaborated with other composers to create timeless art. He continued to write operas, string quartets, symphonies, and more until the end of his life, becoming one of the most well-known composers in history.

FEATURED WORK

Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, Molto allegro

How the sections of music are put together... the structure

DYNAMICS

FEATURED WORK Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Allegro

Ludwig van

Beethoven

BORN: December 1770, Bonn, Germany

DIED: March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria

BIOGRAPHY

Ludwig van Beethoven began his musical schooling when he was a small child. Both his father and grandfather were musicians at the Court of the Elector of Cologne, located in Beethoven’s hometown of Bonn. Although Beethoven’s father began his son’s musical education, it was clear that the boy had surpassed his father’s abilities by the age of nine. By age 12, Beethoven had composed his first work of music. In his young adult life, he worked as a conductor and organist for the court band.

Like many other composers, Beethoven traveled to Vienna, Austria to find inspiration. Here, he played for famous musicians such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn, who later became some of his mentors. Beethoven was very restless, always jumping from one composition to another. His musical ideas frequently became fused together in the chaos, creating some of his most memorable works. As an adult, he began to lose his hearing. Although this loss was devastating, he continued to compose for nearly 25 more years until his death in 1827.

FUN FACTS

• Beethoven was known for having a hot temper and occasionally lashing out at his fans.

• He was very fond of nature and often took long walks in the countryside to find inspiration.

• More than 20,000 people lined the streets of Vienna for Beethoven’s funeral procession.

BIOGRAPHY

William Grant Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi, but was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas by his mother and grandmother. He studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. Later, he went to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and studied under George W. Chadwick. After his time in Boston, he began studying with a composer of the avant-garde, Edgard Varèse. In the 1920’s, he began working in jazz music. He was a jazz arranger for Paul Whiteman, a dance-band leader of the time, and for blues composer W.C. Handy. In 1939, he moved to Los Angeles after getting married to pianist Verna Arvey.

After moving, he began composing works for chamber orchestra; two of his early works are Darker America and From the Black Belt. Still’s concern with the treatment of African Americans in the U.S. can be seen in many of his works. This can especially be seen in the Afro-American Symphony, his ballet, Sahdji, and his operas, Troubled Island and Highway 1 U.S.A. These pieces were composed after Still’s extensive study and research on African music. His eclectic musical style, which included many different musical influences, was enjoyed by audience members of every race and ethnicity. Still is remembered as one of America’s greatest composers, and his music is widely performed today.

William Grant

FUN FACTS

• William Grant Still studied medicine at Wilberforce University before going on to study composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

• He was known as “The Dean of African American Classical Composers.”

Still• He was the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra— the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

BORN: May 11, 1895, Woodville, Mississippi

DIED: December 3, 1978, Los Angeles, California

BIOGRAPHY

Georges Bizet was born in 1838 and began showing his own musical talent at a young age. He began his studies at the Paris Conservatoire at age 10, where he continued to work on his composing. For one of his early compositions, he won an award called the Prix de Rome in 1857, which led to a pension to work at the French Academy in Rome. He lived in Rome for the next two years before returning to France in 1860. Later in his life, although he was admired by other composers of the time, Bizet was often overlooked and forgotten by the public. Furthermore, he seemed frustrated with his own compositions, starting several operas and then leaving them unfinished.

Bizet wedded Geneviève Halévy in 1869; they had a son and a generally happy marriage. Bizet passed away at the early age of 36. Although he didn’t achieve widespread success during his lifetime, appreciation for his works continued to grow after his passing, with several of his operas reaching widespread popularity that Bizet would never get to see.

FUN FACTS

• He was not the first musician in his family! His father was a voice teacher and his mother a skilled amateur pianist.

• Although we know him as Georges Bizet, his original full name was Alexandre César Léopold Bizet. By his baptism two years later, his family was referring to him as Georges, though it is unclear how or why this name came about.

BORN: October 25, 1838, Paris, France

Bizet Georges

DIED: June 3, 1875, Bougival, France

• He left a lot of unfinished works. Of the thirty operas we know he started in his lifetime, he only finished six. However, he often reused material from pieces he left incomplete in his later works.

Tempo

Texture

The way melody and harmony are arranged together to create a complete sound

FEATURED WORK Spirituals of Liberation

Anthony

Kelley

BORN: February 28, 1965, Henderson, North Carolina

BIOGRAPHY

Anthony Kelley is Associate Professor of the Practice of Music at Duke University. He joined the Duke University music faculty in 2000 after serving as Composer in Residence with the Richmond Symphony for three years under a grant from Meet the Composer, Inc. One of the main goals of this program was to introduce children to the idea that the word “composer” applies to people living among us today, and not only people from hundreds of years ago like Bach and Beethoven.

In addition to composing, Kelley has spent much of his time introducing younger people to music creation. He likes to focus on helping young composers transfer their musical ideas from their minds into notes on a page. One of the ways that he does this is through teaching in a way that allows for freedom of musical ideas, regardless of the amount of classical music training students have.

The North Carolina Symphony gratefully acknowledges support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

FUN FACTS

• Anthony Kelley teaches composition at Duke University.

• He writes movie music! Movies Kelley has written music for include Kudzu Vine and The Doll.

• He was inspired to pursue music as a career after hearing the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in high school.

• He grew up in Henderson, an hour north of Raleigh. His first introduction to classical music was a field trip to see the North Carolina Symphony perform in Vance County.

Melody

BIOGRAPHY

John Rosamond Johnson was one of the most successful African American composers of his time. Born in 1873 in Jacksonville, Florida, he left in 1890 to study at the New England Conservatory. He then moved to London to continue his studies for a short period of time, before returning to his hometown of Jacksonville and becoming a public-school teacher. Around the same time, he also formed a songwriting duo with his older brother, poet James Weldon Johnson.

away singing

FEATURED WORK

“Lift Every Voice and Sing”

In 1900, Johnson moved to New York City to work with his brother and fellow composer Robert Cole. Together, the team worked on a vaudeville show and put together a couple of Broadway operettas, remaining collaborators until Robert Cole’s death in 1911. Johnson continued in show business in various ways for the rest of his life, touring with vaudeville groups, writing songs, performing in shows, and editing music collections. He also worked to teach the next generation, founding the New York Music School Settlement for Colored People, a music school in Harlem.

Rosamond

BORN: August 11, 1873, Jacksonville, Florida

DIED: November 11, 1954, New York City, New York

FUN FACTS

• J. Rosamond Johnson arranged over 150 spirituals and over 160 musical theatre songs!

• Although famous as a composer and arranger, he was also a talented performer, appearing in multiple Broadway shows during his time in New York.

• He was a musical prodigy and was considered to be an accomplished pianist by age four.

The main idea of the music... the line that you walk

Márquez

BORN: December 20, 1950, Álamos, Sonora, Mexico

BIOGRAPHY

Arturo Márquez was born in Mexico and grew up listening to a variety of musical genres. One of the avenues of exposure was from his father who was a mariachi musician. Growing up around the musical culture of Sonora, Mexico during his childhood helped influence his drive to become a composer and musician.

Márquez began his musical education and composing at the age of 16 in La Puente, California in 1966. He later went on to study at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico, followed by studies with French composer Jacques Castérède in Paris. Some of his most popular compositions draw inspiration from danzón, the ballroom dancing born out of Cuba in the 1800s. His later compositions take inspiration from Mexican urban music.

FUN FACTS

• Márquez was born in the Sonoran Desert, where summer temperatures can reach more than 110°F!

• After completing his composition studies at the Music Conservatory of Mexico, he received a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris from the French Government.

• In addition to playing in a mariachi band, his father played the violin and worked in construction to support his family.

North Carolina Symphony

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North Carolina Symphony Student Handbook

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