Evoking Folklore
April 29, 2023
Walton Arts Center
Paul Haas, conductor
Chokfi’ (2018)
Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate
b July 25, 1968, Norman, OK
number of compositions that incorporated native musical elements.
Native American music has long suffered from an exceedingly low profile on the concert stage. Attempted remedies have been sporadic and typically short-lived. A laudable but ultimately ineffective movement in the late 19th century sought to research, notate, and publish the music of various native peoples. Led by American composer Arthur Farwell, the so-called “Indianist” movement produced a fair
Composers such as Farwell were outsiders to those native cultures. It has been only recently that works truly reflecting those cultures have been composed by Native American, rather than Eurocentric, composers. Among those we find Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, born in Norman, Oklahoma and a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Both pianist and composer, Tate has received commissions from orchestras nationwide, has written for film and television, and has received numerous awards including a regional Emmy award.
Chokfi’ is the Chickasaw word for the trickster rabbit, an animal spirit of a typically lighthearted demeanor with a penchant for gettting into mild trouble along the lines of gluttony or carelessness, although he is capable of considerably more complex and even frightening behavior. He’s also a bit of a folk hero, such as in the tale of “Rabbit and Big Man Eater” in which he employs his clever wiles to defeat a man-eating monster.
Tate’s Chokfi’ resulted from a commission from the Oklahoma Youth Orchestras. “I decided to create a character sketch that would be both fun and challenging for the kids,” says Tate. “Different string and percussion techniques and colors represent the complicated and diabolical personality of this rabbit person.” The piece is divided into three large parts— the outer sections being propulsive and energetic, while the middle section takes a more introspective tone in which we can perhaps hear chokfi’ planning some new tricks.
Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1915)
Manuel de Falla
b November 23, 1876 in Cádiz, Spain
d November 14, 1946 in Alta Gracia, Argentina
It was once an article of faith that the French wrote the best Spanish music— think Bizet’s Carmen, think Debussy’s Iberia—but Manuel de Falla sought to reclaim Iberian music for native composers. A protégé of composerteacher Felipe Pedrell, tireless champion of indigenous Spanish music, de Falla created a variegated catalog of works that celebrate the manifold musical idioms of Iberia.
Although de Falla spent part of his formative years (1907–1914) in France, where he was influenced by Debussy, Ravel, and Dukas, he never allowed French idioms to dominate his style. From first to last he protected his Spanish heritage, and with the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Spain, where he would have remained permanently but for Franco and the Spanish Civil War. He exiled himself to Argentina in 1939, where he died in 1946. His remains were returned to Spain, where they were interred in Cádiz Cathedral.
Nights in the Gardens of Spain started out as a set of three nocturnes for solo piano, but shortly after returning to Spain in 1915 de Falla re-fashioned the suite for piano and orchestra. It’s fine to refer to Nights as a concerto, given the heightened and exposed role of the solo piano, but de Falla’s own description as “symphonic impressions” suggests that it’s more a three-movement tone poem with an unusually prominent solo instrument.
Each of the Nights portrays one of Spain’s most cherished formal gardens. “At the Generalife” takes us first to the magnificent Moorish Alhambra Palace in Granada, in a portrait that, despite occasional moments of crisp rhythm, generally retains a hushed and atmospheric demeanor. The second-place “Distant Dance” celebrates the flamenco song known as a malagueña, filled with the sound of strumming guitars. To conclude, “In the Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba” makes skilled use of the copla, an Andalusian poetic form that resembles a musical rondo, in which a cyclic refrain alternates with contrasting passages.
Symphony No. 3 (1946)
Aaron Copland
b November 14, 1900 in Brooklyn, NY
d December 2, 1990 in Sleepy Hollow, NY
It is a testimony to the richness of the American melting pot that one of our supreme musical voices was the Frenchtrained son of Polish and Lithuanian immigrants. Aaron Copland was born in New York, but his intense musical talent dictated that he would study overseas: early 20th-century America might have been the land of opportunity but it was a bleak wasteland for ambitious composers of concert music. From 1921 to 1925 he studied in France, broadening his musical horizons and acquiring a rock-solid compositional technique.
Upon returning to his homeland Copland became a prime mover in the creation of a vibrant American musical voice, as he developed a vivid personal style that blended the sophisticated European modernism he acquired in France with native jazz and folk music. One sometimes hears that there were two Coplands—one modernist, the other populist—but it is more accurate to say that his language was flexible enough to serve a wide spectrum of
compositions, from sparse contemporary statements to nostalgic evocations of an archetypal America.
Copland’s Third Symphony has a musical godfather by way of the inimitable Serge Koussevitzky, long-time music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Festival founder, and indefatiguable champion of modern music. Posterity may thank Koussevitzky for Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Messiaens’ Turangalîla Symphony, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and a host of other modern masterpieces, not to mention Ravel’s wonderful orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Copland had been sketching ideas for a new symphony since 1944, and the arrival of Koussevitzky’s commission energized him to “focus my ideas and arrange the material I had collected into some semblance of order.”
That “semblance of order” had its premiere by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony on October 18, 1946 and was immediately hailed as a masterpiece of symphonic art. Neither abstract modernism nor populist Americana, its
distinctly ‘American’ qualities are relatively sparse, in that it incorporates neither folk music nor jazz elements. However, it does make spectacular use of Copland’s own Fanfare for the Common Man, written for the Cincinnati Symphony in 1942. Not only does an expanded version of the Fanfare open the symphony’s last movement, but its characteristically angular contours and noble demeanor permeate the entire work.
Copland’s elegant lyrical muse is fully present in the expansive first movement, where, as is Copland’s typical practice, the movement’s three themes are presented in plain guise, without unnecessary decoration or sonic clutter. For the second movement, Copland provides a scherzo— i.e., a jolly uptempo affair shot through with dance rhythms, even in its contrasting slower middle section.
The finale, opening with Fanfare for the Common Man, is an expansive expression of nobility, gleaming with with heroism and grandeur, downright lavish in its thematic content. Eventually the Fanfare re-appears to bring the symphony to an appropriately imposing conclusion.
Program notes by Scott Foglesong, copyright 2023
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