New Canons
March 11, 2023
Walton Arts Center
Paul Haas, conductor
In
saecula saeculorum (2016)
Paul Haas
b 1971
In lieu of a traditional program note, we’re pleased to offer this question-and-answer exchange between program annotator Scott Foglesong and composer/conductor
Paul Haas.
SF: Could you describe the genesis of “In saecula saeculorum” — what led to its composition?
PH: In 2016, Peter MacKeith, Dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, commissioned me to create a site-specific musical installation celebrating the school’s 70th anniversary and the opening of their new building. “In saecula saeculorum” is the result of that commission, and the premiere took place in the new building on August 27, 2016.
One could translate “in saecula saeculorum” as “for ever and ever” or the like. What’s the significance of that title regarding this piece?
I wanted to explore the relationship between teachers and students, in a broader sense, and I became fascinated with the idea that students become teachers. Those students then in turn become teachers, teaching further generations of students, and the cycle continues eternally, or “for ever and ever”. Not to mention the idea that being a teacher forces you to become a student, although of a different kind. There’s so much to unpack in this, and these are the thoughts that drove me to write this particular score.
Each movement of the piece was written to be performed in a different location – outside a building, ground floor, and staircase. Will that spatial aspect be part of the SoNA performance?
Although I wrote each movement for a different spot in the Fay Jones School building, the pieces work equally well—if differently—in a traditional setting. There will be some spatial elements to the performances, but not nearly as many as in the premiere, given the differences between the venues.
I love creating site-specific work for nontraditional venues, for a few reasons:
First, I generally have very few restrictions on what I can and can’t do, other than budgetary, and so I can allow my creativity to run wild. Second, I have a meditation practice that allows me to become one with the space, discovering ways to use it to fullest effect. That process takes anywhere from a day to about a week, though it continues to evolve as the piece is written and finally rehearsed. There’s really nothing like the feeling of hearing the space “speak,” as it were. Hearing it express itself.
The outer movements have titles in Latin (Invitatio, In spira). However, the central movement is titled in English (Heart of Hearts). Is there any particular significance to that?
Each title is related to the eternal unfolding of the “teacher–student” dynamic I spoke about earlier. The middle movement, “Heart of Hearts,” speaks to the selfless and loving aspect of teaching, of giving oneself entirely to the betterment of someone else. It also happens to be what I call one of my own meditation practices, which is focused on the same ideals.
“In saecula saeculorum” isn’t your only site-specific composition. Could you speak about the process/challenges/ advantages of creating music for nontraditional venues?
Cohere I (2021)
Trevor New
b 1986
Throughout history musical performances have generally taken place in a room of some sort. The players occupy one part of the room, the listeners another. The players play, the listeners listen. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but modern technology has given us abundant new venues: broadcasts, podcasts, simulcasts, streamcasts, recordings, films, videos.
Those advances, wondrous though they are, don’t change that fundamental performershere-listeners-there paradigm. Then along came technologies such as Zoom, FaceTime and their ilk, all supercharged by the Covid epidemic. Such videoconferencing software makes it possible to distribute performers and listeners alike across multiple spaces, creating a network or web of connections, all operating in real time.
That’s the thinking behind Trevor New’s Cohere I. “How connected, yet isolated we all are in some ways by how we see the world and our place in it, our ideas about other people” he writes. “The makeup of the piece is a solution to the desire to create sound with others when you feel separated from others/society/civilization.”
To that end, Cohere I doesn’t take place only in the concert hall. Some of the musicians are in different places and time zones, and the same goes for some of the listeners. The work starts with an onstage viola solo, but gradually the remote musicians enter and coordinate together. Finally, all are empowered to sing and play as one, even across those multiple places and time zones.
Coherence. Connection. Interaction.
“The primary goal of the piece is to show everyone how they can be connected and interact wherever they are,” New tells us. “Being able to suddenly be immersed in a performance wherever you are and play a part in that piece with people from all over the world is a powerful experience that could bring people together.”
Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 (1883)
Johannes Brahms
b 1833
d 1897
By the middle of the nineteenth century musical pundits had declared the symphony, as a living genre, to be a done deal. Heralds had been proclaiming its demise for decades and audiences had accepted the situation as given. It all came down to the impact of Beethoven’s
nine symphonies, considered as the peak achievements of the rapidly-coalescing ‘standard repertory’ and its roster of ‘great composers.’
As of the 1850s potential symphonists were obliged to face Beethoven’s legacy. Some sidestepped the whole issue by writing programmatic ‘symphonic poems’ or operasymphony hybrids. Other more conservative types attempted traditional symphonies and eked out little more than anemic retreads. The flow of new symphonies in the pipeline subsided to a trickle.
Brahms was at first reluctant to try his luck at such an apparently no-win challenge, but pressure on him as the chosen savior of the ailing genre increased steadily along with his growing reputation as a Beethovenclass structuralist. It wasn’t until 1876—he was forty-three years old—that he finally produced his Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68, a majestic creation that proved that the symphony was by no means extinct. He followed up quickly with a second symphony in D Major the next year, but held off for another six years before producing a third.
Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 of 1883 establishes both its musical and philosophical themes in the opening three notes, representing Frei aber fröh (Free, but happy), Brahms’s adaptation of Frei aber einsam (Free, but lonely), the personal
motto of his close friend and colleague Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim.
That motto runs throughout the symphony, its unsettled quality left unresolved until the very end of the symphony, when it is heard in a serenely unruffled guise that seems like a blessing or benediction. Along the way, high drama (first movement), touching intimacy (second movement), lyrical rapture (third movement) and even more intense drama (fourth movement, at least for a while) carve out a memorable journey that fully warrants Eduard Hanslick’s verdict as Brahms’s “artistically most nearly perfect” symphony.
Note: It has been said that Brahms was an indifferent or unimaginative orchestrator. However, it has also been said that the bathtub was invented in Philadelphia in 1842, so let’s not believe everything we hear. Bathtubs date back thousands of years. Brahms was a wonderful orchestrator, imaginative, creative and insightful. Listen for detail, for delicate and subtle blends of sound. Brahms’s orchestra is his own, unique creation—not in its physical makeup, but in its unmistakable sonority, variety and richness.
First North American Serial Rights Only
Program notes by Scott Foglesong, copyright 2023