Program notes: "Rustic Inspiration" February 16, 2012

Contrasts, for clarinet, violin and piano
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
(composed in 1938; duration: 17 minutes)

Having grown up in Hungary, Béla Bartók thought he had heard Hungarian folk music his entire life, but a chance encounter would change that perception – and the course of his career. In 1904, while vacationing at a rural Hungarian resort, he happened to hear a local peasant girl singing a tune in a very unfamiliar key. When questioned, the girl revealed that she was singing a typical folk song from her native Transylvanian village. This ignited Bartók’s lifelong interest in authentic Hungarian and Eastern European folk music, and he began travelling to remote villages to record local songs on the newly invented portable phonograph. Analyzing his recordings, Bartók soon discovered that what had long been considered Hungarian folk music – the music Liszt and Brahms had imitated in their Hungarian-themed works – was in fact a hodgepodge of various Eastern European styles, adapted for urban audiences by Gypsy musicians. But Bartók believed the obscure Hungarian folk music he had found reflected the true character of the Hungarian people, and he used the melodies he collected as the basis for his own uniquely Hungarian musical language.

Contrasts, Bartók's only chamber work for a wind instrument, was commissioned in 1938 by arguably the world's most famous clarinetist: Benny Goodman. But the real impetus behind Contrasts was the Hungarian violin virtuoso Joseph Szigeti, a friend of Bartók's who had emigrated to the United States to escape the rise of fascism. It was Szigeti who suggested Bartók to Goodman in the hopes that the commission might facilitate Bartók's own move to the U.S., which ultimately took place in 1940. The original commission was for a two-movement piece for clarinet, violin and piano, with each movement short enough to fit on one side of a 78-rpm record. Bartók instead delivered three movements – adding what is now the middle movement last – and gave the work the English title Contrasts. Each of the three movements bears a Hungarian title and a strong Central European flavor. The first movement is a moderately paced Verbunkos: an expressive Gypsy dance of the kind that traditionally accompanied the recruiters for the old Austro-Hungarian Army (the name even comes from the German Werbung, meaning "advertisement"). The slow second movement is titled Pihenö, or "relaxation"; it begins true to its name, only to explode in a contrasting burst of activity at the halfway point. The third and final movement is a Sebes: a Bulgarian folk dance in an irregular beat pattern Bartók indicated as (3+2+3)+(2+3). The violinist must re-tune two strings for this lively movement, adding to its rustic flavor.

Rondino (world premiere)
Joseph Rivers (*1954)
(composed in 2011; duration: 4 minutes)

Joseph L. Rivers is J. Donald Feagin Professor of Music and Film Studies and Chair of the Department of Film Studies at the University of Tulsa, where he teaches film scoring, composition, and music analysis. An active composer of concert works as well as film scores, his Second Symphony, titled Oklahoma Peoples in Trial and Triumph, was premiered by the Signature Symphony in November 2011. His other recent compositions include the score for Bo Bergstrom's 2010 film A Midsummer Night's Dream; the choral work Lone Wandering, premiered by the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Tulsa in 2011; and Overture for Debbi, composed in memory of flutist Debbi Turner, premiered by the Starlight Band in 2010. Additionally, Rivers has composed two works for oboist Lise Glaser: the Concerto for Oboe, English Horn and String Orchestra, perhaps the first concerto for these two solo instruments in combination, and The Wanderings of Ayumi, for oboe and harp. In 2010, Rivers released Nuova Avventura, a CD of some of his piano and chamber compositions.

Rondino is a single movement commissioned by Chamber Music Tulsa for the 2012 Young Chamber Artists Competition. As the obligatory contest piece for a mixed-ensembles competition, it was written to be arranged for a wide variety of instrumentation possibilities, from string duos up to a quintet for clarinet and strings. As the composer writes,

Rondino was so titled to reflect its form and character of "a piece attempting to be a rondo, with some degree of success." The piece can also be viewed as a frolicking study of offbeat syncopation. The opening A theme with its accented offbeats sets the tone for the entire piece, and although it occurs only three times, it suffuses the entire composition with its lively, bouncy qualities. The B theme, constructed from motives from the A theme and replicating some of its syncopation, is also introduced early on. It is more lyrical and folklike in character, providing a contrasting foil to the opening theme. A more legato C theme in parallel harmonies begins in a serious manner and offers further contrast. Its consequent phrase, however, lapses into a playful commentary, as if to poke fun at any semblance of seriousness. After another iteration of the B theme at the midpoint, all three themes return in reverse order, leading to the final occurrence of the A theme, as if to blow the whistle that it is really the "top dog" (principal theme) here. This leads to a lively and climactic coda that swirls to a final cadential gesture.

Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet
György Ligeti (1923-2006)
(composed in 1953; duration: 12 minutes)

The best-known Hungarian composer since Bartók, György Ligeti was actually born in Romania to Hungarian-Jewish parents, and only became a Hungarian himself when his village was annexed by Hungary's pro-Nazi regime in 1940. The war years radically altered the course of Ligeti's life: his parents were deported to Auschwitz, and Ligeti himself was impressed into a Hungarian work camp. After the war, he was able to return to his music studies at the Liszt Academy in Budapest; there, he absorbed the methods of Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, which emphasized a compositional style grounded in Hungarian and Romanian folk music. Afterwards, Ligeti remained in Hungary, collecting folk songs and composing in relative obscurity throughout the early years of the postwar communist government. When the 1956 Hungarian revolution was brutally suppressed by the Soviet Army, Ligeti decided to make his move to the West, and he and his wife fled Hungary for Austria. Upon leaving the strictly controlled Soviet bloc, Ligeti was finally able to immerse himself in the latest trends in post-tonal avant-garde music, and his style changed markedly.

One of the most frequently performed works from his early Hungarian period, Ligeti's Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet is actually an arrangement of selections from his groundbreaking (and at that time, still unpremiered) piano cycle, Musica ricercata. The first of the six bagatelles – a musical catch-all term for any short, implicitly inconsequential piece – begins playfully and energetically, with spirited rhythms in the high woodwinds. The slower second movement, marked Rubato, Lamentoso, ebbs and flows emotionally in the manner of a lament. This is contrasted immediately by the allegro grazioso third movement, which features a haunting folk-style melody over a repeating seven-note ostinato rhythm. The spell of this movement is broken by the opening chord of the fourth bagatelle (presto ruvido), which announces a brisk dance in an irregular seven-beat meter. The adagio fifth bagatelle is a lament for the late Béla Bartók, and includes references to Bartók's characteristic Hungarian dance rhythms in a slow dirge style. The molto vivace finale, which was censored by the Soviets for its experimental tonality, is a whirlwind burlesque, culminating in a section Ligeti states should be played "as though mad," before ending quietly with a solo horn motif.

Quintet for Strings in G major, op. 77
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
(composed in 1875; duration: 35 minutes)

Bohemia – the heartland of what is now the Czech Republic – was once the epicenter of a unique variety of cultural nationalism that encompassed all of the arts during the late nineteenth century. After centuries of Austrian Habsburg rule that had turned Prague into a city that was as German as it was Czech by 1800, the stirrings of a nationalist movement first began among a local intelligentsia that felt cut off from its own rural roots. Inspired by the German romantics and their newfound interest in folk tales and rustic culture, these Bohemian romantics began reexamining their own indigenous folk traditions; this led to the first-ever dictionaries of the Czech language, and Czech literature was not far behind. Soon the composer Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) began incorporating Czech folk melodies into his concert works in an effort to define a uniquely Bohemian musical style. But it would take a composer who started out as a violist in Smetana's theater orchestra – Antonín Dvořák – to make Czech music known throughout the world.

As a young man, Dvořák struggled to find his own musical path between his two idols, Smetana and Johannes Brahms. He aspired to Brahms's compositional skill and particularly his ability to develop and transform musical material, yet like Smetana, he wanted his melodies to be recognizably Czech. Dvořák finally achieved this balance in the very productive year of 1875, which saw the completion of his Serenade for Strings and Symphony No. 5, as well as a Quintet for two violins, viola, cello and bass in G major. This string quintet – Dvořák's second of what would be three, but the only to feature the double bass – was composed for a Czech chamber music competition, and originally bore the title "To My Nation." Dvořák subsequently revised and republished the piece in 1888, explaining the relatively high opus number of 77. The first of the quintet's four movements (Allegro con fuoco) opens mysteriously, with snippets of the main theme introduced in the individual strings before coming together in the style of a sprightly peasant dance, which retains its Czech character throughout its development. The scherzo second movement is darker and more aggressive, contrasted by a trio midsection in which the violin plays an expressive solo evocative of folk songs. This is followed by a tender poco andante third movement, which opens with the instruments passing the serpentine melody from one to another; a contrasting middle section again has the solo violin (and briefly the solo cello) soaring over the ensemble. The allegro assai finale, in the classical rondo form, is dominated by a recurring dancelike melody, bringing the work to an ebullient close.

Program Notes copyright 2012 by Jason S. Heilman, Ph.D.