Breathe (2022)

Carlos Simon

“Drop Thy still dews of quietness
Till all our striving cease” 

One of my favorite books to read and re-read has been Meditations of the Heart written by renowned theologian, Howard Thurman. A spiritual advisor to many including Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurman was a prolific writer and preacher who lived in San Francisco for a large part of his life. Meditations of the Heart is a collection of meditations and prayers on the beauty of humanity. I was deeply inspired by one section entitled “Still Dews of Quietness”, which urges one to “stay put for a spell”. Through his words, I wanted to take the gesture further by writing a piece that encourages others to simply reflect and breathe.

-Carlos Simon

Heat (2022)

Jessica Hunt 

 Heat was commissioned for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music with the gracious support of Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting as part of the inaugural cycle of “Composing Earth.”

 The Composer Fellows of “Composing Earth” will each compose a work responding to the climate emergency over the course of their tenure in this program. In my work, I struggled at first to find the lens through which I would compose this piece, not out of lack of inspiration, but out of the overwhelming bewilderment and emotional devastation that has accompanied my journey in learning the science of human-driven climate change. This particular grief, this climate-mourning, has been a common thread with the “Composing Earth” cohort.

 Beyond its several aural metaphors for heat--in particular the sensations and sounds of extreme temperature exposure--it is this emotional journey of climate mourning that Heat seeks to invoke. First, the dread buried underneath denial as an arid, desolate wind rises; next the mounting anxiety and panic as if trapped in a pressure cooker's steam valve, twisting and melting; the ashes of a mourning of what will never again be the same; the bitter flame of deep melancholy; the disoriented, dancing embers of many voices pulling in myriad conflicting directions; and finally, a blooming warmth whispering into being from the violins and violas, climbing and searching, gathering momentum and instruments until the entire orchestra burns with determination, sustained by the powerful warmth of its many voices united in deep resolve.

 It is this warmth, this resolve, that I hope Heat will spark in you.

Symphony No. 8 in F major, Opus 93

Ludwig van Beethoven

Baptized December 17, 1770, Bonn: Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

The lighthearted Eighth Symphony brims over with subtle musical innovations, nimble feats of wit, and many charming moments that make it one of Beethoven’s most jovial and endearing works. Rather than following in the footsteps of the expansive Seventh Symphony, which Beethoven had finished only a few months before, the Eighth Symphony seems to look back to an earlier time with simpler ways of doing things. Here, Beethoven makes a final wistful glance over his shoulder to his mentors Haydn and Mozart before forging ahead on a creative journey that would culminate twelve years in the future with the adventurous spirit and unprecedented techniques of the legendary Ninth Symphony. The Eighth Symphony seemingly flowed from Beethoven’s pen with ease and was completed in a mere four months, a surprisingly short time for a composer who often spent years arduously planning out his major works. The bulk of composition was done during the summer of 1812 as Beethoven was resting at the Bohemian spas near Vienna, and he finished the piece while visiting his brother Nikolaus in Linz during October. The jovial demeanor of the symphony gives no hint as to how tumultuous the year 1812 would turn out to be for Beethoven: he was finally able to meet his idol Goethe in the Czech resort of Teplitz, discovering, to his great disappointment, that they actually had very little in common; he penned his famous love letter to the mysterious Immortal Beloved, an unidentified lady to whom Beethoven wrote, but never sent, this passionate piece of correspondence; and he denounced Nikolaus to city officials for having an affair with his housekeeper, prompting Nikolaus to marry the housekeeper to stop a formal investigation into his private life and causing Beethoven to storm back to Vienna in a rage.

The Eighth Symphony betrays none of Beethoven's personal dramas and remains cheery and playful throughout. Each movement is cleverly constructed from surprisingly simple musical material and is strewn with unexpected silences, sudden accents, and distant key changes that show Beethoven's humorous side. Contained here is the lesser-known image of Beethoven, a man who loved to laugh, enjoyed giving rude nicknames to friends, and relished teasing his drinking buddies over a few bottles of wine. The symphony’s third movement is notable for its solos for French horn and clarinet in the trio section, which were some of the first to feature the clarinet prominently. The steady sixteenth notes of the second movement were commonly thought to be a reference to the metronome, a device invented by Beethoven’s friend Johann Nepomuk Maelzel around this time. Unfortunately, this story was likely fabricated by Beethoven’s self-appointed secretary Anton Schindler since Maelzel did not produce the metronome until 1815, a few years after the Eighth Symphony was completed. It is more likely that Beethoven was thinking of the alternating tick-tock figures in the second movement of Haydn’s Clock Symphony, No. 101, as a model instead. Audiences at the premiere on February 27, 1814, were not impressed with the Eighth Symphony and seem to have missed the point of Beethoven’s jest entirely. Certainly, its position on the program contributed to the confusion since it was sandwiched between the rousing, highly patriotic strains of Wellington's Victory and the bombastic drama of Seventh Symphony, significant favorites against which the subtle wit of the Eighth Symphony would have sounded quite unremarkable. Though it was misunderstood in its own time, Beethoven was fond of the piece, affectionately calling it "my little symphony in F" to distinguish it from its longer F-major sibling, the Sixth Symphony. The Eighth Symphony never caught on with Viennese audiences the way Beethoven’s longer, more dramatic symphonies did, a fact that annoyed the composer for years after, so it is no surprise that, when asked by his student Carl Czerny why the Eighth Symphony was less popular than the Seventh, Beethoven cynically retorted: "That’s because the Eighth is so much better."