The Lark Ascending, Romance for Violin and Orchestra

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Born October 12, 1872, Gloucestershire: Died August 26, 1958, London

 The Lark Ascending enjoys a seemingly permanent position at the top of lists of “Favorite Pieces of Classical Music.” Its immense popularity is only natural given the inherent charm of this contemplative piece, where impressionistic textures and free-flowing pentatonic melodies create a highly evocative vision of the idyllic English countryside. The essence of English folk music and nostalgia for a simpler time are contained in its meditative passages, a combination that has won this piece many devoted admirers across the world. Vaughan Williams started work on The Lark Ascending in 1914, envisioning it as a romance for violin and piano. His inspiration came from a poem by the celebrated English novelist and poet George Meredith, who had penned a set of hymn-like verses in 1881 honoring the song of the skylark. Meredith’s pastoral poem contained over one hundred lines from which Vaughan Williams selected twelve of his favorites and inscribed them in a privileged position on the title page of the score, making them the basis for his musical depiction of the skylark soaring through the air while singing its delicate song.

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
For singing till his heaven fills,
’Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.
Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

The initial idea for The Lark Ascending came to Vaughan Williams while he was visiting the seaside town of Margate on a holiday trip and heard the announcement that Britain had decided to enter World War I. The resort town was used as a training ground for fleet exercises, and the composer watched the ships practicing their battle maneuvers just offshore while he wandered the nearby cliffs. During one of his walks, he had a moment of inspiration as the solo violin melody took shape in his mind, and he hastily copied the tune into his pocket notebook. His hurried writing caught the eye of a young boy who found his behavior suspicious and thought he was a spy mapping details of the coastline for the enemy. The boy reported Vaughan Williams to the police, causing the composer to be detained briefly by a group of puzzled officers.

            Vaughan Williams sketched out much of The Lark Ascending in 1914, but work on the piece was postponed when he volunteered for military service as an ambulance driver. Having experienced the horrors of war and the devastating loss of many friends and colleagues, it was quite some time until he had the will to compose again after World War I came to an end. When he did finally set pen to paper, he drew from a new source of tranquility and strength, channeling a feeling of resigned serenity into his work. He was encouraged to complete The Lark Ascending by the outstanding British violinist Marie Hall, who gave the premiere of the violin and piano version with pianist Geoffrey Mendham on December 15, 1920, in a concert held at Shirehampton Public Hall. The piece was an immediate success, with virtuosic flourishes for the violinist that imitate both the skylark’s exquisite song and expert flight. Hall also gave the premiere of the version for violin and orchestra the following year on June 14, 1921, at Queen’s Hall in London with the British Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adrian Boult. Vaughan Williams dedicated the piece to her in gratitude for her efforts, both as a fine musician and as a trusted friend.

Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Opus 92

Ludwig van Beethoven

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

 Beethoven began work on his Seventh Symphony in the autumn of 1811 after a restful visit to the Bohemian resort city of Teplitz, where he had gone, under the orders of his doctor, to recuperate in the healing mineral waters of the natural hot springs. Constant worries about his hearing loss – which had advanced to almost total deafness – and various stresses from daily life had taken their toll on the composer’s health, but he felt rejuvenated and was eager to start working on the Seventh Symphony once he returned to Vienna. The piece was completed by the spring of 1812, but did not receive its public premiere until December 8, 1813, at a charity benefit concert held to raise funds for Austrian and Bavarian soldiers who had been wounded at the Battle of Hanau. Of the various pieces heard that evening, the most popular was Beethoven’s patriotic Wellington’s Victory, which appealed to the nationalistic spirit of audience members who were collectively weary of the continual battles against Napoleon and still harbored bitter resentment about the French army’s occupation of Vienna some years earlier. The biggest crowd-pleaser was performed by one of latest inventions made by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (best known today as the inventor of the metronome), who unveiled a mechanical trumpet playing machine that rattled off marches written for the occasion by Jan Dussek and Ignaz Pleyel while accompanied by the orchestra. The Seventh Symphony was the longest and least programmatic of the pieces presented, but it was very well received and the Allegretto second movement was repeated as an encore. Audiences and critics alike had mostly positive comments about the new symphony, and even Beethoven himself was uncharacteristically satisfied with it, describing it as “one of my best works” in a letter to the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in 1815.

The orchestra for the premiere performance contained many musicians now recognized as famous composers and performers themselves, including Louis Spohr, Johann Hummel, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Antonio Salieri, and Domenico Dragonetti, to name only a few. Many of these men left descriptions of the bombastic style of conducting they witnessed from Beethoven as he stood on the podium during the event. As Spohr reported from the violin section: “Whenever a sforzando occurred, he [Beethoven] tore his arms, previously crossed upon his breast, asunder with great vehemence. At piano he crouched down lower and lower according to the degree of softness he desired. If a crescendo then entered he gradually rose again and at the entrance of the forte he jumped into the air. Sometimes, too, he unconsciously shouted to strengthen the forte…” The concert was an overwhelming success and generated quite a bit of money for the ailing soldiers, prompting Beethoven to repeat the performance four days later, then again in January of 1814, and again in February, all to great acclaim. Of the works presented on that winter evening, the ebullient Seventh Symphony is the only piece that is still frequently performed today. The first movement opens with an expansive slow introduction characterized by ascending scales that shifts into a lively sonata-form Vivace propelled by dance-like rhythms bubbling with irrepressible musical joy. The Allegretto second movement is built around a rhythmic, rather than melodic, pattern of long-short-short-long-long that is expanded through a series of relaxed variations. The scherzo third movement trips along with a spontaneous excitement using a tune thought to be derived from a Austrian pilgrims’ hymn and is calmed only briefly by the stately trio. The thrilling finale rushes forward in a whirlwind of sound that seems to teeter on the edge of chaos and threatens to tear itself apart at any moment, driving relentlessly into a coda that closes the symphony with a thunderous clamor.

 Michael Gilberton’s Denial

Composed by Michael Gilbertson Co-commission with the BMI Foundation Ever since climate change became part of public discourse, the denial of climate science has been a constant barrier to progress. Denial draws on the words of both poets and flat Earth theorists (science deniers of an earlier era) to explore the human flaws behind one of humanity’s collective disasters. Denial was commissioned for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Volti, and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choirs by the BMI Foundation and the SFCO, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Fire Cycle by Diana Woolner

Lyrics

There are trees and they are on fire. There are hummingbirds and they are on fire. There are graves and they are on fire and the things coming out of the graves are on fire. The house you grew up in is on fire. There is a gigantic trebuchet on fire on the edge of a crater and the crater is on fire. There is a complex system of tunnels deep underneath the surface with only one entrance and one exit and the entire system is filled with fire. There is a wooden cage we’re trapped in, too large to see, and it is on fire. There are jaguars on fire. Wolves. Spiders. Wolf- spiders on fire. If there were people. If our fathers were alive. If we had a daughter. Fire to the edges. Fire in the river beds. Fire between the mattresses of the bed you were born in. Fire in your mother’s belly. There is a little boy wearing a fire shirt holding a baby lamb. There is a little girl in a fire skirt asking if she can ride the baby lamb like a horse. There is you on top of me with thighs of fire while a hot red fog hovers in your hair. There is me on top of you wearing a fire shirt and then pulling the fire shirt over my head and tossing it like a fireball through the fog at a new kind of dinosaur. There are meteorites disintegrating in the atmosphere just a few thousand feet above us and tiny fireballs are falling down around us, pooling around us, forming a kind of fire lake which then forms a kind of fire cloud. There is this feeling I get when I am with you. There is our future house burning like a star on the hill. There is our dark flickering shadow. There is my hand on fire in your hand on fire, my body on fire above your body on fire, our tongues made of ash. We are rocks on a distant and uninhabitable planet. We have our whole life ahead of us.

Zachary Schomburg, "The Fire Cycle" from Scary, No Scary. Copyright © 2009 by Zachary Schomburg. Reprinted by permission of Black Ocean.

Program Note":

I wrote it late one night when I was full of hope and despair all at the same time, when the world was crashing around me and building back up somewhere else.

- Zachary Schomburg

 While writing the piece, I imagined someone yelling “fire!” and tried to manifest that action musically, while taking advantage of the more tender moments hidden within the text to provide some relief. Initially written collaboratively with a chef, a dish of chipotle cinnamon cake truffles was served to the audience to be consumed before the piece started. The climax of the piece involves DIFFUSION, or the intermingling of substances by the movement of particles (which heat accelerates). What the audience hears is the gradual chromatic rising of tones, increasing in speed and energy, until all vocal parts merge into one large chord on “There is you”. This is the piece’s romantic (and arguably sexual) peak.

-Diana Woolner

Earth Song: Music and Text by Frank Ticheli

 Sing, Be, Live, See. 
This dark stormy hour, 
The wind, it stirs.
The scorched earth cries out in vain:
O war and power, 
You blind and blur, 
The torn heart cries out in pain.

But music and singing 
Have been my refuge, 
And music and singing 
Shall be my light.
A light of song,
Shining Strong:
Alleluia!
Through darkness and pain and strife,
I’ll Sing, Be, Live, See –
Peace.