Satie was a musical iconoclast who sought to lead French music from Impressionism to a more minimalist, experimental approach. Among those influenced by him during his lifetime were Maurice Ravel and Francis Poulenc, and he is seen as an influence on a number of modern artists, including John Cage, Philip Glass, and Brian Eno.
His formal musical training began in 1879, when at age 12 he was enrolled in the preparatory piano class at the Paris Conservatoire. However, he strongly disliked it, and a few years later was expelled for unsatisfactory performance. Rejecting his restrictive, traditional upbringing, he embraced an eccentric, bohemian lifestyle and earned a living as a cabaret pianist, adapting more than a hundred compositions of popular music for piano, or piano and voice.
He became involved in avant-garde music and art circles in the early 20th century, becoming a friend and collaborator of many famous artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and James Joyce. He composed music for Cocteau’s play “Parade,” which featured set and costume designs by Picasso. His close friend, Claude Debussy, was a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition. Both were bohemians, enjoying the same café society and struggling to survive financially. Satie composed most of his works for solo piano, including two “Gymnopédies” in 1888 (plus another in 1895), and “Gnossiennes” in 1889.
In 1897 Debussy arranged two of the Gymnopédies for orchestra (the ones we are performing today). “Gymnopédie” may refer to a classical Greek annual festival where young men danced naked – or perhaps simply unarmed. The source of the title has been a subject of debate. The Gymnopédies are characterized by slow tempos, simple melodic lines, at once melancholic and atmospheric. The Gymnopédies are among the most publicly recognizable of Satie’s works. They have been featured in many artists’ arrangements, movies, and television shows.
Born into a musical family, Márquez has become one of Mexico’s best-known composers.
Danzon No. 2 was commissioned in 1994; like his other “Danzon” compositions, it is based on Cuban and Mexican dance motifs. It caught the musical world’s attention in 2007 when it was performed by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth orchestra; it is now one of the most popular and frequently performed works by Mexican composers.
It starts off with a wistful clarinet melody against a soft percussion background; is joined by oboe and strings; and then transforms into a percussive frenzy with full orchestra, interrupted with a sweet passage in the piccolo. A calmer interlude features solo violin and winds, morphing into a romantic statement of the theme by the strings. A sharp attack by the strings brings back the piece’s percussive frenzy, which hurtles to a rousing climax.
Victor Hugo wrote the play “Le Roi S’Amuse” (The King Amuses Himself) in 1832. Loosely based on historical figures, the plot involves a court jester to the king who schemes to help the king obtain a new mistress. The jester’s daughter is seduced by the king; upon discovering a plot to murder the king, she sacrifices her life for him. The play was banned in 1832 after just one performance (government censors believed that the play insulted the current king of France). Some 20 years later, the plot of “Le Roi S’Amuse” became the basis for Verdi’s Opera Rigoletto.
When the play was finally revived in 1882, the noted composer Léo Delibes wrote a ballet sequence of six charming dances and antique airs to be included as incidental music. They consist of a grand opening Gaillarde; a stately Pavane; a melodic Scène du Bouquet; Lesquercarde, a spritely tune; a sweet Madrigal; a wistful Passepied; and a final reprise of the Gaillarde.
The third of the “Three B’s” (along with Bach and Beethoven), Brahms adhered to the use of classical forms in his works but dramatically altered the musical landscape in terms of harmony and expressiveness. Included among Brahms’s masterpieces are four symphonies, two orchestral serenades and two overtures, much great chamber music and many pieces for piano, assorted concertos, the Hungarian Dances, the German Requiem and other choral works.
Given the preeminence that Brahms holds today as an orchestral composer, it is somewhat surprising to find that he did not have a single work in the orchestral repertory until he was nearly 40, and it was the brilliantly crafted “Haydn Variations” that helped secure his reputation as a symphonist. Brahms produced two separate versions of the work: the present one for orchestra and a second one for two pianos. Although the pieces are effectively identical, Brahms considered them two independent works rather than viewing one or the other as a transcription. Brahms himself premiered the piano composition in August 1873 with Clara Schumann. The orchestral composition had its premiere in November of the same year.
Instantly recognizable, this work is taken from Wagner’s opera “The Valkyries,” his second opera in the Ring cycle. The “Ride” is a musical tone poem in which the Valkyries – warrior daughters of Wotan, king of the gods – ride through the air bringing back the souls of dead heroes to Valhalla, the home of the gods. The scenery is foreboding – towering, craggy mountains, a stormy thundering sky. All of this is brought to life in Wagner’s electrifying and dramatic orchestration.
This short well-known work is actually an instrumental interlude contained in the oratorio Solomon, which Handel composed in 1749. The sinfonia contains vigorous running passages in the violins with contrasting oboe solos.
This work is considered by many to be among Vaughan William’s finest compositions.
Its theme is taken from a tune composed by Thomas Tallis, a 16th-century English renaissance composer. Vaughan Williams came across the tune when editing the English hymnal in 1906. When Vaughan Williams edited the hymnal, he assigned a later text to it (John Addison’s “When rising from the bed of death”), and made it the basis for the Fantasia.
The orchestration is unusual. There are two string orchestras – a first “large” orchestra, and a second small “shadow” orchestra, physically separate from each other; a string quartet; and violin and viola soloists.
The Tallis theme is initially foreshadowed by plucked lower strings, before its full exposition, first in a calm mode by middle voices, then in an impassioned mode by the first violins. An introspective viola solo leads to a rich development, in which the large orchestra’s lush sound is echoed by the “shadow” orchestra, with interplay between the string quartet and both orchestras. After a climax (based largely on the second part of the Tallis tune), the work ends with a wistful repetition of the main theme, a soaring solo violin line, one last climax, and a slow fade away.
This work explores issues of scale. I have always been fascinated by the very large, the very small, and most of all by the sensory experiences induced by juxtaposing myself in such situations. Standing in front of a mountain feels very different from standing in front of a bookcase. The experiences are different in kind; our kinesthetic, proprioceptive, and haptic senses are radically brought into play.
Scale has to do with the interrelation of parts, and is different from size. A work can be very large and at the same time of an intimate scale. Joyce’s “Ulysses” would be a classic example: it is a large book, but its component parts work together on a level commensurate with the whole. Conversely, Beckett’s “Imagination Dead Imagine” (a full novel of four pages) or Giacometti’s small-sized sculptures exhibit a tremendous scale. They impart a sense of vastness that borders on the vertiginous.
In music, the problem of scale is directly connected with the problems of sound, movement and, above all, time. Henri Michaux wrote, “Together, all these movements, actual or potential, occupy psychic space. Into this space you can enter.”
The title “Terminus” is that of a short story by the great Polish writer Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006). Lem’s writings have given me much food for thought over the years, and “Terminus” in particular provided elements that are buried deep within the structure of this music.
My work is in no way an attempt to translate Lem’s text into music. (I don’t believe such a thing is possible, in any case.) However, certain aspects of the story provided generative elements that catalyzed the process of composition. If there are similarities, they are not intended to be explicit. The one exception is the end: the final two minutes of music contain references that will be apparent to any reader of Lem’s haunting tale.
