Martin Luther King Holiday Concert: January 16, 2016

Panamanian Dances
(Danzas de Panama) for String Quartet

William Grant Still
(Born in Woodville, Missouri in 1895; died in Los Angeles in 1978)

Tamborito – (“Little drum”)
Mejorana y Socavón – (2 Dances: “Marjoram” and “Tunnel [where an image of the Virgin Mary was reported in an old mineshaft in Panama in 1756]”)
Punto – (“Point[ing]”) – Allegretto con grazia
Cumbia y Congo – (2 Dance names)

In 1955, when most African-American citizens in the South couldn’t even drink out of the same water fountain as their white neighbors, composer William Grant Still achieved a breakthrough – he was the first African-American to conduct the New Orleans Philharmonic. It was only one of the many steps toward racial equality (in that same year, Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to obey bus segregation), but in the Deep South in 1955 Still’s accomplishment was extraordinary. That 1955 concert highlighted several of Still’s own works, including his Afro-American Symphony (Symphony No. 1, 1930), in which Still was just mastering the technique of giving voice to African-American song and rhythm in the “classical” Neo-Romantic style. If George Gershwin started that idea in 1924 with his Rhapsody in Blue, then Still carried it further into the concert hall and perfected it. Such is the case with his marvelous Panamanian Dances for string quartet which he premiered in 1948. Still incorporated not only African-American elements, but as the title’s “Panama” suggests, also Spanish and Native Central American Indian elements as well. These Dances are filled with ingenious details, such as the actual percussive elements of the folk dances throughout, where the performers knock on their instruments in the first and last movements. And then there are the evocations of Panamanian folk instruments – the guitars called mejoraneros and the three-stringed violin, the Rabel – during the Mejorana y Socavón (2nd movement), as well as the shoe-tapping portion in the Punto (3rd dance) from the Panamanian dance, the Zapateo. In the final dance, Still brings to life the joyous Afro-Latin dances, the Cumbia and the Congo, evoking women dancing sensuously in the streets during the Congo with candles held high as the men swirl around them in ecstatic abandon.

Lullaby for Strings

George Gershwin
(Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1898; died in Hollywood, CA in 1937)

George Gershwin’s life is one of those great and inspirational American stories. The son of a poor immigrant family in Brooklyn, he worked his way up from nowhere to becoming one of the most famous musicians in the world and having his music hailed as representing America itself. Even in his fame, however, Gershwin continued studying music as his lifelong pursuit. Thus was born his wonderful Lullaby for Strings in 1919, which was composed as an assignment in harmony and counterpoint during his studies. Aside from Lullaby’s gentle hues, its sweet and lazy habanera/swing-like rhythms, and its two infectious and utterly unpretentious themes, one senses a real glow in this work that emerges from these almost hidden harmonies and counterpoint underneath the melodies. Although Gershwin adapted Lullaby into a song in a new show Blue Monday (a one act “jazz-opera,” Gershwin called it, as well as Opera à la Afro-American, 1922), the show flopped. Nonetheless, the famous jazz band leader Paul Whiteman heard Gershwin’s talent, and commissioned him to write a new piece, which turned out to be Rhapsody in Blue. And thus it was that the gentle Lullaby fathered the edgy Rhapsody that transformed American music.

String Quartet No. 12
in F Major, Op. 96, B. 179, “American”

Antonin Dvořák
(Born near Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic) in 1841; died in Prague in 1904)

Allegro ma non troppo
Lento
Molto vivace
Vivace ma non troppo

In 1892 the American philanthropist Jeanette Thurber persuaded Czech composer Antonin Dvořák to head her newly formed National Conservatory of Music in New York City for three years. The idea was to foster grassroots classical music training, help grow a Nationalist American music, and be open to all races – most important, to African-Americans. Within a year, Dvořák had composed his Symphony in E-Minor “from the New World,” which according to the composer was influenced by the African-American spirituals (then called “Negro music”) he had been exposed to. Ignoring the racial barriers of the time, Dvořák insisted that in “. . . the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.” Directly after composing the “New World” Symphony, Dvořák took a long summer holiday in 1893 in Spillville, Iowa. This small, country town was everything that the bustling New York City he’d spent the year in was not, including a large community of Czech immigrants. Amidst nature and his countrymen, Dvořák overflowed with musical ideas. Within 3 days he sketched out his entire String Quartet No. 12, later nicknamed the “American,” and finished it in another 13 days. Probably the most beloved String Quartet in the repertoire, the American is beautiful and robust, folksy and sophisticated. There is no movement without a gorgeous melody, and equally enticing are their delightful accompaniments, with syncopated ostinatos on par with Joplin’s and chock full of inventiveness. Especially enchanting is the magical second movement (Lento), where a sorrowful tune wafts above the soft undulations of the other strings, and where the harmonies could melt sunsets. The American is unreservedly a masterpiece and crowd pleaser.

But what of the folk songs and African-American influences so often mentioned as sources for these “American” pieces? The only confirmed American “song” comes in the third movement of this Quartet, the bird song of the beautiful Scarlet Tanager, whose insistent singing apparently annoyed Dvořák during his work, and so he transcribed it and memorialized it in the third movement (Molto vivace). All the same, Dvořák felt that just by being in America and hearing a new type of music was enough to inspire him to write in a different way – as if he were hearing with different ears. And so two of Western music’s great masterpieces were created during Dvořák’s tenure in America, and thanks to him and Jeanette Thurber, a serious interest in African-American music began to take root, helping to pave the way for other composers to plumb African-American music to its fullest in the popular as well as the classical vein.

Three Rags by
Scott Joplin
(arranged for String Quartet)

Scott Joplin
(Born in Texarkana, Texas (uncertain) in 1867 or 1868; died in New York City in 1917)

The Entertainer
Solace
Maple Leaf Rag

As popular as it is today, it seems almost impossible that anyone in the western world could never have heard Joplin’s magnificent classic rag The Entertainer (c. 1900). This perfect little piece of music is both jazzy and classical, upbeat and melancholy, and features that rarest of all musical occurrences — an almost instantly memorable main theme. It is as melodiously perfect as a Souza March or a Rossini Overture. Such is the genius of America’s greatest ragtime composer, Scott Joplin, but his fame only really began a half century after his death when his rags were featured in the 1973 classic film The Sting (starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford). In his own lifetime, Joplin’s popularity was sporadic, ending in poverty and an early death. He was buried in an unmarked grave in 1917 at the age of 49, and by the 1920’s he was all but forgotten. But his 1897 rag, the Maple Leaf Rag (the closing piece in this arrangement), had brought Joplin some brief fame. This piece more than any other perfected the ragtime genre – which previously was known condescendingly as “bordello music” – and became the most important influence on the musical form that soon blossomed into Jazz. What was so inspiring about Maple Leaf was its catchy melodic lines and its delightfully infectious character, but also its sophisticated harmonies and intelligent syncopations. As musicologist Bill Ryerson explained it, Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag did for ragtime (and soon Jazz) what Chopin did for the Polish mazurka. Quite different in tone, however, is Solace (also subtitled “Mexican Serenade,” the second rag in this arrangement), which Joplin wrote in 1909. Here the rich harmonies and melancholic sentiment are the true gems – the syncopated top line saunters almost like an afterthought to a remarkably moving and tuneful piece. Joplin wrote his rags as classical pieces of music informed strongly by African-American influences, and their exceptional quality played a tremendous role in shaping the direction of American music.