Hero’s Song

Two pieces on this program deal directly with our festival theme of Courage: Dvořák’s Hero’s Song and Adolphus Hailstork’s tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. With these inspiring pieces, we have the premiere of Jüri Reinvere’s double concerto, and another piece which has something to do with my own upbringing. When I was a youngster, I played second violin in a string quartet, and we played a contemporary piece by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz in a competition. I loved it but then forgot all about it. Decades later, I am glad to conduct one of her symphonies, the Fourth, which is a wonderful, exciting piece.

— Franz Welser-Möst

Choosing Courage

 Courage is a choice. When we’re riddled with doubt or fear about what lies ahead, and we choose to step forward anyway — that’s courage. When we choose to accept whatever consequences await us — that’s courage. When we choose to take a stand for what we believe in — that’s courage. Courage in music arises from the vulnerability of self-expression. The famous line, “I know why the caged bird sings,” from African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy” says it all: Even in physical confinement, a courageous voice refuses to be contained. In their own way, each piece on this program captures the composer’s courage to lay bare an interior world of hope and resolve, with music carrying the capacity to inspire.

Adolphus Hailstork’s Epitaph (In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.) — a somber reflection on the death of the Civil Rights icon — presents us with a clear profile in courage. It opens with the gathering of graveside mourners who join in singing a melody that emerges from a viscous instrumental texture and eventually receives a full, humble statement in the flutes. Following a brief brass chorale, a light gesture in the harp prompts the group to shift focus to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a new world. Having seen a way forward, the mourners develop a fresh, steely resolve to fight for freedom on the path Dr. King paved for them.

Grażyna Bacewicz stands alongside contemporaries like England’s Rebecca Clarke and America’s Margaret Bonds as a prolific composer who has been unjustly overshadowed in a historically male-dominated industry. As scholarly recovery of their works and growing public interest have shown, the mere pursuit of the profession was an act of courage against long-held stereotypes about women’s capacity to excel in composition. Of course, the stereotypes have absolutely no basis in reality, as works like Bacewicz’s Fourth Symphony amply demonstrate.

The symphony reflects the challenges and contradictions Bacewicz faced as a Polish artist working under Soviet-influenced cultural policy after World War II. Restrictions on creative expression were counterbalanced by high levels of institu­tional support and public visibility. Surviving letters show that, while she was afraid of the authoritarian regime, she clearly enjoyed composition and was fortunate that her evolving style aligned with top-down mandates. Through it all, she had the courage to be herself. Cast in a standard four-movement form, the symphony displays Bacewicz’s fondness for using tiny musical fragments as the foundation for further musical elaboration. The vigorous first and fourth movements, for example, build dramatic arcs from a two-note motive. The work is also suffused with Bacewicz’s tendency to use all the instruments at once and compose melodies with traces of folkloric rhythms and scales.

In a more literal sense, Jüri Reinvere’s choice to write a new double concerto for violin and harp was courageous. There are practically no models in the repertoire beyond Louis Spohr’s G-major concertante dating from 1808, leaving Reinvere a wide-open but lonely terrain to explore. Scored for large instrumental forces, includ­ing glass and metal chimes, crotales, and other unusual percussion, the piece unfolds over 20 unbroken minutes, rather than the standard three-movement concerto form.

The work’s core musical narrative follows the relationship between the two soloists. The violin is designed for long, flowing melodies, whereas notes on the harp fade immediately. The concerto opens with this sharp distinction on full display, but soon each instrument begins to take on more of the other’s character as the orchestra tries to blend and obscure the soloists’ identities, presenting gestures that push them in one dramatic direction or another. An astounding climax finds the entire orchestra in the duel between sustained tones and harp-like scales before coming to a quiet close reminiscent of the opening.

The four sections of Antonín Dvořák’s A Hero’s Song return to several of the themes that opened the concert in Hailstork’s Epitaph: optimism, disappointment and setback (here presented as a funeral march), hope and struggle (inflected by elements of the composer’s Czech folklore), and the triumph of the human spirit. Seeking a text to explain the work for listeners, Dvořák contacted the poet Julius Zeyer, whose overwrought description fit the music but detracted from the interiority the composer hoped to convey. Dvořák eventually described the main character as a “Slavic bard” whose heroism arises from the courage to sing, like Dunbar’s caged bird, through the struggles of self-discovery, self-doubt, and self-mastery.

While listening to each work on this program, we might think about how it relates to Leonore in disguise, working quietly and patiently to free her husband from unjust imprisonment. Or we can see Dunbar’s caged bird, who flaps his wings until they draw blood before singing to heaven to transcend his captivity. Courage like theirs is essential in unexpected moments. And when those moments arise, one critical question greets us: What choice will you make?

— Douglas W. Shadle

Douglas W. Shadle is an associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University and the author of two highly regarded books: Orchestrating the Nation and Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony. A leading authority on composer Florence B. Price, he sits on the board of the International Florence Price Festival.