Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Arnold Bax

America Through a Foreign Lens on WPRB

On the suggestion of a loyal listener, who alerted me to the fact that Sir Arnold Bax’s Symphony No. 7 was dedicated to “The People of America,” I thought I would take a different tack this year when putting together my show in honor of Independence Day, which I will observe tomorrow morning on WPRB.

Instead of targeting the strike zone of American patriotism that encompasses composers who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II (much of whose music I admire and even love very much), we’ll view America and the American experience through a foreign sensibility. Some of the composers will be immigrants, excited and even grateful to have made the United States their home, and some will be visitors. Some, such as Richard Wagner, who wrote his dreadful “American Centennial March” for the 1876 celebrations in Philadelphia, will merely have been looking to cash a paycheck.

Not all of the music will sound American (eg. Bax’s Symphony No. 7, given its premiere in conjunction with the 1939 New York World’s Fair); some of it will be self-consciously so (Ernest Bloch’s “America”).

Join me tomorrow, as we welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of the world’s composers, yearning to celebrate the United States, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I’ll be stirring the musical melting pot, on Classic Ross Amico.

June 28, 2017
Shelley’s Summer Poems on The Lost Chord

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” our focus will be on works inspired by seasonal poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley and others.

We’ll hear Geoffrey Bush’s “A Summer Serenade,” composed in 1948. The seven movement work is based on poems by Shelley, James I of Scotland, Samuel Daniel, William Blake, Thomas Heywood, and the ever-prolific Anonymous.

Then we’ll have Arnold Bax’s rarely-heard “Enchanted Summer,” from 1918. The text is from Act II, Scene 2, of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound.” Composed in the middle of a string of Bax’s better-known nature poems, including “Into the Twilight” and “In the Fairy Hills” on the one hand, and “Nympholept” and “The Garden of Fand” on the other, the work begins with a depiction of light and shadow across a forest floor, mysterious caves and crags, and musical evocations of woodland spirits; continues with nightingales, in the second part; and two fauns, commenting on the wondrous things they have witnessed, in the third.

I hope you’ll join me for “Summer Shelley, Some Are Not,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 25, 2017
May Day Music: Sullivan & Bax Celebrate Spring

Happy May Day, everyone! It’s been a raw and clammy day in the Philadelphia/Princeton area. Hopefully your ribbons and hobby horses didn’t get too damp.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we don our finery and caper around the Maypole, with two works by English composers. The first is by Sir Arthur Sullivan – he of Gilbert & Sullivan fame – who, in 1897, set to music a “Jubilee Hymn,” as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations surrounding the reign of Queen Victoria, which were held in May of that year.

Concurrently, he was commissioned to write a ballet to mark sixty years of the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. The result was “Victoria and Merrie England,” which was made up of nationalistic tableaux celebrating the history, legends, and royalty of Great Britain.

We’re going to be listening to Scenes II & III from the ballet, together titled “May Day in Queen Elizabeth’s Time” (this alluding, of course, to the reign of Elizabeth I). The suite includes colorful descriptive subsections like “Procession of the Mummers and the Revelers,” “Knights and Rose Maidens,” “Friar Tuck and the Dragon” and “Maypole Dance.”

My original intention had been to cobble together selections from operas and ballets featuring maypoles, but I didn’t have time to distill the high points of Howard Hanson’s “Merry Mount,” Antonin Dvořák’s “The Cunning Peasant,” and Ferdinand Hérold’s “La Fille mal gardée.”

So instead we’ll fill out the hour with one of the earliest programmatic works by Arnold Bax (later SIR Arnold Bax). “Spring Fire,” composed in 1913 and 1914, is meant to suggest the awakening of mythological beings in early spring.

The subject matter was an attempt to cash in on the fashionable “paganism craze” sparked by the Ballets Russes and its composers. Bax’s affection for the writings of Algernon Swinburne had recently yielded the symphonic poem “Nympholept.” Quotations from Swinburne also adorn portions of the score to “Spring Fire.”

The piece was scheduled for performance several times, but repeatedly cancelled, first because of the outbreak of war, then because of the work’s difficulty. In fact, it would never be performed during Bax’s lifetime. The manuscript was consumed in a fire in 1964, and all hope of ever hearing the score vanished. Fortunately, a copy was discovered, and the piece was finally recorded in 1986.

The work is meant to evoke a woodland sunrise in early spring, as ancient denizens of the forest shrug off their winter sleep. They skip with mad antics down the glades. Forest lovers loll in their ecstatic dreams, until they are rudely awakened by a turbulent rout of satyrs and maenads. Sounds like spring to me.

I hope you’ll join me for “Spring into May Day,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

I know I said I wouldn’t post about Shakespeare anymore for a while, but here’s an interesting piece about Shakespeare, May Day and the hobby horse:

Shakespeare, May Day and the Hobby Horse

Another about Thomas Morton vs. The Puritans, and the Maypole of Merry Mount:

The Maypole That Infuriated the Puritans

May 2, 2016
November Music Bax & Lloyd Autumnal Tones

November already?

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we celebrate the eleventh month with music of an autumnal nature. We’ll open with Sir Arnold Bax’s ravishing tone poem, “November Woods,” of 1917. Then we’ll hear a symphony composed in 1981 by the criminally underrated George Lloyd.

Lloyd’s music is invariably well-crafted, even infectious, yet stubbornly tonal. It can often seem a bit old-fashioned, yet compositional integrity and musical good taste never go out of style. He’s certainly a composer well worth getting to know.

Lloyd’s Symphony No. 10, “November Journeys,” was commissioned by the BBC for the Northern Brass Ensemble. The commission coincided with the composer’s exploration by rail of a number of cathedrals. The sounds of the brass in the composer’s head paralleled his experience of taking in the magnificent buildings. At no point was he attempting to conjure an ecclesiastical air, yet he conceded that the second movement reminded him of a Christmas carol.

We’ll have just a little bit of time at the end of the hour, so I’m tossing in Bax’s “Red Autumn,” for two pianos, for good measure. The piece was originally composed in 1912, and though he never orchestrated it, it’s thought that his original intention had been to do so. In any case, it is marked by Bax’s characteristic opulence.

I hope you’ll join me for “Notions Eleven,” music for the eleventh month, this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

November 1, 2015

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