The limpid air and lambent, silvery light of late August imbue one with a sense of nostalgia swaddled in the gentle melancholy of another summer winding down. How I feel for the young ‘uns straining against the inescapable vortex of another school year.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we listen to music by four composers who engage in musical reminiscences of childhood.
The American symphonist William Schuman based his “American Festival Overture” (1939) on a three-note call-to-play from his boyhood in New York City that was shouted on the syllables “Wee-Awk-Eee!”
Haskell Small’s “Visions of Childhood” (2011) is a cycle of piano pieces in the Robert Schumann “Kinderszenen” mode, a grown artist looking back to his boyhood. The work falls into ten brief movements: “A Long Time Ago;” “Playing Rough;” “A Little Story;” “Feeling Lonely;” “School’s Out;” “Haunted House;” “Frolicking;” “Look at Me!;” “Roller Coaster;” and “Lullaby.”
Charles Ives may have been a radical innovator, but his subject matter frequently looked back in nostalgia to the New England of his childhood. His Violin Sonata No. 4 (1906-1915, revised in 1942) bears the subtitle, “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting,” a programmatic work that balances hymn tunes and rowdy boyhood high jinks.
As he entered his 70s, George Crumb embarked on a remarkably productive Indian Summer, which resulted in no less than seven volumes of “American Songbooks,” the last completed in 2011, when the composer was 82 years-old. Each volume consists of deeply personal treatments of songs Crumb recollected from growing up in West Virginia. We’ll hear selections from “American Songbook III: The River of Life” (2008). By employing his characteristic shades and cross-hatchings through an assortment of ear-tickling percussion effects, the composer provides his own commentary on the time-worn source material, lending it both unsuspected depth and an aura of timelessness.
It’s a far cry from “Kinderszenen.” Join me for “Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be” – 20th and 21st century composers look back to childhood – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
