Tag: Pioneer Songs

Election Day. I found these Uncle Sam clothespins for you to wear in the voting booth. Just like Grandma used to make.

Once you’ve completed your civic duty, I hope you’ll join me on The Classical Network for today’s Noontime Concert, a recital with commentary by harpsichordist Dylan Sauerwald. Sauerwald will present “Clashing Influences: Vienna in the Late 17th Century,” with works by Johann Caspar Kerll and Georg Muffat. The program, part of the free midday concert series presented by Gotham Early Music Scene (or GEMS), was recorded at Saint Bartholomew’s Church, 50th Street and Park Avenue, in New York City. The concerts are held every Thursday at 1:15 p.m. This 45-minute broadcast recital will commence this afternoon at 12.

Interestingly, the music was written at a time when Columbia (then Columbina) was but a glint in Samuel Sewall’s eye. Sewall, of Salem witch trials notoriety, was the creator of one of the most enduring symbols of our future republic.

Later in the afternoon, I’ll be joined by Eric Houghton and Ruth Ochs of the Westminster Conservatory of Music. Houghton’s “Pioneer Songs” will be performed at Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The cycle of fifteen symphonic songs, for vocal soloists, choir, and narrator, celebrates the first successful passage of wagon trains to California in the 1840s. Ochs will conduct the performance, which will feature the Westminster Community Orchestra, the Westminster Community Chorus, and the Glassbrook Vocal Ensemble. Our interview will take place at 3 p.m.

Along the way, we’ll also hear Roy Harris’ Symphony No. 9, dedicated to the city of Philadelphia. Harris was himself a product of the prairies. He was born in a log cabin in Lincoln County, OK, on Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1898. Though he was celebrated in the 1930s and ‘40s as one of our great American symphonists, by 1962, the year of his Ninth Symphony, his reputation had plummeted. Harris’ music is a fascinating blend of the old and new. I always think of him as an American Sibelius. His symphonies are tied closely to the land and to the American character of his prime – confident, morally certain, and totally devoid of irony. Each movement of the Ninth sports an epigraph from the U.S. Constitution; the last is lent further gravitas through the inclusion of subtitles drawn from Whitman.

I can’t promise it will be an all-American afternoon, but I can guarantee that we’ll be united in music, today from 12 to 4 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.