Program Notes
Elizabeth Holleque, soprano
September 18, 1999

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Vado ma dove?, K. 583 (composed 1789)

In addition to his own numerous operas, songs, and independent concert arias, Mozart also wrote quite a collection of arias intended to be inserted into the operas of other composers. Among the last such that he wrote were a pair of arias for a November 9, 1789 production of "Il burbero di buon cuore" by Vicente Martín y Soler (1754-1806) at Vienna’s fabled Burgtheater. The librettist of the opera as well as these interpolations was Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838), with whom Mozart had collaborated on four of his own operas. Ironically enough, Mozart quoted another Martín y Soler opera buffa, "Una cosa rara,." in the supper scene of one of those Da Ponte operas, "Don Giovanni."

Mozart wrote both of the arias in Vienna during October 1789 for the soprano Louise Villeneuve. "Vado ma dove?, K. 583" was inserted into Act II, Scene 5 of "Il burbero di buon cuore" and finds Madame Lucilla supremely puzzled over the turns her love life has recently taken.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Zueignung, op. 10, no. 1 (composed 1885)
Morgen!, op. 27, no. 4 (composed 1894)
Schlechtes Wetter, op. 69, no. 5 (composed 1918)
Allerseelen, op. 10, no. 8 (composed 1885)

When we think of Richard Strauss, it is usually his symphonic poems or his operas that come to mind, mostly larger-than-life works that storm the heavens or plumb the philosophical depths of the human mind. Yet he also wrote over two hundred songs, many of them of exceeding intimacy. The majority of the songs Strauss wrote before 1906 were intended to be performed by his wife, Pauline de Ahna, with the composer at the piano. Between 1906 and 1918, Strauss wrote no songs at all, not only because he was concentrating on opera but also because of a simmering copyright dispute with the publisher Bote & Bock.

Credit Strauss with carrying on the tradition of the orchestral song. He authorized the orchestration of many of his songs, orchestrated some himself, and composed some for orchestra outright (most notably his swan song in the genre, "Vier letzte Lieder" of 1948). "Morgen" was among the first of his songs that Strauss orchestrated himself, in 1897. The original dates from 1894, the fourth of the "Vier Lieder, op. 27." It is memorable especially for its long arpeggiated piano introduction into which the voice gently descends.

"Zueignung" and "Allerseelen" are the first and last, respectively, of the "Acht Lieder aus Letzte Blätter, op. 10" from 1885, with texts by Hermann von Gilm zu Rosenegg (1812-1864). In "Zueignung," the three verses open similarly but each develops differently building to an emotional climax at the end. "Allerseelen" is a richly ornamented evocation of lost love. "Schlechtes Wetter" is the last of the "Fünf kleine Lieder, op. 69" from 1918, with a text by the great German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856).

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

Bachianas brasileiras no. 5 (composed 1938-1945)

The career of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos is among the most fascinating of the twentieth century. Before he was forty, he found warm acceptance from critics and the avant-garde but a cold shoulder from audiences. By the time he was sixty, the situation was exactly the opposite. Since his death in 1959, the unequal quality of his oeuvre is evident and easy to criticize. But as one who skillfully melded his country’s popular and folk musics with the European classical idiom, Villa-Lobos managed to appeal across the listening spectrum. Nowhere is that melding more evident than in his most popular work, "Bachianas brasileiras no. 5."

Between 1930 and 1945, Villa-Lobos wrote nine "Bachianas brasileiras," in which he explored the relationships he perceived between Brazilian folk music and the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. To emphasize the relationship, each movement of each suite has two titles, one referring to its Baroque heritage, the other to its Brazilian popular lineage. "Bachianas brasileiras no. 5" comprises two movements. The first, "Aria (Cantilena)" was written in 1938. It is a wordless vocalise surrounding a central section sung to words by Ruth Valadares Correa. Villa-Lobos added the second movement, "Danza (Martelo)" in 1945. It is also in three parts, a lyrical center bounded by vigorous outer sections, with a text by Manuel Bandeira.

Villa-Lobos scored the accompaniment for an ensemble of at least eight cellos. Violoncello was the only instrument that Villa-Lobos would ever study with any degree of seriousness, although he also became quite a master at the guitar. His father, an amateur musician and employee of the National Library in Rio de Janeiro, was the future composer’s first cello teacher. But the young student actually used the smaller viola as a cello substitute in his earliest lessons. Even a quick glance at his output suggests an affinity for the cello in any number of chamber combinations (including seventeen string quartets), two cello concertos, and the pieces for massed cellos (most notably his 1958 "Fantasia concertante," which calls for an ensemble of at least 32 cellos).

Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Tatyana’s Letter Scene
From "Eugene Onegin" (composed 1877-1878)

The plot of many an opera borders on the territory of its modern namesake, the soap opera. In the case of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s "Eugene Onegin," the libretto is based on the great lyric poem by Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), but the composer’s inspiration for the resulting opera’s greatest scene was a contemporaneous incident in his own life.

In the Spring of 1877, Tchaikovsky received a letter from Antonina Milyukova, who claimed to have met him at the Moscow Conservatory. She declared her love for him in spite of the fact that he had no recollection of her at all. More letters followed, including one in which she threatened suicide if he would not consent to see her. On the First of June, Tchaikovsky visited Antonina and let her know gently but firmly that he could not love her.

As it happened, just days before, Pushkin’s "Eugene Onegin" had caught his imagination as possible opera material, so much so that he had already begun outlining his ideas. Tchaikovsky was struck by the similarity of his own situation to that of Pushkin’s heroine Tatyana, who pours her heart out in a letter to Onegin and is rejected. Reconsidering his life in light of his art, Tchaikovsky went back to Antonina and proposed marriage with the understanding that there was to be no physical relationship. By the time they were married on July 18^th, he had sketched out about two-thirds of the opera. Marriage quickly turned to meltdown, including Tchaikovsky’s failed attempt at suicide. For his own sanity, he separated from her. They would divorce several years later after considerable tumult.

"Tatyana’s Letter Scene" was the first portion of the opera that Tchaikovsky wrote, and many consider it the crowning achievement of his operatic career. Tatyana’s feverish extended monologue uses the four-note motif that was introduced in the opera’s opening prelude, and which seems to track the heroine’s emotional state throughout. "Eugene Onegin" premiered in Moscow on March 29, 1879, at the Imperial Maly Theatre.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Piangea cantando (Willow song)
Ave Maria
From "Otello" (composed 1884-1886)

Giuseppe Verdi towers over the history of nineteenth century Italian music in a way that few others tower over their own. What is more, his more than two dozen operas continue to dominate the modern repertory to an extent unmatched by anyone else and approached only by Mozart. "Nabucco," "Ernani," "Rigoletto," "Il Trovatore," "La Traviata," "Un Ballo in Maschera," "La Forza del Destino," "Don Carlos," "Aïda," and the twin Shakespearean masterworks of his last years, the tragic "Otello" and the comic "Falstaff," are but a few of the most frequently produced of all operas.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Nature, the gentlest mother
Why do they shut me out of Heaven?
From "Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson" (composed 1949-1950)

How ironic that Aaron Copland, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, would come to be regarded as among the most "American" of our twentieth-century composers. Works such as "Rodeo," "Appalachian Spring," "A Lincoln Portrait," and "Fanfare for the Common Man" serve as the soundtrack of what was once called our "conscious Americanism."

Just as ironic is the position of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), the reclusive Amherst, Massachusetts, poet. Along with (but totally independent from) her older contemporary Walt Whitman, she pretty much invented American poetry. Dickinson inspired many a composer, and it’s no surprise that Copland would be drawn to her, selecting a dozen of her poems for the song cycle "Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson" during 1949 and 1950. Later on, between 1958 and 1970, Copland orchestrated eight of the twelve songs, leaving the vocal parts unaltered.

"Nature, the gentlest mother," the first of the cycle, opens with a musical depiction of the dawn chorus of birds and the rising sun. One can almost hear the voice as that of personified Mother Nature and piano as the expression of nature’s creatures. "Why do they shut me out of Heaven?" is the third of the cycle.

The original song cycle received its premiere performance at the Sixth Annual Festival of Contemporary American Music at Columbia University on May 18, 1950, with soprano Alice Howland accompanied by the composer at the piano.

Richard Hundley (born 1931)

Waterbird (composed 1982, arranged 1988)
Moonlight’s Watermelon (composed 1990)

Born in Cincinnati on September 1, 1931, Richard Hundley began picking out melodies on an upright piano at his paternal grandmother’s home in Covington, Kentucky, where we went to live at the age of seven. Discovering opera when he was ten, Hundley soon began more formal musical training and eventually performed as a piano soloist with several area orchestras while still a teenager. He also began notating his improvisations. Hundley moved to New York in 1950 to study at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1960, he joined the Metropolitan Opera Chorus as a tenor and became acquainted with some of the singers who would bring his early songs to public attention, most notably Anna Moffo. During the late 1960s, Hundley spent two summers at the MacDowell Colony. Hundley lives and composes in New York, concentrating on songs and choral works, although he has also written a piano sonata and some chamber music for winds.

The original version of "Waterbird" was one part of a ten-movement choral song-cycle on poems of James Purdy (born 1923), the novelist, playwright, and poet from Fremont, Ohio. "The Sea is Swimming Tonight," commissioned for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Clarion Music Society, was for four-part chorus, four vocal soloists, and piano four hands. Soon after the work’s premiere on February 2, 1982, tenor Paul Sperry asked Hundley to arrange "Waterbird" for solo voice, which the composer did some six years later.

"Moonlight’s Watermelon" is the third of five songs that constitute Hundley’s 1990 song cycle "Octaves and Sweet Sounds." It was commissioned by Art Song Minnesota, a festival sponsored by the University of Minnesota, and received its premiere performance at the McKnight Theatre in The Ordway, Saint Paul, on June 9, 1990, with mezzo-soprano Glenda Maurice accompanied by pianist Ruth Palmer. The text of "Moonlight’s Watermelon" is a light-hearted poem by José García Villa (born 1915).

Ricky Ian Gordon (born 1956)

Will There Really Be a Morning?
Coyotes
Published in the collection "A Horse With Wings" (1995)

Ricky Ian Gordon is usually mentioned in the same breath as Adam Guettel as part of the next generation of musical saviors. Considering that Gordon had never even seriously tried to write any music until just weeks before applying for the Carnegie-Mellon University composition program, his achievements since have been phenomenal. Since 1981, Gordon has been the resident composer with the Battery Dance Company. Among his numerous awards are the 1989 National Institute for Music Theatre Award, the 1991 Stephen Sondheim Award, 1993 and 1994 Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Theatre Foundation Special Recognition Awards, and various awards from the American Music Center, ASCAP, and Meet the Composer.

In 1992, Gordon set ten poems of Langston Hughes for the soprano Harolyn Blackwell, as the cycle "Genius Child." With playwright Tina Landau, Gordon created the site-specific "Stonewall: Night Variations" in June 1994 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village. Houston Grand Opera presented the world premiere of his "The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Liberation Through Hearing," with a libretto by Jean-Claude van Itallie, in May 1996. In 1999, Gordon set to music the "Night Flight to San Francisco" monologue from Tony Kushner’s "Angels in America."

"Will There Really Be a Morning?" with words by Emily Dickinson, and "Coyotes" with words by Ray Underwood, were both published in the collection "A Horse With Wings" by Williamson Music in 1995.

Program notes by Jay Weitz, Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio, and a contributing performing arts critic to the InnerArt Web site.

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