Contemporary Classics February 6, 2018 Music of Protest

Again our introductory music is from the work Nocturne by Kirsten Volness.  Tonight’s show has the theme of Protest and was inspired by a wonderful article by Alex Ross in the New Yorker about the concert which  featured musicians on both sides of the border playing John Luther Adams "Inuksuit" in protest of the border wall.  There is so much to protest – border walls, nuclear stockpiles and conflicts over whose button is the biggest and growing fascism both abroad and in our own government.  So tonight’s show is PROTEST!!

John Adams Doctor Atomic Symphony

Nuclear stockpiles, the arming of North Korea and the debate over whose little hands has the biggest nuclear button has pushed us closer to the 12 midnight.  Thanks to this debate with are now at 11:57:30 according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.  So lets begin with a work by John Adams based upon his opera “Doctor Atomic” which tells the story of the development of the first atomic bomb.  It is a cautionary tale.  We will be playing tonight the Symphony based upon with work.  You will be hearing the revised version in 3 movements played without pause  1. The Laboratory, 2. Panic and 3. Trinity. Music was taken from the overture, various interludes and orchestral settings were made of arias like Oppenheimer's signature "Batter My Heart." 

Here is a performance of the Doctor Atomic Symphony with David Robertson conducting the  Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from the album J. Adams: Doctor Atomic Symphony & Guide to Strange Places       

 

Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki

Threnody is a lament.  Penderecki later said, "It existed only in my imagination, in a somewhat abstract way." When he heard an actual performance, "I was struck by the emotional charge of the work...I searched for associations and, in the end, I decided to dedicate it to the Hiroshima victims". The piece tends to leave an impression both solemn and catastrophic, earning its classification as a threnody. On 12 October 1964, Penderecki wrote, "Let the Threnody express my firm belief that the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten and lost."  And it should never be repeated.

 

Here is a performance of Krzysztof Penderecki’s  Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima For 52 Stringed Instruments with Wojcieck Czepiel conducting the Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra from the album Penderecki: Orchestral Works Vol. 1          

 

 Canti di vita e d'amore: sul ponte di Hiroshima by Luigi Nono

Canti di vita e d’amore (Songs of Life and Love) covers three subjects: mass destruction, the tortured individual, and hope, both uncertain and impatient.  Here is the first movement “at Hiroshima” which  has dramatic blocks of orchestral sound conjure up the 200 000 victims of the bomb that hit Hiroshima and which is cursed for eternity in the song of a man whose face and hands are burnt by radiation.   

Here is a performance of Canti di vita e d'amore: sul ponte di Hiroshima by Luigi Nono by Canti di vita e d'amore: sul ponte di Hiroshima (1962)  performed by soprano Monika Wiech            on the album Composers Through Time - Italy     

Arnold Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon 

But the growth of fascism and the seeming acceptance of dictatorial policies requires us to step up and oppose fascism.  Written during the Second World War the Ode to Napoleon by Arnold Schoenberg was composed for Reciter, String Quartet, and Piano and was written to as a protest against tyranny.  Lord Byron’s poem castigating Napoleon served the composer in expressing his own feelings concerning latter-day tyrants. For this purpose a reciter is used, declaiming in the manner of inflected speech – resembling the Sprechstimme of the composer’s Pierrot Lunaire, which is notated precisely by means of notes written above and below a single-line staff. Most of the principal musical figures are derived from these inflections, the Reciter often participating with the instrumentalists in the exposé of the musical ideas.  

Here is a performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon by The Villers Quartet, René Leibowitz, Ellen Adler & Jacques Monod   from the album Arnold Schoenberg Premieres: Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41, String Trio, Op. 45           

John Luther Adams "Inuksuit"

We will close with the inspiration for tonight’s show and that is John Luther Adams "Inuksuit". Inuksuit is a work that fits seamlessly into the environment itself. Scored for 9 to 99 percussion players who are meant to be widely dispersed in an outdoor area Inuksuit has been described by the New York Times as "the ultimate environmental piece," while the New Yorker's Alex Ross hailed it as "one of the most rapturous experiences of my listening life."   The title refers to the Stonehenge-like markers used by the Inuit and other native peoples to orient themselves in Arctic spaces. Adams structured the rhythmic layers in the score to mimic these stone shapes, but there's an open-endedness to how the music is performed that reflects the sense of freedom behind it.  This recording  was recorded with 32 percussionists on June 12, 2012, in the forest surrounding Guilford Sound in Guilford, VT.