Program Notes: November 24, 2002
Each of the works on tonight's program relates-but each in a different way-to a much larger musical work or repertoire. Perhaps most intriguing is the case of Le Tombeau de Liberace, which composer Michael Daugherty describes as "a meditation on the American sublime: a lexicon of forbidden music." Daugherty sees Liberace (1919-1993) as "one of the most intriguing American icons for crossing over, in more ways than one. Dressed in spectacular furs and rhinestone costumes, [he] was famous for performing polkas, Broadway tunes, and arrangements of the classical piano repertoire accompanied by a Las Vegas showband." If the purpose of a musical "tombeau" (literally, "tomb," or "gravestone") is to honor the memory of its designee, this piece does so with full awareness of Liberace's virtuosic ability to move easily back and forth between "high" and "low" culture. The boogie-woogie rhythms of "Rhinestone Kickstep" are meant to convey "the feeling of strutting down the glittering cement streets of Las Vegas." "How Do I Love Thee?" derives form a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning frequently recited by Liberace. "Sequin Music" draws on "a sequence of musical notes [the composer] noticed on the wall of Liberace's famous piano-shaped swimming pool." Daugherty describes the concluding "Candelabra Rhumba" as "a pianistic tour de force that recreates the excitement of a Vegas showband, keeping the candles on Liberace's candelabra lit."
The other two works on tonight's program may be understood on one level as orchestral excerpts from operas, and in this respect, Bizet's enormously successful Carmen (1875), which premiered in the last year of his life, follows the most conventional model of extraction. As Allen Gross explains: "The great popularity of Carmen has resulted in any number of non-operatic arrangements, from the purely orchestral to Sarasate's virtuoso violin transcriptions. Part of this is due to the dance rhythms used in many of its arias (such as the Habañera), and the fact that its introductions and entr'actes are self-standing orchestral gems in themselves. Tonight's suite consists of eight such numbers. The attentive listener will also notice how much the Spanish-inflected musical language and orchestral color of Carmen has influenced Latin and commercial American show-band music-specifically the language of the Las Vegas-style bands that Michael Daugherty pays hommage to in his Le Tombeau de Liberace." As is often true in opera, the exotic element of Carmen is not authentic, but based rather on what Bizet's Parisian audience would have taken to be representative of Spain. Thus, the famous "Habañera" is actually an Afro-Cuban type (the term literally means "Havana-style") with English and French roots-in this case based on a specific song written by a Spanish composer who is trying to sound Cuban. Despite this complicated derivation, for the world at large, the number-along with the rest of Carmen-simply is "Spain," at least in musical terms.Hindemith's Mathis der Maler Symphony
has been taken to be an arrangement from his identically titled opera
("Matthias the Painter," referring to Matthias Grünewald, ca. 1460-1528). But the 1934 Symphony actually predates
the planned opera, and stands alone as a musical representation of three
groupings from Grünewald's Magnum Opus, the famous Isenheim altar paintings. These groupings are the angel concert (serenading the
Madonna and child), the entombed Christ (directly beneath a particularly
wrenching version of the crucifixion), and the temptation of St. Anthony (the
founder of Christian monasticism); the latter shows him being tormented by the
demons of Hell, who would almost seem to have been inspired by Maurice Sendak's
Where the Wild Things Are. The vibrant paintings are ideally
suited to musical representation, moving from the blessed opening chorale
("There Sang Three Angels") and joyous ensembles of the first movement, through
the dark tones of the second, to the dramatic grotesqueries of the third,
ending with in an exultant brass choir.
But Hindemith's interest in the subject stemmed in part from Grünewald's
position-very much like his own-as an artist working against the backdrop of a
troubled historical moment. For
the painter, that backdrop was the German Peasant Revolt of 1525; for Hindemith
it was the rise of the Nazis, whose displeasure with Hindemith soon forced him
into exile.
-- Raymond Knapp
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