Vista Philharmonic Orchestra

Program Notes

American Dance Suite (1986)
David Amram (1930 – )

Program note by the composer:
American Dance Suite was written through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Kauders and as a result of my musical and personal friendship with the young master musician, Bruce Hangen.

The work is in three movements. I decided to make a dance suite as a result of working with Jacques d’Ambroise, the dancer, choreographer and founder of the National Dance Institute in New York.  Mr. d’Amboise wanted some of my music for a dance he was to create. After watching the excitement of seeing my composition choreographed (Mary Tyler Moore tap-danced in one section!), I decided I would write a piece celebrating American dance forms, as a concert piece, that could create a ballet in the listener’s mind, and perhaps someday be danced to.

The first movement, Cheyenne, uses some traditional melodies of the Cheyenne people. An introductory fanfare is followed by a traditional Cheyenne melody taught to me by Hyemeyonsts Storm, the author of Seven Arrows. This social dance melody is developed and followed by a traditional Cheyenne hand-game song “NU-USM NO-NOTZ.” After further development of both of these melodies, sometimes played together, we hear a setting of a Cheyenne war dance which highlights the unusual rhythms and structure of this highly sophisticated ancient music. After a brief return of the beginning fanfare, the horns introduce the final traditional dance melody, a fast war dance, followed by fragments of the earlier melodies and ending with the drum and rattle.

The second movement. Blues. is a tribute to the contribution of jazz to the enrichment of our century, as music to dance to and music of great emotional depth.  This movement uses only the strings. and the melancholy theme and development celebrates the tranquil and spiritual aspects of a style of music that has influenced all music and listeners around the world. Rather than a rendering of traditional blues. It is a tribute to some of the masters like Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Mingus and Oscar Pettiford – all whom I have known and performed with earlier in my life.

The final movement, Cajun. celebrates another indigenous form of American music that came to us via the Celtic people who lived in Brittany, came to Canada three hundred years ago as French-speaking Acadians, left Canada and arrived in the U.S., settling in Louisiana. There their Celtic-French Canadian music was influenced by the music of Native American and Afro-American cultures into the unique Cajun culture of today.  The lively melody “The Fox Hunt” is a slip-jig. played first by the piccolo and accompanied by traditional Celtic rhythms and contemporary Cajun percussion instruments including the spoons. After several statements with varying orchestration, a second melody of my own, a Cajun waltz (inspired by eating Crawfish Etouffee while performing In Port Arthur, Texas and New Orleans) is introduced. The waltz uses the triangle, bongos and washboard. instruments common to contemporary Cajun music called “Zydeco” which I have performed with several Cajun ensembles at folk festivals. After the clarinet completes the waltz, the strings and different choirs of the orchestra join in.

“The Fox Hunt” is restated and then is joined by the waltz and finally a re-statement of the Cheyenne social song and fanfare from the first movement, to bring the composition to a conclusion.

An Arc Ascending (1996)
Gunther Schuller (1925 – 2015)

Program note by the composer:
One hundred years ago An Arc Ascending (1996) would have been identified as a ‘tone poem,’ a work inspired usually by a literary text—a novel, a poem (as in several Richard Strauss works, for example)—or, later in the 19th century, a picture (as in Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead, based on a painting by the popular Swiss-German artist, Arnold Böcklin). In many of these works the composers attempted to follow a specific story line—take Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel, for example—almost in the sense of writing a movie script. This turns out to be a somewhat mythical, fictitious process since, unless the composer tells us that his or her piece is based on such and such a text or story, we would never relate the music to that story. (For example, no one would ever be able to guess that Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel is based on the life and ribald pranks of that legendary 14th-century Flemish character, if Strauss hadn’t told us so—even in the very title of the piece.)

Claude Debussy took a slightly different tack than Strauss in his La Mer in that there is not literal story line followed, but instead various general impressions, expressed in musical terms, of visualized (imagined) aspects of the sea. Similarly, Ravel’s La Valse is an evocation of an idealized, yet highly personal view of the Viennese waltz genre.

Incidentally, Strauss once bragged that he could even recognizably describe a fork and knife (sic) in music—which is, of course, utter nonsense. A melody or a given chord or musical idea cannot describe anything concrete; it can at best evoke a mood, an emotion, a feeling, but even then it is likely to evoke quite different moods and feelings with different listeners. That is of course the great beauty and power of music: that it can express everything, precisely because it cannot express or represent anything specific.

My work, An Arc Ascending, falls more into the Debussy/Ravel category, a representation in tones not so much of the actual pictorial content of Alice Weston’s remarkable photographs of solstice, equinox, and the historically related ancient native earthworks and mounds, but rather musical reflections on the different seasonal aspects (winter, spring, summer in this case) brought about by the seeming path of the sun in an ascending arc. Actually, since the sun is fixed, it is not ascending at all; it is the earth rotating around the sun at a certain diagonal angle that makes it appear to us earthlings that it (and the moon) rise and fall.

In my piece three of the seasons induced by the sun are represented in several ascending musical arcs, primarily (and in the most immediately audible terms) (1) of rising registers from low (winter) to mid-range (spring) to high (summer); (2) of changing (orchestral) colors from dark murky, wintry grays to spring-like greens to summery yellows and oranges. On another level (or musical track) (3) we can hear the quiet sustained sounds of a cold resting earth — with occasional low subterranean rumblings; rising in Part Two to the life-giving, undulating, scurrying stirrings of spring — with brilliant woodwind colors lead to a clash of brightly iridescent harmonies (simultaneously B major, D-flat major, C major), with the former two eventually giving way to the latter, thus leaving a clear climactic C major, portraying the sun at its highest, most glorious, zenith point.

ON THE WATERFRONT SUITE (1955)
Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990)

Program notes by Wm. E. Runyan ©2018
On the Waterfront (1954) is easily one of the most important American films.  Directed by the great—and controversial—Elia Kazan, with a screenplay by Budd Schulberg, and an all-star cast of Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, and Eva Marie Saint, it just doesn’t get much better than this in cinema.  It won eight Academy Awards (but not one for the music!), and is almost always on the list of American top-ten movies.   The film-score was composed when Bernstein was thirty-five, and is unique for the composer in that it was totally original, with no connections to any stage production.   The story, about corruption and violence on the New Jersey docks, was unremittingly dark, and the composer’s music is eloquently reflective of it—perfect for a kind of “film noir.”  The movie is in black and white, the sun never shines, and violence is always threatening.  It’s all in the music, and makes for one of Bernstein’s masterpieces—it certainly set the mark for many following contemporary film scores.

 The stark brass of the opening sets the mood perfectly.  Later, this kind of writing comes back with even more power and dissonance; if it reminds one a bit of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, is no accident.   For it is no secret that Bernstein’s life-long musical style owed more than a little to the composer’s beloved mentor.  Much of the score references Copland, but with a decided edge.  Rhythmic displacements, jagged gestures, serene simple harmonies—it’s all there.  Bernstein’s score is perfectly suited for the variety of dramatic situations of the film.  The bleak scenes of the docks and the New Jersey tenements; the tender encounters between Brando and Saint; the serenity of the roof-top pigeon coops; the evil of Cobb; the moral ambiguity of Steiger; the firm morality of Malden; and the constant menace of real violence—all are subtly depicted without bathos, and with stylistic evenness.  Like the best of film scores, the music is apt but not distracting.

 Bernstein initially resisted accepting the commission for the score.  Politically dedicated to liberal causes all of his life, he had deep antipathy for the director, Elia Kazan.  Kazan was marginalized for many years for his coöperation with the McCarthy HUAC hearings.  He named names in the witch-hunt.   Musical posterity is fortunate that Bernstein saw the opportunity and changed his mind.

Symphony No. 2 for Organ and Orchestra (1906)
Alexandre Guilmant (1837 – 1911) 

Program notes by Bruce Hangen:
Much like the more famous, earlier organ symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns (performed by the Vista Philharmonic, March 2023), this five-movement work is a giant celebration of the sonic possibilities of a full symphony orchestra and the organ, often called the King of Instruments.  Why “king?” Its size, for one, but it can portray an awesome, inspiring range of emotions that was so important to early church services.  Combining the organ, then, with a full-blown orchestra is a very special experience.

Groton Hill Music Center is home to one of the largest Hauptwerk installations in the world.  Built by Meta Organworks of upstate New York, this instrument is not an “electronic” or “digital” organ, but rather a “Virtual Pipe Organ” (VPO) driven by the Hauptwerk software.  While an electronic instrument derives sounds artificially or electronically, a Virtual Pipe Organ allows one to purchase specific instruments or “sample sets”.  Each sample set contains thousands of audio samples or .WAV (wave) files all of which came from that specific instrument.  Groton Hill’s organ has 32 main speakers and 12 different subwoofers, embracing 44,500 watts of speaker power.

 The first movement of this concerto is likely the most symphonic, featuring the orchestra and the organ rather equally.  The second movement is slower and more lyrical in contrast to the first, with the organ alternating with the orchestra as to being the leading voice.  The third movement is a lighthearted scherzo for orchestra, with the organ taking an extremely minimal role.  The fourth and fifth movements are joined by single tones in the organ pedal tones, with the fourth movement being virtually all organ, and the final movement finishing in a fugal blaze of glory.

Randy Steere, organ
Acclaimed for his solo appearances throughout New England, RANDY STEERE has held numerous full- and part-time positions as a church musician, most recently as Assistant Organist at Old South Church. 

A New England native, he received his B.M. degree from Barrington College, an M.M. from Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, and a Master’s of Computer Science from RPI. 

After graduating from Yale, he became the full-time Minister of Music at the First Church of Christ, Congregational, Glastonbury (CT) for 9 years where he developed an expansive ministry, including two large adult choirs, two handbell choirs, a children’s choir, two concert series, young singles ministry, and weekly commercial TV and radio broadcasts. Under Randy’s initiative, the church hosted the East Branch of the Hartford Camerata School of Music, where he also taught organ and choral conducting. Additionally, he taught organ performance and church music classes at Barrington College (now Gordon College). 

Following his career in music, Randy switched to computers and became an IT Director at a mid-sized law firm for 7 years before running his own international consulting and software company for 20 years. 

In 2020, he fully retired to become more actively involved in the music world once again. He is currently Dean of the Worcester Chapter of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), Treasurer of the Merrimack Valley AGO Chapter, a Trustee at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall and Resident Organist with the Vista Philharmonic Orchestra at the Groton Hill Music.  

He recently had a three-part series of articles published in the international magazine “The American Organist” introducing a new perspective on the history of the organ culminating in an optimistic futuristic forecast.  He has given numerous workshops and seminars for AGO Chapters over the years and is currently presenting workshops on his new perspective for the organ in modern society.  He is passionate about the role of the organ in today’s world!