When we were asked to come up with a title for our program, I had a lot of thoughts running through my head. None of them related to a theme or title of a program. I sat and stared at what we had come up for a few of the pieces, I started seeing a common word come up in my thoughts. My thoughts were as follows:
What am I going to have time to practice?
It's been a long time since Alana and I have played together.
It's finally going to be the time we get to play Rich's piece that we commissioned a few years ago and have not yet performed.
Wow, this Dring trio has a lot of time signature changes.
As indicated by my italics, I did start to see a theme. And then I pulled out Rich's piece entitled "The Hour is at Hand" (I had forgotten what the title was until then), and our theme/title fell in place.
The word time can mean many things. One of my absolutely favorite TV shows is Farscape. In episode 11 of season 4, John Crichton and The Ancient have a back and forth not quite conversation: time...s'up, time...flies, time...is infinite. The discussion is about what time actually is and if time is something simple or is it something complex. Einstein called it the fourth dimension. For music, we usually think of timing - when to place a pitch in relation to other pitches. That seems like a dry definition to me, so instead I suggest that you think of time as a musician's canvas to fill with sounds just as a visual artist fills their canvas with colors. What is magical about our canvas is that it disappears, leaving only memories of the sounds and the emotions they evoked in the listener. As those sounds dissipate, we are left with connections to the composers, the performers and fellow audience members. Truly, it is amazing that God has given us such a gift of time and the sounds to fill that canvas!
Now, it's about time for me to discuss the pieces we have included on this program.
We first have the percussion pieces. I know absolutely nothing about these composers and the pieces and I used my time to practice rather than doing research. I am sure they will be wonderful to listen to and very different than "normal" chamber music programming. (It's about time that percussionists get highlighted in a program.)
The Hour is at Hand is based off the tune St. Cross, which was #136 in CW93. It was commissioned to fit into a Holy Week program which Alana and I were putting together before the pandemic. We needed something for Maundy Thursday and Rich was happy to oblige. The text is as follows:
'Twas on the dark, that doleful night
When pow'rs of earth and hell arose
Against the Son, our God's delight,
And friends betrayed him to his foes.
Before the mournful scene began,
He took the bread and blessed and broke.
What love through all his actions ran!
What wondrous words of grace he spoke!
"This is my body, slain for sin:
Receive and eat the living food,"
Then took the cup and blessed the wine:
"'Tis the new cov'nant in my blood."
"Do this," he said, "till time shall end,
In mem'ry of your dying friend;
Meet at my table and record
The love of your departed Lord."
Jesus, your feast we celebrate;
We show your death; we sing your name
Till you return and we shall eat
The marriage supper of the Lamb.
This piece is divided into contrasting sections. It opens with warmth and progresses to a lyrical statement of the hymn tune. This is followed with alternations of section which Freese notates should be "Frozen in time" and a march. The frozen in time sections always make me imagine that I am walking through the display of statues of Narnians created by the White Witch. The entire country is frozen in a never ending winter and waiting for the return of Aslan. (If you do not get this reference, go home now and read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. If you walk out in the middle of the recital we will know why.) Freese has created a brittle sound to give us the feeling of stasis or of icicles. It ends with the warmth of the opening.
Fantasie in c minor, BWV 906 is an addition to the program which does not appear in the printed version. Juanita added this after our program was handed in because we agreed Bach had earned a place on our program. He is kind of a big deal for Lutherans. In relationship to time, I always tell my students that Bach was so important that when he died, the next day everyone woke up and the Baroque time period was over and it was the Classical Era. I usually get blinks in response. And then I clarify that I want them to write in their notes that the Baroque time period ended in 1750, which is also the year Bach died.
Alana and I always include at least one woman composer on our programs. This time it is the
Trio for flute, oboe and piano by Madeline Dring. She was an English composer, pianist and singer who married an oboist. Many of her pieces are songs and influences which I believe you can hear in this work are Rachmaninoff, Poulenc, Gershwin and Cole Porter. Supposedly she had a fantastic sense of humor and once wrote her own bio as follows: "Madeleine Dring was born on the moon and can therefore claim to be a pure-bred lunatic. Arriving on a speck of cosmic dust she came face to face with the human race and has never really recovered." (I am not kidding, I found this information
HERE)
Judy suggested including Introduction and Variations on "Ihr Blumlein Alle" so that we would have something representative of a more Classical sound. Schubert is one of the bridge composers who can fall either into Classical or Romantic (just like Beethoven). The piece uses the very classical traditional theme and variation form, but the introduction makes Schubert's forward thinking very clear. The piano part is very difficult so I asked Juanita to play it so that I wouldn't have to practice. She obliged.
The Ravel Sonatine is originally a piano solo work which has been transcribed for oboe and piano. The composer is often called a Neo-Classicist because he used Classical forms. This piece uses traditional sonata-allegro form although it clearly has the color palate of turn of the century French music.
The last piece on the program is "Cantique d'amour". This is the last piece in a set of ten pieces collected into Harmonies poetiques. The set is a religious cycle - Liszt actually composed MANY religious works. Throughout the cycle Liszt uses liturgical elements to outline a believer's journey with sin, penitence and the triumph which has been won. The cycle moves through keys which Liszt felt symbolized different aspects of Christianity. E Major is used for many of his sacred pieces, an indicator that he is taking us to spiritual topics. He then uses C Major to symbolize purity, which is God the Creator. The farthest one can get from C, is across the Circle of Fifths with F# Major, this is the key used for symbolizing humanity. We need a mediator between God and Man, this is shown with the key of A-flat Major, used to symbolize Jesus who came to earth for us. Liszt uses this key often when he wants to indicate Love, take for example the very popular third Liebestraum. All of these keys occur during the cycle with complete pieces and with portions of pieces. In this last piece of the cycle, Liszt returns to E Major, but makes it clear with the title that Love is what brings everything to a close and what triumphs over everything. I felt that this piece was a fitting close to our recital.
