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ABOUT THIS MUSIC

Welcome to the 23/24 concert season! The UMSL Orchestra and Wind Ensemble are honored to have you join us this evening, as we kick off our celebration of the University's 60th anniversary. This season we are celebrating UMSL through 5 newly commissioned fanfares, one of which we will premier this evening- Evan Williams' And the Thing Was Done. Following the fanfare, the UMSL Orchestra and Wind Ensemble will present an engaging concert of works that explore the universal mysteries of life and loss.

 

This music asks questions in their own interesting ways: Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question, and the opening of Mozart's Haffner symphony each ask their questions quite literally through the notes themselves (Mozart's melody, simultaneously ascending and descending, even sounds like he's asking us a question). Adolphus Hailstork's gripping American Guernica is a ground-breaking work for winds and percussion, which has us wrestling with why tragedy happens to us and to our communities. And finally, Olivia Kieffer's exciting ...and then the Universe exploded is a jocular (almost absurd) minimalist depiction of the creation (or is it destruction?) of the universe. 

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We hope you enjoy this music, and leave with more questions than answers! Stay curious!  

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- Dr. David Wacyk 

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EVAN WILLIAMS And the Thing Was Done

 

The title of this work is inspired by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO, and is taken from a quote at the end of the video documentary, Monument to the Dream, which can be viewed at the Arch:

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"The historian was writing of Lewis and Clark, but the spirit of his words belong just as truly to those who shaped and raised this monument. 'By strength and skill and valor they rolled the unknown back before them. "they were too weary, uncomfortable, and much too seasoned to rejoice. But the idea in the restless mind of Thomas Jefferson had been given flesh. Meriwether Lewis’s dream had come true. And the thing was done.”

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This fanfare was commissioned by the Music Department at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, in celebration of the University's 60th anniversary.

 

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SAINT-GEORGES Overture to The Anonymous Lover (Op. 11, Symphony no. 2)

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Joseph Boulogne was born on the eastern Caribbean island Guadeloupe, the son of George Boulogne, a wealthy plantation owner, and Anne dite Nanon, his wife’s 16-year-old Senegalese slave. His father, wishing him to have a proper education, moved the family to Paris, where he became as renowned a fencer as he was a violinist.

Unfortunately, Boulogne has sometimes been given the nickname “The Black Mozart” (Le Mozart noir). This is inappropriate, not only because it is offensive, but also because Boulogne is coming out of the French tradition, whereas Mozart is coming from the Austro-German tradition. It has also been pointed out more than once that we might very well call Mozart “The White Boulogne” (Le Boulogne blanc) because the Austrian master was influenced by his French counterpart. In his travels to Paris, Mozart saw the acclaim of Boulogne’s music, witnessed his acceptance by the French nobility, and envied his familiarity with Marie Antoinette.

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In fact, despite his earlier enchantment with the nobility, he went on to take part in the French Revolution, assuming military duties and leading a battalion of soldiers. In 1793, he was arrested and incarcerated in a house, but was spared execution and released 18 months later. Boulogne lived out his life as a commoner, forbidden to live in the vicinity of his former comrades. He briefly directed a new musical organization in Paris before his death.

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The Overture is cast in three sections (presented as three movements). Its opening 3/4 Allegro presto is set in the bright key of D major. The expressive D-minor Andante that follows is scored for strings only; note the orderliness and symmetry of its agreeable melody. The 3/8 Presto, back in D major, takes us almost by surprise; set in ternary form, its middle section shifts to D minor, sans winds. Throughout this brief section, enjoy the playful dialogue between the first and second violins.

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-Note adapted from the WSO

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CHARLES IVES The Unanswered Question

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Once referred to by Ives as "The Unanswered Question: a Cosmic Landscape", the work can be described as a piece of philosophy expressed in music. In the foreword to the score, Ives outlines the conceit of the work as dealing with humanity’s “perennial question of existence.” He constructs the work in three layers – a solo trumpet, a band of winds, and the string orchestra – which never quite sync up.

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The trumpets pose the question as a five-note motive, beautiful and stately if slightly off-kilter. The winds, playing the role of humanity, seek an answer, first softly and slowly, picking up segments of the trumpet’s motive. Then, Ives portrays the frustrating inadequacy of their frenetic and ultimately empty search for answers with increasing rhythmic density, decreasing unity, and more intense dissonances- almost thumbing their nose at the question itself. 

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The strings, meanwhile, provide the backdrop, playing serenely throughout the work in G major. With almost no perceptible beat or meter, the strings continue what Ives called his “endless melody” – the answer to the noise of relentless wondering and seeking, always there in the background, in stillness. It is Ives’ sonic representation of silence, wherein lies the answer.

 

-Note adapted from LAPhil and Meg Ryan

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W.A. MOZART  Symphony no. 35 "Haffner", Movement I. Allegro con Spirito

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In July of 1782, Leopold Mozart sent his son a letter asking him to write a new symphony for their friend Sigmund Haffner, a wealthy Salzburg merchant and burgomeister. Haffner's son, also named Sigmund, was to receive a title of nobility, and a new symphony was to be played at the celebration. 

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In a famous letter, Mozart replied to his father's request:  "Well, I am up to my eyes in work, for by Sunday week I have to arrange my opera [The Abduction from the Seraglio] for wind instruments . . . And now you ask me to write a new symphony!  How on earth can I do so? . . . Well, I must just spend the night over it, for that is the only way; and to you, dearest father, I sacrifice it.  You may rely on having something from me by every post.  I shall work as fast as possible and, as far as haste permits, I shall turn out good work." In fact, Mozart worked so fast that when he received the score back fro his father after some time, he did not recognize his own music- although he was very impressed by it.

 

Launched by a stirring call to attention, the sweeping first movement has just one real theme, a marked departure for the period. This theme, remarkably, is simply a descending scale, but through octave transference and other compositional wonders, he sends the listener on a musical journey in the way only Mozart can. 

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J.S. BACH  Fantasia BWV 570 (arr. Sterk) 

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Johann Sebastian Bach’s Fantasia in C Major, BWV 570, was most likely written during the composer’s term as organist in the city of Arnstadt, Germany (ca. 1703-1706), or perhaps during his one-year stay at Mauthausen (1707). It is among the few Bach fantasias for organ that stand alone, not otherwise a part of a greater prelude-fugue or fantasia-fugue combination. 

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This glorious Fantasia (originally in the key of C major) is written in four voices, to be played on two manuals sans pedals. This arrangement lends it to performance on other keyboard instruments. Unfortunately, they do not always do the work justice, since much of BWV 570 is based on sustained tones that cannot be maintained to the same degree on a harpsichord or a piano as on an organ. However, it is this very tendency that makes a setting for symphonic wind ensemble so ideal.

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-Note adapted from the Virginia Wind Symphony

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ADOLPHUS HAILSTORK  American Guernica

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American Guernica was written in remembrance of the September 15, 1963, fire-bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a racially motivated bombing that killed four young girls attending Sunday school (Carol Robertson, 14, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Cynthia Wesley, 14, and Denise McNair, 11), and injured twenty-two others. The elegy for this tragedy was delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King.

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The work’s title refers to the famous mural by painter Pablo Picasso "Guernica", which depicts the bombing of the Basque village Guernica by Nazi German and Fascist Italian warplanes on April 26, 1937, a tragic slaughter of mainly women and children. Hailstork’s score employs spatial notation and extended techniques to recount the bombing, outrage, and aftermath of the American tragedy. Listener's may hear his literal interpretation of a church service, and children's church, being interrupted as the church is destroyed: shattered glass, wailing in the streets, and a fractured rendition of "Jesus Loves Me". This tragic scene is interrupted twice as Hailstork jolts listeners back and forth in time to the  church service (perhaps a funeral), and a gospel-style piano soloist. The work ends with more silence than notes. Tonight's performance will move directly into to Bach's My Jesus, Oh What Anguish as our collective meditation. 

 

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JS BACH  My Jesus, Oh What Anguish! 

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The Prelude in F Minor is the first movement of Boulanger's Trois Improvisations for organ, composed in 1911, and published in 1912. The music is pensive and reflective, and, at times, dramatic and highly expressive. Boulanger's conservative and lean writing is counterbalanced by her astonishing use of timbre throughout the piece. Colors change frequently and with great subtlety throughout the work, allowing each new musical phrase to be cast in a slightly different light. This technique moves Boulanger's economical musical ideas forward in an effective compositional way, and also enables the listener to maintain a high degree of interest for the duration of the work.

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- Program Note from publisher

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OLIVIA KIEFFER  ...and then the Universe exploded

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...and then the Universe exploded is a wild and joyful piece for concert band. It was written for and dedicated to the Reinhardt Symphonic Winds, and was premiered by the ensemble on April 11, 2017. The beginning source material comes from an unrealized concept album I started back when I was writing electronic beat music, called Everything Everything All of the Time. This feeling of everything seeming to happen at once, and all the time, has not disappeared in my life; I am no stranger to fairly continuous life changes. In the first section of the piece, the musicians build layers of joy upon each other. The second section features a (very polite but bombastic) Battle of the Bands, which abruptly segues into the entire ensemble shouting a Countdown to the End of the World. In its essence, this piece is about the End of Everything. We often think of the end of things as a loss, or bittersweet at best. But sometimes, the very end is the most beautiful. 

- Program Note by composer

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ABOUT THE MUSICIANS

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David Wacyk, Conductor, Music Director 

DR. DAVID WACYK is a conductor and educator dedicated to serving students, the community, and the profession through meaningful music making. David serves as Director of Instrumental Ensembles and Assistant Teaching Professor of Music at University of Missouri- St. Louis where he conducts the UMSL Orchestra, UMSL Wind Ensemble, chamber ensembles, and coordinates the “Triton Sound” Pep band. 

 

Prior to his arrival at UMSL, David was Director of Instrumental Music at Saint Martin’s University, and previously taught instrumental conducting at Towson University. As a Doctoral student at the University of Maryland he served as Assistant Conductor of the Wind Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. Prior to his Doctoral work, David was Director of Bands at North Harford High School, where he directed instrumental ensembles and taught music theory. 

 

David's scholarship focuses on modernist and avant-garde wind music of Twentieth-century composers, including Igor Stravinsky,  Edgard Varese, and Ida Gotkovsky. Additionally David has led discussions related to re-evaluating existing systems of concertizing and programming, and addressing systemic inadequacies in the field of wind bands. Recently he has accepted invitations to present at CBDNA (Symphonies of Winds: toward a new understanding of pitch structure, and The Intelligence of Sound: matters of ethos and style in the wind music of Edgard Varese), IGEB (The Wind Music of Ida Gotkovsky), WMEA (The Future is Flexible: Small bands as leaders in creativity, and DNMC (New Music and New Paradigms: an honest conversation on the future of college ensembles). The Wind Music of Ida Gotkovksy was also presented as a national webinar. David has been named a finalist- and awarded second place- for the American Prize in conducting. 

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David holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree and Master of Music degree in Conducting from University of Maryland, and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Western Michigan University.  David maintains an active schedule as a guest conductor and clinician throughout the United States, including as a conductor for the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. He resides in Clayton, MO with his wife Laurel, and son Roger.

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