2002 Program Notes

In light of the recent anniversary of our country's most tragic event, the Mobile Piano Ensemble has chosen this year to celebrate the music of America. Too often composers of other countries are honored and respected more than those of our own, However, being the great "melting pot," American music offers variety and a spark of life that is a unique reflection of America itself.

The words of our national anthem were written by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), an attorney. He wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" while a prisoner on a British ship, which was bombarding Fort McHenry, Baltimore, in 1814. Set to a popular tune by John S. Smith, it was adopted as our national anthem by an act of Congress in 1931.

As this country was coming of age at the end of the eighteenth century, much of the music heard in our major cities was still being written in Europe. Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K550 was composed in 1788, the year that our constitution was ratified and became operative.

Leonard Bernstein has summed up Copland's influence on music: "Aaron is Moses." That says it all about the New York composer of Russian and Jewish descent who has been so commanding, so vital and so essential a figure on the American music scene during the twentieth century. For the better part of four decades he composed operas, ballets, orchestral, band and choral music, and film scores, taught, wrote books and articles on music, and was a much sought after conductor. El Salon Mexico was the name of a dancehall in Mexico City. This piece, with its sophisticated handling of popular music elements, was originally written in 1936 for orchestra and was later arranged for two pianos by Mr. Bernstein.

Owen Middleton, a native Mobilian, is on the faculty at the University of South Alabama where he teaches guitar. His "Capture Your Dream" comes from the third movement of his opera, "Audrey," and was arranged by the composer for two pianos at the request of the Mobile Piano Ensemble for this concert.

Amy Beach(1867-1944) is certainly the foremost woman composer of America around the turn of the last century. Born in New Hampshire, at the age of 16 she gave her first public recital at Boston Music Hall and two years later performed Chopin's Piano Concerto in f minor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. After marrying an eminent surgeon and Harvard University professor, she concentrated her musical energy on composing. Her Mass in E b was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Handel and Haydn Society in 1892, making her the first woman composer to be so honored by these organizations. After her husband's death she returned to the concert stage and toured Europe from 1911-1914. Although written in 1924, Suite Founded Upon Old Irish Melodies, of which "The Old Time Peasant Dance" is the second movement, is based on nineteenth-century harmonic and pianistic practice.

Mario Braggiotti (1909 - 1996) was a pianist, composer and musical humorist. He played as part of a two piano team with Jacques Fray in the 1920's. Variations on Yankee Doodle was written in 1950. It contains some tricky passages as he so aptly capture the styles of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and Gershwin.

Edward MacDowell, a New Yorker of Scottish and Irish descent, studied in Paris and Frankfurt from the age of 15 until he returned to America in 1887 at the age of 26 and settled in Boston. His Piano Concerto No. 2 was first performed in Chicago in July of 1888. This brilliantly cohesive and logical work shows an obvious Liszt influence. It is one of the major piano concerti by an American in the established concert repertoire.

Scott Joplin was born in Texarkana, Texas in 1868, son of an ex-slave from North Carolina. He played guitar, bugle and piano. After studying music at George R. Smith College for Negroes, he desired a career as a concert pianist and classical composer. He taught and composed in St. Louis and eventually moved to New York. However, his fame came as the greatest ragtime composer, having written 50 rags, sometimes referred to as Afro-American polkas, before he died in 1917. Ragtime with its musical mixture (European forms, West Indies and Spanish influences, Irish jigs, polkas, etc.) is known for its lighthearted and infectious rhythms. It gets its humor from its syncopated beat. It was very popular in America from 1890 to 1920.

On a memorable day in 1942, Rodgers and Hammerstein met for lunch to discuss what eventually became Oklahoma! "What happened between Oscar and me," Rodgers has said, "was almost chemical. We hit it off from the day we began discussing the show." Oklahoma! Opened on March 31, 1943 at the St. James theater in New York and ran for 2,248 performances. In 1944 it won a Pulitzer prize. It is one of the longest running, most financially successful shows ever written, and has been translated into more languages, and played in more countries than any other musical in the history of American theater.

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), known as the March King, was born in Washington, D.C., son of an immigrant Portuguese father and German mother. As a child he played violin, trombone, and other band instruments. After enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1868, he began building his formidable reputation as a bandmaster of great precision through his leadership of the Marine Band. Then he toured the world with his own band of equal virtuosity in both military and symphonic music. He was a prolific composer writing operettas, songs, waltzes, suites, humoresques, and fantasies as well as marches.