The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) John Adams

The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) is a by-product of Adams’ opera Nixon in China, premiered in Houston in 1987. The opera, explains Michael Steinberg in his liner notes for the recording of The Chairman Dances on Nonesuch Records, “is set in three days of President Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972, one act for each day. The single scene of the third act takes place in the Great Hall of the People, where there is yet another exhausting banquet, this one hosted by the Americans.” The preface to the score gives the following description of The Chairman Dances: “Madame Mao, alias Jiang Ching, has gatecrashed the Presidential banquet. She is seen standing first where she is most in the way of the waiters. After a few minutes, she brings out a box of paper lanterns and hangs them around the hall, then strips down to a cheongsam, skin-tight from neck to ankle, and slit up to the hip. She signals the orchestra to play and begins to dance herself. Mao is becoming excited. He steps down from his portrait on the wall and they begin to foxtrot together. They are back in Yenan, the night is warm, they are dancing to the gramophone ...”

Old American Songs, Set No. 1 Aaron Copland

Soon after he completed the imposing song cycle on Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson in March 1950, Copland turned his creative attention to some lighter fare by “newly arranging” a set of five traditional 19th-century American songs for voice and piano. A second group of five followed in 1952, and both sets were later orchestrated. In her study of Copland’s music, Julia Smith suggested that the Old American Songs form “a kind of vocal suite, the accompaniments, practical but exceedingly attractive, offer moods by turns nostalgic, energetic, sentimental, devotional and humorous.” The most familiar melody among these Songs is Simple Gifts, the evergreen Shaker tune (also known as The Lord of the Dance) that Copland had earlier used with such excellent effect in Appalachian Spring. Like the other Songs, it taps a deep, quintessentially American sentiment in its sturdy simplicity and its plain words, qualities that Copland captured perfectly in his colorful, atmospheric settings.

Lincoln Portrait Aaron Copland

Soon after the United States entered World War II, André Kostelanetz asked three American composers to write works that would convey “the magnificent spirit of our country.” He felt that “the greatness of a nation is expressed through its people, and those people who have achieved greatness are the logical subjects for a series of musical portraits. The qualities of courage, dignity, strength, simplicity and humor which are so characteristic of the American people are well represented in [our leaders].” Following Kostelanetz’s request, Virgil Thomson composed the Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia Waltzes and Jerome Kern the Portrait for Orchestra of Mark Twain. Aaron Copland was the third composer approached by Kostelanetz, and he provided the following information about the composition and nature of his Lincoln Portrait: “It was in January 1942 that André Kostelanetz suggested the idea of my writing a musical portrait of a great American.... The letters and speeches of Lincoln supplied the text. It was a comparatively simple matter to choose a few excerpts that seemed particularly apposite to our [wartime] situation. The order and arrangement of the selections are my own. The composition is roughly divided into three main sections. In the opening section, I wanted to suggest something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality. Also, near the end of that section, something of his greatness and simplicity of spirit. [Springfield Mountain is the thematic basis of this portion.] The quick middle section briefly sketches in the background of the times during which he lived. [Fragments of Stephen Foster’s Camptown Races figure prominently in this passage.] This merges into the concluding section, where my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame around the words of Lincoln.”

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World” Antonín Dvorák

When Antonín Dvorák, aged 51, arrived in New York on September 27, 1892 to direct the new National Conservatory of Music, both he and the institution’s founder, Mrs. Jeanette Thurber, expected that he would help to foster an American school of composition. He was clear and specific in his assessment: “I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. They can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States…. There is nothing in the whole range of composition that cannot find a thematic source here.” The “New World” Symphony was not only Dvorák’s way of pointing toward a truly American musical idiom but also a reflection of his own feelings about the country. “I should never have written the Symphony as I have,” he said, “if I hadn’t seen America.”

The “New World” Symphony is unified by the use of a motto theme that occurs in all four movements. This bold, striding phrase, with its arching contour, is played by the horns as the main theme of the sonata-form opening movement, having been foreshadowed (also by the horns) in the slow introduction. Two other themes are used in the first movement: a sad, dance-like melody for flute and oboe that exhibits folk characteristics, and a brighter tune, with a striking resemblance to Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, for the solo flute. Many years before coming to America, Dvorák had encountered Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, which he read in a Czech translation. The great tale remained in his mind, and he considered making an opera of it during his time in New York. That project came to nothing, but Hiawatha did have an influence on the “New World” Symphony: the second movement was inspired by the forest funeral of Minnehaha; the third, by the dance of the Indians at the feast. That the music of these movements has more in common with the old plantation songs than with the chants of native Americans is due to Dvorák’s mistaken belief that African-American and Indian music were virtually identical. The second movement is a three-part form (A–B–A), with a haunting English horn melody (later fitted with words by William Arms Fisher to become the folksong-spiritual Goin’ Home) heard in the first and last sections. The recurring motto here is pronounced by the trombones just before the return of the main theme in the closing section. The third movement is a tempestuous scherzo with two gentle, intervening trios providing contrast. The motto theme, played by the horns, dominates the coda. The finale employs a sturdy motive introduced by the horns and trumpets after a few introductory measures in the strings. In the Symphony’s closing pages, the motto theme, Goin’ Home and the scherzo melody are all gathered up and combined with the principal subject of the finale to produce a marvelous synthesis of the entire work — a look back across the sweeping vista of Dvorák’s musical tribute to America.

©2009 Dr. Richard E. Rodda