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The long and illustrious career of Daniel Pinkham (b.1923) includes a large catalogue of compositions, teaching, and performing. Today he continues as music director of King's Chapel, Boston. In addition to a large body of choral works, he has written symphonies, concertos, documentary film scores, stage works, and many chamber works, often employing "his" instruments -- the harpsichord or organ. Pinkham has taught at Boston University, Harvard, and from 1959 lectured in composition and headed the department of early music performance at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Pinkham's interest in early music and his role as a composer-performer came together in producing his most often performed work, the Christmas Cantata. Subtitled Sinfonia sacra, the piece recognized the polychoral works of Giovanni Gabrielli and Heinrich Schutz. The Latin texts ar drawn from the Mass and various Christmas services. The three-movement work is scored for three choirs: one vocal and two brass. Ever the pragmatist, the composer scored the second instrumental choir for either brass or organ. The first movement Qem vidistis, pastores? Dicite (Whom do you see, shepherd? Tell us) uses contrasting textures and rhythms to render the conversation of the text. with its modal tonality and long, sustained melismaas, the second movement O magnum mysterium (O great mystery) evokes a medieval atmosphere. The final movement presents statements of the text Gloria in excelsis deo (Glory to God in the highest) accompanied by brass alternating with a capella statements of the psalm Jubilate Deo omnis terra (Rejoice in the Lord, all y lands). The organ joins the final, joyous Alleluias.
The Christmas Cantata received its premier on December 1, 1957. It was performed by the New England Conservatory Chorus and conducted by Lorna Cooke DeVaron, for whom it was composed.
"I want to play the piano. I want to write music for Broadway
and Hollywood. I want to write symphonic music. I want to keep
on trying to be, in the full sense of that wonderful word, a musician.
I also want to teach. I want to write books and poetry. And
I think I can...do justice to them all. But I can't do them all at
once." It seems that the immensely talented Leonard Bernstein (1918-1992)
spent his life in a wild juggling act of all this and more. In June
of 1964 he took a fifteen-month sabbatical from the hectic life of as conductor
of the New York Philharmonic to concentrate on the new music and his relationship
to it as a composer. He summed up his feelings about his time of
pondering with an article in the New York Times, October, 1965.
Much of it was written inverse as the following excerpts illustrate:
Coming form the year 1877 -- an unusually tumultuous year in Tchaikovsky' life (1840-1893) -- the Symphony No. 4 in f minor, Op. 36 depicts the composer's struggle to reconcile the extremes of melancholy and frenzied optimism. 1877 was the year of the composer's ill-fated marriage, suicide attempt, psychological breakdown, and finally the appearance of his patron. Nadezhda van Meck. By mutual consent, Madame von Meck and Tchaikovsky never met , but their correspondence and her generous financial patronage supported the composer until 1890. It was to her -- "my best friend" -- that the work was dedicated. At her request he provided a program of the symphony -- in reality a post-compositional attempt to explain the emotional experiences that he expresses in hits work.
The piece begins with the seed of the whole symphony, a brass fanfare
-- the call of fate. This theme appears throughout the first movement,
and reappears near the end of the last movement. The despair of fate
contrasted with dreams of happiness dominate the first movement.
An oboe solo introduces the second movement. "Here is that melancholy
feeling which enwraps one when he sits at night alone in the house...One
thinks on the gladsome hours, when the young blood boiled and bubbled,
and there was satisfaction in life...And it is all so sad and yet so sweet
to muse over the past." The playful pizzicato of the third movement
expresses "capricious arabesques of elusive images which rush past...your
spirit is neither cheerful nor yet sad. You think of nothing; you
give free rein to your imagination...somewhere in the distance, a military
procession passes." This movement is made up of "completely disjointed
images which rush past in your head when you have fallen asleep.
Of the fourth movement the composer wrote "if within yourself you find
no reasons for joy, look at others. Go among people. Observe
how they can enjoy themselves, surrendering themselves wholeheartedly to
joyful feelings." But then "irrepressible fate again appears and
remind you of yourself. But others do not care about you...they have
not noticed that you are solitary and sad....Do not say that everything
in this world is sad. There are simple but strong joys. Rejoice
in others' rejoicing. To live is still possible!"
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