Virtual Concert – Tribute to Sousa

Medina:  The Medina Community Band, under the baton of Marcus L. Neiman, presented their Spring Concert for 2004 on Sunday, February 8. With Jeffrey Kehnle serving as narrator, Christopher Burdick, on the band director staff at North Royalton City Schools, was featured cornetist.  Guest conductors were Dr. David Meeker, director of bands at Cleveland State University.  The concert was a “Tribute to Sousa” concert and performed in that style.

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Jeffrey B. Kehnle served for a long time as narrator of Medina Community Band.  His wife, Jackie was a member of the saxophone section.  Jeff passed away to his new heavenly home October 20, 2012 with his razor sharp mind, delightful wit and gentle kindness still with him all the way. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky on August 19, 1941 to the late William Edward and Helen (Moe) Kehnle and was raised in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated from George Peabody College for Teachers (now the education department of Vanderbilt). He taught English in Cincinnati, Ohio and then entered the seminary at the Hamma School of Theology at Wittenberg University and received his Master of Divinity. His first parish was in Wilmington, Ohio and his second parish was Our Savior Lutheran Church in Hinckley, Ohio. He was also the interim Medina County Auditor, Medina City Service Director and he retired from FirstMerit Bank. He was a voracious reader and an active community volunteer throughout the county. Jeff enjoyed researching Medina Community Band’s history to construct his narrations.  It was an honor to have him as a friend and narrator of the band.

 

Francis Scott Key’s The Star Spangled Banner often appeared on the program of early Medina Community Band concerts.  Prior to 1931, when it became the official national anthem, it was performed at the end of concerts.  Following that date, the anthem was moved to start the concerts.

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Overture to “Il Guarany” (Antonio Carlos Gomez/Herbert L. Clarke)

Antonio Carlos Gomez was a highly talented child of Portuguese descent. His father, a bandmaster and father of 25 children, taught Carlos to play several instruments. In 1860, he won a composition prize for which the Brazilian government paid for his musical study at the Milan Conservatory in Italy. His fame lies chiefly with his opera, Il Guarany, though he composed other important works as well. He died of cancer of the tongue (he was an ardent cigar smoker) not long after receiving an appointment to serve as director of a new conservatory in Pará, Brazil. His operas usually take place in his native South America. They are somewhat in the style of Verdi and are very spirited and picturesque. The Brazilian government honored him posthumously with the issuance in 1936 of a postage stamp bearing the first few measures of Il Guarany.

The opera Il Guarany was first presented at La Scala in Milan on March 17, 1870. It was an international success and Giuseppe Verdi wrote that it was the work of a true musical genius. It remains the most successful opera in Brazil. It is based on a novel by José de Alencar, which depicts a love affair between an Amazon Indian chief from the Guaraní tribe and one of the despised Portuguese colonists. By using several tribal melodies, Gomez successfully imparted local color to his opera. Unfortunately, the work is not nearly as popular as it was when Sousa’s band performed it for audiences.  Yet, it is still a brilliant and exciting overture.  The arrangement was created by Herbert L. Clarke, John Philip Sousa’s assistant director and solo cornet soloist.

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ENCORE – Creole Bells – March Two-Step (Jens Bodewalt Lampe)

It was very much in the style of Sousa to insert short encores after major works, solos, or ensembles, in his concerts.  The first encore on this concert was Lampe’s Creole Bells.

Jens Bodewalt Lampe was born into the large and musical family of Christian and Dorothea Lampe in Ribe, Denmark, in 1869.  A cobbler by trade, his father played tuba and bass violin in the summers with the band at the Tivoli Theater in Copenhagen, and several members of the family became well-known musicians.  In 1873, when J.B. (as he was later called) was four, his father accepted an offer to direct the Great Western Band in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the family moved to America. 

In addition to a number of military style marches, Lampe composed many ragtime and two-step marches.  In 1900, when Creole Belles was composed, ragtime was beginning to be the big “noise” in American popular music.  Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag became the first ragtime sheet music best-seller in 1899.  In 1900, the Sousa Band helped to popularize ragtime in Europe during its prolonged tour there.  Creole Belles March with its strong syncopation over a steady rhythmic accompaniment, rapidly became a favorite with band audiences everywhere.  The Sousa Band, with either Arthur Pryor or Herbert L. Clarke conducting, recorded the tune five times between 1902 and 1905.  

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Narration by Jeffrey Kehnle.

Concert Etude, Op. 49 (Alexander Goedicke)

Alexander Goedicke was a professor at Moscow Conservatory. With no formal training in composition, he studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory with Galli, Pavel Pabst and Vasily Safonov. Goedicke won the Anton Rubinstein Competition in 1900. Despite his lack of traditional guidance, his compositional efforts were rewarded when he won the Rubinstein Prize for Composition at the young age of 23. Goedicke died at the age of 80 on 9 July 1957.

The Concert Etude is written along fairly “Classical Lines,” which is not too difficult to understand since Goedicke is one of the greatest living exponents of the “Western Tradition” in Russia. The word “etude” which ordinarily connotes a dry-as-dust study is qualified with the word “concert” by the composer. It follows along the lines of the Chopin etudes for piano which have always been used both as study and concert material.

Christopher Burdick is a band director with the North Royalton City Schools.  He directs the North Royalton High School Symphonic Band, the Seventh & Eighth Grade Bands, the Musical Pit Orchestra, and assists with 6th Grade and the 2003 Rose Bowl participant, North Royalton High School Marching Band.   Christopher is a member of the Ohio Music Education and has served as the Local Chairman for the District IV Junior High Large Group Adjudicated Event.  He also served as a director on the American Music Abroad Honors Band & Choir Tour of Western Europe in 1999.  He is originally from Boston, NY, a suburb of Buffalo and received his Bachelor’s at the Crane School of Music at Potsdam College.  He was a graduate assistant at Kent State and was a member of the Kent Faculty Brass Quintet while earning his master’s.   Christopher was a member of Marcus
Neiman and the Sounds of Sousa Band as well as Medina Community Band.

 

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ENCORE – Rifle Regiment (March) – John Philip Sousa

Written in 1886, Sousa’s march Rifle Regiment was dedicated to the officers and men of the Third United States Army Infantry.  Although different from Sousa’s other marches in music format, it is regarded as one of this best efforts.

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Narration by Jeffrey Kehnle.

Jazz Prelude No. 2 (Gershwin)

George Gershwin was essentially self-taught. He was first a song plugger in Tin Pan Alley and an accompanist. In his teens he began to compose popular songs and produced a succession of musicals from 1919 to 1933 (Lady, be Good!, 1924; Oh, Kay!, 1926; Strike up the Band, 1927; Funny Face, 1927; Girl Crazy, 1930); the lyrics were generally by his brother Ira (1896 1983). 

Preludes

Three Preludes are short piano pieces by George Gershwin, which were first performed by the composer at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City in 1926. Each prelude is a well-known example of early-20th-century American classical music, as influenced by jazz. Gershwin originally planned to compose 24 preludes for this group of works. The number was reduced to seven in manuscript form, and then reduced to five in public performance, and further decreased to three when first published in 1926. Two of the remaining preludes not published were rearranged for solo violin and piano and published as Short Story. Of the other two, the Prelude in G was eliminated by the publisher because somewhat similar music had already appeared in Gershwin’s Concerto in F. The other was excluded for unknown reasons. Gershwin dedicated his Preludes to friend and musical advisor Bill Daly. The pieces have been arranged for solo instruments, small ensembles, and piano.

The second Prelude, in C-sharp minor, also has the distinct flavour of jazz. The piece begins with a subdued melody winding its way above a smooth, steady bassline. The harmonies and melodies of this piece are built on thirds, emphasizing both the interval of the seventh and the major/minor duality of the blues scale. In the second section, the key, tempo, and thematic material all change; only the similarity of style binds the two sections together. The opening melody and bass return in the final section, more succinct but otherwise unchanged, and the piece ends with a slow ascent of the keyboard. Gershwin himself referred to the piece as “a sort of blues lullaby.”

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Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin (Wagner)

Lohengrin is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself inspired by the epic of Garin le Loherain. It is part of the Knight of the Swan tradition. (Program Notes from Wikipedia)

Lohengrin was first produced at Weimar in 1850, under the direction of Franz Liszt. The legend of the Holy Grail was the inspiration for the story of the opera. Lohengrin, keeper of the Holy Grail, appears as a knight in silver armor to defend Elsa of Brabant, unjustly accused of killing her brother, Godfrey, heir to the Duchy of Brabant. Victorious in combat with Telramund, Elsa’s accuser, Lohengrin marries Elsa, after having extracted from her the promise that she will never inquire his name nor descent. When she, unfortunately, breaks her promise, Lohengrin publicly reveals his identity as Keeper of the Holy Grail and announces that he is compelled to leave the earth since his identity is known. As he is about to leave in a boat drawn by a swan, Telramund’s fervent supplication breaks the sorceress’ spell and Godfrey appears in his original form. As Lohengrin glides away, Elsa falls, unconscious, in her brother’s arms.  (Program Note from Program Notes for Band)

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Narration by Jeffrey Kehnle.

Lincolnshire Posey (Grainger)

Percy Grainger did most of his folk song collecting in rural England during the summer months, dead concert periods prior to the emergence of our now-feverish summer festival activities.  He made this available time count in his usual efficient way, helping to rescue the English folk song from extension.  And, he pursued the subject with a kind of fanaticism that one grows to know as standard with him on all subjects, once joined. These folk song collecting journeys began in the summer of 1905 with Grainger seeking out his sources by walking on foot from town to town, music pad in hand.  He would hastily write down in his own kind of musical shorthand what he had heard, spending his evenings at the local inn transcribing the day’s discoveries.  Skillful though he became at this, it bothered him that he could not immediately chart the subtleties of inflection that fascinated him so much in the highly personal interpretation of each singer.  He was struck by their individuality, excited by their unfettered flights of creative fancy, and admired their freedom from those shackles sometimes forged in conservatories and opera houses like those he had come to know from his studies in Frankfurt.  His “Program Note” in the Posy score contains sensitive character sketches of the folk singers whose tunes he used in the six-movement work.  On returning to London each folk song, minutely documented, was pasted in huge accountant’s ledgers, now in the Grainger Museum in Australia.

Lincolnshire Posy, which Grainger wrote in 1937, was premiered at the American Bandmaster’s Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Only three of the works movements were performed. Grainger called this work a “bunch of musical wildflowers”. It is based on folksongs he collected in 1905 and 1906 in Lincolnshire, England. Grainger attempted to capture the original flavor of the British folksongs and their singers’ peculiarities of performance by using varying beat lengths and his masterful use of wind instrument scoring techniques. He acquired those techniques largely through an arrangement with Boosey, an instrument manufacturer, which lent him a different instrument each week so he could become familiar and experiment with it.

Lisbon

Harkstow Grange

Lost Lady Found

Howard Meeker joined the Cleveland State University music faculty in 1984. Prior to his retirement, he conducted the CSU Wind Ensemble and coordinatesd the activities of the applied music area. Prior to his appointment at CSU, Professor Meeker was Associate Director of Bands at Washington State University. He has B.Mus. and M.F.A. degrees in percussion performance from the University of Iowa, and has done additional graduate study in wind band conducting at the Ohio State University. Professor Meeker is an active guest conductor/clinician throughout the United States and Canada.

 

 

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Where the Black Hawk Soars (Robert W. Smith)

Where the Black Hawk Soars was written as a commemorative work for the dedication ceremonies of Brooke Point High School in Stafford, Virginia. The work was inspired by the Black Hark, the figure chosen to represent the new institution. (Program Note by composer)  Commissioned by Brooke Point High School, Stafford, Va., Ms. Anita Price, Director of Bands. (Program Note from score)

 

 

 

The U.S. Army	“The Caisson Song” – Words and music by Edmond L. Gruber
The U.S. Coast Guard	“Semper Paratus” – “Always Ready”; Frances F. van Boskerck – 1938
The U.S. Marine Corps	“The Marines’ Hymn,” Music by James Offenback; words by Henry C. Davis
The U.S. Air Force	“The U.S. Air Force” – Words and music by Robert Crawford – 1951
The U.S. Navy	“Anchors Aweigh” – Music by Charles A. Zimmerman;vwords by George D. Lottman, Alfred Hart Miles, and Royal Lovell – 1907

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The Stars and Stripes Forever (Sousa)

Who was this man who became a musical legend during his own lifetime with such hits as Stars and Stripes Forever, The Liberty Bell (best known as the theme song for Monty Python’s Flying Circus) and The Washington Post? Fittingly, John Philip Sousa was born on Nov. 6, 1854 at 636 G Street, SE, Washington, D.C., near the Marine Barracks where his father, Antonio, played trombone in the U.S. Marine Band. John Philip was the third of 10 children of John Antonio Sousa (born in Spain of Portuguese parents) and Maria Elisabeth Trinkhaus (born in Bavaria). Young John Philip grew up surrounded by military band music, and when he was just six, he began studying voice, violin, piano, flute, cornet, baritone, trombone and alto horn. By all accounts, John Philip was an adventure-loving boy, and when at the age of 13 he tried to run away to join a circus band, his father instead enlisted him in the Marine Band as a band apprentice. Except for a period of six months, Sousa remained in the band until he was 20 years old. In addition to his musical training in the Marine Band, he studied music theory and composition with George Felix Benkert, a noted Washington orchestra leader and teacher. It was during his years in the Marines that Sousa wrote his first composition, Moonlight on the Potomac Waltzes. Discharged from the Marines in 1875, the 21-year-old Sousa began performing on violin, touring and eventually conducting theater orchestras, including Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore on Broadway. In 1879, Sousa met Jane van Middlesworth Bellis, and they married on December 30, 1879. Just a year later, the couple returned to Washington, D.C., where Sousa assumed leadership of the U.S. Marine Band. Over the next two years, Sousa conducted the band The President’s Own, serving under Presidents Hayes, Garfield, Cleveland, Arthur and Harrison.

The Stars and Stripes Forever (March) is considered the finest march ever written, and at the same time one of the most patriotic ever conceived.  As reported in the Philadelphia Public Ledger (May 15, 1897) “… It is stirring enough to rouse the American eagle from his crag, and set him to shriek exultantly while he hurls his arrows at the aurora borealis.”  (referring to the concert the Sousa Band gave the previous day at the Academy of Music). The march was not quite so well received though and actually got an over average rating for a new Sousa march.  Yet, its popularity grew as Mr. Sousa used it during the Spanish-American War as a concert closer.  Coupled with his Trooping of the Colors, the march quickly gained a vigorous response from audiences and critics alike.  In fact, audiences rose from their chairs when the march was played.  Mr. Sousa added to the entertainment value of the march by having the piccolo(s) line up in front of the band for the final trio, and then added the trumpets and trombones join them on the final repeat of the strain. (Research done by Elizabeth Hartman, head of the music department, Free Library of Philadelphia.  Taken from John Philip Sousa, Descriptive Catalog of His Works (Paul E. Bierley, University of Illinois Press, 1973, page 71))