Nkeiru Okoye is an American-born composer of African American and Nigerian ancestry. She was born in New York, NY and raised on Long Island. After studying composition, music theory, piano, conducting, and Africana Studies at Oberlin Conservatory, she pursued graduate studies at Rutgers University and became one of the leading African American women composers. An activist through the arts, Okoye creates a body of work that welcomes and affirms both traditional and new audiences.
Voices Shouting Out is a response to 9/11 that is marked by a sense of resiliency. In the composer’s own words, “It was a march to acknowledge those fighting on behalf of our safety, and yet a sparkling celebration of life for those who continue living.” Voices Shouting Out was commissioned by the Virginia Symphony and premiered by the organization in February 2002.
A famous painting by Carl Rohling painted in 1887 was titled “The Incident at Teplitz,” capturing the famous meeting between Goethe and Beethoven on July 21, 1812. Beethoven, wearing his hat, is in the foreground moving away from Goethe, who is bowing to royalty with hat removed. Twenty-one years separated the two men, and but far more than two decades separated their political positions. “Goethe delights in the court atmosphere far more than is becoming to a poet,” Beethoven stated to his publishers, Breitkopf and Hartel. At the time, Beethoven explained, “I waited for you [Goethe] because I respect you and admire your work, but you have shown too much esteem to those people…” For Goethe, Privy Counsellor at the Weimar Court, it was absolutely correct to show deference and respect.
The meeting at Teplitz was the first time the two men had met in person, primarily to go over music Beethoven had composed for a re-staging of his play “Egmont in Weimar.” In 1822, reminiscing with the critic Friedrich Rochlitz, Beethoven remembered, “How patient the great man was with me…how happy he made me then! I would have gone to death, yes ten times to death for Goethe. Goethe… he lives and wants us all to live with him. It is for that reason that he can be composed.” The admiration was not mutual. Goethe, in a letter to the critic Carl Zelter, noted that Beethoven “had an absolutely uncontrolled personality, he is not altogether wrong in holding the world detestable, but surely he does not make it more enjoyable for himself or others by his attitude.” He grudgingly admitted, however, that “Beethoven has done wonders matching music to the text.”
In the past, Goethe had often found Beethoven’s music to be “overblown and incomprehensible.” How then, did Beethoven receive a commission for this project? In fact, the commission came from Joseph Hartl, manager of the Court Theaters in Vienna, who wanted to bring plays by Goethe and Schiller to the theatre. Beethoven was enthusiastic; the topic aligned perfectly with the composer’s morality, sensibilities and political views.
On April 12, 1811, Beethoven wrote to the poet, “I am in a position to approach you only with the deepest reverence…You will shortly receive from Breitkopf and Hartel [for which he received 1,400 gulden] the music to Egmont… I should like to know your opinion…” (information derived from Chicago Symphony Orchestra program notes, 1921–22). Hence, the face to face meeting in Teplitz came naturally in the course of musical decisions. Goethe’s play with Beethoven’s nine incidental pieces and overture was fully staged in 1814 but critical response was bleak. Only the overture took off in the musical world after its premiere, and the incidental pieces were performed at the Hofburg Theatre on May 24, 1810. Beethoven had written the music in 1809. The play, originally penned by Goethe in 1787, eventually sank into obscurity.
For Beethoven, this composition was a chance to provide a musical counterfoil to the contemporary Napoleonic juggernaut. Count Egmont deserved to be remembered for his fighting for human freedom (against Spanish Oppression), and it was time to highlight the relevancy of his martyrdom. His overture chronicles the sixteenth century story of Lamoral, Count Egmont of the Netherlands who defied a Spanish attack captained by the Duke of Alva.
The overture opens with a long-held, heavy, F minor chord (Egmont in prison) followed by a slow Sarabande in a 3/2 meter. The weight of Spanish occupation is clear. After a repetition, the Spanish dance leads directly into a triple meter Allegro filled with lyrical tunes. Their poignancy clearly insures imminent tragedy. These gentle melodies provide no freedom from destiny. As the music progresses, the measured rhythms from the opening gain urgency and momentum which leads to a huge climax that explodes during the Egmont-Spanish battle. Eventually, the woodwinds chant a somber funeral prayer. Egmont has been defeated, and in fact, beheaded. His lover, Claechen, is represented in a gentle set of melodies… and, in the drama, she promises that Egmont’s death will provide fuel for a later revolt.
But, Beethoven has a surprise for us—all is not lost. Goethe had specifically asked that the ending not be a lament, and Beethoven took him at his word. In place of a summarizing coda, the composer adds new material in a Victory Symphony, emerging in high spirits in the sunny key of F major. Horn and trumpet fanfares abound. The righteousness and vitality of Egmont’s struggle survived the moment of defeat. Theodore Adorno, the great German social thinker wrote, “If music tries to stay strictly within its autonomous confines, it becomes co-optable, living a harmless life in its appointed niche.” Beethoven did not let that happen, and in the Overture to Egmont he provided both lesson and hope.
Program note by Marianne Williams Tobias
Coleridge-Taylor’s cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast of 1898, based on Longfellow’s epic poem “The Song of Hiawatha,” was an immediate and long-lasting success. Even before its premiere, a piano-vocal-score printed by Coleridge-Taylor’s publisher Novello sold numerous copies. The profits from the music sales led Novello to quickly commission two sequel cantatas (The Death of Minnehaha and Hiawatha’s Departure) and make the work into a trilogy, Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha.
The overture to The Song of Hiawatha was composed during his work on the second cantata, The Death of Minnehaha. It was conceived as an opener to a performance of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast at the Norwich Triennial Musical Festival. This well attended event included premieres and performances of recent choral and orchestral works by the leading British composers of the day, alongside classics of the choral and symphonic repertoires. The premiere took place on the festival’s concluding concert in the evening of October 6, 1899, at the Norwich cathedral, conducted by Coleridge-Taylor himself (as was customary). It was played again 20 days later at the premiere of the Death of Minnehaha. The overture soon became an independent concert piece, and, until this day, is commonly performed separately from the cantatas.
The overture begins with a slow introduction hinting at its principal theme, accompanied by prominent harp arpeggios. The main part of the overture, in full sonata form with an imaginative development section, features a principal theme loosely based on the spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” with a passionately lyrical secondary theme. The overture ends with a short, festive coda, based on the first choral episode of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. Coleridge-Taylor stated the overture’s intent is “an attempt to reproduce, or, at least, to suggest, the impressions received by the composer on reading Longfellow’s poem.”
The story of Faust is known to us in many forms: the originating fifteenth century man Johann Georg Faust, the 16th century play by Christopher Marlowe titled The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play of the same title. Within classical music, the tale and the man permeate every genre and span nations and centuries.
To provide some examples: Franz Liszt’s “Faust’’ Symphony, Charles Gounod’s Faust opera, Richard Wagner’s “Faust’’ Overture, the inspiration of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, and Igor Stravinsky’s famous Histoire du Soldat, to name a few. Safe to say: this story is epic. But there are two questions: What is it about this tale that intrigues us? And, why has Emilie Mayer’s overture been left off those impressive lists? What we love about Faust, what triggers our deep intrigue and fascination, is the idea of making a deal with the devil. (Think on how deeply the song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia’’ is ingrained in our brains…) There are a few different versions of Faust’s intentions and wants, but it boils down to this: Doctor Faust has become bored with life. An intense seeker of all knowledge and wisdom, he seeks more than he has. The devil, Mephistopheles, senses this anguish within Faust and goes to him. He makes him an offer: the devil will serve Faust on earth but his soul will belong in Hell for eternity.
The version that inspired Emilie Mayer was Goethe’s play. Goethe’s particular portrayal of Faust includes additional characters and scenes that create a very specific world. Most notably, the play opens in Heaven where the devil and God have a conversation; they make a bet. Mephistopheles declares that he can convince God’s favorite human to align with him and condemn himself to servitude in hell. God has his doubts but agrees nonetheless.
Faust is one of more than fifteen overtures written by Mayer in her lifetime. Emilie Mayer was a 19th century German Romantic composer. She composed eight symphonies and was the Associate Director of Opera at the Berlin Academy of Music. Within her sound, you will hear elements of the Viennese influence found throughout her compositions. Sudden tonality shifts, frequent seventh chords, and complex rhythmic motifs permeate the work. While her pieces received premieres during her lifetime, after her death in 1883 her works fell out of the spotlight. Since the 2000’s, her pieces have been gaining traction and have enjoyed multiple performances across the world.
Program note from the Loyola Symphony Orchestra
Les préludes has always been the most popular of Liszt’s 12 symphonic poems. The composer explained its title by printing in the score a lengthy paraphrase of the Méditations poètiques of the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869). Lamartine’s poem is a rather flowery discourse on the tribulations of life, particularly on the difference between war and the pastoral life. The paraphrase in the score captures some of its flavor: “What else is life but a series of preludes to that unknown hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death? Love is the dawn of all existence; but what fate is there whose first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm…” Liszt’s music – which seems to depict these many “preludes to that unknown hymn” – was first performed in Weimar on February 23, 1854, and it remains a favorite with audiences.
But the problem with the story of the music’s inspiration is that it isn’t true. Liszt originally wrote this music in 1848 as the overture to a work for male chorus called Les Quatre Élémens on a text by Joseph Autran. When he saw that he was not going to finish that piece, Liszt extracted the overture, revised it and grafted Lamartine’s poem onto it – Liszt had composed this music before he thought of the Lamartine poem or the title Les préludes. That should not detract from our enjoyment of the music, but it should warn listeners not to search for connections between the music and the poem, and it also reminds us that Liszt’s conception of the symphonic poem was rather general. At the end of the nineteenth century, Richard Strauss would aim for exact pictorial representation in his tone poems (Strauss bragged that he could set a glass of beer to music so specifically you could tell it was a pilsner), but Liszt had no such aim, and his music should be enjoyed on its own merits.
And those merits are considerable. Les préludes is one of the finest examples of Liszt’s theory of the “transformation of themes.” Classical sonata form was based on the contrast between quite different thematic material, but Liszt aimed for a more organic conception in which an entire piece of music might grow out of a few seminal themes. These themes would then be transformed across the span of the work, taking on a different character at each reappearance. In Les préludes, the principal theme is the deep three-note figure announced by the strings at the very beginning. These three notes will prove an extremely fertile idea (so fertile, in fact, that Liszt’s younger colleague César Franck would later use the same figure as the basis for his Symphony in D minor). Listeners can follow this fundamental theme-shape through Liszt’s many ingenious transformations – Les préludes is episodic, and these episodes vary from the lyric to the violently dramatic. Two subsequent ideas appear in the course of the music: a murmuring, relaxed figure for horns and violas, and a more spirited section introduced by solo horn. The latter is quite attractive – there is a glistening, fresh quality to this section (Liszt’s marking is Allegretto pastorale), and it brings relief after some of the earlier drama. As the music proceeds, Liszt proves quite adept at combining his various themes, and at the end Les préludes builds to a rousing (and very loud) climax.
Program note from the San Diego Symphony Orchestra
Israeli conductor Rotem Weinberg is known for his profound musicality, creative programming, and polished performances. He is a cross-genre musician, at home in classical, operatic, and pops repertoires alike. In the fall of 2022 he assumed the position of Visiting Assistant Professor of Conducting and Director of Orchestras at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he will conduct orchestras and opera, and teach conducting.
Rotem began his conducting studies at the age of seventeen, under the guidance of Vag Papian. Before starting his academic studies, he served in the Israel Defense Forces military band as head librarian and assistant conductor. He earned a BM in orchestral conducting from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music of Tel-Aviv University, where he studied with Prof. Yoav Talmi, Yi-an Xu, and Ronen Borshevsky. His graduate studies took him to The University of Michigan, where he earned both MM and DMA degrees in orchestral conducting, studying with the renowned conductor and pedagogue Kenneth Kiesler.
At the University of Michigan, Rotem served as Music Director of the Campus Symphony Orchestra and the Michigan Pops Orchestra, bringing these ensembles to new musical heights. He also filled the role of assistant conductor to the prestigious orchestra program, supporting the work of four student orchestras. As cover conductor of the University of Michigan Opera Theater, he conducted operas such as Puccini’s La bohème, Handel’s Alcina, and William Bolcom’s Dinner at Eight. In February 2018 he served as the first assistant conductor for the ground-breaking test performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess’ new critical edition. Following his studies, Rotem served as Music Director of Spectrum Orchestra in Birmingham, Michigan, Associate Conductor of the Michigan Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Cover Conductor for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Rotem participated in workshops and masterclasses with world renowned orchestral conductors, including Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Zsolt Nagy and Christopher Lyndon Gee. He participated in additional conducting workshops with Joseph Missal, Felix Hauswirth, and Laszlo Marosi.
In his native Israel, Rotem led several orchestral, wind, and vocal ensembles, achieving national acclaim as a conductor and educator. He received frequent honors and awards for his conducting and musicianship, including the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Excellence Grant in orchestral conducting, the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Excellence Scholarship, and the Tel Aviv University Dean of Arts Excellence Award for his outstanding musical and academic achievements.
An advocate of contemporary music, Rotem has collaborated and premiered work by composers Nina Shekhar, Natalie Moller, Tyler Arnold, Sawyer Denton, and Samuel Sussman.