by John Williams

The Columbia Orchestra,
Jason Love, conductor

Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer John Williams wrote theme songs for four Olympic games, beginning in 1984 when he was commissioned to write music for the summer games in Los Angeles.  At the July 28 opening ceremonies held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Williams conducted the New American Orchestra in playing the “Olympic Fanfare and Theme.”   He described the intent of his fanfare as representing the “spirit of cooperation, of heroic achievement, all the striving and preparation that go before the events and all the applause that comes after them.”

Williams also composed music for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea; 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta; and the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

American Folk Song
Arranged by James Erb

Choir
Terry Eberhardt, conductor

The popular American folk song “Shenandoah” has many variations, versions, and titles.  The lyrics tell the story of a fur trader in love with the daughter of a Native American chief, most likely the Oneida Iroquois chief Shenandoah.

“Shenandoah’s” exact origins, while unclear, date back to the early 19th century.  A popular theory is that the song originated in the 16th century with French Canadian voyageurs (fur traders) journeying down the Missouri River, who often sang while paddling their canoes. By the late 1800s, the song had become popular with sailors, who sang it while they performed tasks on the vessel.  Scholars have also linked “Shenandoah” to loggers and have explored possible African-American origins, based on accounts of Black workers loading and unloading wool and cotton from ships in the late 19th century.

Familiarity with the song soared during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, when “Shenandoah” fell into the repertoires of Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and other artists.  It has been featured in several films and TV shows and has become a choral favorite.

from The Tender Land
By Aaron Copland

"The Promise of Living” comes from Copland’s only full-length opera, The Tender Land, which tells the story of a poor Midwestern farm family in the 1930s and the arrival of two itinerant workers into their lives.

The Tender Land centers on the family’s teenage daughter Laurie Moss, who is torn between her family’s generations-long tradition of farming and the appeal of “the world out there.” At a party to celebrate her high school graduation the following day, Laurie falls in love with one of the drifters and plans to escape with him at dawn.  When Laurie discovers that both men have left without her, she decides to leave home anyway and make her way in the world.

 “The Promise of Living” closes Act I with the principal characters singing a hymn of gratitude for life, the land, and the upcoming harvest. In “Laurie’s Song,” Laurie reflects on how quickly her childhood has passed and her desire to leave home, also expressing anger at attempts by her mother and grandfather to control her life.

Aaron Copland and librettist Erik Johns (writing under the pseudonym Horace Everett) drew inspiration for The Tender Land’s setting and characters from the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, written by James Agee, with photographs taken by Walker Evans.  The book tells the stories of three Depression-era sharecropper families in Alabama, based on Agee’s and Evans’s experience with these families for a few weeks in 1936 as part of a journalistic assignment.  Two photographs in particular, one of a middle-aged woman and another of a young girl, formed the basis for the opera’s characters of Ma Moss and her daughter Laurie.

The New York City Opera presented The Tender Land’s premiere on April 1, 1954.  Poorly received by critics and audiences, the opera was canceled after a brief run.  Intent on saving their work, Copland and Johns added another act, and the revised opera was performed at Tanglewood in August 1954 and at Oberlin College in May 1955.  In 1958, Copland arranged an orchestral suite from the opera’s highlights, broadening its exposure.

“The Promise of Living,” which celebrates hard work, family, community, and the bounties of nature, has proven far more enduringly popular than Copland’s opera, keeping it in the choral repertoire for decades.

Read by Robert C. Daly,
Veteran U.S. Navy Reserve, Lt. Cmdr.

By Samuel Barber

The nostalgic, sentimental, and undeniably beautiful Knoxville: Summer of 1915, composed by Samuel Barber (1910-1981), is one of the gems of American music. Barber wrote the music for a commission from Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony, and acclaimed American soprano Eleanor Steber.

For the text, Barber chose a portion of a 1938 prose poem by American author James Agee.  The writer’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” was originally published in 1938 as an independent prose poem in the periodical Partisan Review.  Agee later placed the prose poem as a prologue to his novel “A Death in the Family.”

Agee’s autobiographical “Knoxville” paints a picture of the early 20th century American South, as seen through the eyes of a six-year-old boy lying in the grass at his home in Tennessee.  On this summer evening, the boy listens to the “music” surrounding him—a passing streetcar, neighbors talking on porches, the rasping of locusts and crickets, and more melodies.  Before bed, the boy says a prayer, asking God to bless his family.

Barber completed the musical composition in the space of a couple of months, finishing it on April 4, 1947. Rather than set Agee’s text wholesale, Barber selected passages to craft into a libretto.  At the time, Barber’s father and maternal aunt Louise (a famous contralto singer) were terminally ill.  Louise Homer died that May, and Barber’s father, three months later.   Barber dedicated Knoxville: Summer of 1915 to the memory of his father.

By Richard Rodgers
Arranged by Robert R. Bennett

"Oklahoma!,” the breakthrough first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, would redefine the Broadway musical and become one of the most cherished works of the musical theatre canon.  Robert Russell Bennett orchestrated the Broadway hit and scored the film version (1955), for which he won an Oscar.

The musical opened at Broadway’s St. James Theatre on March 31, 1943, where it would run for 2,212 performances before the final curtain fell on May 29, 1948.  “Oklahoma!” also had a successful run in London’s West End, debuting on April 30, 1947 at the Drury Lane Theatre.  It was the first American musical to travel to London after World War II.

The “Oklahoma! Orchestral Suite” incorporates a sampling of nearly all the musical’s well-known songs—“People Will Say We’re in Love,” “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning,” the mock funeral dirge “Pore Jud is Daid,” and “Surrey with the Fringe on Top.”  The piece opens with the barn dance “The Farmer and the Cowman,” before bursting into the title song, which celebrates Oklahoma’s brand-new statehood.  “Out of My Dreams,” part of the dream sequence that ends Act I, “Many A New Day,” “Kansas City” and “I Cain’t Say No,” all find a place in the number.

Setting by Cecil Effinger

Contemporary composer Cecil Effinger arranged “An American Hymn” in 1967 as a setting of the beloved song “America the Beautiful.”  For nearly his entire professional life, Effinger was associated with colleges and orchestras in Colorado, to include working as an instructor of music at Colorado College.  Decades before Effinger arranged “An American Hymn”—in summer 1893—English professor, poet, and social activist Katharine Lee Bates worked at Colorado College as a guest lecturer.  It was during this trip to Colorado that Bates would write the poem that would become the song “America the Beautiful.”

After completing her summer teaching assignment, Bates, together with other visiting Colorado College visiting faculty, set out on an expedition to Pikes Peak.  Bates described the panoramic view atop the summit as the “most glorious scenery I ever beheld.” On return to her hotel room, she penned the poem, “Pikes Peak,” drawing inspiration from images and impressions she’d collected from Pikes Peak and from the stops she made on the train journey out West.  Two years would pass before Bates’s poem, under the title “America,” was first published in print on July 4th, 1895.

Bates revised her poem in 1904, adding the lines, "And crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea,” and again in 1913.  Since then, dozens of musical settings have been created from its words.

New Jersey church organist and choirmaster Samuel Ward composed the musical setting for “America the Beautiful” that we know today in 1882. Bates’s poem and Ward’s melody, which he called Materna, were not combined until 1910, seven years after Ward’s death.  Bates and Ward never met.

Bates’s lyrics celebrate and express appreciation for the extraordinary physical beauty of the American landscape, honor our country’s history, and ask that God bestow His blessing on America.

EXTRA CREDIT READING

Cecil Effinger was a prolific composer, whose nearly 200 works largely reflect his love for the western United States. Effinger was also an inventor.  In 1954, he created the musicwriter, a typewriter for preparing quality music copy. Decades before the introduction of the personal computer, Effinger’s musical typewriter allowed composers of all kinds an easier way to print and share their work.  In 1969, Effinger invented the “tempowatch,” which allowed musicians to determine the tempo of a performance. In 1974, Effinger produced an open-ended typewriter to be used for architectural drawings and other large documents.

by John Philip Sousa

Among the more than 130 marches composed by John Philip Sousa, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” is the composer’s most well-known and popular. Written on Christmas Day 1896, the piece stands as the quintessential example of Sousa’s music. Critics have stated that this perennial favorite of high school, college, and military bands may be the greatest piece of music ever written by an American.  The march was also reported to have been Sousa’s personal favorite.

Sousa’s inspiration for “The Stars and Stripes Forever” occurred on a voyage home to New York from a vacation in Europe.  The composer had just learned of the recent death of David Blakely, manager of the Sousa Band and a good friend.  Feeling anxious and homesick, Sousa composed the march in his head aboard the ocean liner Teutonic.  He committed the mental notes to paper on arrival in the United States.

“The Stars and Stripes Forever” was first performed before President McKinley in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897, at the unveiling of a statue of George Washington. It soon became a patriotic anthem for the United States. By an 1987 act of Congress, “The Stars and Stripes Forever'' is the official National March of the United States of America.  In 2002, when the Library of Congress chose the first group of recordings to be entered into the National Recording Registry, Berliner Grammaphone Co.’s first recording of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” (1897) was among the initial 50 selections.

On March 6, 1932, Sousa died of a heart attack in a hotel room in Reading, Pennsylvania.  The 77-year-old conductor had come to Reading for a guest conducting appearance with the local Ringgold Band, performing to celebrate its 80th anniversary. The last number Sousa ever conducted, leading the band during the previous afternoon’s rehearsal, was “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Arranged by James Mulholland

The original composition of “How Can I Keep from Singing” is credited to Baptist minister Robert Wadsworth Lowry, who penned the music for the well-known hymn in the mid-1800s. In addition to his duties as Baptist minister, Lowry was a professor at Pennsylvania’s University of Lewisburg (now Bucknell University) and music editor at Biglow Publishing Company. Lowry was an editor of  the songbook “Bright Jewels for the Sunday School,” published in 1869, the volume in which “How Can I Keep from Singing” initially appeared.

The hymn’s lyrics were first published in the August 27, 1868 issue of The New York Observer under the title “Always Rejoicing.”  The magazine attributed the authorship of the lyrics to “Pauline T.” These words were the ones published by Lowry in his Bright Jewels songbook, though Lowry gave no credit to an author.

An updated version of the hymn sung by Pete Seeger became very popular in the folk music revival of the 1960s. 

The setting of “How Can I Keep from Singing” performed at this concert is by contemporary composer and arranger James Mulholland.  It retains most lyrics of the original composition, with some minor modifications.

Rev. Michael DeAscanis, Pastor,
St. Louis & St. Francis of Assisi

by John Carter

1. Prelude
2. Rondo (Peter go ring dem bells)
3. Recitative (Sometimes I feel like a motherless child)
4. Air (Let us break bread together)
5. Toccata (Ride on, King Jesus)

Today’s program celebrates American composers and a versatile selection of their works, from patriotic favorites to anthems to a uniquely American art form—the African American spiritual. The selection of “Cantata for High Voice and Piano/Orchestra” for inclusion in the repertoire, based on settings of spirituals, draws attention to the talents of its author, John Daniels Carter (1932-1981).  Although Carter was a prolific African American composer, he is not well-known. 

Carter’s “Cantata” is set in five movements: (1) Prelude, (2) Rondo “Peter, Go Ring Dem Bells,” (3) Recitative “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” (4) Air “Let Us Break Bread Together,” and (5) Toccata “Ride on King Jesus.”  The song cycle contains many hints of the African American spiritual as the precursor for the development of other American styles and genres, such as jazz, the blues, and gospel. Without knowing it, Carter was preparing the ears of people worldwide to accept and applaud these styles, and to be touched by them. 

Legendary soprano Leontyne Price, a close friend of Carter, premiered “Cantata” at   Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Carter attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music from 1949-1954, but did not complete his degree in piano performance and composition, choosing to join the U.S. Army Special Services.  He was an accomplished pianist, touring extensively, and served as composer-in-residence with the Washington National Symphony (now the National Symphony Orchestra). 

Norman Shankle, tenor

Arranged by Bob Lowden

"Armed Forces Salute,” arranged by Bob Lowden, is a medley of service songs that includes:

●       “The Caisson Song” (Army),

●       “Semper Paratus” (“Always Ready”) (Coast Guard),

●       “The Marines’ Hymn” (Marine Corps),

●       “The U.S. Air Force,” often referred to as “Wild Blue Yonder” (Air Force),

●        “Anchors Aweigh” (Navy).

Arranged by Peter J. Wilhousky

Since first published in 1862, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” has endured as an American wartime and patriotic anthem, giving encouragement and inspiration to soldiers and activists.

The story of the song’s creation combines a camp meeting hymn, a popular army marching song, and the words of writer, abolitionist, and suffragist Julia Ward Howe.  The tune dates to early 19th century Southern camp meetings, adapted from the spiritual “Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us/On Canaan’s Happy Shore,” first published in an 1807 Virginia hymnbook.  Philadelphia bookkeeper and insurance agent William Steffe is credited with collecting and editing the tune, with the traditional “Glory Hallelujah” refrain about 1856. Early in the American Civil War, the tune was used to create the Union army marching song "John Brown's Body,"a tribute to the abolitionist who led the insurrection at Harper’s Ferry.

In fall 1861, Julia Ward Howe accompanied her husband Samuel Howe, a physician and prominent Boston abolitionist, on a trip to Washington, D.C.   The Howes were members of a group checking on the health of troops and inspecting conditions at a Union Army camp in the area.  On the trip, Ms. Howe heard soldiers singing “John Brown’s Body.”  A clergyman at the camp, aware that Ms. Howe occasionally wrote poetry, suggested that she craft new lyrics to the tune, verses more appropriate to the Civil War effort.   The next morning Ms. Howe wrote the lyrics for “Battle Hymn of the Republic” that we sing today.

Ms. Howe’s poem first appeared in the February 1862 issue of “The Atlantic Monthly.”  Editor James T. Fields titled the nameless poem “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and paid Ms. Howe four dollars to publish it.  It would prove to be one of the most influential publications in the history of the periodical.

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was reprinted in Army hymn books and newspapers, quickly catching on as the rallying anthem of Union troops for the remainder of the war. The song would endure as America’s wartime anthem, inspiring soldiers during the Spanish-American War and world wars.   The singing of “The Battle Hymn” concluded the memorial service for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on September 14, 2001.

Extra credit reading: More than one novelist has found a title in the verses to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the most famous being John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.