Program Notes:
Childhood & Music

Featuring Boston Symphony principal Mike Roylance & pediatrician/jazz musician Eli Newberger, tubas
Steven Lipsitt, Music Director, conducting

Friday, March 16, 2007 at 8pm
Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 3pm
at Faneuil Hall, Boston

Mozart wrote occasional music throughout his career: works categorized variously as serenades, divertimenti, cassations, or contradances. Nachtmusik was his German translation of "serenade" (from the Italian, where sera is "evening"), and K. 525 (Eine kleine Nachtmusik) is the last and most concentrated serenade he wrote. Mozart's own original catalogue of works lists this serenade as having five movements, the most typical scheme of that era: fast movement, first minuet, slower movement, second minuet, fast movement. The first minuet has not survived, and it has been suggested that Mozart removed it to provide the work with the perfectly concise proportions it has as a four movement composition. In any event, Eine kleine Nachtmusik quickly earned its place as one of the eighteenth century's most satisfying and durable string serenades.

In 2003 composer Howard Frazin wrote The Voice of Isaac, an oratorio for children's chorus, soloists, and chamber orchestra --- a retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac from the child's perspective. One of the performances was a benefit for a child welfare organization, and a symposium was organized around issues of child abuse and intergenerational violence. The panel included Frazin and pediatrician Eli Newberger --- the first time the two had met. I learned that the two had begun discussing a possible tuba concerto --- I had known Howie's music for several years, and was a big fan Eli's tuba playing with the New Black Eagle Jazz Band --- and immediately expressed interest. When Mike Roylance was appointed principal tuba of the Boston Symphony, and Howie and I learned that Mike and Eli were old friends, the project took on a life of its own. The composer makes the following observations:

"What I am interested in as a creative artist is a strong, expressively
nuanced statement that is challenging but also immediately engaging
to an average listener --- engaging in part because it interacts with
tradition to create something new. Theme and Reverberations
considers as its premise the notion of the tuba as the acoustic
fundament of the orchestra and childhood experience as the
psychological foundation for adult life. The idea has been to write an
abstract piece of music whose drama and expression are
manifestations of a structured psychological description (in a sense,
similar to the way Classical sonata form was originally derived from
rules of rhetoric)."

The score bears the dedication "To Amelia" --- Mike and Amanda Roylance welcomed their first child during the period of collaborative preparation for these premiere performances.

For many years the "Toy" Symphony was attributed to Franz Josef Haydn; more recently there was speculation that his brother Michael wrote it; by the end of the twentieth century fairly conclusive evidence established that the composer was in fact Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang's father. (Leopold's other light "novelty" works include the Peasant Wedding Divertimento --- with bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, and optional whoops, whistles, and pistol shots --- and the Hunting Symphony --- with bugle, hunting-horn, live ammunition, and (if possible) dog yelps and hunters' cries.) The Kindersymphonie (literally, "Children's Symphony") became known as the "Toy" Symphony because the score calls for a variety of toy instruments, including a toy trumpet and toy drum, birdcalls (cuckoo, nightingale, woodpecker, and quail), bells, rattle, and triangle. The three short movements of the work are in the characteristic Italianate style of the era.

Debussy's Children's Corner, written in 1908 as a suite of piano pieces, is dedicated to his five-year-old daughter, "Chouchou." Her English governess apparently provided the titles of the six pieces (Debussy mistranscribed Chouchou's "Jumbo" stuffed elephant as "Jimbo"). The opening "Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum" portrays a struggling child's piano lesson with wit and warmth; in "Jimbo's Lullaby" the low left hand of the piano (here the doublebass) depicts the elephant; "Serenade for the Doll" contains amusing hints of Gounod in its color and form; "The Snow is Dancing" and "The Little Shepherd" are fairly straightforward --- even serious -- in their ecovation of childlike wonder and fantasy (and perhaps adult nostalgia?); and "Golliwog's Cakewalk" mixes a ragtime dance with a mischievous reference to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

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