BREVARD MUSIC CENTER | OVERTURE
Soaring in the strings over the last breaths of the blues tune, this long-lined melody moves us into “Southern Midnight.” The three distinct textures from the opening return, but now each is brought to life by a phrase of the melody. At the close of this lyrical section, we hover in that strange space between night and day, when only the singing of the first bird alerts us to the approaching dawn. But it is a hot, Southern dawn, both sparkling and heavy, with the air made rusty again by the buzzing cicadas (popularly called locusts). The bluesy tune begins to creep back into the middle register, while above and below figuration buzzes about in different tonalities. MASON BATES (1977-) Alternative Energy
Premiered on February 2, 2012, in Chicago under the direction of Riccardo Muti. Again, in the composer’s own words: Alternative Energy is an “energy symphony” spanning four movements and hundreds of years. Beginning in a rustic Midwestern junkyard in the late 19th century, the piece travels through ever greater and more powerful forces of energy — a present-day particle collider, a futuristic Chinese nuclear plant — until it reaches a future Icelandic rainforest, where humanity’s last inhabitants seek a return to a simpler way of life. The idée fixe that links these disparate worlds appears early in “Ford’s Farm, 1896.” This melody is heard on the fiddle — conjuring a figure like Henry Ford — and is accompanied by junkyard percussion and a “phantom orchestra” that trails the fiddler like ghosts. The accelerando cranking of a car motor becomes a special motif in the piece, a kind of rhythmic embodiment of ever-more-powerful energy. Indeed, this crank motif explodes in the electronics in the second movement’s present-day Chicago, where we encounter actual recordings from the FermiLab particle collider. Hip-hop beats, jazzy brass interjections, and joyous voltage surges bring the movement to a clangorous finish. Zoom a hundred years into the dark future of the “Xinjiang Province, 2112” where a great deal of the Chinese energy industry is based. On an eerie wasteland, a lone flute sings a tragically distorted version of the fiddle tune, dreaming of a forgotten natural world. But a powerful industrial energy simmers to the surface, and over the ensuing hardcore techno, wild orchestral splashes drive us to a catastrophic meltdown. As the smoke clears, we find ourselves even further into the future: a Icelandic rainforest on a hotter planet. Gentle, out-of-tune pizzicato accompany our fiddler, who returns over a woody percussion ensemble to make a quiet plea for simpler times.
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Overture
The occasional song of future birds whip around us, a naturalistic version of the crank motif. Distant tribal voices call for the building of a fire — our first energy source. HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803-1869) Symphonie fantastique
Premiered on December 5, 1830, in Paris. Mark Twain famously said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” In case of this symphony, I’d say it’s a tie. When Berlioz composed one of the most pivotal 19th-century works — and one with the weirdest stories — he did what Romantic composers do: write about their own lives. Berlioz was madly in love with Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson. Realizing that he was a struggling, virtually unknown composer, he poured his angst into this symphony. Given the progressive nature of his compositional approach, Berlioz felt it necessary to provide the following program: 1. Reveries – Passions. A young musician sees a woman who embodies his ideals, and he falls desperately in love. The mere thought of her brings to his mind an obsessive melody. In the first movement his state of mind progresses from a melancholy reverie to fitful passions. 2. A Ball. Even at a ball the obsessive thought of his beloved and its melody return. 3. Scene in the Country. In the country, the artist’s mind is calmed by shepherds piping a folk melody. Suddenly a dark thought comes to him — perhaps the beloved is not as perfect as he has imagined. 4. March to the Scaffold. In despair he takes opium and has a hellish nightmare. He imagines that he has killed his beloved, and he thinks one last time of her before the blade falls. 5. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath. He awakens in hell, surrounded by witches. Their number is joined by the beloved, who has come to taunt him in a devilish orgy. Funeral bells and the funeral chant “Dies Irae” (Day of Wrath”) are heard, and the witches then dance gleefully around him. Having basically abandoned symphonic conventions, Berlioz had to figure out a way to help the audience follow along. His solution was brilliant. Possibly drawing on ideas from his medical studies, he employed an idée fixe, “a single pathological preoccupation in an otherwise sound mind.” Expressed as a musical motif, this obsession with the beloved controlled both Berlioz’s mind as well as his masterwork. While the symphony ends with a nightmare, the real story ends in marriage. Obviously, Berlioz had gotten the actress’s attention — once it was pointed out to her that this story was about her. Thus ends one of the strangest courtships in the history of music. -Siegwart Reichwald
Rusty Air in Carolina is about Mason Bates’s experience at Brevard.