Featured Composers of the
American Composers Festival 2010

Aaron Copland

Among those whose work was influenced by the era associated with "The Greatest Generation" is Aaron Copland, America’s iconic mid-20th century concert composer. As the Depression deepened, Copland responded as so many other artists did by becoming politicized. He developed a compassionate need to side with the challenged and dispossessed. His "Fanfare for the Common Man," which opens ACF’s concerts on Feb. 4-6, was originally commissioned by the Cincinnati Orchestra, which sought 18 wartime fanfares for brass and percussion that offered "stirring and significant contributions to the war effort." Copland’s work—while just one of the 18 commissioned works that were chosen (others included music by such notables as Henry Cowell, Paul Creston, Morton Gould, Howard Hanson, Darius Milhaud, Walter Piston, and Virgil Thomson)—was the one that endured.

"It was…the common man, after all, who was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army. He deserved a fanfare," Copland said.

Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann was an American film and concert composer born in New York in 1911 and dying in Los Angeles in 1975, whose "For the Fallen" was composed for the New York Philharmonic during World War II, as one of a series of 1943 League of Composers commissions for pieces based on the theme of war. Herrmann called it "a berceuse (a lullaby) for those who lie asleep on the many alien battlefields of the war." In the opinion of Herrmann’s biographer, Steven C. Smith, it is the composer’s "most moving and evocative concert work."

"Musically I count myself an individualist," said Herrmann, "I believe that only music which springs out of genuine personal emotion is alive and important."

Kurt Weill

Among the composers inspired by hard times in America were refugees from Europe under Hitler’s tyranny, who saw the United States as a haven of freedom and who saw Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) as a heroic figure. The immigrants who composed tributes to FDR included Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith and Erich Korngold. But according to Horowitz, the immigrant composer who most fully embraced life in America was Kurt Weill—who resolved to speak English the day he arrived in New York City in 1935, and quickly became a Broadway composer. "I totally feel like an American," Weill said in 1942. "Americans seem to be ashamed to appreciate things here," he told Time magazine in 1945. "I’m not."

"Weill’s Walt Whitman Songs (1942, 1947), a setting of four of Whitman’s Civil War poems were (and remain) undeservedly neglected," says Horowitz. "Three were composed in 1942 in direct response to Pearl Harbor. The fourth, ‘Come Up from the Fields, Father,’ in which a mother receives news of her son’s death in combat—was added in 1947. Weill died in 1950, at the age of 50, his American career tragically unfinished. "He had intended to set additional Whitman war poems, but the four that we have comprise a felicitous cycle."

"Oh Captain, My Captain!," Whitman’s emotional response to Lincoln’s assassination, became a Broadway ballad. Another song in the set, "Beat! Beat! Drums," was performed by Helen Hayes as "spoken song" on an RCA Victor war-benefit recording. Weill looked forward to other performances of the Whitman songs—but it never happened.

Morton Gould

Morton Gould’s music includes a World War II brass and percussion fanfare for the Cincinnati Symphony and, for orchestra, "Lincoln Legend" (1942) and "American Salute" (1943).

"Amber Waves" is part of the patriotic set, "American Ballads," composed in 1976. "This memorably sublime seven-minute adaptation of ‘America the Beautiful’ is the second of Gould’s six Ballads," says Horowitz. "The first, also memorable, fractures and recombines ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’"

Michael Daugherty - Pacific Symphony Composer in Residence

No composer has taken on the iconic monument Mount Rushmore as their inspiration for music—until Michael Daugherty, Pacific Symphony’s composer in residence for the 2009-2010 season. One of the most commissioned, performed and recorded composers on the international concert music scene, Daugherty is also the only living composer to be included in this year’s ACF. Commissioned by Pacific Symphony to write a work for the festival, Daugherty’s choice adds an intriguing layer and contrast to the composers of the past by writing a work based on the iconic monument that was carved during the Depression and left unfinished in 1941. The piece allows each movement to draw from text of the related Presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Daugherty says the work is "very American" and inspired by the "Greatest Generation" notion of overcoming challenge and preserving democratic values.

Daugherty’s music, which has traditionally been inspired by icons, places and historical figures, is typically rich with cultural and political allusions bearing the stamp of classic modernism. But getting to Mount Rushmore was a process.

"Finding the right concept is for me the most important first step in the musical creative process," Daugherty says. "I knew that I wanted to select a topic that coincided with the ‘Greatest Generation’ theme—however, I felt that a work inspired directly by events of World War II, while interesting, would be too obvious. At first, I was considering setting Carl Sandburg’s epic poem ‘The People, Yes’ (1936). But after further reflection, I selected Mount Rushmore. This monumental sculpture, carved into a granite mountainside located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, features four Americans who mean something to everyone."

Daugherty adds that "The Greatest Generation’s" attitudes toward adversity and hope were shaped by The Great Depression (1929-1941) and Mount Rushmore was sculpted by a small group of men against seemingly impossible odds during that same time period (1927-1941). "After the Second World War, Mount Rushmore became a touchstone for millions of people from around the world upon which to reflect on the dramatic complexities of American history," says Daugherty.

As Daugherty has composed music over the last 20 years, he has been inspired by many American historical figures including Jackie Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Paul Robeson and Rosa Parks, among others. For "Mount Rushmore," he conducted research on Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln and learned aspects of American history about which he was previously unaware. "For example," he says. "I never knew that Thomas Jefferson was an accomplished violinist or that Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive attitudes towards conservation led to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone national parks.

"Drawn from American musical sources, my composition echoes the resonance and dissonance of Mount Rushmore as a complex icon of American history. Like Mount Rushmore, my libretto is carved out of the words of each President."

Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson, whose score to the documentary film "The River" will be performed live to film at the opening concert of the festival, was a many-faceted American composer of great originality and a music critic of singular brilliance. Born in Kansas City, Missouri on 25 November 1896, Thomson studied at Harvard. After a prolonged period in Paris where he studied with Nadia Boulanger and met Cocteau, Stravinsky, Satie, and the artists of Les Six, he returned to the United States where he was chief music critic for the New York Herald Tribune.

Virgil Thomson composed in almost every genre of music. Utilizing a musical style marked by sharp wit and overt playfulness, Thomson produced a highly original body of work rooted in American speech rhythms and hymnbook harmony. His music was most influenced by Satie's ideals of clarity, simplicity, irony, and humor. Among his most famous works are the operas "Four Saints in Three Acts" and"The Mother of Us All" (both with texts by Gertrude Stein with whom he formed a legendary artistic collaboration), scores to "The Plow That Broke the Plains" and "The River" (films by Pare Lorentz), and "Louisiana Story" (film by Robert Flaherty). In addition to his compositions, he was the author of eight books, including an autobiography.

Included in his many honors and awards are the Pulitzer Prize, a Brandeis Award, the gold medal for music from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the National Book Circle Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Music Council Award, and 20 honorary doctorates. Thomson passed away in 1989.

Rodgers & Hammerstein

After long and highly distinguished careers with other collaborators, Richard Rodgers (composer) and Oscar Hammerstein II (librettist/lyricist) joined forces to create the most consistently fruitful and successful partnership in the American musical theatre. Prior to his work with Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) collaborated with lyricist Lorenz Hart on a series of musical comedies that epitomized the wit and sophistication of Broadway in its heyday. Prolific on Broadway, in London and in Hollywood from the '20s into the early '40s, Rodgers & Hart wrote more than 40 shows and film scores. Among their greatest were "On Your Toes," "Babes on Your Toes," "Babes in Arms," "The Boys from Syracuse," "I Married An Angel" and "Pal Joey."

Throughout the same era Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) brought new life to a moribund art form: the operetta. His collaborations with such preeminent composers as Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg and Vincent Youmans resulted in such operetta classics as "The Desert Song," "Rose-Marie," and "The New Moon." With Jerome Kern he wrote "Show Boat," the 1927 operetta that changed the course of modern musical theatre. His last musical before embarking on an exclusive partnership with Richard Rodgers was "Carmen Jones," the highly-acclaimed 1943 all-black revision of Georges Bizet's tragic opera "Carmen."

"Oklahoma!," the first Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, was also the first of a new genre, the musical play, representing a unique fusion of Rodgers' musical comedy and Hammerstein's operetta. A milestone in the development of the American musical, it also marked the beginning of the most successful partnership in Broadway musical history, and was followed by "Carousel," "Allegro," "South Pacific," "The King and I," Me and Juliet," Pipe Dream," "Flower Drum Song" and "The Sound of Music." Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote one musical specifically for the big screen, "State Fair," and one for television, "Cinderella." Collectively, the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals earned 35 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Grammy Awards and 2 Emmy Awards. In 1998 Rodgers & Hammerstein were cited by Time Magazine and CBS News as among the 20 most influential artists of the 20th century and in 1999 they were jointly commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp.

Arnold Schoenberg

Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg began his musical studies on violin at age eight. Although he had no compositional training, he began composing his own music. In 1895, he began lessons with Alexander von Zemlinsky, only three years his elder. From 1901 to 1903 he held various conducting posts in Berlin, and in 1904 he moved to Vienna, and there began teaching (Alban Berg and Anton Webern were early pupils). In 1919 he founded a society for performance of new music, and in 1925 returned to Berlin to teach. In 1933 he was forced, as a Jew, to leave Berlin. Ironically, he had converted to Lutheranism in 1898, but after fleeing to Paris he renounced the Christian faith and returned to Judaism. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States and in 1936 began teaching at UCLA. He remained in Los Angeles until his death in 1951.

Schoenberg's early music was clearly marked by the style of the late nineteenth century, and influences of Brahms, Mahler and others can be seen in pieces such as his Verklärte Nacht. But as his compositional style developed, it became more concise and contrapuntally intricate. At the same time, Schoenberg's chromaticism intensified to the point that any strong tonal focus disappeared. Such works as Pierrot Lunaire are in a fully atonal style. The music of this period is also marked by a style that is referred to as expressionist, and Schoenberg had contact with, and a great deal of admiration for, the expressionist painters and writers (Schoenberg himself painted in an expressionist style). These ideals can be seen in the dark and dreamlike atmosphere conveyed in Pierrot Lunaire, based on the expressionist poetry of Albert Giraud. The kinds of internal conflicts we associate with Freud and his school of psychoanalysis are played out in exquisite musical detail.

From 1915 to 1923, Schoenberg produced relatively few works, in part due to wartime service. At the same time, he was working on his theoretical ideas of twelve-tone writing. Starting in 1923, with his Suite for Piano, he began writing in a fully twelve-tone musical language. Along with this came a return to more classical means of formal organization and larger works such as his Variations for Orchestra. Although he never abandoned these principles, he never extended them to other elements as his student Webern had. And after his move to the United States, he more freely blended tonal elements within his twelve-tone writing.

Ode to Napoleon, from 1942, is an unusually accessible implementation of the 12-tone, “serial” compositional methodology. Inspired by the attack at Pearl Harbor, the work is scored is for piano, string quartet, and a reciter whose words are set as “Sprechgesang” -- Schoenberg’s unique way of combining speech and song.