At 8:00 P.M. on Nov. 18 in Lang Concert Hall, the Swarthmore College Wind Ensemble, conducted by Professor Andrew Hauze, will bring its audience back to the early 20th century–back to the time of piano four-hands played in British and American homes, of ragtime in bars and brothels and dance halls, and of charismatic folk singers.<\/p>\n
The hour-long concert will open with Lincolnshire Posy, an experimental fantasia by Australian composer Percy Grainger. Each of the six movements of the Lincolnshire Posy represents a different folk song that Grainger heard in his tour around the small villages of Lincolnshire. The folk songs memorialize historical events, including an unresolved feud between friends and the story of a missing sailor, once thought dead, returning home to his betrothed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the music, it\u2019s really interesting for the performer to see, \u2018Okay, how\u2019s Grainger taking this story and reimagining it in the way that he writes for the instruments?\u2019\u201d Hauze said. \u201cPercy Grainger is not a household name, particularly in America, but he wrote some of the most original music you\u2019ll hear. It has very traditional material so it\u2019s very approachable\u2014there\u2019s a tune, you\u2019ll get that\u2014but at the same time it goes in these directions\u2026when you listen to it and then you step back from it, it takes a moment to fully realize what you\u2019ve heard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second half of the concert will begin with dances composed by Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k. Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s mentor, Johannes Brahms, had written wildly successful Hungarian dances and suggested that Dvo\u0159\u00e1k do the same. \u201cThese composers are mostly writing symphonies and very serious chamber music and in some cases opera, and these are kind of prestige things, but they\u2019re not necessarily big moneymakers,\u201d Hauze said. Some of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s most popular and lucrative pieces were the Slavonic dances he then wrote, inspired by his home, the Czech lands. They were piano four-hands duets performed for family and friends as a favorite pastime of middle-class Europeans and Americans in the early 20th century.<\/p>\n
In addition, the wind ensemble will perform \u201cDanzon,\u201d a Cuban-inspired piece from Leonard Bernstein\u2019s score for a ballet called Fancy Free. \u201c[\u201cDanzon\u201d] is also a little homage to Bernstein, because he\u2019s entering his centennial year,\u201d Hauze said. \u201cHe\u2019s also one of my favorite composers, and wind ensemble in particular plays a lot of Bernstein. It\u2019s really well suited to the group.\u201d<\/p>\n
The closing piece of the concert is \u201cThe Thriller,\u201d a ragtime piano piece composed by May Aufderheide that Hauze arranged for wind and percussion instruments. According to Hauze, Aufderheide and her contemporary Julia Lee Niebergall were especially notable as a female composers from Indianapolis. \u201cThey weren\u2019t in New York, they weren\u2019t in one of the major metropolises, and they were women, and ragtime was dominated by male composers, both black and white,\u201d Hauze said. \u00a0\u201cThey wrote some great rags but they\u2019re mostly kind of forgotten these days, and I really like to play them on the piano, so I thought it would be fun to start making some arrangements for wind ensemble.\u201d<\/p>\n
The link between the varied compositions chosen for the concert is that none were written as concert pieces; they were intended to be sung or danced along to. The lively and lighthearted rhythm of the concert may just make it hard to stay sitting down.<\/p>\n
\nBayliss Wagner ’21<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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