Category Archives: Fleisher Collection

Lili Boulanger, Vivian Fine, Florence Price

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Saturday, November 5th, 2011, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918). D’un matin de printemps (1918). The Women’s Philharmonic, JoAnn Falletta. Koch 3-7603-2. 5:05

Vivian Fine (1913-2000). Concertante for Piano and Orchestra (1944). Reiko Honsho, piano, Japan Philharmonic, Akeo Watanabe. CRI 692. 17:46

Florence Price (1887-1953). Symphony No. 3 (1940), movements 2, 3, 4. The Women’s Philharmonic, Apo Hsu. Koch 375182. 18:45

Nadia Boulanger is well-known to musicians, being the Parisian teacher of many American composers, most notably Aaron Copland. But her younger sister Lili excelled as a composer despite battling sickness most of her life. She eventually succumbed to Crohn’s Disease at the much-too-young age of 24.

In 1913 Lili Boulanger was the first female to win the coveted Rome Prize (which her sister never succeeded in winning), but which their father Ernest had won in 1835. In her last years, she produced a number of beautiful works, including D’un matin de printemps, Of a Spring Morning. The Fleisher Collection is putting the finishing touches on a new, critical edition. The music is a gorgeous and delicate example of her talent.

This work, along with Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 and more than a hundred other titles, were given to the Fleisher Collection by The Women’s Philharmonic, which presented its final concert in 2004. In its two decades, the Philharmonic aggressively encouraged and promoted the work of women composers, instrumentalists, and conductors. Fleisher is proud to carry their legacy forward by making this music available for performance now and into the future. Composers such as Florence Price open a barely known window into the history of American music, as she was the first African-American woman to gain notoriety in orchestral writing.

Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, and many singers now know her songs, but the symphonic works are mostly unknown. This third symphony, like much of her music, hints at, rather than quotes, actual folk material. The hint, however, is undeniable and fresh. The third movement, “Juba Dance,” is catapulted by rhythm, the element Price considered essential to an understanding of the African-American experience in music. She is a finely balanced composer, though, strong in her handling of harmony and the orchestra.

Vivian Fine was an excellent pianist and composer, so it’s fitting to listen to her Concertante for Piano and Orchestra today. When she moved to New York City from Chicago in 1931, she supported herself by accompanying dance company rehearsals. She was soon writing dance scores and performing the works of Cowell, Ives, Copland, Rudhyar, Sessions, and many others.

Over her long career she composed in every form, including opera. She was never content to remain in any one style. The Concertante is tonal and almost romantic, but with a quirky humor that endears.

On the first Saturday of the month Jack Moore and I host Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection on WRTI 90.1 FM in Philadelphia and on the all-classical webstream at wrti.org. We also broadcast encore presentations of the entire Discoveries series (now nine years and counting!) every Wednesday at 7:00 pm on WRTI HD-2. For a look at all the shows, click here.

Lecturing at Settlement

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I was not yet the former Curator of 
the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music when the 
Willow Grove Branch of Settlement Music School asked me to talk about the Collection on their Adult Chamber Players Lecture Series. So I told them that since I would have left that employ by the time of the lecture, I would certainly understand their withdrawal of the invitation. But they would have none of it, and pressed me again. So tomorrow, Tuesday, November 1, at 11:30 I’ll be speaking about my career at Fleisher, and about my music.

The Willow Grove Branch is the newest addition to Settlement, and the building is, in fact, not a year old. A beautiful venue, and I’m looking forward to it. 318 Davisville Road, 
Willow Grove, PA 19090.

Hymn Festival

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An exhilarating Sunday night at Holy Trinity Lutheran, where we held our Hymn Festival, exploring Martin Luther’s Seven Marks of the Church, through Lutheran hymns—so many hymns, and A Mighty Fortress nowhere in sight. Jackie once again put together a fantastic program of music with the Chancel, Handbell, and Youth Choirs, oboist Priscilla Smith, violinist James Finegan, and cellist Elena Smith.

I commented on each of the hymns, one or two for each Mark, and managed to work in the Phrygian mode, Calvinists, Barry White, a hymn I wrote (The Word of God, in hymn + anthem concertato style), and cake.

The Marks, and the hymns:

1. The Word
Dearest Jesus, at Your Word (Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier)
The Law of God is Good and Wise (Erhalt uns Herr, bei deinem Wort)

2. Baptism
God’s Own Child, I Gladly Say It (Bachofen)
All Christians Who Have Been Baptized (Nun freut euch)

3. Communion
Jesus Comes Today with Healing (Alles ist an Gottes Segen)

4. Absolution
From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee (Aus tiefer Not)

5. Ministering
The Word of God (Confession)

6. Discipleship
Your Kingdom Come, O Father (Noormarkku)

7. The Cross
Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me? (Warum sollt ich mich denn Grämen)
If You But Trust in God to Guide You (Wer nur den lieben Gott)

They had a reception afterward (cf. cake, above), celebrating (honoring? poking fun at?) my retirement from the Fleisher Collection. Lots of folks—stunning how many stayed for a good long time, I was overwhelmed by it. Two very busy self-employed friends, a programmer and an architect, gave me the same advice. They told me to say, “I’m not retired. I’m working for myself full-time!” After adding up all the things I am doing, it sounds good; I think I’ll use it.

Aleksander Scriabin

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Saturday, October 1st, 2011, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

Aleksandr Scriabin (1872–1915). Piano Concerto, Op. 20 (1896). Roland Pöntingen, Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Leif Segerstam. Bis 475. Tr 1-3. 24:15

Scriabin. The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54 (1905–8). Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano. Telarc 32630. Tr 9. 21:05

You needed a ticket to get into the funeral. All the services and all the tributes and all the writings bear witness that when Aleksandr Scriabin died in 1915 at the age of 43, Russia believed its standard-bearer of art had been taken away.

Ten years earlier, Russia could hardly have cared less.

Scriabin was not unknown, far from it. He was an extremely talented pianist, and had taught at the Moscow Conservatory. He was known as a composer, too, although some of his orchestral premieres had been ravaged by the public and the critics. But he performed his own inventive piano music often, and others began to. It seemed to flow out of him effortlessly.

He just couldn’t gain traction, though, and he had himself to blame for much of this. He quarrelled with his friends and with his publishers (often the same people). He fought with those who could help him artistically and financially (Diaghilev, Koussevitzky). He moved constantly, left his family, and alienated those close to him. He drank. He struggled with demons emotional and, some said, mental.

Then he started getting ideas.

After 1900 and especially during the years he lived outside Russia (roughly 1904–1911), he increasingly studied symbolism—the philosophy sweeping a new generation of artists and writers—and theosophy. He made a pilgrimage to the London room where Madame Blavatsky, the spiritualist and founder of theosophy, had died a decade earlier.

Scriabin was no dilettante, but approached philosophy the way a homesteader approaches a new land, keenly observing the terrain and choosing just those elements necessary to construct a dwelling. He read books and talked for hours with other thinkers, and began processing it all the only way he could, by writing music.

The Piano Concerto of 1896 had been influenced by his early idols Chopin and Liszt, and is in a traditional multi-movement form. But in looking for new modes of expressing the inexpressible, as he would call it, he abandoned comfortable forms and harmonies. Works in one movement—Poems, without standard thematic development—began appearing. His music drifted away from the major/minor duality to a system of interpenetrating chromatics, small melodic cells, and specially constructed chords.

To Scriabin, this wasn’t just theory. Music, he thought, was the highest of all the arts and was therefore the greatest bridge to that indivisible Reality in which all souls long to be united. We may already experience openings to that Truth in various ways throughout our life. These open windows, whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, are moments of ecstasy, and so he composed The Poem of Ecstasy over four years. He had no interest in writing an exegesis on some philosophy. The Poem of Ecstasy was to be the bridge itself.

“I am a moment illuminating eternity… I am affirmation… I am ecstasy,” he wrote. Now, Scriabin was the composer Russia was waiting for. Now, Russia started to care.

On the first Saturday of the month Jack Moore and I host Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection on WRTI 90.1 FM in Philadelphia and on the all-classical webstream at wrti.org. We also broadcast encore presentations of the entire Discoveries series (now nine years and counting!) every Wednesday at 7:00 pm on WRTI HD-2. For a look at all the shows, click here.

The top ten reasons I’m leaving the Fleisher Collection

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Such a long time ago, I hardly recognize myself

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011, will be my last day at the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music, after 30 years, the last 18 as Curator.

When I started as a part-time copyist in 1981, working on Louis Gruenberg’s music (pen and ink on vellum), I was getting my Master’s in composition from Temple. Mrs. Morgan retired (Sadie, but no one would ever dream of calling her anything but “Mrs. Morgan”), I applied to fill her position, and in 1983 I became a full-time civil servant. That’s right, the City of Philadelphia once administered a test for music copying. In a year or so I was promoted to Copyist Supervisor, still copying but also overseeing the work of outside hires. Romulus Franceschini, the Assistant Curator, retired, and I moved into his job, Curator Sam Dennison retired and Fred Kent, Head of Music, became Curator for a few years, then retired, and I became Curator in 1993.

We doubled circulation and tripled income since then, not counting the gifts and bequests that’ve been entrusted to us, totalling more than twice the original Fleisher endowment. The number of titles has grown by one-third, to more than 21,500. We ran a concert series for nine years, then Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection started at WRTI, now beginning its tenth season. We produced a newsletter, and when the internet came along we began an e-newsletter. (We’ve spent years building up our email addresses, all from public sources. You’ll hear it bruited about that there are 1,800 American orchestras. Don’t believe it; we know of about twice that number.)

We helped produce a recording series on Albany, and now dozens upon dozens of recordings using Fleisher materials have been made by companies all over the globe. We continue to produce materials for contemporary world premieres and new editions of historical works. We’ve gone from printing our own music on ammonia-developed blueprint machines to large-format copiers to a digital, networked large-format printer. I can still smell the ammonia, though.

We converted the catalog after a long period of repentance, so all Fleisher titles are now searchable online. The goal of an integrated e-commerce system—with ordering, tracking, and searching by full instrumentation—is still to be realized, but we’ve made great behind-the-scenes progress laying the groundwork. We rewrote and continue to streamline every aspect of our music-lending procedures.

Fleisher’s been hit hard with staff cutbacks—as has the rest of the Library, as has everywhere—but I am blessed to work with the best people, nice folks who go out of their way to help patrons and each other. It’d be hard to imagine better coworkers than Stu, Abu, Judia, Saul, and Gary. I inherited a tradition of the best, most knowledgeable service in the best and by-far-the-largest lending library of orchestral performance material in the world. I am very happy to see that continue.

Then why am I leaving?

Well, I always wanted to be a composer when I grew up. I’ve been pretty busy at that for a few decades, but the opportunities (and deadlines) are piling up, so I figured it was time to take the plunge. I’ll still co-host Discoveries with Jack Moore and write up the shows, since everyone wanted to keep it going and we don’t know how long the transition to a new Curator will be. But it’s time for the next chapter to begin.

So that’s the main reason. There are others, but I don’t know if… oh, OK, here they are:

The Top Ten Reasons I’m Leaving the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia:

10. Last week I finished reading all the books. Wait, that wasn’t my job?

9. The year I started was the same year Hosni Mubarak became President of Egypt. I have heard the voice of the people.

8. Can’t blame my problems on previous Curators anymore.

7. I talk to everybody but only Haley Joel Osment answers. [Email me if you don't get this one.]

6a. I dropped my briefcase during my daily right-hand to left-hand briefcase exchange at the exact halfway point between the Library and Suburban Station, and that’s never happened before.

6b. It occurs to me that I have a daily right-hand to left-hand briefcase exchange.

6c. It occurs to me that I know the exact halfway point between the Library and Suburban Station.

5. My exploratory committee says the 2012 field is wide open.

4. So you know how you’re behind somebody leaving the Central Library, and how they go through the automatic door and they just, you know, stop? And you’re like, “What, you can’t walk like three more feet but no you’re just going to stand there, and what… I mean what are you thinking, I can’t like walk through you, you know, hello?” Yeah, so I figure that if I leave I’ll never come across that situation in any other public building with automatic doors and that I’ll like, be happy then.

3. I used to know all the phone numbers for the orchestral rental publishers by heart. Then the area codes changed—not the numbers, just the area codes—and I can’t remember the numbers anymore. Wait, that was 15 years ago.

2. Stu’s told all of his jokes now and sometimes it looks like… well, it’s crazy I know but I think I see his brain working, just when the light comes in the window a certain way and… I’m almost afraid to say it, maybe it’s just me, but… I think he’s trying to learn some more.

and The Number One Reason I’m Leaving the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia:

1. They’re starting to figure out what I do here.

Fiesta Criolla

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Saturday, September 3rd, 2011, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

Guillermo Uribe Holguín (1880-1971). Tres Danzas (1926/40). Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, Gabriel Castagna. Chandos 10675, Tr 13-15. 8:05

Theodoro Valcárcel Caballero (1896-1942). Concierto indio (1940). Nora Chastain, violin, Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, Gabriel Castagna. Chandos 10675, Tr 9-11. 18:47

Manuel Gómez Carrillo (1883-1968). Rapsodia santiagueña (1922). Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, Gabriel Castagna. Chandos 10675, Tr 7. 11:57

Francisco Mignone (1897-1986). Congada (1921). Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, Gabriel Castagna. Chandos 10675, Tr 12. 4:53

“I’ve been searching for these all my career!” The conductor from Argentina gazed at the more than 100 Latin American scores on the desks around him at the Fleisher Collection, just a fraction of the works found by Nicolas Slonimsky in Central and South America. Gabriel Castagna had flown to Philadelphia to study these, and he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Since 1909, Edwin Fleisher had scoured the United States and Europe for every orchestral work available, so in 1941 he turned to Latin America. He funded Slonimsky with $10,000 of his own money to acquire whatever he could find. The Collection then hand-copied or microfilmed the scores, extracted the parts for many of them, and returned the originals to their owners. Much of the music remained unpublished, and manuscripts sometimes disappeared in Latin America over the years, so it was often the case that the music existed only here, in Philadelphia.

Castagna was thrilled to discover music he thought was gone forever. From the scores he looked at come most of the music on this new CD. It’s called Fiesta Criolla, and on our program we’ll hear works by four of the composers on it.

Guillermo Uribe Holguín was the leading mid-century composer in Colombia. He studied with d’Indy in Paris, alongside Erik Satie. He became Director of the National Conservatory in Colombia until retiring to his coffee plantation. He conducted the premiere of Tres Danzas in 1927, then reworked the orchestration in 1940.

An Indian from both sides of the family, the Peruvian Theodoro Valcárcel Caballero was a talented child who at 15 studied music in Spain. He had no other formal training and loved to use Incan melodies he knew in his compositions. Some of his works were orchestrated by the German-born Rudolph Holzmann, who resided in Lima, but the charming Concierto indio is fully Valcárcel’s. He entered it into the Latin American Violin Concerto Competition funded by Philadelphia industrialist Samuel Fels, losing out to a concerto by the Brazilian Camargo Guarnieri.

Manuel Gómez Carrillo’s works are also often inspired by native music. His Rapsodia santiagueña is an example of his “accumulating folkloric material, and integrating it in established musical forms,” as he explained to Slonimsky. Based on tunes from his province of Santiago in Argentina, the Rapsodia premiered in Paris in 1924.

Francisco Mignone’s Congada is more of a Brazilian-Congolese-Catholic celebration than a mere dance. It’s his most successful orchestral piece, taken from the opera Contractador dos Diamantes. After studying in Italy, Mignone returned to Brazil to become a successful composer of concert music. He also wrote pop songs under the name Chico-Bororó, after the Bororó Indian tribe.

“The Collection saved… our repertory,” says Gabriel Castagna. He’s recording and performing as many of these as possible, to open the ears of the world to the richness and variety of this music. He comments on the good fortune of finding this safe in the Fleisher Collection, the start of what we hope are many such CDs, “You are doing a great service to the Latin American cultural heritage.” We think the same of him.

On the first Saturday of the month Jack Moore and I host Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection on WRTI 90.1 FM in Philadelphia and on the all-classical webstream at wrti.org. We also broadcast encore presentations of the entire Discoveries series (now nine years and counting!) every Wednesday at 7:00 pm on WRTI HD-2. For a look at all the shows, click here.

Ignaz Pleyel, Dmitri Shostakovich

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Saturday, August 6th, 2011, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

Ignaz Pleyel had three strikes against him during the French Revolution. He was rich, he was a foreigner, and he worked for the Church. He was exactly the type of person for whom the Reign of Terror sharpened its guillotines. Even worse: He was an artist. Different despots use different tactics, but artists are usually among their first targets.

The Austrian Pleyel was Director of Music at the Strasbourg Cathedral, leaving for England in 1791 when the Revolution banned public and church musical performances. His London concert series actually competed with that of another Austrian in the city at that time, Joseph Haydn, who had been Pleyel’s teacher. They remained good friends despite the competition and even played each other’s music on their concerts. They also made a lot of money there, and Pleyel bought a chateau from his windfall when he returned to France after his concerts ended. But the Revolution was just getting started.

Churches were outlawed. The Cathedral was renamed the “Temple of Reason,” and Pleyel was brought before the Committee numerous times, charged with being an enemy of the Republic, an enemy of the people. Others had been executed for less, so he began to write works praising the new government, such as The Revolution of August 10. He became a citizen. It all had the desired effect, and “Citoyen” Pleyel was left alone as the Reign of Terror ended and France began its climb back from the horrors of repression.

He continued to compose, and the clarinet concerto we hear today comes from this time. He became a successful music publisher, inventing the miniature score and printing music of his contemporaries, including Haydn’s string quartets. He founded the Pleyel piano manufacturing firm, and Pleyel pianos are still made today. As for his music, well, everybody played it. He was so popular that Nantucket Island had a Pleyel Society, and American hymnals included his tunes. He is buried in a parcel of land with perhaps the highest concentration of famous gravesites, the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, just a few paces from one of his piano customers, Frédéric Chopin.

The story of Dmitri Shostakovich is more well-known. Other composers had already fled a USSR still consolidating power in the 1920s, but in the ʼ30s Stalin turned his full attention to modernists–these new enemies of the people–not aligned with his vision of the ideal citizen. Shostakovich’s triumphs piled up, though, until Stalin came to his already successful opera Lady Macbeth in 1935. The dictator was not pleased. Its brutal story was realistic, but it was not Soviet Realism and besides, Stalin shuddered every time the loud brass came in. The critics dutifully bashed it.

Fearing for his life, Shostakovich withdrew the dissonant Fourth Symphony, about to be premiered. He continued to write film music, which was useful propaganda for the regime, and then his putatively Soviet-affirming Fifth Symphony helped return him to good graces in 1937. His career from then on swung back and forth between prizes and denunciations. In another crackdown against the “formalist” avant-garde, his professorships were revoked from the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories in 1948. A mild-looking but fiery 21-year-old student cellist at Moscow quit in protest. Mstislav Rostropovich would later premiere both of his teacher’s concertos. The first, written in 1959, was recorded in Philadelphia, with the composer in the recording booth, under the eyes of wary apparatchiks.

Tyrants of every century all seem to think that composers have something so important to tell us, they need to be watched. Maybe they’re on to something. Let’s listen.

On the first Saturday of the month Jack Moore and I host Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection on WRTI 90.1 FM in Philadelphia and on the all-classical webstream at wrti.org. We also broadcast encore presentations of the entire Discoveries series (now nine years and counting!) every Wednesday at 7:00 pm on WRTI HD-2. For a look at all the shows, click here.