The following are the program notes I wrote for the Lubbock Chamber Orchestra’s March 14 concert. Tickets can be purchased here.
Copland Appalachian Spring
Appalachian Spring was commissioned in 1943 by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge as a ballet for choreographer Martha Graham. The scenario portrays a young pioneer couple beginning their married life in rural Pennsylvania, supported by their community and sustained by faith. The title Appalachian Spring was chosen after the music had been written; it was borrowed from a line in a poem by Hart Crane. The poem and the ballet’s narrative are unrelated.
The title proved uncannily apt. Listeners ever since have heard in the score a sense of landscape, space, and renewal. Copland himself remarked with amusement that once the title was attached, audiences began hearing mountains and open country that he had never consciously tried to depict.
Appalachian Spring tells a simple, symbolic story rather than a detailed plot. Conceived by choreographer Martha Graham, the ballet portrays a young pioneer couple in rural Pennsylvania at the start of their married life. A bride and her husband-to-be establish a new farmhouse with the support of their community. Key figures include a revivalist preacher and his followers, who represent spiritual fervor, and a protective older pioneer woman who embodies stability and tradition. Through scenes of reflection, blessing, celebration, and communal dance, the couple moves from uncertainty to confident hope. The ballet ends in quiet affirmation: the pair stands ready to begin their life together, grounded by faith, community, and shared purpose.
The ballet was scored for a chamber ensemble of just thirteen instruments: flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, and strings. It premiered in Washington, D.C. in 1944 with Graham herself dancing the lead role. The ballet won Copland the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1945.
In May 1945, Copland arranged the ballet into a suite for symphony orchestra. It premiered in October of that year with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski. The orchestral suite is divided into eight sections, named by their tempo markings instead of the episode titles in the ballet. These sections are played without pause.
- Very slowly: Introduction of the characters in a “suffused light”.
- Fast: Sudden burst of unison strings starting the action.
- Moderate: A tender duo for the Bride and her Intended.
- Quite fast: The Revivalist and his flock; includes square dance patterns.
- Still faster: Solo dance of the Bride reflecting joy and fear.
- Very slowly: Transition scene reminiscent of the introduction.
- Calm and flowing: The “Simple Gifts” variations.
- Moderate (Coda): The couple is left “quiet and strong in their new house” with a hushed, prayer-like close.
Copland uses the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” in Section 7 of the Appalachian Spring Suite. The section follows a theme and five variations structure that builds from a single solo to a powerful, full-orchestral climax.
Appalachian Spring is the third of three great Copland ballets. Billy the Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942) were highly successful and remain popular to this day, but Appalachian Spring is widely viewed as the masterpiece among them – the one where his American style, formal control, and expressive warmth come together perfectly.
Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
Bach’s six Brandenburg concertos are the world’s most spectacular example of an unsuccessful job application. He composed the Concertos during his years at the court of Köthen (1717–1723), where he worked as Kapellmeister for Prince Leopold. Köthen was a Calvinist court with little emphasis on elaborate church music, which freed Bach to concentrate on instrumental composition – concertos, suites, and chamber works.
Rather than being written as a unified cycle from scratch, the six concertos appear to be a curated collection of pieces written over several years. Bach revised them for presentation as a set. They were designed to showcase a wide range of instrumental combinations and styles. Each concerto uses a different ensemble and explores a different solution to the Baroque concerto principle of contrast.
In 1721 Bach compiled the six concertos into a manuscript and dedicated them to Christian Ludwig, Margrave (Marquis) of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Bach titled them (in French): “Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments”- Six Concertos with several instruments.
He likely hoped the dedication would lead to a prestigious court appointment. It did not. There is no evidence that the Margrave ever had them performed or even that he glanced at them. The court probably lacked the unusually skilled and specialized players required – some of the parts are extremely demanding. This last sentence is a charitable explanation for their neglect.
Most Baroque concertos use a consistent format and instrumentation. The Brandenburg Concertos do not. Each is a different experiment. Together they form a kind of catalog of concerto possibilities rather than a matched set.
After Bach died in 1750, the manuscript remained unused in the Brandenburg library. The concertos were rediscovered in the 19th century during the Bach revival led by scholars and musicians such as Mendelssohn and the Berlin Bach Gesellschaft. The first published edition appeared in 1850, over a century after Bach’s death.
The Brandenburg Concertos are prized because they combine structural brilliance, instrumental innovation, rhythmic vitality, playful invention, and extraordinary solo writing. They are not a single concept repeated six times; they present six different answers to the question: what can a concerto be?
The Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major is a dazzling example of Baroque string writing. Scored for three violins, three violas, three cellos, and continuo, it abandons the traditional soloist-versus-orchestra model. Instead, it showcases intricate interplay among all the strings, treating each section as both soloist and ensemble. The first movement is famously constructed from a simple three-note “da-da-da” motif that Bach transforms and passes around the entire ensemble.
The middle movement is just one measure long, consisting of two sustained chords known as a Phrygian half-cadence (a specific type of half-cadence occurring in minor keys). Musicologists suspect Bach intended it as a prompt for the lead violinist or harpsichordist to improvise a lengthy cadenza before the finale.
The third movement is characterized by perpetual motion and fugal imitation. The energy is relentless as the 12/8 meter creates a driving, triplet-based pulse that rushes toward a jubilant conclusion.
While Bach didn’t get the Brandenburg job, it made Margrave Christian Ludwig famous, or better infamous, for the duration of recorded time.
Vivaldi Concerto for Two Trumpets
Igor Stravinsky is alleged to have said that Vivaldi didn’t write 500 concertos; he wrote one concerto 500 times. In truth, he wrote more than 500 concertos – the exact number is uncertain. While there are stylistic similarities among his concertos, and indeed among all of his huge musical output, there is also organization, clarity, rhythmic vitality, and melodic invention. They decisively shaped the concerto as a form and expanded the expressive and technical possibilities of instrumental music.
JS Bach, arguably the greatest musical mind ever, was a great admirer of Vivaldi’s concertos. He studied them closely. He transcribed several Vivaldi concertos for solo keyboard and organ – seven for harpsichord and three for organ. His Concerto for Four Harpsichords in A minor is based on Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins in B minor. So chew on that Igor.
Vivaldi’s concerto style strongly influenced later composers. The modern solo concerto tradition, emphasizing the contrast between individual and ensemble, owes much to Vivaldi’s models. His concertos are musically valuable for their structural clarity, rhythmic life, instrumental virtuosity, and historical importance. At their finest, they combine brilliance and poetry in a way that explains their lasting popularity and central place in the Baroque repertoire.
Vivaldi was born in Venice. Known as “Il Prete Rosso” (“The Red Priest”) because of his red hair and ordained status, he was trained in music by his father, a professional violinist. Although he was ordained in 1703, health problems limited his clerical duties, and he soon devoted himself primarily to music. He spent much of his career at the Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian institution for orphaned and abandoned girls, where he served as violin master and composer.
From 1718 to 1720 he worked in Mantua as director of secular music for that city’s governor, Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt. This was the only full-time post Vivaldi ever held. The 1720s were the zenith of Vivaldi’s career. Based once more in Venice, but frequently traveling elsewhere, he supplied instrumental music to patrons and customers throughout Europe. In the 1730s Vivaldi’s career gradually declined. In 1740 he traveled to Vienna, but he fell ill and did not live to attend the production there of his opera L’oracolo in Messenia in 1742. The simplicity of his funeral on July 28, 1741, suggests that he died in considerable poverty.
Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Trumpets in C major is one of the best-known Baroque concertos featuring trumpets as solo instruments. It was written during his productive years in Venice in the early 18th century. At the time, trumpets were still natural trumpets (without valves), capable of playing primarily the notes of the harmonic series. As a result, composers typically wrote for them in bright keys such as C and D and favored brilliant, fanfare-like writing in the upper register.
The concerto is scored for two solo trumpets, string orchestra, and harpsichord. Like most of Vivaldi’s concertos it follows the standard three movement fast–slow–fast pattern and is built on ritornello form in the outer movements. Ritornello form is a Baroque-era musical structure characterized by the alternation between a recurring, full-orchestra theme (the ritornello) and contrasting, virtuosic solo sections (episodes). In keeping with Baroque trumpet practice, the slow middle movement omits the trumpets entirely as natural trumpets were not well suited to lyrical chromatic writing in low registers.
Manfredini Concerto for Two Trumpets
Francesco Onofrio Manfredini (1684–1762) was a prominent Italian Baroque composer, violinist, and church musician. A contemporary of masters such as Bach and Handel, he is best remembered for his contributions to the concerto grosso genre and his celebrated “Christmas Concerto”.
Manfredini’s surviving output is small but well regarded for its melodic invention. His Concerto for Two Trumpets was likely written in the early 18th century and is associated with the brilliant trumpet traditions of northern Italy; it showcases the brilliance and athletic clarity of the natural (valveless) trumpet. The concerto follows the typical three movement fast–slow–fast structure common to Baroque concertos.
Overall, the concerto is admired for its clarity, symmetry, and idiomatic trumpet writing. It avoids heavy contrapuntal complexity in favor of rhythmic vitality and color, making it both accessible to audiences and rewarding for performers. It remains a staple of the Baroque trumpet repertoire – a compact example of early concerto style centered on brilliance and balance. It’s also short, a virtue given that Manfredini’s gifts were not on the same level as the major Baroque composers like Vivaldi and Bach.
