Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro premiered in May 1786 in Vienna at the Burgtheater and is one of three operas that Mozart created with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (the other two are Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutti). In many respects, The Marriage of Figaro marked the high point of Mozart’s success during his lifetime. On a visit to Prague the following year to conduct the opera, Mozart reported that “Here nothing is talked of but Figaro, nothing played but Figaro, nothing whistled or sung but Figaro, no opera so crowded as Figaro, nothing but Figaro.”

Mozart customarily composed the overtures to his operas last, so that was likely the case with Figaro. Mozart’s overtures were usually in sonata form, but he abandoned that form here, and for good reason. Figaro is witty, brilliant and wise, and it needs an overture that will quickly set its audience in such a frame of mind. The music opens with bustling notes, like whispers of gossip which gain momentum. Ultimately, these fragments gel into an energetic theme which romps happily throughout the Overture.  Moods shift like quicksilver; a comedic helter-skelter atmosphere prevails; and there is no rest. At one point, Mozart had considered a contrasting slow tune for oboe but deleted the idea.  Allowing the Overture to run with its madcap nature, uninterrupted by any structural corseting, provided the perfect introduction and preparation for the hilarious opera. It has delighted audiences as a separate concert piece for hundreds of years.

“Contre Qui, Rose” is a direct transcription of the vocal piece by Morten Lauridsen. Lauridsen based his choral cycle Les Chansons des Roses (The Songs of the Roses) on poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke. This poem poses a series of unanswered questions to a rose about its thorns and concludes with a statement accusing the rose of most hurting those who love it. Lauridsen interprets, “This wonderful little poem poses a series of questions, and the corresponding musical phrases all end with unresolved harmonies, as the questions remain unanswered. We have all been in situations where we have given affection and not had it returned, where attempts at communication have been unsuccessful, met by resistance or defenses of some kind.” Reynolds’ transcription captures this beauty in the wind band setting.

Against whom, rose,

Have you assumed these thorns?
Is it your too fragile joy that forced you
to become this armed thing?

But from whom does it protect you,
this exaggerated defense?
How many enemies have I lifted from you
who do not fear it at all?
On the contrary, from summer to autumn
you wound the affection that is given you.

Spangled Heavens is one in a series of the composer’s works based on “shape-note music.” Shape notes are a musical notation designed to facilitate congregational and community singing. Shape-note songs are hearty, simple, rhythmic, and always singable. The notation, introduced in 1801, became a popular teaching device in American singing schools. Shapes were added to the note heads in written music to help singers find pitches within major and minor scales without the use of more complex information found in key signatures on the staff. Shape notes of various kinds have been used for over two centuries in a variety of music traditions, mostly sacred but also secular, originating in New England, practiced primarily in the Southern region of the United States for many years, and now experiencing a renaissance in other locations as well. The first movement of Spangled Heavens is based on “Holy Manna,” an old American folk hymn, and features three contrasting presentations of the tune. The second movement is based on the hymn “Restoration.” And movement three employs two contrasting but complementary hymns, “Sweet Canaan” and “Saints Bound for Heaven.”

Donald Grantham (b.1947) is an American composer and music educator. He received music degrees from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Southern California. He teaches music composition at the University of Texas. 

From the composer:

“The idea of writing the ‘Danzón No. 2’ originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez, both of whom are experts in salon dances with a special passion for the danzón, which they were able to transmit to me from the beginning, and also during later trips to Veracruz and visits to the Colonia Salon in Mexico City. From these experiences onward, I started to learn the danzón’s rhythms, its form, its melodic outline, and to listen to the old recordings by Acerina and his Danzonera Orchestra. I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent lightness of the danzón is only like a visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality and qualitative seriousness, a genre which old Mexican people continue to dance with a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own emotional world; we can fortunately still see this in the embrace between music and dance that occurs in the state of Veracruz and in the dance parlors of Mexico City.

The ‘Danzón No. 2’ is a tribute to the environment that nourishes the genre. It endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms, and although it violates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic language, it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music. ‘Danzón No. 2’ was written on a commission by the Department of Musical Activities at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and is dedicated to my daughter Lily.”

HALCYON HEARTS is an ode to love and how it affects us all. Halcyon denotes a time where a person is ideally happy or at peace, so in short Halcyon Hearts is about the moment of peace when one finds their love or passion. The piece centers around major 7ths and warm colors to represent the warmth that love brings us. The  introduction-which is sudden and colorful- symbolizes the feeling of the unexpected journey it takes to find love. Using the colors and natural energy of the ensemble, we create this sound of ambition and passion throughout the work. No matter what race, gender, religion, nationality or love, we all are united with the common thread of passion from the heart.

This piece was written in dedication to those who love no matter what negativity is in the world; do not allow hate and prejudice to guide the way we live our lives. Always choose love and the halcyon days will come.

In Buddhist tradition, the bodhisattvas are the seekers after enlightenment. It can be said that we are all seekers on this path, the path of self-understanding, of the heart of compassion, of caring for the world.

The bodhisattvas are put forward as models for our own seeking:

• Avalokiteshvara: the way of listening in order to relieve the suffering in the world.
• Manjushri: the way of being still and looking deeply into the heart of things and people.
• Samantabhadra: the way of acting with the eyes and heart of compassion.
• Ksitigarbha: the way of being present where there is darkness, suffering, oppression, and despair.
• Sadāparibhūta: the way of never disparaging or underestimating any living being.

The Seeker is subtitled “a symphonic movement.” It opens with a slow melody that feels like an Appalachian folk song. It transitions suddenly and sharply into the main body of the work, an energetic and exuberant romp at a very speedy tempo. The opening melody returns in the context of a chorale, my recomposition of Christe, der du bist der Tag und Licht (Christ, you who are day and light) from the 371 four-part chorales of Bach. The movement concludes with a partial recap of the fast music, and a very brief coda.

The Melody Shop was one of King’s earliest published marches, written when the composer was nineteen years old. Composed in the virtuosic style of the circus march, the baritone part has long been notorious for its dizzying and extremely difficult final strain. One popular legend explaining this challenging part involves a chance meeting in a Canton, Ohio, barbershop between King and a stranger. The stranger was also a baritone player and he struck up a conversation with King, not knowing the composer’s identity. The stranger referred to King as “that guy who writes those dinky, little marches.” The story goes that this was all the urging King needed to make The Melody Shop baritone part one of the most famous in all band repertoire.

Irish Tune from County Derry (published 1918) is based on earlier settings that date back as early as October 1902 with an essentially identical setting of this melody for wordless mixed chorus. Later versions for solo piano (1911) and string orchestra with two optional horns (1912) followed. The wind band setting is cataloged as British Folk Music Setting Nr. 20, and like all his settings of British folk music is “lovingly dedicated to the memory of Edvard Grieg.” The composer’s brief program note states, “This tune was collected by Miss J. Ross, of New Town, Limavady, Co Derry, Ireland and published in The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, Dublin, 1855.”

In 1835, William “Singin’ Billy” Walker’s songbook Southern Harmony was first published. This remarkable collection  contains, according to its title page, “a choice collection of tunes, hymns, psalms, odes and anthems; selected from the most eminent authors in the United States.” In fact, few of the numbers in the book are identified as the work of a particular composer. Many are folk songs (provided with religious texts), others are traditional sacred tunes, while some are revival songs that were widely known and sung throughout the South. The book was immensely popular, selling an amazing 600,000 copies before the Civil War, and was commonly stocked “along with groceries and tobacco” in general stores across the American frontier. From 1884 until World War II, an annual all-day mass performance of selections from Southern Harmony, called the “Benton Big Singing”, was held on the Benton, Kentucky, courthouse lawn. The event drew  participants from Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Illinois.

The music of Southern Harmony has a somewhat exotic sound to modern audiences. The tunes often use modal or pentatonic rather than major or minor scales. The harmony is even more out of the ordinary, employing chord positions, voice leading and progressions that are far removed from the European music that dominated concert halls at the time. These harmonizations were dismissed as crude and primitive when they first appeared. Now they are regarded as inventive, unique, and powerfully representative of the American character.

In his use of several tunes from Southern Harmony, the composer has attempted to preserve the flavor of the original vocal works in a setting that fully realizes the potential of the wind ensemble and the individual character of each song.

“Tico-Tico” is a world-famous song by Brazilian composer Zequinha de Abreu. Abreu wrote the song in 1917 in the popular Brazilian choro style, which is characterized by fast rhythms, syncopations, and lots of counterpoint. The song was originally scored for the choro ensemble, which usually consisted of several guitars, a cavaquinho (a small four-stringed guitar), and a melody instrument, often a flute. The full title “Tico-Tico no Fubá”, meaning “sparrow in the cornmeal,” was given to the song in 1931 when it was published in Brazil, to distinguish it from a different popular tune also named “Tico-Tico.”

In the 1940s, the song became a hit in the United States, and it has been recorded worldwide by a variety of artists in many different settings. Carmen Miranda popularized it internationally in the 1947 movie Copacabana. This concert band arrangement pays homage to the original choro ensemble by using the woodwinds for much of the melody. The brass and percussion often provide the rhythm and groove of the piece. The arrangement was written by Japanese composer Naohiro Iwai. Most of Iwai’s career was spent as a jazz and pop performer and composer. He has made an effort to bring these styles to groups like wind ensembles, brass ensembles, and orchestras that more often play in the Classical style.