PROGRAM NOTES
May 16, 2010, 3:00 PM Recital
DACOR Bacon House, Cloyce K. Huston Musicale, Washington, DC
Marjorie Bunday, mezzo-soprano
Neil Gladd, mandolin

To view the concert program, follow this link.
To view texts and translations, follow this link.

   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is thought to have written "Die Zufriedenheit" (KV 349) and "Komm, liebe Zither"(KV 351) in the winter of 1780–1781, while he was in Munich writing the opera Idomeneo. The songs for mandolin and voice are surmised to have been written for friends, or for his own amusement, as there is no record of a commission. Mozart would later use the mandolin in the orchestra for the opera Don Giovanni.

   We have grouped the Mozart songs with another German composer, Carl Maria von Weber. The song "Einsam bin ich, nicht alleine," from the 1821 Preciosa (a drama in four acts by Pius Alexander Wolff with overture and music by Weber) was originally scored for pizzicato strings, one flute, and three horns. The arrangement for mandolin and voice is from an early 20th century mandolin method book by Emil Theodor Weimershaus. Known as "Preciosa's song," the Lied was a favorite in Germany, but not until after the opera's second run in 1858 at the Theatre-Lyrique in Paris, when it was condensed to one act.

   The Sonata No. 1 in G minor (BWV 1001) by J.S. Bach was written in 1720 for solo violin. Bach himself set the second movement fugue again twice - once for organ (Prelude and Fugue, BWV 539) and once for lute (Fugue, BWV 1000). It seems a natural step to adapt this virtuosic Sonata to the mandolin, which has the same tuning as the violin.

   Victor Kioulaphides, a faculty member at the Lucy Moses School for Music and Dance, was born in Athens, Greece, in 1961 and moved to New York in 1979. He studied double bass and composition at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music; his composition teachers were Giampaolo Bracali and Ludmila Ulehla. He is a recipient of the Pablo Casals Award and the Harold Bauer Award, and a former faculty member of the Brooklyn Conservatory.
   Although Kioulaphides has contributed a great deal of literature to the mandolin orchestral and chamber repertoire, as well as writing chamber operas, choral works, and songs, the "Seven Ancient Greek Lyrics" is his first composition for mandolin and voice. The seven concise settings of English translations from ancient Greek poetry intertwine the mandolin with the mezzo-soprano voice to evoke an aural portrait of each poem. The composer brings a welcome humor using directives to the singer such as "mock-serious" and "slithering" in some songs, changing the mood in others to transport us to an other-worldly snapshot of fig trees, maidens in the Evros River, and the bright white halcyon bird breeding her young under the moon of the winter solstice.

   Howard Boatwright was an American composer, concert violinist, and musicologist. His 1999 New York Times obituary says that
"[h]e intended to become a violinist not a composer but began writing music in 1941 as a way to court Helen Strassburger, a soprano. They married in 1943 and performed and recorded new music, standard repertory and early music together for many years." One can imagine the couple reading through his Two Folk Song Settings, set for violin and voice, here adapted for mandolin.

   Neil Gladd writes about his Three Songs on Thomas Campion: "Mandolin and voice is a wonderful combination with not nearly enough repertoire. Thomas Campion appealed to me because he was both a poet and a composer. He set his own texts with lute accompaniment, so there is already a history of singing them with a plucked instrument. For the first two songs, I used only his texts and wrote all new music. I kept Campion's melody for the last song, and just wrote a new accompaniment for the mandolin. They received their first performance, on June 2, 2002."

   Thomas Morley's "I goe before my darling" is from his 1595 publication The first booke of canzonets to two voyces. Songs of this type were likely often played as entertainment not only as written for two voices, but with a voice and an instrument, or two recorders, or any combination based upon what players or singers were available. Perhaps this madrigal was performed during Morley's lifetime with voice and Renaissance mandola or mandore, a forerunner of the mandolin that looked very much like a miniature lute. The mandolin evolved from the mandore in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

   Rebecca Clarke arranged Morley's song on a Shakespeare text "It was a lover and his lass" for voice and violin along with "The tailor and his mouse" in her 1925 publication "Three Folk Songs." Though most of her works were never published, Clarke was a prolific composer and supported herself as a concert violist - in 1912 she became one of the first female musicians to play professionally in the Queen's Hall orchestra led by Henry Wood. Born and raised in England, she spent most of her adulthood in the United States and was a citizen of both the US and England.

   Neil Gladd writes of his Partita a Dodici Toni for solo mandolin: "'Baroque 12-tone music in C with blue notes.' After the performance of my Concerto, one of the string players described it as being a 'cute' piece. I decided that I had greater aspirations than to write 'cute' music and parodies, so to get out of a rut, I wrote my first and only 12-tone piece. It is modeled after the solo violin partitas of Bach, and even though it was composed on the mandolin, it is also playable on the violin, since I limited the techniques required to the areas where mandolin and violin technique overlap. All of the movements are in Baroque binary form, and sound quasi tonal due to the implied tonic-dominant relationships at the cadences and the use of tradition dance rhythms. I gave the first performance on November 18, 1982 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC."

   Clara Lyle Boone, born in Kentucky and a longtime Washington, DC resident, published her first works under the pseudonym Lyle de Bohun in 1957 after being told by her mentor that no one would publish or pay attention to music written by a woman. She went on, using her real identity, to found Arsis Press in 1974, the first publishing company dedicated to the chamber and sacred choral music of living female composers. "Slumber Song" is scored for voice and any melody instrument, and is written in an unmetered style - the voice line has bar lines, while the instrument line does not, and there is no time signature. It is a poignant lullaby to a son who has grown up.

   Welsh-born composer Hilary Tann lives near the Hudson River in Upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College. Her music is influenced by her love of Wales, her strong identification with the natural world, and a deep interest in the traditional music of Japan. "A Girl's Song to Her Mother" is a reversal of the Boone song - a lullaby to a parent who is growing old. It is written for voice and oboe (or other melody instrument) and has alternate Welsh lyrics for the refrain.

   In 1769, Pietro Denis (1720-1790) published a book of songs from the popular opéras-comiques for mandolin and voice dedicated to Achille-Joseph Robert, the Marquis de Lignerac. The Marquis does not seem to have left any indication of his musical ability in the history books - he was likely one of many amateur musicians who learned the popular Italian mandolin as a pleasant pastime.
   The basic definition of the opéra comique in the eighteenth century is an opera that contains spoken dialogue, satire, and is accompanied by well-known vaudevilles (a vaudeville is a strophic song with refrain, set to a popular tune or a tune in that style). From Denis's book, we have chosen four selections.

   Silvain, a comédie mêlée d'ariettes in one act and in verse, by Jean François Marmontel, with music by André Erneste Modeste Grétry, was performed for the first time at the Comédie Italienne, Paris, February 19, 1770 (presumably Denis had insider information for his book). "Je ne sais pas si ma soeur aime" ("I do not know whether my sister is in love") is sung in the third scene by the childish and naive Lucette, a daughter of Silvain.

   Jean-Joseph Rodolphe's De l'aveugle de Palmire (The blind man of Palmyra), a comédie pastorale mêlée d'ariettes, premiered at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris on March 5, 1767, and was restaged in 1776 at Fontainebleau. The song "La lumiere la plus pure Brille" is from the final scene where the blind-from-birth Zulmis has been given sight and is looking upon his beloved Nadine for the first time. Alibeck is a wise woman who has aided in the happy lovers' marriage.

   Gabriele Leoné, known as Signor Leoni de Naples, who taught and concertized extensively throughout Europe between 1750 and 1810, helped to popularize the mandolin with his skillful playing and copious publishing efforts. He first arrived in Paris in 1760, filling concert halls and receiving glowing reviews from the press. He published a mandolin method book in 1768, the title translated to "A Complete Introduction to the Art of Playing the Mandolin," which seems to be a response to a method book published by Pietro Denis, stated by Leone to be a "defective treatise." Leone writes, presumably directed towards Denis, "It is a mistake to think that the mandoline is an easy instrument. Those who undertake to teach it in twelve lessons must have got their principles, and in consequence their music, from some Neapolitan stroller. But it is much easier to discover in them the true portrait of a Quack, and the love of money, than it is even to learn how to tune the instrument in so short a time." Mr. Gladd will play four variations on "La lumiere la plus pure Brille" from this publication.

   We continue from the Denis book (though he may have offended Leone with his methodology, his song arrangements are quite charming) with the song "Des simples jeux de son enfance"("The simple games of childhood"). This is another selection from Rodolphe's De l'aveugle de Palmire. a simple song about keeping playfulness in marriage, lest our lives become nothing but housework and drudgery.

   Egidio Romualdo Duni arrived for his composer's appointment at the then French-influenced Italian court of Parma in 1754, at a time when Paris was filled with Italian sonatas, concertos, and symphonies. [Jean-Joseph Rodolphe also was in Parma the same year, probably a violinist in the orchestra of the Duke of Parma]. The popular opéra-comique form did not benefit from the Italian influence until Duni's Le peintre amoureux de son modèle opened in Paris in 1757 - he traveled there for the premiere, which was so successful with its fresh mixture of French and Italian opera style that he remained in Paris composing for the rest of his life. The Air des Moissonneurs (Song of the Reapers) "Le temps passe comme ce fil entre mes doigts" ("Time passes like thread between my fingers") is from Les Moissonneurs (1768). The dramatist and librettist, Charles Simon Favart, reminds us that time treats both king and peasant exactly alike.

   The opera Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet is considered by some to be within the form (and indeed the pinnacle) of the opéra-comique, while others think that because of its less-than-cheery ending, it does not represent the genre at all. Nonetheless, it has survived the test of time as a well-beloved opera, and we will end our program with an arrangement of one of its most famous arias - Habenera - "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle."