He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.

-J. R. R. Tolkien, “Mythopoeia” (excerpt)

Tolkien wrote the poem “Mythopoeia” sometime in the fall of 1931 in response to C. S. Lewis who claimed that myths were just lies and therefore worthless. Tolkien obviously felt Lewis was deeply incorrect, and the process of myth-making and myth-telling was rather a means of unveiling hidden truths about our world. He published The Hobbit just a few years later, in 1937, with The Lord of the Rings on its heels, from 1937-1949.

In The Silmarillion, a sort of mythology of Middle Earth from The Lord of the Rings, Tolkienrecounted the story of the Music of the Ainur, which essentially tells how the Ainur (the “Holy Ones”) sang the universe into existence—it is an intense story involving harmony, counterpoint, discord, and eventually, catastrophe and its antithesis: eucatastrophe. A key theme throughout the accounting is the relationship between light and music. With the Flame Imperishable the Ainurwere able to create song from nothing, and this same Flame was also present in a way in humanity.

Humanity, for Tolkien in his mythos, were sub-creators. Like the Ilúvatar, who first created thing from nothing, humans were in a way able to imitate that creativity through the presence of the Flame within them. In humanity, the Flame Imperishable was refracted, splintered into countless hues, “endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind.” Even the dwarves, who once were mindless automata under the puppeteering of Aulë, were eventually endowed with the Flame Imperishable and thus given sentience and free will.

Perhaps this confesses my ignorance or my naïveté, but I have always found both light and sound magical. We can talk about them as waves, particles, frequencies, beams, or resonances. But at their core, they’re something that still defies graphs and diagrams and touches something deeper, something emotional within me. I can feel daybreak in my soul. I can ache at the sound of an echo. Shining metal in the sun can make me flinch. A groove can make me grin. Light and sound seem to be both mirrors and echoes of each other, unseen but making the world visible, unheard but making the world audible.

We manipulate light and sound as creators. We talk about the light within that guides us through moral consequences. We talk about finding our voice and using it to move others in compassionate ways. The stage director lights the hall, we enter it, and then we vibrate wood, metal, and plastic with our breath and force to connect with you. Our teachers light the way for us and we follow them, eventually using the light they gave us to light the way for others. Our world is a place of luminance: light and shadow, sound and silence, forever entwined in an unending counterpoint.

For Tolkien, who had lived first-hand through the unspeakable horrors of the Great War, this luminance was the fiercest kind of optimism, the greatest hope for humanity.

Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
they have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

The Soviet-era composer Dmitri Shostakovich composed over 140 compositions with many of them written under the pressures of government-imposed standards of Soviet art.  He composed Dance of Youth in 1943 as the third movement of My Beloved Country, Op. 63. It was first arranged for Russian bands by Mark Vakhutinskii in 1970 and edited for American bands by H. Robert Reynolds in 1979. The melodies used in Folk Dances are like folk tunes, but they are original from Shostakovich's pen. Although not sourced from Russian folk tunes, the programmatic nature of Folk Dances allows for spirited dancing to be envisioned.
 
- Program Note by Don Miller

Pierre La Plante is an American composer of French-Canadian descent. He grew up in Wisconsin and received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
 
Commissioned and dedicated to the 1988-89 Oberlin, Ohio High School Band, (Stephen Johnson III, director), this work is meant to be a tribute to an earlier time, when American rivers and other waterways were the lifelines of our growing nation. Featuring Down The River, The Glendy Burk, and a version of a Creole bamboula tune.
 
- Program Note by the composer

Children's Folksong Suite for concert band is based on five Hungarian folk melodies with a simple, child-like character that have been culled from sources published between 1813 and 1896. The five melodies are also found in a collection of Hungarian and Slovakian folk songs in Bela Bartok’s piano collection entitled For Children. As with Bartok's Mikrokosmos and his Forty-four Violin Duets, For Children is an expression of Bartok's interest in composing accessible works for young musicians that introduces them to contemporary harmonic resources rarely encountered at the beginning level.
 
Similarly, the five folk melodies set in Children's Folksong Suite have been completely re-harmonized and, in some instances, expanded. Although not bound by common-practice theoretical expectations, Children's Folksong Suite preserves each piece's unique, child-like character.
 
- Program Note by the publisher

I believe that music has the power to take us to a place that words alone cannot. And so my own feelings about Amazing Grace reside in this setting itself. The harmony, texture, orchestration, and form are inseparable, intertwined so as to be perceived as a single expressive entity.
 
The spiritual, Amazing Grace, was written by John Newton (1725-1807), a slave ship captain who, after years of transporting slaves across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, suddenly saw through divine grace the evilness of his acts. First published in 1835 by William Walker in The Southern Harmony, Amazing Grace has since grown to become one of the most beloved of all American spirituals.
 
Amazing Grace was commissioned by John Whitwell in loving memory of his father, John Harvey Whitwell. It was first performed on February 10, 1994, by the Michigan State University Wind Symphony, John Whitwell conductor.
 
- Program Note by the composer

“Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks”
- Mary Oliver
 
What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,
 
not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled–
I’m wading along
 
in the sunlight–
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead–
I can see the light spilling
 
like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon–
and, so far, I am
 
just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.
 
I don’t know where
such certainty comes from–
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind–
 
but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth
 
with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines
 
against the hard possibility of stoppage–
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

Dr. Susan Eischeid, oboe professor at the University of Valdosta (Georgia, USA), got to know the first oboe concerto and made contact with Hidas. She had—despite his tonal language—surprisingly found out that he was still alive. She consequently commissioned him to compose the Second Oboe Concerto. Hidas wrote the original version in 1998, which was first performed one year later with Susan Eischeid as the soloist with the chamber orchestra at Valdosta conducted by Laszlo Marosi conducting. Dr. Eischeid used this opportunity to host a Hungarian festival with a special concert series on campus. 
 
Originally for oboe and string orchestra, Hidas wrote a version with wind ensembles for Stormworks Europe in 2000, which had its premiere on the CD Five Concertos with the oboe player Pauline Oostenrijk and the Delphi Ensemble under Lute Hoekstra.
 
- Program Note by the publisher

“Passio Lunae” is a celebration of the incredible world we live in. The name translates to “The Passion of the Moon” and is a tone poem from the perspective of our nearest celestial body, the Moon. In this selection, the Moon witnesses the creation of the Earth and the emergence of life. After a brief chorale signifying the eternity of the universe, we witness the slow evolution of the planet. Textures slowly grow and morph into the next, culminating in the coming forth of the world we know today.
 
- Program Note by the composer

Don Miller

Conductor

Dr. Christopher Ramos

Conductor