Memory is a funny, fickle thing. We remember the good old days, when things were easy and fun. ‘Simpler times,’ is a phrase I often hear. I sometimes catch myself when I get wistful—were those times truly simpler? On looking upon a new fashion or new gait among young people, I sometimes hear something akin to the following remarks:

“We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient.”

“The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age.”

It’s an ancient tradition, to remember ourselves in better times than the current ones, and thus blame the current youth against some memory of ourselves from the past. The first quote is attributed to an inscription from a 6,000 year-old Egyptian tomb. The second was Peter the Hermit in A.D. 1274. It’s an old complaint.

The sepia toning process for developing photographs became popular in the late 1800s as an alternative to black and white that better preserved those photos against environmental pollution. In another way, the anxiety of preservation colored our memories. If only we could get back to those good old days. It may look brown now, but look how happy we were!

Childhood is a precious thing; I think none of us dispute that. And perhaps this is part of the process of aging, that we preserve our childhood in sepia for the sake of memory, a garden of Eden we can remember and long for as we deal with the vicissitudes of the present: Ukraine at war. Israel at war. Trade war. Turf war. Playing Cowboys and Indians seemed harmless when we were kids. Was it? Sepia colors our memory.

There is also an odd psychological phenomenon. Daniel Levitin observed that the music of our teenage years has a particular impact on our memory and taste for music over our entire lives. Because of the way the brain is developing through puberty, the music we consume at that time becomes inseparably entangled with our sense of identity. For me, it is a mixture of Queen and the Grateful Dead playing in my dad’s workshop, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Bach from my piano lessons, Grainger and Sousa from my high school band, the metal and punk rock of the 90s and 00s, and the old hymns we sang weekly in my Southern Baptist country church. Those tunes will always mean more to me than to a teenager across the world who is right now facing violence in the Middle East. And the music that teenager is using to deal with their reality will always stir more for them for decades to come than it will for me.

Every piece on today’s program in some form or another interrogates our memories—what they teach us about the past, and what baggage they might bring into our present. Sometimes it’s an issue of how we remember the form of the music itself (“Angels in the Architecture”), sometimes it’s a memory of our cultural moment (“West Side Story” and “Tiny Dancer”), and sometimes it’s what we remember about being children (“The Red Balloon,” “Down a Country Lane,” “Early Light”). Having children of my own is teaching me troves about who I am and who I want to be and how I want to be. The innocence of childhood is so precious, and so much of it is pure. But I am also learning it isn’t all pure innocence, especially as we grow older. I wish I could preserve them in sepia, keep them golden for all time. Unfortunately, this is not our reality, and I glimpse darkness too where I see so much light. Perhaps our decaying age isn’t new. It’s been here for a long time. And so we rage, rage against the dying of the light. Memory then becomes a powerful well upon which we draw for hope.

-Chris Ramos

Born October 5, 1921, in Northampton, England, Malcolm Arnold studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Although a composer, he performed professionally with the BBC Symphony and the London Philharmonic. Sarabande and Polka are two movements from Arnold's ballet Solitare. This arrangement for band by John Paynter was published in 1983.

The Red Balloon was inspired by a painting the composer once saw of an old man with a small child holding a red balloon.

Anne McGinty is a prolific composer of band literature. She has composed more than 225 works with more than 50 commissioned. Before completing music degrees at Duquesne University, she was principal flute with the Tucson, Arizona Symphony Orchestra, and the Tucson Pops Orchestra.

At once the cinema's first true artist and the most prolific technical innovator of the early years, Georges Méliès was a pioneer in recognizing the possibilities of the film medium for narrative and spectacle. He created the basic vocabulary of special effects and built the first studio of glass-house form, the prototype of European studios of the silent era. The success of his films contributed to the development of an international market in films and did much to secure the ascendancy of French cinema in the pre-1914 years. In the film, a juggler takes in succession about a dozen eggs out of his servant's mouth. He breaks all the eggs into a hat, and after having beaten them up after the manner of a cook, he extracts an egg as large as the hat itself. As soon as he sets this egg on the table there appears a tiny dancing girl, full of life, as big as a baby's doll, and who performs on the table some beautiful stage dances. All of a sudden, she increases to the size of an ordinary woman, and jumping on the floor she delights the audience with her turns. The juggler and the dancing girl disappear in the most extraordinary way.

Valdres is evocative and expressive of its land of birth. This Norwegian tone-poem in march time was composed in 1903-1904. The opening tune is a bugle call from the Valdres Battalion; Valdres is a valley is southern Norway. The second subject is an old tune for hardanger-fiddle; the trio is a pentatonic tune based upon Norwegian folk music.

Composer, Johann Hanssen, began his career as a tenor-horn player in the Oslo Military Band in 1900. The premiere, during an open-air concert in Oslo, Hanssen (who was playing trumpet in the band) heard only two people applaud -- his two best friends. Later he sold the march to a publisher for 25 kroner (about five dollars).

Early Light was written for the Oklahoma City Philharmonic and received its premiere performance in July, 1995. The material is largely derived from “The Star Spangled Banner.” One need not attribute an excess of patriotic fervor in the composer as a source for this optimistic homage to our national anthem; Carolyn Bremer, a passionate baseball fan since childhood, drew upon her feelings of happy anticipation at hearing the anthem played before ball games when writing her piece. The slapstick heard near the end echoes the crack of the bat on a long home run.

On June 29, 1962, Life Magazine featured Aaron Copland's composition Down a Country Lane. The piece was commissioned by Life in hopes of making quality music available to the common pianist and student. The work was featured along with an article title "Our Bumper Crop of Beginning Piano Players.” The article explains, "Down a Country Lane fills a musical gap: It is among the few modern pieces specially written for young piano students by a major composer." Copland is quoted in the article of saying "Even third-year students will have to practice before trying it in public." Copland then explains the title: "The music is descriptive only in an imaginative, not a literal sense. I didn't think of the title until the piece was finished -- Down a Country Lane just happened to fit its flowing quality.”

Angels in the Architecture begins with a single voice singing a 19th-century Shaker song:

I am an angel of Light
I have soared from above
I am cloth’d with Mother’s love.
I have come, I have come,
To protect my chosen band
And lead them to the promised land.

This “angel” – represented by the singer – frames the work, surrounding it with a protective wall of light and establishing the divine. Other representations of light—played by instruments rather than sung—include a traditional Hebrew song of peace (“Hevenu Shalom Aleichem”) and the well-known 16th-century Genevan Psalter, “Old Hundredth.” These three borrowed songs, despite their varied religious origins, are meant to transcend any one religion, representing the more universal human ideals of peace, hope, love. An original chorale, appearing twice in the work, represents the composer’s personal expression of these aspirations. In opposition, turbulent, fast-paced music appears as a symbol of darkness, death, and spiritual doubt. Twice during the musical drama, these shadows sneak in almost unnoticeably, slowly obscuring, and eventually obliterating the light altogether. The darkness prevails for long stretches of time, but the light always returns, and inextinguishable, more powerful than before. The alternation of these opposing forces creates, in effect, a kind of five-part rondo form (light—darkness—light—darkness—light). Just as Charles Ives did more than a century ago, Angels in the Architecture poses the unanswered question of existence. It ends as it began: the angel reappears singing the same comforting words. But deep below, a final shadow reappears—distantly, ominously.

Dr. Donald Miller

Conductor

Dr. Christopher Ramos

Conductor