Sunday, June 28, 2024 at 4 pm
download a copy of this program here.
From Rags to Mystics 2
Lee Alan Nolan, piano
Program
Scott Joplin (1867?–1917)
Bethena – A Concert Waltz (1905)
Scott Joplin & Scott Hayden (1882–1915)
Sunflower Slow Drag (1901)
Bruce Christian Bennett (b. 1968)
Small Art (2015)
I. for Lee Nolan
II. for Billy Pearsley
IV. to Matthew Ethridge
V. to Annabeth Jensen
VI. to Davis Rogan
VII. to Anne Jocteur Monrozier
VIII. to William Langton
Scott Joplin
Wall Street Rag (1909)
May Aufderheide (1888–1972)
The Thriller! (1909)
Intermission
Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992)
Catalogue d’oiseaux (Catalog of Birds), Book I
I. Le chocard des Alpes (The Alpine Chough)
II. Le Loriot (The Golden Oriole)
III. Le Merle bleu (The Blue Rock Thrush)
Irene Giblin (1888–1974)
Chicken Chowder (1905)
About the musician
Lee Alan Nolan received his Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of South Florida in Tampa. His principal professors were Peggy Salkind in San Francisco and Robert Helps in Tampa and San Francisco. While studying with his great mentor, composer/pianist Robert Helps, Mr. Nolan discovered his facility for learning and performing contemporary classical works, and like his mentor before him, gave acclaimed premiere performances of works by William Susman, David Del Tredici, Helps, and many others. In 1995 he recorded his debut CD Mendocino Suite by David Wurts, and it was released on Wild Iris Productions. While residing in San Francisco, he performed at Cowell Theater, City Hall, Herbst Theater, and Davies Symphony Hall. In 1997 Nolan commissioned Bruce Christian Bennett to compose Schematic Nocturne for him, which he premiered. In 1999-2001 he toured Switzerland, Germany, and Italy as pianist for the Singing Waiters, an L.A.-based vocal group. It was near the end of 1999 on one such tour that Mr. Nolan found himself playing Ragtime piano for the entertainment of legendary pop star Sting at the Dolder Grand Hotel.
Lee Alan Nolan had taught himself to read music by the age of 4, although did not begin piano lessons until the age of 8. While growing up in Florida, Mr. Nolan began winning many awards for his performances, including the Music Teacher’s Association Community Service Award, received for giving over a thousand public performances (including clogging) by the age of 17; the piano scholarship at USF—the Zbar Award; and Grand Prize of the Florida Orchestra Young Artist Concerto Competition, for which he performed Ravel’s Concerto in G Major with the Florida Orchestra.
Since relocating to Portland, Oregon in 2018, Mr. Nolan has been accompanist for the choirs at Portland Community College Rock Creek, and is also Professor for piano and theory classes there. He teaches piano, guitar, banjo, and vocal coaches privately and with Five Star Guitars; he was accompanist for the Oregon Chorale from 2018-2020; in 2019 he embarked on music tours as accompanist and singer with PCC Chamber Singers to Vancouver, B.C., and to Eastern Oregon with the Oregon Chorale. He is currently and has been organist and choir accompanist at Savage Memorial Presbyterian Church in SE Portland since 2018. Before his move from Ridgecrest, California, he was Music Director and Pianist for Cabaret in 2010, pianist and vocalist for RMES’ Classic Autumn in 2011 and Broadway Nights in 2013. His numerous solo concerts in recent years have been invariably received with standing ovations, including more recently his 2015 French-influenced program Sacré Bleu! and his 2016 one-man show Across the Genre-ations. He also received special recognition for his accompanying work for the 2016 Ridgecrest Opera Guild Prima Voce and Troubadours concerts. He made his first appearance on the Old First Concerts series in 2022 with From Rags to Mystics, and it featured works by Joplin, Scriabin, Melnyk, Bennett, and Ivanova.
About the music
Scott Joplin (1867?-1917) was the son of a freed slave, the “King of Ragtime”, and probably the first widely famous African-American composer. Ragtime was a musical style borne out of the Black community at that time, evolving from the playing of so-called honky-tonk pianists along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the late 1800s. There were influences on Ragtime from syncopated cakewalk rhythms, stylings from the banjo (originally an African instrument), and minstrel show music. Joplin’s exact date of birth is lost, undoubtedly because of careless or nonexistent record-keeping for the offspring of freed slaves, which his father, Giles Joplin, was. Available documents point to Scott Joplin’s birth being between June 1867 and mid-January 1868. Interestingly, Wikipedia reports “circa November 24, 1868” as his date of birth, which is quite outside the aforementioned time frame. In any case, in his truncated lifespan he composed over 100 Ragtime pieces, 2 operas, and a Ragtime ballet. Scott Joplin in his compositions elevated the genre of Ragtime into an art form, fusing the style with classical training and knowledge he gained through a German piano teacher, Julius Weiss. Starting when Joplin was 11 years old, Weiss gave him lessons in piano, ear training, sight reading, and harmony free of cost. There is a subtlety and complexity in his harmonic and melodic treatment not present in most other Ragtime composers. Reflection Rag was apparently started in 1904, and then Joplin circled back and finished composing it in 1908. It has five different sections—one (or two) more than the usual—the fourth of which is particularly Classical in its counterpoint and texture. Palm Leaf Rag was composed earlier, in 1903, and one historian accounts that possibly while in Chicago submitted it to rag-centric publisher Victor Kremer. Palm Leaf Rag was a favorite with ragtime orchestras even over a century later.
Joplin composed and copyrighted Bethena in 1905, and it was the first composition since the tragic death of his newlywedded bride Freddie (what seemed to be the flu turned into pneumonia—they were only married for ten weeks). The grief, nostalgia, and wistfulness permeating the sections of the piece are unmistakable. Bethena is in waltz time, 3/4, and calls for more treatment dynamic shading of rubato than his more standard ragtime compositions … in short, it is his most Classical-like. There are also more differences in mood and key between each section than one normally gets from Scott Joplin in one piece of music. My mother frequently requested me to play Bethena when I was first digging deeper into Scott Joplin music when I was 10 and 11 years old. It enjoyed renewed exposure in 2008 when used prominently in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Sunflower Slow Drag was actually a collaboration from 1901 with an in-law relative at the time, Scott Hayden. Hayden was Joplin’s first wife’s brother-in-law, and a protege of his. The teamwork paid off—the Sunflower Slow Drag features some of the most energetic strains found anywhere in Ragtime. Before the famous crash of 1929, Wall Street had a “panic” in 1907. Joplin composed Wall Street Rag with this event in mind and provides the following narrative, section by section, in the score, which is fairly unusual: “Panic in Wall Street, Brokers feeling melancholy; Good times coming; Good times have come; Listening to the strains of genuine Negro ragtime, brokers forget their cares.”
Bruce Christian Bennett (b. 1968) is a native of Seattle and is currently residing in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999 where he studied composition with Richard Felciano and computer music with David Wessel. He received his M.M. in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1993, where he studied composition with Andrew Imbrie, David Conte, and Elinor Armer; he received his B.A. in music from Reed College in 1990 where he was a student of David Schiff. He has received several honors, in addition to grants from meet the composer, he was awarded a commission from the Fromm Foundation in 2003 and the Prix Maurice Ravel in 1993.
As one of the dedicatees of Small Art, I possess a sense of pride, and also, in a way, duty in presenting and performing these miniatures. #1 is for written for me, and #2 is in memoriam for our common friend from San Francisco Conservatory days, Billy Pearsley. I shared a couple things with Billy personally. One was a room for rent steps away from Golden Gate Park which he vacated and I took immediately afterward, enabling me to become roommates for a time with my dear friend Bruce Bennett. We also shared a common duality of instruments we played: classical piano and 5-string banjo. I also am friends with another of Small Art’s dedicatees, Eli Osterberg. We have played music together, he’s cooked food for me, and he lives just a couple miles from me in Portland. I have not had the pleasure of meeting the other artist dedicatees of this set, and yet I feel a connection to them through this music and our common friend, the composer. This afternoon, 7 of the original 9 pieces from Small Art will be performed; I will be omitting #3 and #9.
Mr. Bennett offers these comments: Small Art for piano is a set of nine short character pieces (each about a minute long, give or take). It started as a general call for friends to create new and original, but small art works for each other. Some of my friends sent me small visual artworks that now grace the walls of my studio. Not being a visual artist myself, I embarked on composing this set of short pieces, each dedicated to a friend (though only five of the nine are musicians, and only three of those are pianists, one of whom is sadly deceased).As a set of short pieces, Small Art may be reminiscent of the keyboard suites of J. S. Bach (or perhaps some of the collections of short piano pieces by Béla Bartók). Though most of the pieces have no explicit reference to dance music styles of the 18th century, the 7th and 9th pieces do draw on specific stylistic aspects of that era.
May Frances Aufderheide (1988–1972) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and her father was a capable violinist who chose a career in banking. His sister, May’s aunt May Kolmer was a talented pianist who had played public concerts with the Indianapolis Symphony, and later taught at the Metropolitan School of Music. Aufderheide took classical piano lessons from her aunt while in her teens, but always felt a lure to ragtime and popular music. A possible catalyst for her inspiration may have been when her cousin Frieda Aufderheide had The Flyer Rag published. By the summer of 1909, her father’s company was successful enough to purchase column space in the American Musician and Art Journal and declared Aufderheide to be “a composer with a future”, which mentioned two upcoming pieces of hers that were sure to be hits. They were Buzzer Rag and The Thriller!, the latter of which would become her best known work.
The works of French composer Olivier Messiaen drew from many inspirations: birdsong and other physical natural wonders, mysticism through the lens of Catholicism, symmetrical structures and modes, complex rhythms, and rhythms and timbres that are reminiscent of music from other parts of the world, especially that of Asia and Indonesia. He even experimented with everything from writing for the early electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot, to “total serialism”. Much like Alexander Scriabin (who was featured on my previous From Rags to Mystics program), Messiaen also experienced a form of synesthesia. He would describe the color progressions of modes and chords as they corresponded to colors he saw with his mind’s eye when hearing them. He often utilized modes of limited transposition, a term coined by Messiaen in his book La technique de mon langage musical (The Technique of my Musical Language). A child prodigy, Messiaen taught himself piano and organ as a young child and was composing by age 7. When he was 11, Messiaen was admitted for studies at the Paris Conservatoire. Messiaen did not conform to any specific stylistic school of the time, and quite early developed a distinctive voice in his sound and style. He was principal organist at Sainte-Trinité in Paris for more than 40 years until his death in 1992. Messiaen’s influence as a composer and educator in theory both are still felt. When World War II broke out, Messiaen was drafted, appointed as a military nurse rather than a soldier because of poor eyesight, and was taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans from 1940 to 1942. When taken hostage, no weapons were found on his person during the search, but instead writing supplies and musical scores. Because of this, Messiaen was allowed special privileges including the opportunity to play the camp organ. During this time, he composed Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) which became his first piece to incorporate the use of birdsong. It was written for the musicians (Messiaen himself along with three fellow prisoners) and their instruments on hand—piano, clarinet, violin, and cello—and was premiered in the camp. The piece has gone on to be revered as one of the greatest chamber works of the 20th century.
A devout ornithologist as well as Catholic, Messiaen spent much of his compositional energy and time transcribing the songs of birds, harmonizing them with his own sensibilities in guiding him to emulate the microtonal aspect of birdsong and incorporated them into compositions such as Chronochromie, Oiseaux exotiques, and of course, Catalogue d’oiseaux (Catalog of the Birds) for solo piano, composed 1956–58. Spanning 7 books, or volumes, Catalogue d’oiseaux is a massive cycle for piano. Presented here is Book 1, comprised of 3 single-movement works named after the most prominent bird featured in each. There are always other kinds of birds in the vicinity of each main bird, and all are represented and labeled in the score. Messiaen also provides the following descriptions before each piece in the score:
Le chocard des Alpes / The Alpine Chough
Strophe. The Alps of the Dauphiny, l’Oisans: the ascent towards the Meidje and its three glaciers.
First Couplet. Near the Chancel refuge the lake of Puy-Vacher, marvelous landscapes of summits, chasms and precipices. An Alpine Chough, separated from its flock, calls as it crosses the precipice. Gliding, silent and majestic, the Golden Eagle, borne on currents of air. Raucous, ferocious cawings and snarling of the Raven, Lord of the high peaks. Varied cries of the Chough, with their acrobatic flight (gliding, swooping, looping the loop) above the abyss.
Antistrophe. Before St-Christophe-en-Oisans, the rocks of St-Christophe: a jumble of fallen slabs, boulders as if from Dante, heaped up by the giants of the Mountain.
Second Couplet. An Alpine Chough surveys the landscape, hovering over the cliffs. The same calls and takes flight as in the first couplet. Epode. Les Ecrins: the amphitheater of Bonne-Pierre, with its huge rocks lined up like giant phantoms…or like the towers of a supernatural fortress!
Le Loriot / The Golden Oriole
The end of June. Branderaie de Gardépée (Charente), around 5:30 in the morning: Orgeval, around 6 o’clock: Les Maremberts (Loir et Cher) in midday sunlight. The Golden Oriole, yellow-gold with black wings, twitters among the oak trees. Its song, flowing, gold, like the laughter of an exotic prince, evokes Africa or Asia, or some unknown world- filled with a rainbow light, the smiles of Leonardo da Vinci. In the woods and the gardens, other birds: the rapid, decisive stanza of the Wren, the secretive caress of the Robin, the brio of the Blackbird, the long-short-long meter of the Black-throated Redstart, the ritual incantations of the Song Thrush. For a long while tirelessly, the Garden Warblers pour forth their sweet virtuosity. The Chiffchaff adds its skipping droplets of water. Drowsy recollection of gold and rainbow, the sun seemingly draws its light from the golden rays of the Oriole’s song…
Le Merle bleu / The Blue Rock Thrush
The month of June Roussillon, the Vermilion Coast. Near Banyuls: Cap l’Abeille, Cap Redress. Cliffs overhang the sea (Prussian-blue, sapphire-blue). Cries of Swifts; splashing water. The headlands stretch into theme-like crocodiles. Echoing in a rocky cleft, the Blue Rock Thrush sings. Its blue is in contrast with the sea: purple-blue, slate, satin, blue-black. Almost oriental, recalling music of Bali, its song merges with the sound of the waves. Also heard is the Thekla Lark which flutters in the sky above the vines and wild rosemary. Herring Gulls scream far out to sea. The cliffs are awesome. Arriving at their feet, the water breathes its last- a memory of the Blue Rock Thrush (“like a choir of women’s voices in the distance…”).
Irene Giblin (1888–1974) was born in St. Louis, Missouri and was the oldest of six children. Having shown a natural talent for piano in her adolescence, she was first employed at the age of 14 as a music demonstrator by composers Eddie Dustin and Charles N. Daniels (aka Neil Morét) at the Grand Leader department store in St. Louis. Giblin was hired to play all of the latest hits from the Whitney-Warner (later the Jerome H. Remick) catalog. After a couple of years, she started composing her own music. From 1905-1911 Giblin published ten pieces, most of them piano rags, and most issued by Remick. Among them, Sleepy Lou and The Aviator Rag were substantial sellers. However, it was the straightforward Chicken Chowder that became her runaway hit. Composed before Giblin reached the age of 17, Chicken Chowder is neatly crafted with the same chromatic scale tying the A and C sections together, with the C section being in the subdominant key. The B section offers a slight contrast omitting the chromatic run, but really delivers with catchy riffs and discernible chicken-like gestures.
Program notes by Lee Alan Nolan