Concert I, 2025-2026 Season

Heroes: Common and Uncommon

Fanfare for the Common Man, Aaron Copland

In 1942, shortly after the U.S. had joined World War II, Vice President Henry Wallace delivered his most famous speech, which talked about the "Century of the Common Man,” as a way of broadcasting his conviction that victory in that war would benefit common people the world over, including in the Axis countries. About the same time, Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony, commissioned fanfares from ten composers to be played as wartime morale boosters at the beginning of concerts. Copland was one of the ten, and, inspired by the phrase in Wallace's speech, which fit with his own socialist sympathies, he wrote this short brass piece. It is now widely recognizable from movies and advertisements and is the only one of Goossens' ten to have survived in the repertory.

Overture to I Vespri Siciliani, Giuseppe Verdi

I Vespri Siciliani (The Sicilian Vespers) is the Italian title of an opera Verdi originally wrote in French for the Paris Opéra in 1854. Like a number of Verdi's operas, including Don Carlo and Aida, this one deals with the consequences of unwanted political domination; in this case, the French dominion over Sicily in the Middle Ages. This operatic topic capitalized on Verdi's strong sympathies with the movement to unify the various city-states on the Italian peninsula—some of which were ruled by foreign powers—into a single country. This subject also provides rich grounds for exploring the juxtaposition of public and private emotions. In I Vespri Siciliani, the widow of a man murdered by the French governor of Sicily is in love with a man who turns out to be the long-lost son of said governor. Complications ensue. This overture uses tunes from the opera, and we get everything from the tense heartbeats of the opening to the ravishing melodies of love and longing, to the clattering of both rebellion and celebration.

I Have a Dream, Lee Hoiby

Lee Hoiby had successful careers as both a composer and a pianist. His compositions are overwhelmingly for voice—chiefly songs and operas. Here, Hoiby sets the most famous portion of Martin Luther King's most famous speech almost verbatim, moving from King's quotation from the Declaration of Independence to his vision of all Americans being "free at last." Hoiby's musical language is melodic (if not exactly hummably tuneful), and the accompaniment (originally for piano) provides an atmospheric background to these always-relevant words. 

“I Have a Dream” Text:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire!

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York!

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Spirituals

Spirituals originated in enslaved communities under a variety of circumstances and from a variety of musical influences, but they quite often relied on Old Testament stories as metaphors for enslaved people's yearning for freedom. They were sung and danced to in a variety of circumstances, including in secret gatherings away from the prying eyes and ears of enslavers, but published collections of the words and music started appearing shortly after the end of the Civil War. Concert presentation of these songs started in the early 1870s with the touring presentation of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who arranged them in choral parts with classical harmonies. The arrangements you'll hear in this performance are in that tradition.

Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 55, "Eroica," Ludwig van Beethoven

You can't be a hero without striving—whether to realize a principle, to defeat demons, to better yourself, or some combination of these. Of all the famous classical composers, Beethoven is the one most identified with heroic effort—in his battle with deafness and the psychological darkness that accompanied it, but also as the defiant individual shaking his fist at tired conventions and mere mortals in order to realize his own fullest selfhood. Indeed, even in his lifetime, and certainly immediately after his death, his "middle period" music (that written between about 1803 and 1815 or so) was generally described as exemplifying a "heroic" style. The Third Symphony, written in 1803-04, more or less inaugurates this period. "Eroica" is Beethoven's own designation, chosen after he became disillusioned with Napoleon, the original "hero" of the work.

Beethoven's heroic style exhibits three related yet apparently contradictory features. One is material (tunes and motifs) stripped down to the basics (scales, basic chords, simple rhythms) that seem to leave the ornamental prettiness of the rococo period, and even of much Haydn and Mozart, far behind. The opening of this symphony is a classic example; it's just the notes of an E flat major chord (E flat, G, B flat) played in a simple rhythm—that is, until a rogue but inconspicuous C sharp at the end of the first phrase provides an interruption that seeds all kinds of things later in the movement. 

Another aspect of this heroic mode is the increasingly massive scale. The 45- to 55-minute length of this symphony was unprecedented, for example. And that sense of scale is amplified by the simplicity of its building blocks: how does Beethoven keep the music going with such apparently simple material? The contradiction between simple material and vast scale is only apparent, though: elemental material offers much more potential for continuous reworking than do more fully realized or elaborate opening materials. (Just think how much music of all genres has been written using only "power chords" or really simple bass lines.) 

And that brings us to a third characteristic of Beethoven's heroic style, which is a sense of the fulfillment of potentialities as the music progresses. This often seems to imply a kind of psychological journey with which many listeners identify. So Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with its famous bare-bones, four-note opening, which both spawns essentially the whole first movement and keeps reminding us of its existence in the rest of the work, is usually described as the spirit's journey from darkness to light or from despair to triumph. It's hard to imagine that narrative without the feeling that the opening idea undergoes a series of travels and transformations.

Although the first movement of the Eroica fits the model of a psychological journey that can seem both individual and universal, the symphony as a whole is more episodic than the Fifth. Continuing the fusion of the personal with the more broadly social, the slow movement is a funeral march whose opening has always seemed to me one of the loneliest moments in music, at the same time as it references a social or ceremonial occasion. 

The Scherzo, the third movement, is certainly the most cheerful and in many ways the most conventional of the four movements, but it continues the practice of starting with the simplest of material—two notes, right next to each other, just going back and forth. 

Then, after a deceptively passionate opening, the last movement displays the molehill out of which will grow a massive (even heroic) mountain: E flat up to B flat, down to another B flat, and back up to E flat. Four naked notes form the basis for a huge variation movement. The little sections are expressively distinct, but you can discern those four notes in every one of them.

© Mary Hunter