Concert II, 2025-2026 Season

Myths and Magic

Humans may not be the only species with music (whales and birds come to mind), but we are certainly the only species that talks about it. And magic is one of the things that people have most often mentioned when they talk about the effects and powers of music. Since the earliest days of humanity and all over the world, music has been used to heal both emotional and physical problems in ways that seem to defy rationality. There is evidence that prehistoric civilizations had music, and one of the most appealing arguments about the evolutionary importance of music is that the use of music in both rituals and in smaller domestic situations "magically" bound societies together and thus made groups of humans more resilient against the many threats to their existence. So it is no surprise that magic (and the myths that rely on it) has long been a topic for songs, operas, dances, film scores, and instrumental music.

Overture to The Magic Flute, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart's opera The Magic Flute (1791) features a flute only incidentally, but when it does appear, it is the talisman that gets the prince through the trials that qualify him for membership in a sacred order of priest-like figures. The opera features a good king, a wicked queen, an imprisoned princess, a hero prince, and a comic servant who sells birds (and in some productions wears a bird-like costume). The overture, which we play today, lays out the music associated with both the serious and the comic aspects of the plot.

The Swan of Tuonela, Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius became an ardent Finnish nationalist after meeting his wife Aino, whose family was deeply involved in the move towards Finnish independence from Russia. Part of Sibelius's demonstration of Finnish sympathies was his setting of parts of the Kalevala, Finland's national epic featuring heroes and maidens, curses and quests, and objects of greed and reverence. Tuonela is the equivalent of the Greek Hades; Lemminkainen, one of the heroes of the epic, is sent to slay its swan (he fails and is temporarily decapitated). This mournful piece is almost a concerto for the English horn (a lower-voiced oboe), with occasional commentary by a solo cello.

Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds, Tan Dun

Tan Dun grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and moved to the U.S. to get his doctorate at Columbia University in 1993. This work, which involves cell phones and audience participation, evokes the magic of a tropical wilderness full of birdsong and other sounds of nature but gets increasingly human-like as the music goes on.

Overture to Hansel and Gretel, Engelbert Humperdinck

The Brothers Grimm fairytale “Hansel and Gretel” is one of the staples of childhood. Engelbert Humperdinck (the German composer, not the 1960s and 70s pop singer who borrowed the older composer’s name) was initially asked to write some folksongs on texts from this story for his nephews and nieces to perform, but that request grew into a full-length opera. The overture is built around the most famous song in the opera: the children’s prayer, known in English as “Now I lay me down to sleep,” which occurs as the Sandman sprinkles sand on the children’s eyes to send them off to oblivion.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Paul Dukas

Anyone who has watched Disney’s film Fantasia will remember the episode where Mickey Mouse (the apprentice) dons the absent Sorcerer’s wizard hat and commands the broom to do the mopping job he hates. Mayhem ensues as the broom becomes unstoppable and morphs into an entire army of animated sweepers after Mickey has tried chopping the original broom into pieces. The story comes from a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in the voice of the apprentice. French composer Paul Dukas found this material an irresistible subject for a symphonic poem, and the endlessly repeated little tune aptly conjures the uncheckable power of the robot brooms.

Selections from The Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore

Howard Shore has written music for everything from “Saturday Night Live” to " The Silence of the Lambs." His score for the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was the work that cemented his success and led to him scoring the ensuing two films. The magic of his music (like that of other successful symphonic film score composers such as John Williams) is that each musical idea conjures up a feeling or an image practically instantaneously and is often quickly memorable as well. So listening to this music with no visuals will bring the film to mind as if you were watching it again.

© Mary Hunter