Music Listening Recordings

Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral - Wagner: Wagner's Lohengrin is based upon an anonymous medieval German epic and poems by the German Meistersinger Wolfram von Eschenbach (d.1220). Wagner conceived of the opera in 1845 while he was at Marienbad, convalescing after suffering nervous exhaustion. (As conductor of the Dresden Opera, he had just staged the premiere of his Tannhäuser.) In his autobiography, he wrote: "There suddenly sprang up before my eyes a Lohengrin complete in every detail of dramatic form. I was suddenly overcome by so powerful a longing to commit Lohengrin to paper that, unable to stay in the bath the regulation hour, I jumped out impatiently after the first few minutes and, without even drying myself properly, ran like a madman to my lodging to write out what was pressing so heavily on my mind." He completed the libretto in short order, and worked to complete the opera over the next few years. Wagner finished Lohengrin in 1848, and presented a concert version of Act I in Dresden that year. But the planned premiere of the opera in Dresden never happened--Wagner took part in the abortive revolution in Dresden in 1848 and had to skip town to Switzerland to avoid arrest. Lohengrin was finally produced at Weimar in 1850, under the direction of Franz Liszt. Lohengrin centers on the passionate--and eventually tragic--love affair between Elsa, a disinherited princess, and a mysterious knight, later revealed as Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, leader of the Knights of the Grail. Lohengrin appears to defend Elsa from a wrongful accusation of murder. She agrees to marry her champion, on the condition that she never ask his name or origin. Their wedding is a joyous event, but under a spell cast by the evil Ortrud, she eventually demands to know her husband's name. Tragedy ensues, and Elsa eventually dies, leaving Lohengrin to leave in a boat drawn by a dove.

The brief Introduction to Act III fulfills a vital dramatic role in the opera. Act II ends with Elsa's stirring procession to the cathedral (heard at this concert in a lovely arrangement for trombone quartet!) and Act III begins with the familiar wedding march. The Introduction is the perfect bridge between these two scenes, suggesting the excitement swirling around the wedding of Elsa and her "mystery knight." It is in a three-part form, with the outer panels based on a fanfare theme carried by the horns and trombones. The central section is calmer, suggesting a solemn processional.

All Blues - Miles Davis: Regarded by experts as the best jazz recording of all time, the 1959 release of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue is one of the most influential albums in the history of jazz. One reviewer has called it "a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence." Several of the songs, Including All Blues from the album have become jazz standards and are very often covered by others.

El Capitan March - Sousa: The best known of Sousa's operettas is "El Capitan". First performed in 1896, the operetta was a success, and Sousa then rewrote the men's chorus section in the second act, and created the march we now know as "El Capitan". "El Capitan" march is Sousa at the height of his creative career, and this Frederick Fennell edited rendition is sure to occupy an esteemed place in your band library.

Sousa's Band had no permanent home. With all those shining rails reaching out to everywhere it really didn't need one; trains moved it where the bookings beckoned. Residence at the Pavilion in Willow Grove Park, Philadelphia, or at Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn probably came as close to a "home" for the Band as Sousa wanted anyhow. The months-long engagements obviously provided that all-important creative adrenalin needed by his kind of composing conductor.

Sousa's 1895 contract at Manhattan Beach, for instance, began on June 15 and ended on September 1st. During these eleven weeks he composed the operetta "EL CAPITAN", signing page 320 of the piano score on August 20, just four days before packing trunks and heading south for the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta. This was where he was to introduce his newest march sensation "King Cotton", composed at that same stand at Manhattan Beach.

"El Capitan" opened in Boston with great success on April 13 the following year and Sousa lost little time in preparing the band version of its march, signing that score eighteen days later. The band edition which The John Church Company published within three weeks is now approaching its first century of life. In this time the band that sits in the image of Sousa's has been in metamorphosis, solidifying its instrumentation through superior manufacture, widening the scope and excellence of its pedagogy, and attracting unprecedented activity from composers who view it at last as a serous medium of musical art.

Night - Rumbelow: This work is based on impressions evoked by the novel Night by 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel. The work is not a chronicle of the novel, but simply an expression based on select thoughts concerning the subject and composed with the intent on offering those who perform and hear the work another dimension through which to contemplate the atrocities of the Holocaust. The novel is an account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy (Wiesel) into an agonized witness to the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God. Wiesel’s accounts of concentration camps and death marches evoke a gray, ethereal, almost other-worldly tonal scheme which provided the genesis for the work.

Movement III Darkness Descends; The Never Ending Night (The Loss of Faith) traces the descending darkness, all encompassing, which, in confusion, devours faith in the eternal Lord. The Sephardic hymn melody Adon Olam is briefly quoted as a representation of faith only to be quickly and completely devoured by darkness (the loss of faith). The text of Adon Olam is as follows: He is the eternal Lord, who reigned before any being had yet been created; when all was done according to His will, already then His name was King.

And after all has ceased to be, still will He reign in solitary majesty; He was, He is, and He shall be in glory.

And He is One; none other can compare to Him, or consort with Him; He is without beginning, without end; to Him belong power and dominion.

And He is my God, my living Redeemer, my Rock in time of trouble and distress; He is my banner and my refuge, my benefactor when I call on Him.

Into His hands I entrust my spirit, when I sleep and when I wake; and with my spirit, my body also: the Lord is with me, I will not fear.

The melody to Adon Olam is stated within a musical texture that represents the “death marches” between concentration camps. With each “step” the faith is diminished and the darkness becomes more and more pronounced until all that is left is torture in a chaotic and meaningless world devoid of faith. The Allegro section of the work is representative of confusion. Trains, marches, the military machine, etc. are all part of the layered energy of this section. The ending is reminiscent of the first movement, but should seem rather empty and devoid of life. The ostinato figure in diminution is not resolved at the end of the work, just as the novel leaves the author’s faith striped away and at an uncertain personal end.

Robert W. Rumbelow currently serves as Director of Wind Ensemble Activities in the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University (Columbus, Georgia) conducting the Wind Ensemble, Wind Orchestra, and Chamber Winds ensembles.