Brandenburg Gate
inspired by Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.2
For trumpet, flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), solo violin and strings. Approximately 17 minutes.
Carnegie Hall Premiere: October 16, 2008
The Brandenburg Concertos are among Bach's most joyous creations. As part of the "New Brandenburg" series, I wanted to project a similar quality of convivial energy. The title, Brandenburg Gate, suggests a portal through which we enter Bach's world of exuberant invention. It also refers to the actual monument in Berlin, which I personally associate primarily with the astonishing images of the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. It seemed a joyous moment indeed not only for Berliners, but for all of us watching on television around the world. Among other things, this piece evokes the spirit of that historic moment, and does not intend to describe the events literally.
There are three movements in this piece—fast-slow-fast—and they are played attacca, that is, without interruption between the movements. The name Bach, B-A-C-H, can be represented in German musical notation as B-flat – A – C – B-natural. Bach himself used this device occasionally in his own music, and various composers since then have followed his lead in tribute to the master. This piece is, among other things, a musical meditation and elaboration on the motive. As the B-A-C-H motive is a chromatic four-pitch collection, it well suits my characteristically chromatic harmonic language. Occasionally, the motive serves as the foundation of various twelve-tone rows treated in the general context of my own particular tonality.
Brandenburg Gate is dedicated with great admiration and affection to the amazing musicians of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
–Paul Moravec
Paul Moravec, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music, has composed over one hundred orchestral, chamber, choral, lyric, film, and electro-acoustic compositions. His music has been described as "tuneful, ebullient and wonderfully energetic" (San Francisco Chronicle), "riveting and fascinating" (NPR), and "assured, virtuosic" (Wall Street Journal). The New York Times recently praised his quartet, Vince & Jan: 1945, with, "This masterly miniature conveyed warm nostalgia, buoyant swing and wartime unease."
He is University Professor at Adelphi University and recently also served as the Artist-in-Residence with the Institute for Advanced Study. Both positions are unique to their respective institutions.
Mr. Moravec's first opera, The Letter, commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera, with libretto by Terry Teachout, premieres July 25, and runs till August 18, 2009. Also in the 2008-9 season, his evening-length oratorio, The Blizzard Voices, about the Great Plains blizzard of 1888, with text by Ted Kooser, was premiered by Opera Omaha, and his Brandenburg Gate was premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
Among Paul Moravec's numerous awards are the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, a Fellowship in Music Composition from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a Camargo Foundation Residency Fellowship, two fellowships from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, as well as many commissions. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University, he has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Hunter College, as well as Adelphi University.
Mr. Moravec is regularly sought out by leading performing artists and ensembles. Recent performance highlights include Songs of Love and War with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall, The Time Gallery at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Tempest Fantasy with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Recent world premieres include Anniversary Dances with the Ying Quartet; Atmosfera a Villa Aurelia with the Lark Quartet; Mark Twain Sez with cellist Matt Haimovitz; Cornopean Airs with the American Brass Quintet; The Time Gallery with eighth blackbird at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Morph with the String Orchestra of New York (SONYC); Cool Fire and Chamber Symphony for the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival; Capital Unknowns for the Albany Symphony; Everyone Sang for Troy Cook and the Marilyn Horne Foundation; Parables for the New York Festival of Song, Vita Brevis, a song cycle for tenor Paul Sperry; Useful Knowledge, a cantata commissioned by the American Philosophical Society for Ben Franklin's tercentenary; No Words, commissioned by Concert Artist Guild for pianist James Lent and the Gay Gotham Chorus; and two works for the Elements String Quartet.
Paul Moravec's discography includes Tempest Fantasy, performed by Trio Solisti with clarinetist David Krakauer, on Naxos American Classics; The Time Gallery, performed by eighth blackbird also on Naxos; Cool Fire, with the Bridgehampton Chamber Festival on Naxos; Songs of Love and War for Chorus and Orchestra on a CD featuring The Dessoff Choirs & Orchestra; Sonata for Violin and Piano performed by the Bachmann/Klibonoff Duo for BMG/RCA Red Seal; Double Action, Evermore, and Ariel Fantasy, performed by the Bachmann/Klibonoff Duo on an Endeavour Classics CD entitled "The Red Violin."; Atmosfera a Villa Aurelia and Vince & Jan , performed by the Lark Quartet on an Endeavour Classics CD entitled "Klap Ur Handz"; Morph, performed by the String Orchestra of New York on an Albany disc, Spiritdance, an orchestral work on the Vienna Modern Masters label; an album of chamber compositions titled Circular Dreams on CRI; and Vita Brevis, with Paul Sperry, tenor, and the composer at the piano, on Albany Records.
What does the title of your piece, Brandenburg Gate, signify for you?
I think of the joy that I felt when the Berlin Wall fell and the Brandenburg Gate opened in November of 1989. This piece is about the spirit and the emotion of the moment. I am not trying to represent anything literally. There are no specific programmatic associations, with one exception: in the final movement, I have the strings playing pizzicato, suggesting in my mind the sound of lots of people chipping away at the Wall with hammers and chisels. I think of the Brandenburg Concertos as among Bach's most joyous creations, and as part of the "New Brandenburg" series, I wanted to project a similar spirit in this piece.
The B-A-C-H motive (the German names for the pitches B-flat, A, C and B-natural) appears throughout Brandenburg Gate. How do you use this classic signature in your music?
My music tends to be very chromatic in general, and the B-A-C-H motive is essentially a chromatic four-pitch-collection, that is, a minor third filled in chromatically. The tetrachord can be replicated twice more in transposition until you end up with a full chromatic set. I do that in the third movement, for example, in which the orchestra is playing various forms of a twelve-tone row. There are a lot of very interesting musical possibilities with this little chromatic tetrachord, and I had a lot of fun exploring them.
Has Bach been an important influence for you?
Yes, absolutely. He is the indispensable composer, timeless and universal. I think he is the greatest of all composers.
So many composers have expressed that view about Bach. Why do you think he is so beloved, particularly among composers?
Among other things, for the unsurpassed technical mastery of the music, the richness and brilliance of ideas, the sheer sensuous beauty, the amazing variety of invention, and the magisterial scope of his spirit. By the way, it's interesting that his work was not particularly novel in its time. It seems to me that he did not invent anything unprecedented. For example, one could say that Debussy materially introduced something new into mainstream music which really had not quite existed before his time. I don’t think Bach did that. He took what he inherited and what was around him and worked his astonishing alchemy with those materials. I think that makes him a model for composers, especially now.
Why is that lesson so applicable now?
The 20th century was a time of extremely profitable exploration of technique on many levels. In fact, so much was done in terms of technical development, that at the beginning of the 21st Century, I sense that we are kind of exhausted in terms of technique, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I think it simply means that we are running out of unexplored musical landscapes. These days, there seems to be more and more exploration of less and less virgin territory. So, the focus shifts from novelty of technical effect to the substance of what one is actually doing with available materials. It's less easy to be novel these days, but one can still be profoundly original, as was Bach. By the way, I think of myself as a practical idealist: I love to dream my musical dreams, but I want my music to be used, to be useful in the lives of people. I like to compose for specific performers and for specific occasions, as did Bach.
That raises the point that, just as Bach had the duties of a Kappelmeister, composers today are professionals with various responsibilities that may or may not have anything to do with composing.
We all do something to make ends meet. I am—happily and proudly—a professor at Adelphi University.
Do you find that being a teacher enhances what you do as a composer?
I think the roles of teacher and composer can be essentially complementary. The thing that the artist has in common with the teacher, in my view, is that both are teaching values. The teacher does it more often by precept, analyzing and explaining what has been done, while the artist does it by example, in the work itself. But I think the teacher and the artist are—and should be—heading in the same direction, in terms of somehow conveying values to a receptive listener. I am happy to be a teacher. It dovetails very nicely with the life of a composer.
Interview conducted bycomposer Aaron Grad has been the Program Annotator for Orpheus since 2005. To comment or to read his blog about music, please visit www.aarongrad.com.