Theme from “Apollo 13” (1995)
James Horner n born in 1953
Since providing the score for the 1979 The Lady in Red, James Horner has become one of Hollywood’s most prolific and in-demand composers, with credits for more than seventy feature films. He has garnered Oscar nominations for Aliens, An American Tail, Apollo 13, Braveheart and Field of Dreams, and Golden Globe nominations for Braveheart and Legends of the Fall. His other scores range from epic to fantasy, from adventure to comedy: 48 Hrs., Cocoon, Glory, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Land Before Time, The Name of the Rose, Patriot Games, Ransom, The Rocketeer, The Spitfire Grill, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday.NASA’s ill-fated 1970 moon mission, on which astronauts Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jack Swagert (Kevin Bacon) were nearly stranded in space, provided the subject for the 1995 Apollo 13.
Clair de Lune from “Suite Bergamasque” (1890)
Claude Debussy n 1862-1918
During his early years, Debussy turned to the refined style of Couperin and Rameau for inspiration in his instrumental music, and several of his works from that time are modeled on the Baroque dance suite, including the Suite Bergamasque of 1890. The composition’s title derives from the generic term for the dances of the district of Bergamo, in northern Italy, which found many realizations in the instrumental music of the 17th and 18th centuries. The rustic inhabitants of Bergamo were said to have been the model for the character of Harlequin, the buffoon of the Italian commedia dell’arte, which became the most popular theatrical genre in France during the time of Couperin and Rameau. Several of Watteau’s best-known paintings take the commedia dell’arte as their subject. The poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) evoked the bittersweet, pastel world of Watteau and the commedia dell’arte with his atmospheric, evanescent verses, which Debussy began setting as early as 1880. In 1890, Debussy captured the nocturnal essence of Verlaine’s Clair de Lune in the third movement of his Suite Bergamasque for piano.
“L’Invitation au Voyage” for Chorus (1971)
The Mannheim Rocket (2000)
John Corigliano n born in 1938
John Corigliano, one of today’s most prominent and frequently performed American composers, studied at Columbia University with Otto Luening and at the Manhattan School of Music with Vittorio Giannini. He served as Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1987 to 1990, and has taught at the Manhattan School of Music and at Lehman College of the City University of New York, which recently established a composition scholarship in his name; he has also been on faculty of the Juilliard School of Music since 1991. Corigliano has been recognized with such distinguished honors as the Pulitzer Prize, Grawemeyer Award, two Grammy Awards, the Horblit Prize and an Academy Award (for The Red Violin). In 1992, Musical America named John Corigliano as that publication’s first “Composer of the Year.”
Corigliano wrote, “L’Invitation au voyage, composed in 1971, is a setting of Richard Wilbur’s translation of Baudelaire’s poem. Wilbur’s poignant setting pictures a world of obsessive imagination — a drugged vision of heaven full of sensual imagery. The music echoes the quality of the repeated refrain in Wilbur’s lush translation: There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, richness, quietness, and pleasure.”
The Mannheim Rocket was commissioned in 2000 by the City of Mannheim, Germany and premiered by the Mannheim National Theater Orchestra, conducted by Adam Fischer, on March 26, 2001. Corigliano wrote of the work, “I first heard of the ‘Mannheim Rocket’ in a music history course in my freshman year at college. The term was used to describe a musical technique perfected by the Mannheim Orchestra in the 18th century in which a rising figure (a scale or arpeggio) speeded up and grew louder as it rose higher and higher (hence the term ‘rocket’).
As a young music student, however, my imagination construed a very different image — that of a giant 18th-century wedding-cake-rocket, commandeered by the great Baron Von Munchausen, and its marvelous journey to the heavens and back.
It was this image that excited me when I was asked to write a work for the Mannheim Orchestra of today: I knew I had to re-create the rocket of my young imagination and travel with it through its adventures.
And so this ten-minute work begins with the scratch of a match and a serpentine twelve-tone fuse that sparkles with light and fire. The ignition leads to a slow heaving as the giant engine builds up steam. The ‘motor’ of the rocket is a very low, very slow [steadily rocking] ‘Alberti bass,’ the accompaniment pattern that has served as the motor of so many Classical-era pieces.
To get it started, I included a quote from one of the originators of the ‘Mannheim Rocket,’ Johann Anton Wenzel Stamitz (1717-1757) — the stately opening of his Sinfonia in E-flat (La Melodia Germanica, No. 3) uses a scalar ‘rocket’ to lift our heavy structure and start it on its way.
This is the first in a series of quotes as the rocket rises and moves faster and faster, climbing through more than two hundred years of German music, finally breaking through a glass ceiling to float serenely in heaven, where the rocket and crew are serenaded by tranquil ‘Music of the Spheres.’ But what goes up must come down, and with a return of the opening fuse-music, the descent begins.
The rocket accelerates as flashes of the ascent — backwards — mark the fall. Just before the inevitable crash, Wagner tries to halt things, but the rocket is uncontrollable: even Wagner can’t stop it. After a crunching meeting with terra firma, the slow heaving and the Alberti-bass-motor die away as we hear a fleeting memory of heaven, and, finally, a coda composed of a Mannheim Rocket.”
The Planets, Op. 32 (1914-1917)
Gustav Holst n 1874-1934
Holst’s interest in writing a piece of music on the attributes of the astrological signs was apparently spurred by his visit in the spring of 1913 with the writer and avid star-gazer Clifford Bax, who noted that Holst was himself “a skilled reader of horoscopes.” Of the music’s inspiration, Holst noted, “As a rule I only study things which suggest music to me. Recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely.” Imogen Holst said of her father’s writing The Planets, “Once he had taken the underlying idea from astrology, he let the music have its way with him.”
Holst gave the following explanation of The Planets for its first performance, on September 29, 1918 in London: “These pieces were suggested by the astrological significance of the planets. There is no program music in them, neither have they any connection with the deities of classical mythology bearing the same names. If any guide to the music is required, the subtitle to each piece will be found sufficient, especially if it is used in a broad sense. For instance, Jupiter brings jollity in the normal sense, and also the more ceremonial kind of rejoicing associated with religious or national festivities. Saturn brings not only physical decay, but also a vision of fulfillment.”
©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda