Remembering Daniel Pearl

A Celebration in Music

The combined choirs of the LISD high schools - Lewisville, Hebron, The Colony, Marcus, Flower Mound

Guest of Honor: Dr. Judea Pearl

Friday, April 30, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.

Lakeland Baptist Church, Lewisville  (Directions)

Adults $25, Seniors (60+) $20, Students $10

Families $60 no matter how large the family.

Special UNT student and faculty rate: $5

Sponsored by the City of Lewisville and the Medical Center of Lewisville.  Co-sponsored by Duane and Judi Johnson and by The Friends of the Symphony

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings

   - Intermission -

Benjamin Britten: Simple Symphony: 3rd Movement (Sentimental Sarabande)

Lord Byron: Prometheus

  Read by R Neil Ferguson

Timothy Brown: There are Stars Whose Radiance is Visible on Earth

(The Texas premiere of a work for chorus and chamber orchestra commissioned by the Daniel Pearl Foundation.)

'There are Stars Whose Radiance is Visible on Earth' - composer's notes

"Daniel Pearl was dedicated to the Jeffersonian ideals of freedom and equality and saw America as a beacon of hope for the rest of the World. We envision this new choral work to reach out to the entire world to express the oneness of mankind and the victory of humanity over brutality."

Dr. Judea Pearl, President of the Daniel Pearl Foundation

The first movement of “There are Stars Whose Radiance is Visible on Earth” begins with a simple statement of a "four part chorale" that sets the tone and mood for the rest of the three movements of the choral work.

The text of the first movement, “Lord, May it Never End,” is from the writings of Hannah Senesh, an inspirational figure that inspired me due to the many parallels of her short life and the life of the journalist, Daniel Pearl. 

Hannah Senesh, diarist, poet, playwright

and parachutist in the Jewish resistance

under the British Armed Forces during

World War II was born and died in

Budapest, Hungary.

The first movement is a powerful portrayal of the strength of the goodness found in mankind . “A victory of humanity over brutality”. The first movement has an immediate impact with a fullness of dynamic ranges and energetic moments pushing the music continually forward in it’s representation of “a cry from the darkness”

The second movement, an "Alleluia," is solemn, and reflective of it’s initial use in the ancient Greek Liturgy of St. James. It’s “chant like” opening gradually builds to a tremendous climax towards the end of the movement in both dynamics and harmonic development.

The movement uses an " A cappella" setting and serves as a decisive dividing point between the first and final movement. The "Alleluia" or Hebrew word "Halleluya" text can be used interchangeably to suit both traditional Jewish and Christian performance practice. The overall message of thanksgiving, joy, and triumph is interwoven throughout this movement as a vocal tapestry.

The static monophonic beginnings of the third movement “Of Thine Impenetrable Spirit,”reflects the story and struggle of the titan “Prometheus” found in Greek mythology. The text is from the third verse of the poem “Prometheus” by the English poet, Lord Byron.

The movement slowly builds from the opening moments of the movement to a triumphant restatement in fullness of intensity in both the choral and orchestral parts. The concluding section features a violin solo introducing a theme of hope and purity .

The violin continues as if following the process from afar, yet having an important role of leading the choir and orchestra to the final statement of the opening chorale which was first presented in the opening of the first movement.

Timothy Brown, composer (2009)
 

Timothy Brown
Lewisville composer Timothy Brown’s works are frequently performed throughout North America and Europe His music has been recently performed at the Spoleto Music Festival, in The Library of Congress Concert Series in Washington D.C., and on National Public Radio.

He has just finished a commission by the Dallas Ballet Foundation for the ballet “The Happy Prince” based on a short story by Oscar Wilde. Mr. Brown is currently a fine arts specialist for the Dallas Public Schools and serves on the advisory board of the “Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts” in Dallas. He leads a very active career as an exclusive composer with over one hundred compositions now in print.

Timothy Brown’s music has been influenced greatly by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone and also by the composer Luciano Berio. His music is noted for it’s “immediate emotional impact” and it’s roots in the neo-romantic style. His traditional formal structural elements are embedded in his wide array of orchestral, ballet, chamber, and piano music.

He did his undergraduate studies at Bowling Green State University and received his masters degree from the University of North Texas where he studied piano with Adam Wodnicki, and music composition with Newel Kay Brown. He later was a recipient of a research fellowship from the Royal Holloway, University of London where he did his post-graduate studies in music composition and orchestration studying with the English composer, Brian Lock.

Dr. Judea Pearl

Guest of Honor
Dr. Judea Pearl is one of the pioneers of Bayesian networks and the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence, and one of the firsts to mathematize causal modeling in the empirical sciences. His work is also intended as a high-level cognitive model. He is interested in the philosophy of science, knowledge representation, nonstandard logics, and learning. Pearl is described as "one of the giants in the field of artificial intelligence” by UCLA computer science professor Richard Korf. His work on causality has "revolutionized the understanding of causality in statistics, psychology, medicine and the social sciences."
 

Serenade for Strings, Op. 48

Peter I. Tchaikovsky

Among the most charming of Tchaikovsky’s compositions is his Serenade for Strings, composed in 1880.  Tchaikovsky confided to his publisher that this work took the form of a serenade by accident.  When he made preliminary sketches he envisioned it as something between a symphony and a string quartet.  Its final form was an inspiration that delights all his admirers.  Despite his tendency to underestimate even his best works, Tchaikovsky seems to have had a fondness for this score.  “I wish with all my heart that you could hear my Serenade properly performed,” he wrote to Mme. Von Meck in 1881 . . . . “The first movement is my homage to Mozart.  It is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model.”

I.  Piece in Form of a Sonatina:  Andante non troppo; Allegro moderato.  The main body of this movement is lively and energetic with a strongly rhythmic first theme and a lightly skipping second theme for contrast.

II. Waltz:  Moderato, tempo di valse.  The graceful, lilting melody of this Waltz is one of the most popular and most charming in all of Tchaikovsky.  He had an especial flair and so loved the Viennese waltz style that the melody is hard to forget.

III. Elegy: Larghetto elegacio.  The wistful mood of the opening contrasts with a livelier middle section.  For the return of the opening music the entire orchestra plays with mutes, producing a delicately veiled tone.

IV. Finale: Andante; Allegro conspirito.  The slow introduction is based on a Russian folk tune, a Volga "hauling song".  There is a bustling main theme that is related to the slow introduction to the first movement, which also returns toward the end in its original form.  The conclusion comes with another brilliant outburst of the bustling main theme. 

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Born on May 7, 1840 in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia

Died On November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg, Russia

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, probably the most famous of all Russian composers, was the son of a mine inspector.  He started piano studies at age five and soon showed remarkable gifts.  He attended law school in St. Petersburg, and, while studying law and government, he took music lessons, including composing. 

At age nineteen he took a job as a bureau clerk, a job which he hated.  By this time he was totally absorbed by music, and he began to study music in earnest at the relatively late age of twenty-one.  His progress in music was rapid, however.  After graduating from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he became a professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory and became a very prolific composer: a symphony, an opera, a tone poem – and by the age of thirty – his first great orchestral work, Romeo and Juliet.

 In 1877 he acquired a wealthy benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, with whom he had a curious relationship – they corresponded but never met in person.  Madame von Meck gave him an annuity that allowed him to leave the conservatory and devote himself totally to composition; fourteen years later, he was deeply hurt when she cut off the stipend and stopped writing to him. 

During these years Tchaikovsky achieved success conducting his own works throughout Europe (and the United States in 1893), but he always remained a spiritually troubled man.  In 1893, nine days after conducting the premiere of his Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique) – which ends unconventionally with a slow, despairing finale – he died at the age of fifty-three.

Tchaikovsky’s music is extremely tuneful, colorfully scored, and filled with emotional fervor directed to the heart rather than the head.  In 19^th Century Russian music Tchaikovsky stands alone.  He did not fall under the influence of Brahms nor Wagner, but greatly admired the French music of Bizet and Saint-Saens. 

He had a lifelong passion for Mozart, and many passages in Tchaikovsky’s music are as delicately detailed and colored as works by Bizet and Mozart.  In addition to his orchestral master-pieces he is noted for the success of his operas, ballets and songs.

Simple Symphony, Op. 4

Benjamin Britten
   III. Sentimental Sarabande

The Sentimental Sarabande for strings was based on original piano pieces and songs written when the composer was twelve years old. Here the ideas of a highly musical child give shape to the work as occasional changes form symmetrical classicist structures. The twenty-year-old composer added a few touch-up strokes of sophistication, but the great merit of the work lies in its range of idiomatic string textures. This third movement of the symphony has an expressiveness gained from using orthodox progressions against a pedal tone. The middle section abandoned conventional textural fullness for melody with transparent accompaniment figures.

Benjamin Britten
Born on November 22, 1913 in Lowestoft, United Kingdom
Died on December 4, 1976 in Aldeburgh, United Kingdom

After two hundred years with no major composer to speak of, English music enjoyed a great renaissance throughout the 20th century, through the compositional talents of Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughn-Williams and Benjamin Britten. Britten stands at the center of this admirable talent. While Elgar and Vaughn-Williams wrote mainly for the concert hall, Britten concentrated more on vocal music, and especially opera. Hence,
symphonic audiences generally are not as familiar with his music.

Britten was born in 1913 in Lowestoft, Suffolk. He was a child prodigy who wrote his first music at the age of four. In 1924 he began his formal music studies with composer Frank Bridge, and by the time he was twelve he had composed a dozen large works. At age 14 he had written over one hundred youthful pieces of music, some of which were to form the basis of his early Simple Symphony. In 1930 he entered the Royal College of Music in London, and by the age of twenty-one he was self-supporting as a composer, chiefly from writing film-scores and incidental music for radio plays. The sensational success of his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge at the 1937 Salzburg Festival clinched his reputation.

He moved to the United States in 1939. His composing career ran parallel to the growth of the recording industry after World War II. A relationship with Decca records flourished and his War Requiem, with its universal appeal, creatively utilized the then relatively new techniques of stereophonic sound. After the war he returned to the United Kingdom and in 1948 founded the Aldeburgh Festival, which became the major musical focus for him for the rest of his life. He composed a continual flow of operas, orchestral and choral works, but he generally focused on conducting and accompanying the English Opera Group in Aldeburgh until his death in 1976.