Focus on Piano Literature:
Paris in the 1920s
John Salmon, piano
Andrew Willis, piano
Hope Koehler, soprano
James Douglass, piano
assisted by:
Students from the UNCG
Departments of Theatre and Dance
Friday, June 6, 2008
8:00 pm
Recital Hall, School
School of Music
U N C G
Program
Fugues in G major and G minor, Op. 161, Nos. 3 and 4 (1920) Camille Saint-Saëns
(1835-1921)
Pastorale from Album des Six (1919) Germaine Tailleferre
(1892-1983)
Pièce en forme de Habanera (1907, transcribed Ericourt 1926) Maurice Ravel
(1875-1935)
Mechanic (1929) Daniel Ericourt
Fantaisie (1926) (1903-1998)
Pièce en forme de Rag (1924) John Salmon, piano
Piano-Rag-music (1919) Igor Stravinsky
(1882-1971)
Mazurkas, Op. 50, Nos. 3 and 4 (1924-26) Karol Szymanowski
(1882-1937)
Czech Dance No. 3 (Polka) (1926) Bohuslav Martinu
(1890-1959)
Nocturne No. 1 (1929) Francis Poulenc
(1899-1963)
Andrew Willis, piano
Deux Poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1922) André Caplet
La mort des pauvres (1878-1925)
La cloche fêlée
from Deux Poèmes Chinois (1927) Albert Roussel
Réponse d’une épouse sage (1869-1937)
Jazz dans le Nuit (1928) Albert Roussel
Poèmes de la Pléiade, 8ème recueil (1928-29) Jacques Leguerney
Le tombeau de Ronsard (1906-1997)
Avril
Hope Koehler, soprano
James Douglass, piano
Intermission
Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Nothing-Doing Bar), Op. 58 (1919) Darius Milhaud
(Cinéma-Symphonie sur des Airs Sud-Américains) (1892-1974)
Scenario: Jean Cocteau
Pianists: John Salmon and Andrew Willis
Choreography/restaging: Ann Dils (Department of Dance) and cast
Production manager: Kelly Carolyn Gordon (Department of Theatre)
Design: Fritz Janschka
Scene Construction: Geoff Boronda and Katy Liang
Scene Painting: Fritz Janschka, Porter Aichele, Charlie Headington,
Michael Henderson, Wanda Myatt, Stoel Burrowes, Chris Rogers
and Deborah Seabrooke
Props Master: Hugh Bryant
Costumes: Trent Pcenicni
Special Thanks:
Chip Haas and the Department of Theatre Scene Shop
UNCG Department of Dance
Triad Stage
Cast (Students from Departments of Dance and Theatre):
Bartender: Tricia Zweier
Boxer: Alison Williams
Boy: Elise Hehn
Red haired Woman: Melissa Pihos
Elegant Woman: Kelly Ozust
Bookmaker: Ali Duffy
Gentleman: Faith Mottershead
Policeman: Andrew Bosworth
Program Notes
Saint-Saëns: Fugues in G major and G minor, Op. 161, Nos. 3 and 4 (1920)
In a way, Saint-Saëns does not belong to a discussion of Paris in the 1920s. Never mind for a
moment that he died in 1921, just as the Jazz Age was commencing. He was considered old-fashioned
even at the end of the nineteenth century (he couldn’t stand Debussy) and his
conservative nature only got harder to hide once Stravinsky hit the stage (S.-S. hightailed it to the
sortie at the 1913 premiere of Rite of Spring). And fugue is not the genre that first comes to mind
when thinking of Satie, Milhaud, and the other groundbreaking artists of Montparnasse. But
Saint-Saëns did contribute to the rich fabric of Parisian musical life and, precisely because of his
backward glance, serves as an effective contrast to the whippersnappers Tailleferre and Ericourt.
The Fugues in G Major and G Minor presented tonight are excerpted from Saint-Saëns’ Six
Fugues pour le Piano, op. 161, composed and published in 1920. They are telltale signs of his
background as a church organist.
Tailleferre: Pastoral (1919)
Germaine Tailleferre’s Pastoral, a whiff of a piece lasting under one minute, is more typical of the
day. Composed in 1919, one year before Saint-Saëns’ fugues, it is unpretentious and
unabashedly bitonal, with hints of Milhaud (its dedicatee) such as left-hand tenths.
Ravel: Pièce en forme de Habanera (1907, transcribed Ericourt 1926)
Daniel Ericourt, artist-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1963-
1976, was an up-and-coming pianist and composer in 1920s Paris. His Pièce en forme de
Habanera, an arrangement of the Habanera movement from Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole for
orchestra (1907-8), joins a long list from the 1920s of arranged versions of that piece, for every
conceivable instrument—vocalise for soprano, alto saxophone, cello, flute, clarinet, and surely
other instruments I wasn’t able to document. (If you youtube “Ravel Habanera,” you can even
see and hear a version for theremin, an early electronic instrument activated by waving one’s
hands in front of it.) The work was popular. Its popularity also highlights one of the trends of
Parisian musical life from the late nineteenth-century up through the 1920s—the musical
appropriation of “exotic” languages (although Ravel’s background made Basque and Spanish
culture quite native to him) and a special Gallic fascination with Spain, perhaps most famously
illustrated by Bizet’s Carmen (1873-4).
Daniel Ericourt: Mechanic (1929), Fantaisie (1926), Pièce en forme de Rag (1924)
Mechanic, composed in 1929, illustrates yet another popular and uniquely 20th-century esthetic—
the industrial perpetuum mobile, whose most famous example was surely Prokofiev’s Toccata
(1912). George Antheil’s “Airplane Sonata” (1921), Death of Machines (1923) and Ballet
Mécanique (1924) were other examples, famous in Paris, where Antheil lived at the time.
Ericourt’s take on motorized repetition is remarkably brief and pleasant, just under two minutes,
and will surely cause no auditor to reach for the aspirin.
Fantaisie, composed in October-November of 1924 and published in 1926, shows Ericourt’s
influence from Debussy. There are traces of the latter’s Masques and L’Isle joyeuse, both
composed 1903-4. That Ericourt would have so thoroughly absorbed them indicates the degree
to which Debussy had entered the compositional mindset of early twentieth-century Parisian
composers.
Pièce en forme de Rag (1924), another piece under two minutes, shows Ericourt’s mordant
humor, typical of artists and intelligentsia of the day. It does sound vaguely swingy, if you can get
past those dark tone clusters and off-key melodies. The tongue-in-cheek qualities clearly show
Ericourt the prankster, and remind us of that mid-1920s episode when Ericourt and fellow
mischief-makers found a stray alley cat and put it in the piano at Le Boeuf sur le Toit restaurant
while the house pianist was on a break. Meow.
John Salmon
Stravinsky: Piano-Rag-music (1919)
Artur Rubinstein was (to hear him tell it) the toast of postwar Paris. The virtuoso pianist’s
prodigious talents attracted the attention of many composers, and his name was affixed to the
dedication line of many a score of Falla, Szymanowski, Villa-lobos, and Stravinsky, among others.
Some of these pieces he found congenial and performed often, but Stravinsky’s Piano-Rag-music
was not one of these. Written in Switzerland under straitened circumstances, the work
was a gesture of appreciation for a cash gift from Rubinstein. Although cruelly difficult, it is devoid
of opportunities for dazzling display. Rubinstein disliked its percussiveness and apparent
randomness, and never learned it.
Much as the Cubists exploded the images of their subjects, presenting many perspectives and
details to the eye at once, Stravinsky seizes various clichés of ragtime – stride bass, syncopated
beats, short melodic riffs – shatters them into fragments, and reassembles these in a sort of
collage. In just over three minutes, he portrays a bizarrely distorted version of ragtime, in which
the pace stops and starts, gestures overlap, and notes group and regroup themselves with little
regard to a regular beat. Logical connections are fully present, embedded in the relationships
among various fragments, but they must be sensed rather than grasped – the evanescent flow of
thought means that to contemplate any particular event means to miss others equally significant.
About halfway through, bar-lines disappear, replaced with a mechanical and relentless
succession of eighth-notes that may represent a statement about the kind of freedom that arises
from and yet is bound by the relentless pace of modern life.
Szymanowski: Mazurkas, Op. 50, Nos. 3 and 4 (1924-26)
Paris exerted a magnetic attraction upon composers all over Europe. In the mid-1920s
Szymanowski concentrated on developing the Polish national elements in his music, returning
often to the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane to immerse himself in folk culture, but he also
made sure to spend part of each year in Paris. The twenty Mazurkas, Op. 50 were perhaps his
most overt attempt to capture a national music. In form, rhythm, and texture they owe a palpable
debt to Chopin, but their harmony is au courant with 1920s Paris, even exploring polytonality (the
simultaneous use of more than one key). The first four are dedicated to the composer’s close
friend and compatriot Artur Rubinstein, who in this instance found a completely congenial music
that he embraced enthusiastically. Though the two selected tonight tend respectively toward the
introspective and extroverted, their individual range of fluctuating moods is striking.
Martinu: Czech Dance #3 (Polka) (1926)
Another Eastern European who felt the attraction of Paris was Martinu, who, after arriving in Paris
in 1923 to study with Albert Roussel, never again made his home in Czechoslovakia. Yet his
musical thoughts never strayed far from the rhythms of his homeland – who else ever thought of
making sets of “Etudes and Polkas?” In tonight’s Polka, the third of Trois danses tcheques
published in Paris in 1926 (the first two are a Obrocák and a Dupák) Martinu lets the player
splash around the keyboard in a brilliant manner full of quasi-Lisztian chords and octaves. Yet,
however recognizable its idioms may be, this is no ordinary toe-tapping polka, for Martinu cleverly
updates the conventions of the venerable dance, shifting the beat, adding extra time to measures,
overlapping phrases, and spicing up the harmony with “wrong-note” dissonances. In keeping with
this disarmingly casual approach, the key, which initially purports to be D minor (or is it major?),
soon pays calls to E major, F major, and F# major, before ending up (why not?) in C major.
Poulenc: Nocturne #1 (1929)
Of these composers, the Frenchman’s modern patois is the most amiable. Poulenc’s First
Nocturne deploys his faux-naïf white-key manner in an easy saunter that never breaks stride; into
the steadily flowing eighth notes are enfolded many a modulation, shift of voice, or dissonant
twinge to temper the prevailing douceur. A mock-serious minor episode builds up a spasm of
agitation but quickly dissolves into a restful sway. The whiff of cabaret to be detected in the final
chords (or is it cabernet?) betrays the composer as the ultimate sophisticate, too refined to bring
his cigarette to the piano.
Andrew Willis
Mélodies by Caplet, Roussel, and Leguerney
This eclectic collection of mélodies presents repertoire from three French composers who
produced significant bodies of vocal works, each sharing a certain neglect of much of their song
oeuvre. Paris in the twenties finds each composer at a different phase of his life and
compositional process. We see Caplet at the very end of his life, Roussel near the end but still
with another decade or so of production, and Leguerney at the very outset of his mature
compositional technique.
Caplet, ardent Debussian, extraordinary accompanist and conductor, confined his vocal
compositions to his mature years. A magnificent colorist, his piano parts often utilize great ranges
of the keyboard with tonal palettes that demonstrate the influence of his trusted mentor Debussy.
All his songs are significant contributions and deserve to be in the canon of mélodie, models of
refinement, sensitivity, sensuality, and harmonic inventiveness. The two songs of Baudelaire are
some of the last important mélodies to utilize the poet’s works. Both come from Les fleurs du mal,
Baudelaire’s shocking and controversial collection of poetry from 1857 and demonstrate the
darkness so common to the work as a whole.
Roussel, student of d’Indy at Schola Cantorum, writes with an acerbic approach yet manages to
find a subdued sensuality when the poem demands such. He originally intended a career in the
navy but left to pursue composition, thus becoming a late starter as compared to most other
significant composers. His years of travel, primarily to Asia, left him with both a love of aspects of
the Orient as well as a lingering awareness of the pain of leaving behind loved ones. These traits
continue to appear in his choice of poetry in either literal manifestations or more subtle
references. His writing is full of integrity, some say severity, and an attention to craft and
economy (more similar to Ravel’s songs than Debussy’s), yet he is capable of great expression
even within his penchant for formality. The two Chinese songs of opus 35 show a remarkable
connection of text and musical gesture, particularly the Réponse d’une épouse sage. In Jazz
dans la nuit we do not see Roussel trying to literally capture rhythms and harmonic structures of
jazz (although there are clear references) so much as an evocation of a scene which shows the
perception of jazz (at the time) as a sensuous medium.
Leguerney presents an unusual picture of several aspects. A complete individualist, a student of
Roussel in his early development who left in order to develop his own voice of style, he is often
compared to Poulenc in his brevity, harmonic structures, and phrasing. Among the songs on this
program , his are the most unknown primarily as a result of his withholding large groups of works
from publication until much later in his life. Life circumstances caused him not to be able to
compose full-time until the 1940’s but he was already establishing his compositional voice even in
his youthful works from the early 1920’s. Poulenc once remarked later in his career that there
were only two important mélodie composers of the mid to later twentieth century: himself and
Leguerney.
The Pléiade is a group of poets from the sixteenth century (including the great Ronsard) that
Leguerney used to reconnect to an older French tradition in order to continue establishing a
twentieth-century French tradition (many other composers had also done this). Most of the songs
in this collection of eight volumes date from the 1940’s. Volume eight, however, contains four
songs written in 1927-28 that are fascinating glimpses into his development of style even within
this first group. Le tombeau de Ronsard was written by the poet on his deathbed and reflects on
his place in this life and passage to the next. Leguerney constructs a song that becomes a
pastiche as he invokes Baroque type ornaments and textures in order to create a moment of time
travel. Belleau was a lyrical poet, famous for his multitude of poems on pastoral themes. Avril
comes from his collection Les Bergeries, a skillful mix of poetry, verse, and dialogue, and shows
Leguerney at his most skillful in creating a colorful framework for the decorative verses. We see
the lyrical beauty, harmonic movements, and excellent attention to prosody that are a part of
Leguerney’s mature style.
James Douglass
Milhaud: Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Nothing-Doing Bar), Op. 58 (1919)
Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof) is the name of a Brazilian tango (O Boi no Telhado in
Portuguese) that Milhaud heard during his wartime service in the French embassy to Brazil in
1917 and 1918. Milhaud later recalled, “Still haunted by the memories of Brazil, I assembled a
few popular melodies, tangos, maxixes, sambas, and even a Portuguese fado, and transcribed
them with a rondo-like theme recurring between each successive pair,” without, it must be added,
acknowledging any of the dozen-odd composers whose ‘intellectual property’ he had
appropriated. Milhaud’s original inspiration took symphonic form, but he soon took advantage of
the work’s success by arranging it for piano, four-hands and for violin solo with orchestra. Jean
Cocteau, on the lookout for a vehicle for his multifarious artistic gifts, dreamed up a fantastic
balletic farce, dubbed “The Nothing-Doing Bar,” to accompany Milhaud’s music (or was it the
other way around?). From its premiere in February 1920, with sets and props by Raoul Dufy, a
25-piece orchestra conducted by Vladimir Golschmann, and the famous circus acrobats, the
Fratellini Brothers, in the leading roles, the show enjoyed wild success, to the point that in 1922 a
leading watering hole for the artistically aware cashed in on its name.
The fact that Cocteau’s original scenario for Le Boeuf sur le Toit has nothing to do with Brazil, and
more often than not nothing in particular to do with the music, would hardly have troubled the
surrealistically adept audiences of the day – absurdity, after all, was the tone of the times. In brief
summary: some night owls amuse themselves with the usual vices – dice, pool, dancing, and
drink – at an American speakeasy. A policeman raids the joint and gets decapitated for his pains.
The guests depart, and the bartender, cleaning up, jams the policeman’s head back on, revives
him, and presents the bill.
Welcome to the Nothing-Doing. What’ll you have?
Andrew Willis
Our version of Le Boeuf sur le Toit retains Cocteau’s idea of a farce about American prohibition as
well as most of the markers indicated in his scenario. This cast enters in the order Cocteau
prescribes, reacts to the musical changes he notes, and performs many of the actions he
specifies: the Bookmaker and Gentleman still play an exaggerated game of dice, the Elegant
Woman totes the Boy into the pool room, and our Red-haired Woman walks on her hands in the
manner of Salome. But there are important differences. Cocteau’s cast was costumed in
oversized masks; in our version, only the Policeman is masked while other performers are
transformed through makeup, wigs, and costuming. Cocteau’s all male cast of circus performers
is replaced with a mostly female cast of dancers and actors. Cocteau’s cast moved in slow
motion; our cast is energetic, conveying the story and characters Cocteau lays out through 1910s
and 20s social dances, contemporary theatrical dancing, and references to Salome dancers such
as Maude Allan and to the gestures of silent films. We have taken away the specificity of
Cocteau’s vision of America, which made use of the racial stereotyping of minstrel shows, but
retained some of the playful gender confusion that must have been part of the first performance of
this work.
Ann Dils
Performers
Guest artist HOPE KOEHLER, soprano, has appeared with the Nashville
Opera, Tennessee Opera Theatre, Blair Opera Theatre, MTSU Opera
Theatre, University Opera Theatre in Tuscaloosa, Northland Opera
Theatre in Duluth, and Lyric Opera of the North, creating title roles in
Tosca, Carmen, Fidelio, and Madama Butterfly, together with leading
roles in myriad operas, operettas, and musicals.
As soloist in oratorio and other choral orchestral works, Hope Koehler
has appeared with numerous orchestras in such repertoire as Handel’s
Messiah, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Verdi’s
Requiem, Mozart’s Vesperae solennes di confessore, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater. She is a
featured soloist with the American Spiritual Ensemble, a group devoted to keeping the American
Negro Spiritual alive and vibrant in performances around the world.
Dr. Koehler teaches voice and opera at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. She has been on
the faculty of the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts for seven years and has also served on
the voice faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.
Dr. Koehler received the BA in Vocal Performance and Music Education from Lipscomb
University in Nashville, the MM in Vocal Performance from the University of Alabama in
Tuscaloosa, and the DMA from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where she studied with
soprano Gail Robinson.
John Salmon, Professor of Piano, UNCG. DMA, University of Texas at
Austin. Recordings of Dave Brubeck piano compositions (Phoenix,
Naxos). Author, The Piano Sonatas of Carl Loewe (Peter Lang). Jazz
and classical concerts, festival appearances, and radio broadcasts
throughout the United States and Europe. Articles in Piano Today, Piano
& Keyboard, American Music Teacher. Founder and Director, UNCG
Focus on Piano Literature, 1990-2002.
Andrew Willis, Professor of Piano, UNCG. DMA, Cornell University;
MM Temple University; BM, Curtis Institute of Music. Period-instrument
recordings of Beethoven piano sonatas and lieder programs
with sopranos Julianne Baird and Georgine Resick. Premiere recording
of Martin Amlin Sonata No. 7, commissioned for the 2000 Focus.
Recital and concerto performances in the US and Europe. Articles and
reviews in Piano & Keyboard, MLA Notes, Early Keyboard Journal.
Past President, Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society. Director,
UNCG Focus on Piano Literature, 2003-.
James Douglass, Assistant Professor of Collaborative Piano, UNCG.
DMA in Keyboard Collaborative Arts, University of Southern California;
BM, MM in piano performance, University of Alabama. Former faculty
member, Mississippi College, Occidental College, University of Southern
California, Middle Tennessee State University. Faculty, American
Institute of Musical Studies, Graz, Austria. Active performer of chamber
music and vocal repertoire throughout the US and Europe.
Ann Dils, Associate Professor, UNCG Department of Dance; courses in dance history, dance
appreciation, dance research and writing. Editor, Dance Research Journal (2006-2008); co-editor
of the collections Intersections: Dance, Place, and Identity (2006) and Moving History/Dancing
Cultures: A Dance History Reader (2001). Recent publications in the International Handbook of
Arts Education and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Current member, Women’s and
Gender Studies Coordinating Council at UNCG.
Kelly Carolyn Gordon, theatre history and dramatic criticism, UNCG Theatre Department. PhD
in theatre history, with certificate in women's studies, University of Georgia; Master’s in directing,
Emerson College. Undergraduate studies, Ohio Wesleyan University and the City of London
Polytechnic. Further studies, La Mama's International Symposium for Directors, Umbria, Italy;
Piven Theatre Workshop, Chicago; trained mediator. Writing published in Lighting Dimensions,
Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, Dallas Morning News; granddaughter of actor Eddie Bracken.
School of Music
U N C G
