School of Music
U N C G
Nana (Cradle Song)
Duérmete, niño, duerme.
Duerme, mi alma,
Duérmete, lucerito
De la mañana.
Nanita, nana,
Duérmete, lucerito
De la mañana.
Canción (Song)
Por traidores, tus ojos,
Voy a enterrarlos;
No sabes lo que cuesta,
“Del aire” Niña, el mirarlos.
“Madre, a la orilla”
Niña, el mirarlos.
“Madre.”
Dicen que no me quieres,
Y a mi me has querido…
Váyase lo ganado “Del aire”
Por lo perdido.
“Madre.”
Polo (Flamenco Song)
¡Ay!
Guardo una “¡Ay!”
Guardo una pena en mi pecho,
¡Ay!
¡Que a nadie se la diré!
Malhaya el amor,
¡Ay!
¡Y quien me lo dio a entender!
¡Ay!
Sleep, little child, sleep.
Sleep, my soul,
Sleep, little morning star
Until the morning.
Hear me murmur;
sleep, little morning star
Until the morning.
For their unfaithfulness,
I’ll bury your eyes.
You don’t know how difficult it is
simply to look at them!
Madre!
Look at them!
Madre!
They say you don’t love me,
yet you loved me once …
Just look at what I’ve done now.
It’s all lost.
Madre!
Ay!
I have a cry in my breast,
Ay,
that I will tell to no one.
Ay!
Cursed be love,
Ay!
and cursed be he who made me to understand it!
Ay!
The Cant dels ocells is a traditional Catalan Christmas carol which is known ‘round the world
now because Casals played it so often in his recitals. When he first left the bombed and gutted
Catalunya of 1939, he met in a private home with several Catalan musicians and writers in
Prades. During the course of the evening, he took out his ‘cello and played this tune, a song
charged with meaning for the people who saw the unbelievable demise of the artistic life to which
they had dedicated years. Casals continued to play El cant dels ocells often. So often, in fact, that
this traditional song is more often than not attributed to him. And if Casals began popularizing the
tune, Victòria dels Àngels sang it on innumerable occasions, recording it many times over.
Following is the first verse of today’s best-known Catalan song:
En veure despuntar
el major lluminar
en la nit més ditxosa,
el ocellets, cantant,
a festejar-lo van
amb sa veu melindrosa.
Seeing first break of light
in the most happy of earthly nights,
all the birds,
singing,
make haste to celebrate,
the gift of their sweet voices bringing.
— Eric Koontz, April 2005
Eric Koontz
viola
Chenny Gan, piano
Graduate Recital
Friday, April 29, 2005
7:30 pm
Organ Hall, School of Music
Program
Sonata, “Moments musicals” (1952) Lluís Benejam
I. Romança (b. Barcelona, Catalunya: 1914
II. Scherzo d. Birmingham, AL: 1968)
III. Allegro moderato
Sis sonets (1922) Eduard Toldrà
I. Sonetí de la Rosada (b. Vilanova i la Geltrú, Catalunya: 1895
II. Ave Maria d. Barcelona: 1962)
III. Les birbadores trans. Eric Koontz
IV. Oració al maig
V. Dels quatre vents
VI. La font
Sonata (1986) Salvador Brotons
I. Moderato amabile (b. Barcelona, Catalunya: 1959)
II. Adagio lugubre
III. Molto allegro
Siete Canciones populares Españolas (1914) Manuel de Falla
I. El paño moruno (b. Cádiz, Spain: 1876
II. Seguidilla murciana d. Alta Gracia, Argentina:1946)
III. Asturiana trans. and arr. Eric Koontz
IV. Jota
V. Nana
VI. Canción
VII. Polo
El cant dels ocells trad. Catalan nadala folksong
arr. Pau Casals
trans. Eric Koontz
In partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the
Doctor of Musical Arts
_____
The hall is equipped with a listening assistance system.
Patrons needing such assistance should contact an usher in the lobby.
uncomfortable position of fence-straddling. He refused to be used by either side of the conflict
(progressive Republicans and conservative Nationalists), but did intervene on behalf of his artistic
compatriot, the poet Garcia Lorca, when the Nationalists detained him. Alas, Falla could not
spare Lorca from execution. By the end of the civil war, 1939, he had accepted a conducting
engagement in Buenos Aires and traveled to Argentina with his sister. There he would remain
until his death in 1946, refusing to barter with the offers designed to tempt his return from the
fascist government in Madrid.
The Siete Canciones Populares were finished in 1915, and come from a somewhat better time in
Falla’s life. He had lived seven happy years in Paris, enjoying friendships with Debussy, Ravel,
Dukas, and Diaghilev, but was obliged to return to Spain upon the outbreak of World War I in
1914. This work, much like the masterpiece Iberia by Isaac Albéniz, is a musical travelogue of the
Peninsula, the different songs representing the various regions of Múrcia, Aragón, Astúrias, and
Andalucía.
The songs’ texts, derived from authentic folk material, are delightful:
El paño moruno (The Moorish Cloth)
Al paño fino en la tienda,
Una mancha le cayó;
Por menos precio se vende,
Porque perdió su valor.
¡Ay!
Seguidilla murciana (Folksong from Murcia)
Cualquiera que el tejado
Tenga de vidrio,
No debe tirar piedras
Al del vecino.
Arrieros semos;
Puede que en el camino
¡Nos encontremos!
Por tu mucha inconstancia
Yo te comparo
Con la peseta que corre
De mano en mano;
Que al fin se borra,
Y creyéndola falsa
¡Nadie la toma!
Asturiana (Asturian melody)
Por ver si me consolaba,
Arrímeme a un pino verde.
Por verme llorar, lloraba.
Y el pino, como era verde,
Por verme llorar, lloraba.
Jota (Spanish Folk Dance)
Dicen que no nos queremos
Porque no nos ven hablar;
A tu corazón y al mío
Se lo pueden preguntar.
Ya me despido de ti,
De tu casa y tu ventana,
Y aunque no quiera tu madre,
Adiós, niña, ¡hasta mañana!
On that fine cloth in my shop
A stain has cropped.
I´ll sell for less price,
for its value is lost.
Ay!
He who lives under a roof
made of glass
Had better not throw stones
at his neighbor’s ass.
For good relations let’s not be at a loss;
Our paths just might
one day cross!
For your lack of loyalty
I compare you
to a coin that moves
from hand to hand;
In the end, its design is blurred,
and thought to be false,
loses its value in all the land!
To seek consolation,
I drew close to a verdant pine.
In seeing me weep, it also wept.
And the pine, as it was so verdant,
watched my tears … and wept.
They say we are not in love
Because they never see us talk.
They can ask us;
Our two hearts would never balk!
I now bid you farewell,
farewell to your house, farewell to your window.
And even though your mother would not wish it:
Farewell, sweet maid, until tomorrow!
Music from Catalunya for Viola and Piano
Background
As a youngster growing up in Western North Carolina, I considered three musical heroes were
deserving of true reverence: Albert Schweitzer, Pablo Casals, and Victoria de los Ángeles. From
books and recordings, we are all made aware that Schweitzer was a grand humanitarian and
organist from Alsace, and that Casals was his humanist homologue from Spain, while Madam de
los Ángeles, considered by many to possess the most beautiful voice of the twentieth century,
was Casals’ compatriot. While not entirely untrue, these assumptions represent a certain
frustration to some six million citizens of the small country of Catalunya who had practically lost
their identity at the close of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39. Casals himself had felt so adamantly
opposed to the fascist dictatorship which in 1939 changed forever the lives of all Catalan artists
and musicians that he chose to abandon his home and reestablish himself in Prades, France, just
inside the borders of the old “Catalunya North”. Casals made full use of his musical renown and
good name in trying to bring to world consciousness the ugliness of fascism and intolerance, and
he tirelessly argued the case of the men, women, and children in Catalunya (as well as that of
other oppressed Spaniards) who had been subjected to a life greatly void of civil liberties and to
whom was granted limited access to the world outside the borders of Spain. And yet, despite his
unequivocal stance, the man born as Pau Casals in the seaside village of El Vendrell and had
done so much for the musical life of his people (including founding two symphonic orchestras,
one for the affluent sector of Catalan society and a second orchestra organized in a daring move
to bring music to the proletarian classes of Barcelona) would be forever remembered as the
great Spanish ‘cellist who played innumerable concerts for masses of eager music lovers around
the world, while his deep devotion and passion for his native land and its people would be all but
forgotten. Casals’ book of memoirs, Joys and Sorrows; Reflections, was published in 1973 and
has been read by scores of musicians the world over, while a previous book, published in Catalan
in 1955 by Josep Corredor, Converses amb Pau Casals (Conversations with Pau Casals),
remained untranslated until 1997.
Today’s concert of Catalan music for viola — some scores original and others transcribed for the
instrument — wishes to serve as an homage to those who, like Casals, Toldrà, and Benejam,
worked with great joy and endured so many sorrows in order to construct a truly Catalan musical
art.
_____
Musical roots
All the composers included in this program were affected by Modernism and its filial branch,
Noucentisme. The roots of Catalan Modernism are firmly planted in a cultural movement of the
mid-nineteenth century wholly dedicated to Catalan poetry and literature. The Renaixença
movement was not only responsible for recuperating an enthusiastic literary activity using the
Catalan language, but also brought about the by-product of innovations in architecture, painting,
and sculpture, as well as a frenetic pace of musical creativity. As a result, many instrumental
scores from Catalunya include literary allusions or derive inspiration from poetry.
The unifying factor of this program of music is the figure of Felip Pedrell (1841-1922), the Catalan
musicologist who played a preponderant role in the musical development of most of the best-known
musicians of Catalunya and Spain after the 1860s. His enthusiasm and tenacious
dedication to lifting Iberian music out of its early nineteenth-century apathy led to a volume of
musical activity in Modernist Catalunya which equaled that of its sister arts of literature, painting,
and architecture.
Lluís Benejam (1914-1968), violinist, composer, and pedagogue, composed the 1952 Sonata for
Viola and Piano, Moments musicals, in Barcelona. Because of harsh conditions in Spain, he
immigrated in 1954 to Ecuador, eventually settling in Birmingham, Alabama in 1956, where he
joined the faculty at Birmingham Southern College (Benejam also taught at the Brevard Music
Center here in North Carolina). While maintaining a love for simple, flowing melodic lines and
rhythmic allusions to the sardana (the national dance of Catalunya), the work Moments musicals
evidences the composer’s exploration of jazz harmonic colors before arriving to the United
States.
The recuperation and publication of his entire compositional output is currently overseen by
Elisenda Climent of Clivis Publications in Barcelona.
The violinist, composer, and orchestral director Eduard Toldrà (1895-1962) is a special figure
among Catalan artists. He heard and met many of the great violinists of the day (Ysaÿe, Kreisler,
Thibaud, and Crickboom) in Barcelona and became a fine player himself. Pau Casals invited him
to lead his own orchestra, L’orquestra Pau Casals, as concertmaster and later as assistant
director. After the Civil War, Toldrà all but lost his motivation to compose, and instead channeled
his energies into orchestral conducting. He founded Municipal Orchestra of Barcelona, flourishing
today under the new name Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya.
Everything artistic he set out to do seemed destined for aesthetic success, and his avid love of
poetry led him to compose the Sis sonets (Six Sonnets) in 1922, inspired by poetic texts of some
of the finest writers in Catalunya. Practically all the poets represented in these six short
compositions had won highest awards in Barcelona’s Jocs Florals, (a Gothic contest for poets
dating from an Occitan and Catalan troubadour tradition of the early fourteenth century and
reinstated in Barcelona in 1859).
Each of Toldrà’s musical sonnets bears the name (and includes the text) of the poetry that
inspired the composition:
I. El sonetí de la rosada (Dew-drop Sonnet)
II. Ave Maria
III. Les birbadores (The Gleaner Women)
IV. Oració al maig (Prayer to the Month of May)
V. Dels quatre vents (From the Four Winds)
VI. La font (The Fount)
Flutist and composer Salvador Brotons (b. 1959) studied at the Municipal Conservatory of
Barcelona before earning the DMA at Florida State University. Subsequently, he taught at
Portland State University in Oregon during ten years before returning to Catalunya to assume the
directorship of both the Symphonic Orchestra of the Vallés (Sabadell) and the Symphonic
Orchestra of the Balearic Islands (Palma de Mallorca).
The Sonata for Viola was written during his last year of residence in Florida, and, true to the
musical values of so many of his countrymen, demonstrates a gift for sumptuous melodic line.
The harmonic content contains the dual influence of Brotons’ love for the music of Shostakovich
and a loyalty to his Catalan teacher, Xavier Montsalvatge.
The Andalusian composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) represents the pinnacle of all the
pedagogical aspirations of his teacher, Felip Pedrell. Pedrell had hoped to establish a Spanish, or
perhaps more precisely, Iberian, school that would equal the various schools of European
Romanticism in the nineteenth century. That hope would never quite materialize on a large scale,
yet any attempt to organize Iberian music of the 19th and 20th centuries will inevitably point in one
direction: all roads lead to Falla! His oeuvre is a succession of gems and masterpieces, treasures
that combine Iberian folk inspiration with the most sophisticated musical organization.
Catalan artists and musicians had few qualms with a radical reaction to Franco’s military and
Church-sanctioned regime following the civil war because they had had everything to lose at the
hands of the Nationalists (fascists sector). But Falla found himself, as a devout Catholic, in the
Music from Catalunya for Viola and Piano
Background
As a youngster growing up in Western North Carolina, I considered three musical heroes were
deserving of true reverence: Albert Schweitzer, Pablo Casals, and Victoria de los Ángeles. From
books and recordings, we are all made aware that Schweitzer was a grand humanitarian and
organist from Alsace, and that Casals was his humanist homologue from Spain, while Madam de
los Ángeles, considered by many to possess the most beautiful voice of the twentieth century,
was Casals’ compatriot. While not entirely untrue, these assumptions represent a certain
frustration to some six million citizens of the small country of Catalunya who had practically lost
their identity at the close of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39. Casals himself had felt so adamantly
opposed to the fascist dictatorship which in 1939 changed forever the lives of all Catalan artists
and musicians that he chose to abandon his home and reestablish himself in Prades, France, just
inside the borders of the old “Catalunya North”. Casals made full use of his musical renown and
good name in trying to bring to world consciousness the ugliness of fascism and intolerance, and
he tirelessly argued the case of the men, women, and children in Catalunya (as well as that of
other oppressed Spaniards) who had been subjected to a life greatly void of civil liberties and to
whom was granted limited access to the world outside the borders of Spain. And yet, despite his
unequivocal stance, the man born as Pau Casals in the seaside village of El Vendrell and had
done so much for the musical life of his people (including founding two symphonic orchestras,
one for the affluent sector of Catalan society and a second orchestra organized in a daring move
to bring music to the proletarian classes of Barcelona) would be forever remembered as the
great Spanish ‘cellist who played innumerable concerts for masses of eager music lovers around
the world, while his deep devotion and passion for his native land and its people would be all but
forgotten. Casals’ book of memoirs, Joys and Sorrows; Reflections, was published in 1973 and
has been read by scores of musicians the world over, while a previous book, published in Catalan
in 1955 by Josep Corredor, Converses amb Pau Casals (Conversations with Pau Casals),
remained untranslated until 1997.
Today’s concert of Catalan music for viola — some scores original and others transcribed for the
instrument — wishes to serve as an homage to those who, like Casals, Toldrà, and Benejam,
worked with great joy and endured so many sorrows in order to construct a truly Catalan musical
art.
_____
Musical roots
All the composers included in this program were affected by Modernism and its filial branch,
Noucentisme. The roots of Catalan Modernism are firmly planted in a cultural movement of the
mid-nineteenth century wholly dedicated to Catalan poetry and literature. The Renaixença
movement was not only responsible for recuperating an enthusiastic literary activity using the
Catalan language, but also brought about the by-product of innovations in architecture, painting,
and sculpture, as well as a frenetic pace of musical creativity. As a result, many instrumental
scores from Catalunya include literary allusions or derive inspiration from poetry.
The unifying factor of this program of music is the figure of Felip Pedrell (1841-1922), the Catalan
musicologist who played a preponderant role in the musical development of most of the best-known
musicians of Catalunya and Spain after the 1860s. His enthusiasm and tenacious
dedication to lifting Iberian music out of its early nineteenth-century apathy led to a volume of
musical activity in Modernist Catalunya which equaled that of its sister arts of literature, painting,
and architecture.
Lluís Benejam (1914-1968), violinist, composer, and pedagogue, composed the 1952 Sonata for
Viola and Piano, Moments musicals, in Barcelona. Because of harsh conditions in Spain, he
immigrated in 1954 to Ecuador, eventually settling in Birmingham, Alabama in 1956, where he
joined the faculty at Birmingham Southern College (Benejam also taught at the Brevard Music
Center here in North Carolina). While maintaining a love for simple, flowing melodic lines and
rhythmic allusions to the sardana (the national dance of Catalunya), the work Moments musicals
evidences the composer’s exploration of jazz harmonic colors before arriving to the United
States.
The recuperation and publication of his entire compositional output is currently overseen by
Elisenda Climent of Clivis Publications in Barcelona.
The violinist, composer, and orchestral director Eduard Toldrà (1895-1962) is a special figure
among Catalan artists. He heard and met many of the great violinists of the day (Ysaÿe, Kreisler,
Thibaud, and Crickboom) in Barcelona and became a fine player himself. Pau Casals invited him
to lead his own orchestra, L’orquestra Pau Casals, as concertmaster and later as assistant
director. After the Civil War, Toldrà all but lost his motivation to compose, and instead channeled
his energies into orchestral conducting. He founded Municipal Orchestra of Barcelona, flourishing
today under the new name Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya.
Everything artistic he set out to do seemed destined for aesthetic success, and his avid love of
poetry led him to compose the Sis sonets (Six Sonnets) in 1922, inspired by poetic texts of some
of the finest writers in Catalunya. Practically all the poets represented in these six short
compositions had won highest awards in Barcelona’s Jocs Florals, (a Gothic contest for poets
dating from an Occitan and Catalan troubadour tradition of the early fourteenth century and
reinstated in Barcelona in 1859).
Each of Toldrà’s musical sonnets bears the name (and includes the text) of the poetry that
inspired the composition:
I. El sonetí de la rosada (Dew-drop Sonnet)
II. Ave Maria
III. Les birbadores (The Gleaner Women)
IV. Oració al maig (Prayer to the Month of May)
V. Dels quatre vents (From the Four Winds)
VI. La font (The Fount)
Flutist and composer Salvador Brotons (b. 1959) studied at the Municipal Conservatory of
Barcelona before earning the DMA at Florida State University. Subsequently, he taught at
Portland State University in Oregon during ten years before returning to Catalunya to assume the
directorship of both the Symphonic Orchestra of the Vallés (Sabadell) and the Symphonic
Orchestra of the Balearic Islands (Palma de Mallorca).
The Sonata for Viola was written during his last year of residence in Florida, and, true to the
musical values of so many of his countrymen, demonstrates a gift for sumptuous melodic line.
The harmonic content contains the dual influence of Brotons’ love for the music of Shostakovich
and a loyalty to his Catalan teacher, Xavier Montsalvatge.
The Andalusian composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) represents the pinnacle of all the
pedagogical aspirations of his teacher, Felip Pedrell. Pedrell had hoped to establish a Spanish, or
perhaps more precisely, Iberian, school that would equal the various schools of European
Romanticism in the nineteenth century. That hope would never quite materialize on a large scale,
yet any attempt to organize Iberian music of the 19th and 20th centuries will inevitably point in one
direction: all roads lead to Falla! His oeuvre is a succession of gems and masterpieces, treasures
that combine Iberian folk inspiration with the most sophisticated musical organization.
Catalan artists and musicians had few qualms with a radical reaction to Franco’s military and
Church-sanctioned regime following the civil war because they had had everything to lose at the
hands of the Nationalists (fascists sector). But Falla found himself, as a devout Catholic, in the
