|
These pages contain program notes written for Redwood
Symphony. You are free to use the information in your own program
notes. If you quote me directly, please attribute it. Thanks!
These notes were edited, amended, and otherwise
improved by Eric Kujawsky, Peter Stahl, and Doug Wyatt.
Barbara Heninger
|
Igor Stravinsky
Greeting Prelude
During a rehearsal of Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony at Aspen in 1950, Igor
Stravinsky was surprised when the orchestra, at his downbeat, responded with the
strains of "Happy Birthday." It turned out the players were honoring a
fellow musician who had just had a child.
But Stravinsky, as he explained later, "quite failed to 'get it,' and
for some time I considered myself the victim of a practical joke."
He must have eventually enjoyed the joke, however, because the next year
wrote his own variations on the familiar tune by Mildred Hill in a series of
canons. And finally, for a concert honoring Pierre Monteaux's 80th birthday on
April 4, 1955, he created Greeting Prelude. It apparently went over well,
although Stravinsky, who thought "Happy Birthday" was in the public
domain, was surprised to find out that royalties must still be paid to the
copyright holder for any performance. In honor of Stravinsky's own 80th birthday
in 1962, Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic in the piece during one
of his televised Young People's Concerts, thus bringing the birthday joke around
full circle.
Greeting Prelude is an energetic and quintessentially Stravinskian take on
Hill's ditty, full of playful counterpoint and harmonic surprises. His
disjointed treatment of the original tune, with major seventh leaps, make it
sound almost like a serial or 12-tone version. As Bernstein said, "you can
never mistake that Stravinsky sound." You won't mistake Redwood Symphony's
own unique sound as they perform the piece at today's 20th birthday celebration.
October, 2005
|