Fanfare for Brass and Percussion*
           Winner, Max Bragado-Darman Composer Competition

           Nocturnes
           Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
           Composed: 1897-1899

Nuages, Fêtes, Sirènes
Few composers of the ante-World War I generation have had a more lasting influence on the course and manner of 20th century music than Claude Debussy. His youth was spent in a milieu which was convinced of the inevitableness of German musical domination; but he was the first composer of importance to resist those tenacious precepts, glorying in the acquisition of the epithet musicien francais. He was a pioneer in applying the maxim that chord structure and chord movement could be governed by principals of sonority rather than by the intellectual formulas which had organized music for many years. His music, much of it almost a century old now, is as fresh and attractive as it was at its first hearing, and there is scarcely a composer of our day who does not owe to Debussy certain aspects of his own music.

Debussy composed his Nocturnes early in his career (1897-1899), at a time when he was still stimulated by the success of his Quartet and, especially, his Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faun (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), both written only four years earlier. At the first performance of Nocturnes, for the Concert Lamoureux, December 9, 1900, only the first two movements of what was to be eventually a triptych were played: Nuages (Clouds) and Fêtes (Festivals). The composer, despite his professed aversion to explanatory notes, did attempt to clarify his use of the title Nocturnes:

 . . . it is not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests. Nuages renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white. Fêtes gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession a dazzling fantastic vision which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged with it. But the background remains persistently the same: The festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm.

Nuages (Clouds), the primary movement of Nocturnes, gives vivid illustration of all that Debussy said. In general, the strings are the "immutable aspect" of the sky, being almost omnipresent after the first few measures. Their role is a background one, but often each string section is divided into several parts so that the illusion of increased sonority is produced. The "motion of the clouds" is simulated in the wind choirs which move in monotonously symmetrical patterns of six quarter notes per measure, grouping sometimes in 3 + 3 patterns, sometimes in 2 + 2 + 2, after the fashion of the old French courante. The "flashes of light" are provided by brief motifs in English horn or French horn.

Fêtes (Festivals), the second movement, commences with a sudden change of pace: brisk, strongly marked triplet rhythm persists until the episode of the "procession" cuts in with a quasi-martial "two" measure, established and maintained by the persistent kettle-drum beat. As the composer suggests, this vibrant episode merges with the returning festival scene, through the simple device of resumed triplet rhythm. Throughout this tableau, the luminous atmosphere is simulated in the freely shifting tonality (key) which avoids the processed modulations of typical 19th century music; keys are freely juxtaposed the one to the other. Much that was to be indigenous to later impressionistic music is heard in embryonic form in this early Debussy masterpiece.

Sirènes (the Sirens of mythology), the final movement, is scored for full orchestra and female voices singing wordless chant. According to Debussy, "The sea and its innumbreable rhythms; then amid th ebillows silvered b th emon, the mysterious soung of the sirens is hear; it laughs and passes. The main theme which rises and falls is built on just two tones over varying harmonies.

Louise Cuyler

           Symphony No. 1 in D Major, "The Titan"
           Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
           Composed: 1889

Gustav Mahler was the last of a long line of Austro-German symphonists which started with Joseph Haydn shortly after the middle of the 18th century. To this remarkable stream of gifted musicians, the world owes a major portion of its orchestral literature, for seldom has a race of artists left so rich a legacy. Wagner (who was not a symphonist) was alive and almost deified during Mahler's youth, and traces of his powerful ethos are felt in the younger man's music ?? but what composer working during the later 19th century escaped the aura of that Titan? That Mahler was equally gifted and active as conductor and composer imparts a welcome practicality to all his orchestral scores, complicated though they may be. His nine completed symphonies match Beethoven's in number, and an unfinished Tenth might have exceeded the accomplishment of the icon were it not for Mahler's premature death.

In the United States especially, Mahler's music was somewhat neglected for half a century after his death, often disparaged in the general rejection of the whole post-romantic German tradition. This was occasioned largely by the interest in new systems and cacophony espoused by the generations between the Two Great Wars. The present Mahler "renaissance" was started by Leonard Bernstein during the 1960s, when he played, recorded, and championed all Mahler's symphonies.

Compared to his later symphonies, Mahler's First could be described as terse, even modest. But compared to much of the music of his time, even the imposing symphonies of Brahms, it emerges as of heroic proportions. Writing the First Symphony occupied Mahler at intervals between 1885 and 1888. (The fifty-two-year-old Brahms was just finishing his Fourth and last symphony as Mahler undertook his First).

Mahler's First Symphony had its première at Budapest in 1889, titled then as a symphonic poem in two parts. Five years later, played at Weimar, the same composition was programmed as a symphony subtitled "The Titan," probably after Paul Richter's romantic novel of the same name. In the subsequent publication of the work, there were no programmatic titles affixed to the subsections of the piece; but the labels associated with them by several of Mahler's biographers indicated that the symphony may have certain autobiographical connotations.

The first part, often entitled "From the Days of Youth," opens slowly with an extended prelude in which the strings sound a multiple note "A" while the woodwinds have a series of descending fourth intervals that soon generate a theme. The second and principal portion of the part borrows the melody of a Lied, "As I Walked Abroad This Morn." The third and closing section becomes a turbulent Scherzo in A Major, but with a Trio in the vividly contrasting key of F Major.

The second part was originally called Commedia Umana (Human Comedy), its two sections subtitled "The Hunter's Funeral Procession" and Dall' Inferno al Paradiso. The first section combines the old French canon Frère Jacques with a gypsy-like melody in the wind choir. Another borrowed Mahler Lied "My Darling's Blue Eyes" intervenes before a return of Frère Jacques and a quiet closure.

A cymbal crash followed by a stormy tutti signals the "infernal" opening of the final section as new ideas appear, followed by recall of principal motifs from previous sections (this recall of previous materials as a means of unity is a favorite device of many 19th century composers). A triumphant climax apparently signals the approach to Paradiso.

Louise Cuyler