Forgotten Heroes Archives - Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra

April 23, 2019August 11, 2019

AFRO-AMERICAN SYMPHONY by William Grant Still, 1895-1978

William Grant Still is the most influential African-American composer of the early 20th century. He was born in Woodville, Mississippi, in 1895 and started his musical career as an oboist in the pit orchestra of an All-Black musical, “Shute Along”, in 1921. He began composing when he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, this during the era of Jim Crow segregation when Oberlin was one of just a few major schools to admit black students.

His 1931 “Afro-American Symphony” was one of the first works by a black composer to be performed by a major symphony orchestra. Its first performance met with controversy in the press because some critics felt the piece belonged with jazz groups like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the group that premiered Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” There certainly is that distinct classical jazz sound and feel of Gershwin’s music in this symphony. In Still’s own words he “wanted not to portray the higher type of colored Americans, but the sons of the soil, who still retain so many of the traits peculiar to their African forebears and who have not responded completely to the transforming effect of progress.”

April 16, 2019August 11, 2019

THE SEA HAWK by Erich Wolfgang Korngold 1897-1957

The Sea Hawk, 1940 (loosely based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in May of 1897 in Brno, Austria-Hungary. He was a child prodigy and son of eminent music critic Julius Korngold. By his early teens he had composed a successful ballet (Der Schneemann — The Snowman), a piano sonata played by Arthur Schnabel throughout Europe, and two operas conducted by Bruno Walter. By age 23 he became the conductor of the Hamburg Opera, and by 33 he was a professor of music at the Vienna State Academy.

At the request of his Austrian friend, director Max Reinhardt, and due to the rise of the Nazi regime, Korngold moved to the U.S. in 1934 to write music for Hollywood films. His first score was for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935). His next work was for “Captain Blood” (1935), which helped boost the career of Errol Flynn, a Hollywood newcomer and an actor Korngold would work with in years to come. Korngold received an Oscar for both “Anthony Adverse” (1936) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938). Overall, he wrote music for sixteen Hollywood films. Along with Max Steiner (“King Kong”, “Casablanca”, “Gone With The Wind”) and Alfred Newman (“Mark of Zorro”, “Wuthering Heights”, “Hunchback of Notre Dame”), he was one of the founders of great film music.

April 9, 2019August 11, 2019

OVERTURE IN C MAJOR by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel 1805-1847

Fanny Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany, the oldest of four children of a distinguished family headed by Abraham Mendelssohn. Her brother Felix was, as was she, a musical prodigy and truly gifted composer. She was first given piano instruction by her mother and was taught in the “Berliner-Bach” tradition. By the age of thirteen Mendelssohn could play all twenty-four preludes from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier by memory. Her brother Felix grew to discover she was a far superior pianist than was he. People began to comment, “She plays like a man,” which was the highest praise for a woman at that time.

Mendelssohn was limited by the prevailing attitudes of the day toward women. Her father wrote in 1820, “Music will perhaps become a profession for your brother Felix, but for you it can and must be only an ornament.” Felix, however, was much more supportive of his sister’s music and had a number of her pieces published under his own name. She continued to compose privately even after she married painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829.