Ethiopia's Shadow in America (1932)

by Florence Price (Little Rock, AR, 1887 – Chicago, 1953)

 

In the African-American imagination, Ethiopia served as a symbol of freedom.  One of the oldest Christian countries in the world, it was never colonized—in fact, it dealt a crushing blow to the invading Italian army in 1896, giving inspiration and hope to Black people everywhere.  The name Ethiopia could stand for the entire African continent, celebrating the courage and resilience of its people.

 

Florence Price addressed Black history and Black culture in many of her compositions. During her lifetime, she achieved considerable success as the first African American woman to have a piece performed by a major orchestra. Yet after her death her music was all but forgotten, until 2009 (more than half a century after her death), when a cache of virtually unknown scores was discovered in the attic of the house where she used to live. This amazing find sparked a veritable Price renaissance, as more and more music-lovers are becoming acquainted with the impeccable musical technique and  great melodic richness of her works.  Together with her contemporaries William Grant Still and William Dawson, she put Antonín Dvořák's advice, given some 40 years earlier, into practice:  the Czech master thought that American composers should life up the traditions of their own communities to create a new national style in art music.

           

Ethiopia's Shadow in America was written in 1932, around the same time as the first of Price's four symphonies.  It could well be called another symphony in miniature, one whose three brief, interconnected movements offer a portrait of her cultural heritage, and captures the spirit of African American folk music.

           

Price gave the three movements of her work the following programmatic titles:

 

I. The Arrival of the Negro in America when first brought here as a slave – (Introduction and Allegretto)

II. His Resignation and Faith – (Andante)

III. His Adaptation – (Allegro) – A fusion of his native and acquired impulses.

 

This sketch of a program, which spans an arc from suffering to hope and final fulfillment, fits in well with the fast-slow-fast outline of a traditional symphony, and Price gave poignant expression to each stage on this historic journey.

 

Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, “Romantic”

By Anton Bruckner (Ansfelden, Austria, 1824 – Vienna, 1896)

 

The cornerstone of Anton Bruckner’s existence was his strong, unwavering Catholic faith, which determined the direction of his evolution as a composer. He spent his formative years in the monastery of St. Florian in Upper Austria, a sumptuous architectural complex that is one of the glories of Austrian Baroque architecture. It has often been suggested that the grandiosity of St. Florian had a direct impact on the development of Bruckner’s artistic outlook. But the vast spaces in Bruckner’s musical edifices are often filled out with ornamental elements evoking the countryside around the monastery:  echoes of Austrian folk music and the works of Franz Schubert (himself deeply influenced by folk music) account for more than a few building blocks in Bruckner’s expansive cathedrals in sound.  To listen to a Bruckner symphony, then, is to experience the composer putting those blocks on top of one another until the building stands before us in all its splendor. 

 

Like many Bruckner symphonies, No. 4 begins with soft string tremolos (very rapid note repeats) before a theme emerges from the mist.  The gentle inequality of the so-called “Bruckner rhythm” (in which the first half of the measure is divided into two and the second half into three:  pampam-papapam) ensures continuity and coherence through much of the movement, interrupted only momentarily by the Schubertian second theme. 

 

In his influential book The Essence of Bruckner (1967), composer Robert Simpson wrote about the second movement:  “The Andante has something of the veiled funeral march about it, as if it were dreamt; sometimes we seem close to it, even involved, sometimes we seem to see it from so great a distance that it appears almost to stand still.”  Long-breathed singing melodies, often featuring the cellos and violas and accompanied by a steady pulse, are “the essence of Bruckner” in this movement.  The winds amplify the string melodies but do not actually come into their own until the final repeat of the themes, at which point the “veil” comes off and the melodies receive the “royal” treatment from the entire orchestra.  Then a sudden diminuendo (decrease in volume) brings back the mystery in a brief and subdued coda.

 

The third movement is often referred to as the “hunting” scherzo, on account of the vigorous horn calls that open it.  The brass clearly dominates this movement which, like other Bruckner scherzos, features thematic development as complex as any first-movement sonata form.  The grandiosity of the scherzo contrasts with the rustic simplicity of the Trio, a Ländler dance in the best Schubertian tradition.  As always, the scherzo is repeated in its entirety.

 

Bruckner’s symphonic scheme placed almost superhuman demands on the finale.  It had to serve as summation and culmination, the capstone to a magnificent symphonic edifice, surpassing in import and complexity three earlier movements which were already quite substantial. 

 

In the Fourth Symphony, Bruckner was still grappling with the finale problem that he was to solve so brilliantly in the Fifth.  Commentators have noticed a certain lack of continuity in the finale of the Fourth: occasionally, the musical process nearly grinds to a halt in what seem like temporary losses of momentum. Some may see these moments of doubt as structural weaknesses, others as portrayals of a human weakness; sometimes there may be bumps on the road to salvation.  In any event, Bruckner finally manages to put the pieces back together so the glorious conclusion of the symphony is not in jeopardy.  At the very end, the horn call that opened the first movement returns one final time to remind us of the journey we have just completed.

 

Bruckner himself had to travel a “bumpy road” before the Fourth Symphony reached its audience.  Many of his symphonies exist in multiple versions, but in no other instance are the differences between the versions greater than in the case of the Fourth.  The first version (1874), never performed or published until 1975, is a vastly different work from the 1878-80 revision that we will be hearing this weekend.  In the place of the “hunting” scherzo, it contained an entirely different movement.  The slow movement and especially the finale, though sharing the same basic thematic material, were so thoroughly reworked in 1878-80 as to be barely recognizable.  Even this version was not the composer's last word, however:  another reworking occurred in 1888, one in which Bruckner received assistance from two of his students.  To this day, most conductors prefer the 1878-80 version, and it was in this form that the symphony conquered the world.