by William Grant Still (Woodville, MS, 1895 – Los Angeles, CA, 1978)
Duration: 6 minutes
Instrumentation: string orchestra and piano
“So simple, so sincere, so colorful. So dramatic, in its texture of tone.” Thus wrote critic Harry R. Burke in the St. Louis Globe Democrat after the 1946 premiere of William Grant Still's Bells, capturing the work's essence as well as anyone could ever hope to do. Originally written for piano and subsequently orchestrated, Bells is in two movements, “Phantom Chapel” and “Fairy Knoll.” The composer retained the piano even in the orchestral version, using the keyboard in a some brief, “bell-like” motifs complementing an expressive string melody. “Phantom Chapel” could be placed alongside Copland's “Quiet City” as an impressionistic evocation of nocturnal calm. Like Copland, Still occasionally allows the volume to rise to fortissimo, but never for very long: the music soon returns to its initial dreamlike state, where it remains to the end.
Peter Laki