I.  Funeral Music

 II.  Whirlwind

III.  Dreadnought

John Henry: The Steel Driving Man

A West Virginia Legend retold by

S.E. Schlosser

Now John Henry was a mighty man, yes sir. He was born a slave in the 1840’s but was freed after the war. He went to work as a steel-driver for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, don’t ya know. And John Henry was the strongest, the most powerful man working the rails.

John Henry, he would spend his day’s drilling holes by hitting thick steel spikes into rocks with his faithful shaker crouching close to the hole, turning the drill after each mighty blow. There was no one who could match him, though many tried.

Well, the new railroad was moving along right quick, thanks in no little part to the mighty John Henry. But looming right smack in its path was a might enemy - the Big Bend Mountain. Now the big bosses at the C&O Railroad decided that they couldn’t go through it - drilling right into the heart of the mountain.

A thousand men would lose their lives before the great enemy was conquered. It took three long years, and before it was done the ground inside the mountain was filled with makeshift, sandy graves. The new tunnels were filled with smoke and dust. Ya couldn’t see no-how and could hardly breathe. But John Henry, he worked tirelessly, drilling with a 14-pound hammer, and going 10 to 12 feet in one workday. No one else could match him.

Then one day a salesman came along to the camp. He had a steam powered drill and claimed it could out-drill any man. Well, they set up a contest then and there between John Henry and that there drill. The foreman ran that newfangled steam-drill. John Henry, he just pulled out two 20-pound hammers, one in each hand. They drilled and drilled, dust rising everywhere. The men were howling and cheering. At the end of 35 minutes, John Henry had drilled two seven-foot holes - a total of fourteen feet, while the steam drill had only drilled one nine-foot hole.

John Henry held up his hammers in triumph! The men shouted and cheered. The noise was so loud, it took a moment for the men to realize that John Henry was tottering. Exhausted, the mighty man crashed to the ground, the hammers rolling from his grasp. The crowd went silent as the foreman rushed to his side. But it was too late. A blood vessel had burst in his brain. The greatest driller in the C&O Railroad was dead.

Some folks say that John Henry’s likeness is carved right into the rock inside the Big Bend Tunnel. And if you walk to the edge of the blackness of the tunnel, sometimes you can hear the sound of two 20-pound hammers drilling their way to victory over the machine.

 Dreadnought: a total absence of fear * invincible * a name given to a class of heavily armed battleships in the early part of the 20th Century. These are feelings and images I had in mind as I composed this music for concert band.

This piece is essentially informed by the lessons provided by my two small children who were one year (Ronan) and three years (Adelle) at the time I started this composition. Ronan had no fears. It was something of which he had no concept. He would happily walk in front of a bus or get in a cage with a tiger.

Adelle was investing new fears daily, trying them on, discarding some, keeping others. How did she decide these things? Where do we get our fears? What if most of our fears are invented? What if fear is a lie? What would the music sound like?

Jeffery Brooks was born in Minneapolis and began studying music at an early age, eventually studying at Tanglewood and Yale University where he earned a masters and doctorate in composition. His teachers included Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Gilbert Amy and Alan Forte.

Brooks’ compositions have been performed extensively and he has received numerous grants and commissions. As an advocate of new music he served as Artistic Director of the American Composers Forum in the early 1990’s and later co-created/produced a radio program called The Composer’s Voice for Minnesota and National Public Radio.

Currently Brooks owns a small studio in Minneapolis where he composes, records, and digitally preserves and restores audio archives.

Program note and composer biography researched and compiled by Elisabeth Jackson