Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite (1913)
Karl King (1891-1971)
Ed. Schissel

The Leaves are Falling (1964)
Warren Benson (1924-2005)

Tyler Hamilton, graduate assistant conductor

Lincolnshire Posy (1937)
Percy Grainger (1882-1961)

1. Lisbon
2. Horkstow Grange
3. Rufford Park Poachers
4. The Brisk Young Sailor
5. Lord Melbourne
6. Lost Lady Found

Come Sunday (2018)
Omar Thomas  (b. 1984)

All notes courtesy of the United States “President’s Own” Marine Band

Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite

Raised in Canton, Ohio, Karl L. King was undoubtedly influenced both by the rich tradition of band music of the Midwest as well as the most popular form of entertainment at the time, the circus. Very much a self-made man, King began his musical education with the purchase of a cornet, paid for with money earned from a paper route. As a young musician, he played several brass instruments as well as the piano, but ultimately settled on the baritone, which he played in several circus bands between 1910 and 1913, among them the Barnum and Bailey Band. It was during this time that King became well known for his ability to compose circus marches quickly (often by oil lamp in crowded circus tents). At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were very few compositions that fit the rhythm and pacing of circus performances, and composers were in demand. King composed more than 188 marches and rousing circus “screamers,” and he was considered to have done for the circus march what John Philip Sousa did for the patriotic march. King began a long conducting career in 1914, initially directing circus bands and ultimately becoming the Bandmaster of the Fort Dodge Municipal Band, all the while continuing to compose.

King was performing with the Barnum and Bailey Band in 1913 under Ned Brill when Brill asked him to write a special march. “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite,” dedicated to Brill, became King’s most famous march as well as the theme music of the circus. The piece unsurprisingly has a lively baritone part and, like most of his other circus marches, is considered to be among the more difficult compositions in the body of American march music.

The Leaves are Falling

Although now considered one of the most poignant homages in the concert band repertoire, when Warren Benson began composing The Leaves Are Falling in 1963 his only goal was to address a long-standing deficiency of band repertoire: the lack of substantial music. Benson had observed that most band works were relatively brief in duration, and that even the longer works tended to be collections of short movements. He made the conscious decision to compose a work that was characterized by longer unbroken lines, judiciously controlled climactic points, appropriate periods of denouement, and a sense of timelessness for musicians and audiences alike. Another of Benson’s compositional goals at the time was to create a quasi-montage technique in which two or more ideas are combined, an aural equivalent to the experience of seeing the reflection of an image on the surface of glass while simultaneously seeing the image behind the glass. 

Benson hoped to employ these compositional techniques in a work he began in 1963, a composition commissioned by the Kappa Gamma Psi fraternity, and that would eventually become The Leaves Are Falling. The composer had completed the first half of the still unnamed work when he received the news of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November. In the composer’s words:

The news really devastated us. It turned me toward this piece I had begun where I was still trying to figure out what to use for the second musical material, the known factor or quote. I had written the first half straight through in a sketch earlier. I thought then that I should choose something as some kind of memorial to Kennedy because I was so emotionally involved with this news, although I didn’t feel that I wanted to say anything about it in the title or notes. I guess it was on the next Monday that one of my percussion students, Ruth Komanoff, who shared an interest in poetry with me, brought in some poems for me to see, one of which was “Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke, which just suited the moment perfectly. The first line just captivated me as a title because it seemed to be society was feeling that way . . . like everything was going to pot and the upbeat spirit of the Kennedy administration, at least as the people of my generation were concerned, had just been blown away.

Benson settled on the hymn tune “Ein feste Burg” as the ideal second motive for the montage effect in The Leaves Are Falling because it was familiar and instantly conveyed the concepts of universal faith and spiritual healing. Much to his delight, as he spent more time with the hymn tune he found more and more points of connection between the ancient melody and the material he had composed for the first half of the work. He cross-pollinated the two ideas, revising some of his original material to highlight these “affinities,” and also allowing his music to provide some unusual harmonizations for the later hymn statements. By his own admission, Benson was wrought with emotion while composing The Leaves Are Falling, but found the work fulfilling and cathartic.

AUTUMN

The leaves are falling, falling as from way off,
as though far gardens withered in the skies;
they are falling with denying gestures.

And in the nights the heavy earth is falling
from all the stars down into loneliness.

We all are falling. This hand falls.
And look at others: it is in them all.

And yet there is One who holds this falling
endlessly gently in His hands.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Lincolnshire Posy

Although Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Australia, he spent the majority of his professional life in England and America. His mother Rose was an accomplished pianist, and thus Grainger’s earliest musical studies were kept within the family. He showed tremendous promise at the keyboard and began a professional career as a concert pianist in England in 1901. During this time, Grainger also composed feverishly and began to take particular interest in the native folk songs of his new homeland. In 1905, he set about in Brigg, Lincolnshire, on the first of what would become countless trips to the English countryside to collect and document the tunes often sung by the native residents. First on paper, and then with the newly developed wax cylinder, Grainger eventually documented more than 700 English and Danish folk songs. He delighted in the nuances and “imperfections” rendered by each singer and arranged dozens of these tunes for various ensembles and otherwise included them in his original compositions.

After the outbreak of the First World War, Grainger moved to New York in 1914 and called America his home for the remainder of his life. In 1917, Grainger decided to join the U.S. Army in support of the war effort. He served with the Coast Artillery Band until 1919, playing both oboe and saxophone (which he had taught himself to play, among many other instruments). This was Grainger’s first true experience with a concert band, and he was immediately taken with the unique sound and capabilities of the ensemble. This encounter proved to be the beginning of Grainger’s long and fruitful relationship with the band, resulting in dozens of significant works for the medium. When he died in White Plains, New York, in 1961, he left behind a collection of works that became the cornerstone of the concert band repertoire.

Lincolnshire Posy was Grainger’s seminal work for wind band. In a colorful and remarkably extensive 1939 program note included with the score, the composer describes the inspiration for this collection of folk song settings:

“Lincolnshire Posy,” as a whole work, was conceived and scored by me direct for wind band early in 1937. Five, out of the six, movements of which it is made up, existed in no other finished form, though most of these movements (as is the case with almost all my compositions and settings, for whatever medium) were indebted, more or less, to unfinished sketches for a variety of mediums covering many years (in this case the sketches date from 1905–1937). These indebtednesses are stated in the scores. The version for two pianos was begun a half-year later after the completion of the work for wind band.

This bunch of “musical wildflowers” (hence the title “Lincolnshire Posy”) is based on folksongs collected in Lincolnshire, England (one noted by Miss Lucy E. Broadwood; the other five noted by me, mainly in the years 1905–1906, and with the help of the phonograph), and the work is dedicated to the old folksingers who sang so sweetly to me. Indeed, each number is intended to be a kind of musical portrait of the singer who sang its underlying melody—a musical portrait of the singer’s personality no less than of his habits of song—his regular or irregular wonts of rhythm, his preference for gaunt or ornately arabesqued delivery, his contrasts of legato and staccato, his tendency towards breadth or delicacy of tone.

For these folksingers were kings and queens of song! No concert singer I have ever heard approached these rural warblers in variety of tone-quality, range of dynamics, rhythmic resourcefulness and individuality of style. For while our concert singers (dull dogs that they are—with their monotonous mooing and bellowing between mf and f, and with never a pp to their name!) can show nothing better (and often nothing as good) as slavish obedience to the tyrannical behests of composers, our folksingers were lords in their own domain—were at once performers and creators. For they bent all songs to suit their personal artistic taste and personal vocal resources: singers with wide vocal ranges spreading their intervals over two octaves, singers with small vocal range telescoping their tunes by transposing awkward high notes an octave down….

…It is obvious that all music lovers (except a few “cranks”) loathe genuine folksong and shun it like the plague. No genuine folksong ever becomes popular—in any civilized land. Yet these same music-lovers entertain a maudlin affection for the word “folksong” (coined by my dear friend Mrs. Edmund Woodhouse to translate German “volkslied”) and the ideas it conjures up. So they are delighted when they chance upon half-breed tunes like “Country Gardens” and “Shepherd’s Hey” (on the borderline between folksong and unfolkish “popular song”) that they can sentimentalise over (as being folksongs), yet can listen to without suffering the intense boredom aroused in them by genuine folksongs. Had rural England not hated its folksong this form of music would not have been in process of dying out and would not have needed to be “rescued from oblivion” by townified highbrows such as myself and my fellow-collectors. As a general rule the younger kin of the old folksingers not only hated folksong in the usual way, described above, but, furthermore, fiercely despised the folksinging habits of their old uncles and grandfathers as revealing social backwardness and illiteracy in their families. And it is true! The measure of a countryside’s richness in living folksong is the measure of its illiteracy; which explains why the United States is, to-day, the richest of all English-speaking lands in living folksong.

There are, however, some exceptions to this prevailing connection between folksong and illiteracy. Mr. Joseph Taylor, singer of “Rufford Park Poachers”—who knew more folksongs than any of my other folksingers, and sang his songs with “purer” folksong traditions—was neither illiterate nor socially backward. And it must also be admitted that he was a member of the choir of his village (Saxby-All-Saints, Lincolnshire) for over 45 years—a thing unusual in a folksinger. Furthermore his relatives—keen musicians themselves—were extremely proud of hisself-earned success underlay the jaunty contentment and skittishness of his renderings. His art shared the restless energy of his life. Some of his versions of tunes were fairly commonplace (not “Lord Melbourne,” however!), yet he never failed to invest them with a unique quaintness—by means of swift touches of swagger, heaps of added “nonsense syllables,” queer hollow vowel-sounds (doubtless due to his lack of teeth) and a jovial, jogging stick-to-it-iveness in performance. He had an amazing memory for the texts of songs. “Lord Melbourne” (actually about the Duke of Marlborough) is a genuine war-song—a rare thing in English folksong. Mrs. Thompson (the singer of “The Brisk Young Sailor”), though living in Barrow-on-Humber, North Lincolnshire, came originally from Liverpool.

The first number in my set, “Dublin Bay,” was collected under characteristic circumstances. In 1905, when I first met its singer—Mr. Deane, of Hibbaldstowe—he was in the workhouse at Brigg, N.E. Lincolnshire. I started to note down his “Dublin Bay,” but the workhouse matron asked me to stop, as Mr. Deane’s heart was very weak and the singing of the old song—which he had not sung for forty years—brought back poignant memories to him and made him burst into tears. I reluctantly desisted. But a year or so later, when I had acquired a phonograph, I returned to get Mr. Deane’s tune “alive or dead.” I thought he might as well die singing it as die without singing it.

I found him in the hospital ward of the workhouse, with a great gash in his head—he having fallen down stairs. He was very proud of his wound, and insisted that he was far too weak to sing. “All right, Mr. Deane,” I said to him, “you needn’t sing yourself; but I would like you to hear some records made by other singers in these parts.” He had not heard half a record through before he said, impulsively: “I’ll sing for you yoong mahn.” So the phonograph was propped up on his bed, and in between the second and third verse he spoke these words into the record: “It’s pleasein’ muh.” Which shows how very much folksinging is part of the folksinger’s natural life.

The last number of my set (“The Lost Lady Found”) is a real dance-song—come down to us from the days when voices, rather than instruments, held village dancers together. Miss Lucy E. Broadwood, who collected the tune, writes of its origin as follows, in her “English Traditional Songs and Carols” (Boosey & Co.):

Mrs. Hill, an old family nurse, and a native of Stamford (Lincolnshire), learned her delightful song when a child, from an old cook who danced as she sang it beating time on the stone kitchen floor with her iron pattens. The cook was thus unconsciously carrying out the original intention of the “ballad,” which is the English equivalent of the Italian “baletta,” (from ballare, “to dance”), signifying a song to dance measure, accompanied by dancing.

Come Sunday

Come Sunday is a masterful two-part composition which highlights the importance of the Hammond organ’s prominent role in the Black worship service. In the first movement, Thomas uses the influences of Johann Sebastian Bach, R&B, and jazz in the same way that the organ is used to gather the hearts and minds of the congregation to prepare them for The Word. The second movement is a frenzied journey, accentuated by clapping and tambourine beating. It features instrumental solos and culminates in a conclusion which will likely bring the audience to its feet with just as much exuberance and excitement at the end of a popular Sunday service.

Dr. Maria Fernanda Castillo, flute
Dr. Victor Chávez, Jr., clarinet
Prof. Jaren Atherholt, oboe
Prof. Ben Atherholt, bassoon
Dr. Allison Adams, saxophone
Dr. Arthur Zanin, trumpet
Dr. Katie Johnson-Webb, horn
Dr. Alex van Duuren, trombone
Dr. Alex Lapins, euphonium/tuba
Dr. Andrew Bliss, percussion
Kevin Zetina, percussion
Dr. Michael Stewart, Associate Director of Bands, Director of Athletic Bands
Dr. Fuller Lyon, Assistant Director of Bands, Assoc. Director of Athletic Bands

* = principal

Flute
Lynne-Grace Wooden
Rebecca Deal*
Sophia Dobbie
Ella Pinchok

Oboe
Matthew Barrett
Grace Davis*
Jessie Wilson

Bassoon
Ava Kroeppler*
James Carnal

Clarinet
Landon Blankenship
Grace Dobrescu
Ryder Fitzgerald
Anna Hutchinson
Nathaniel Palcone
Rafael Puga*
Bryce Neely
Troy Weatherford
Meredith Williams
Joshua Zhou

Bass Clarinet
Alex Jett

Contra Bass Clarinet
Ashley Melvin

Alto Saxophone
Sean Keenan
Alex Singleton*

Tenor Saxophone
Brooklynn Crabtree

Bari Saxophone
Benjamin Strobel

Horn
Cameron Allen
Rose Capooth
Margaret Kinzer
Ben Makins*
Aaron O’Donnell
Casey Treanor

Trumpet
Andrew Beiter*
Justin Bowers
Lauren Dodd
Matthew Dunevant
Issac Hair
Jayden Robins
Eric Xie

Tenor Trombone
Wyatt Detrick*
James Garrick
Elizabeth Greene
Thomas Long
Matthew Walker

Bass Trombone
Bryce McCracken

Euphonium
Amy Smith*
Sam Vance

Tuba
Harrison Jeffers
Cameron McKenzie*
Casey Mobley

Percussion
Anna Davis
Lydia Dodd
Chang Gao
Freddy Morales*
Burke Rivet
Trik Gass (extra)
Christopher Rosas (extra)

Piano
Stephanie Hensley

String Bass
Jack Willard

February 1, 2025
UT Conducting Workshop

February 25, 2025
Volunteer Concert Clinic/SB and CB Concert

March 13, 2025
Wind Ensemble Concert

March 27, 2025
Wind Ensemble Concert @ CBDNA National Conference

April 24, 2025
Symphonic Band and Concert Band Concert

April 27, 2025
Wind Ensemble/University Band Concert

Want to know more
about the bands at UT?
Please visit: utbands.utk.edu

We hope you enjoyed this performance. Private support from music enthusiasts enables us to improve educational opportunities and develop our student artists’ skills to their full potential. To learn more about how you can support the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music, contact Nikki Darrow, Associate Director of Advancement, (865) 974-0020 or ndarrow@utfi.org.