Adolphus Hailstork, Essay for Strings
Janice Hamer, For the Uprooted
Richard Strauss, Metamorphosen, Study for 23 Solo Strings
In Memoriam is an opportunity for those who mourn the missing to celebrate them through the beauty and poignancy of classical music. From Adolphus Hailstork, whose style blends musical ideas from both the African American and European traditions, you’ll be treated to Essay for Strings. This one-movement composition is a tribute to colleague Glen Hull. It is based on his initials, G. H., which in music are represented by the pitches of G and B-natural, heard throughout the piece.
Janice Hamer’s For the Uprooted (2016) is a nine-minute threnody for solo cello and string orchestra, inspired by the plight of refugees worldwide—their hardships reflected in the keening of the cello, the pounding strings suggesting fleeing feet, the concluding gasps. The work coalesces around a fragmentary quotation of a Mozart concerto, a melody conveying love and hope.
Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen is scored for ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses. Composed during the closing months of World War II, from August 1944 to March 1945, the piece mirrors the agony, chaos, and destruction of the time.Towards the end, you will hear several bars of the funeral march theme from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony quoted explicitly in the bass part, accompanied by the words “In Memoriam!” in the score.
Dr. Hailstork is one of America’s pre-eminent African American composers and you might have even heard his piece ‘Fanfare on Amazing Grace’ performed as a part of President Biden’s Inauguration in January; marking only the second time that music by a contemporary African American composer has been performed at a presidential inauguration.
Dr. Hailstork grew up in Albany, New York and currently lives in Norfolk, Virginia where he is Professor Emeritus of Music at Old Dominion University after retiring on Jan. 1, 2021. He completed his Undergraduate degree at Howard University, one of America’s most well known Historically Black Universities, his Master’s at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and his Doctorate from Michigan State University. Dr. Hailstork is also one of the few American composers who had the opportunity to study with one of classical music’s most infamous pedagogues, composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger.
Considered one of the leading composers of the late Romantic and early Modern eras.
He began his musical studies at the age of four followed by theory and orchestration lessons at age six, when he began to compose.
His father was a horn player who performed with the Court Opera in Munich and also taught professionally; it was through his musical connections and guidance that Strauss encountered his earliest musical influences such as Felix Mendelsohn and Robert Schumann as evident in his early symphonic works.
Strauss is most notably known for his later style of writing, featuring his advanced harmonic style characteristic of late German romanticism.
This concert is sponsored by Rosalie Lijinsky, in memory of William Lijinsky, a founder of the National Philharmonic, and co-sponsored by Ruth Berman
A special thanks to our 2020-21 Season Sponsors: Jean and Paul Dudek; Ed Grossman and Rochelle Stanfield; Ted Mirecki, NatPhil Board Member; Martha Newman; Doug and Emily Jacobson; and Potter Violins.
