A new batch of program notes for the Dallas Symphony.
Category Archives: Program Notes
Hitchcock composers, Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Herrmann with Alfred Hitchcock
Long time, no blog post. I’m pleased to report that I’m now writing program annotations for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, in addition to my beloved St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Here is my first assignment, for their Pops program: a concert featuring some of Hitchcock’s finest composers, including the immortal Bernard Herrmann, on whom I have developed a late-life crush. In unrelated news, I have a new dog named Edith. She is absolutely perfect in every way.
Click to access hitchcock_-_insert_6_final.pdf
Kabalevsky, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Shostakovich
Here is a link to my program notes for the final St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra performance of the season:
The concert takes place at Powell Hall on Saturday, May 18, at 7:00 p.m.
Tickets are free, with a $1 service charge. Ordering information is here:
http://www.stlsymphony.org/youthorchestra/concerts.aspx
There were last-minute space constraints with the YO program notes, which often happens, so the introduction to the Debussy piece got cut. (I understand why–it was the longest essay, even though it is by no means the longest work on the program–so this was the most logical paragraph to remove, and one I probably would have chosen myself if I’d been told to cut for space.) In the interest of completion, though, I’m pasting it here:
Like so many composers before and after him, Claude Debussy turned to literature for musical ideas, and the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé was a particularly rich source. The men were not only friends; they were kindred spirits in their respective art forms. Both were preoccupied with the liminal, with elusive thresholds and ineffable states, with spaces and silences. Mallarmé’s irreducible, intentionally ambiguous verse jump-started postmodernism, anticipating the linguistic theories of Derrida, Kristeva, and Lacan. Debussy, for his part, revolutionized concert music with his setting of Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un faune (“The Afternoon of a Faun”), expanding the limits of tonality and symphonic structure. As the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez observed, the flute of the titular faun “brought new breath to the art of music.”
I’m not an early riser. I just haven’t fallen asleep yet.
For at least 10 years, well-meaning people have been telling me that I need a blog. For professional reasons. Seeing as how I call myself a freelance writer. Sometimes these well-meaning people even put me on the spot and ask me where they can read my so-called writing. I just wave airily and say, “Oh, you could always google René Spencer Saller, and see what comes up.”
In truth, I mostly hate blogs, and it seemed very likely that I would hate my own, if I had one. But early this morning, plagued by insomnia, I thought, well, why not? It’s free, after all, and it’s easier if everything is organized in one place.
So far all I’ve done is upload a bunch of links. They’re all on the Links to Published Writing page above, haphazardly organized. Click at your peril.
I am also a freelance editor, but that’s far too boring to write about. I’m fairly good at it, and I’ve been doing it professionally for more than 20 years now.
René Spencer Saller 