Adam Glaser

Sound Visions: Music and Art
The South Shore Symphony
St. Agnes Cathedral, Rockville Centre, NY 
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Program Notes by Adam Glaser

This evening’s program, “Sound Visions: Music and Art,” features four orchestral works that share a measure of inspiration with the visual arts. Two of the four pieces – Franz Liszt’s Battle of the Huns, and Ottorino Respighi’s Church Windows – are inspired by stories from Christianity. Not coincidentally, both Liszt and Respighi feature the pipe organ, suggesting that they intended (or at least hoped) for these works to be performed in churches. The South Shore Symphony is grateful to Michael Bower and the entire St. Agnes Cathedral community for hosting us in this beautiful venue, and we join them in welcoming you to tonight’s performance. 

We begin with the overture to the opera The Magic Flute by the Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791).  In the late 18th century, opera provided the quintessential example of sound inspired by images. With its fairytale story and colorful cast of characters (e.g. a bird-catcher!), the libretto of The Magic Flute offered an unusually rich font of visual inspiration for the composer, and it has continued to inspire artists ever since. In 1966, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned French artist Marc Chagall (1887 – 1985) to design its new production of the opera, resulting in the sets, costumes and signature 1967 lithograph pictured here.

The opera Goyescas started in 1911 as a collection of six piano
pieces composed by Spanish composer Enrique Granados
(1867 – 1916) after paintings of Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828). The fifth piece (Balada) was inspired by Goya’s Capricho No. 10: El amor y la muerte (Love and death), pictured here. Later, Goyescas was developed into a one-act opera, and the evocative “Intermezzo” featured on our program was added just before the premiere.

German composer Franz Liszt’s (1811 – 1886) symphonic poem, Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns), is inspired by the similarly named painting by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805-1874). In his preface to the score, Liszt writes of his ambition to depict the dichotomy between “two supernatural and contrasting lights, by means of two motives…one should represent the fury of the barbarous passion… while the other represents…the virtues irradiating from Christianity.” Kaulbach’s painting (see next page) is thought to tell the story of the 451 AD battle between Christians and Huns, in which “the fighting was so fierce that the spirits of those killed in battle are said to have drifted upwards towards heaven and continued the battle in the air for three days and nights” (Georg Predota, interlude.hk). Liszt devotes the first half of the piece to the battle itself; the music is peppered with jagged dotted rhythms in the strings and woodwinds and fueled by rising triplet-fueled “war-cries” in the brass (much like the “charge!” prompt we hear at baseball games today). Eventually, the pipe organ enters serenely with the ancient church chant, Crux Fidelis (Faithful Cross). Out of this calm texture, the first violins emerge floating upward, followed by the oboe and flute, perhaps evoking the souls of the deceased rising into the heavens. The music that follows -- uplifting, victorious -- celebrates the triumph of light and Christianity over darkness and barbarism.

The final piece on our program also takes inspiration from
Christianity, but not necessarily from a specific story or image.  In fact, despite its title, none of the four movements in Church Windows represents an actual scene or stained-glass window. Rather, the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879 - 1936) was inspired – according to his wife Elsa’s memoirs -- by “the mystic exultation of profound religious feeling.” Like Granados’ Goyescas opera, Church Windows started as a series of piano works, Three Preludes on Gregorian Melodies. Following addition of a fourth movement and the orchestration of the entire work, Respighi’s friend Claudio Guastalla contributed the following titles and poetry:

1. The Flight into Egypt: the little caravan proceeded through the desert, in the starry night, carrying the treasure of the World.
2. St. Michael Archangel: And a great battle was made in the Heavens: Michael and his Angels fought with the dragon, and fought the dragon and his angels. But these did not prevail, and there was no more place for them in heaven.
3. The Matins of St. Clare: But Jesus Christ her bridegroom, not wishing to leave her thus disconsolate, had her miraculously carried by the angels to the Church of Sancto Francesco, and to be at the whole function of Matins.
4. St. Gregory the Great: Ecce Pontifex Maximus! Bless the
Lord...Sing the hymn to God. Alleluia!

Speaking of St. Gregory, he is the saint pictured in this beautiful stained-glass window image that is part of the St. Agnes Cathedral. As the cathedral’s website explains, St. Gregory is “depicted wearing papal tiara and holding sheet music as a symbol of his collection of simple chants and melodies we now refer to as Gregorian Chant.” 

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Download the full-color PDF of these program notes, including full-color images of the artwork, from the link below.