Concerts > 2026-2027 Season
Looking Back
October 25, 2026
Program notes by Richard M. Kesner
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958),Toccata Marziale
Ralph Vaughan Williams is one of Great Britain’s greatest composers of the last century, whose works included operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions. He was strongly influenced by Tudor music of the 16th Century, and the English folksong. His extensive his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th Century. Vaughan Williams came to music as a mature adult, not finding his true voice until his late thirties through his studies in 1907–1908 with the French composer Maurice Ravel. Among the best-known works would be his nine symphonies, noted for their wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned, to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. The most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). Among his works for winds, he is best remembered for his English Folk Song Suite (1923). Toccata Marziale is a 1924 composition for wind band. Written for the British Empire Exhibition, it stands as a cornerstone of serious modern wind band literature, combining baroque toccata energy with powerful military band instrumentation. The word “toccata” comes from the Italian toccare, meaning “to touch,” hence its association with the early Baroque keyboard pieces written by Frescobaldi and others. In Toccata Marziale musical textures are juxtaposed in massed effects with large sections of winds and brasses. A rhythmic vigor, as suggested by the title, permeates the piece, and Vaughan Williams’s brilliant scoring reveals the fundamental properties of the band’s sonority and its instrumental virtuosity and color.
Vincent Persichetti (1915 - 1987), Symphony No. 6 (for Band) opus 69
Vincent Ludwig Persichetti was an American composer, teacher, and pianist, known for his integration of various new ideas in musical composition into his own work and teaching. His musical education began early. Persichetti enrolled in the Combs College of Music at the age of five, where he studied piano, organ, double bass and later music theory and composition with Russel King Miller. He first performed his original works publicly at the age of 14. He attended Combs for his undergraduate education as well. After receiving a bachelor's degree in 1936, he was immediately offered a teaching position. By the age of 20, Persichetti was simultaneously head of the theory and composition department at Combs, a conducting major with Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute, and a student of piano and composition at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. He earned a master's degree in 1941 and a doctorate in 1945 from the Conservatory, as well as a conducting diploma from Curtis, where he subsequently taught from 1939–1962. During all those years, he also created a vast body of diverse serious music for all sorts of instrumental combinations. The Symphony No. 6 for Band was commissioned and premiered by Clark Mitze and the Washington University Band (1956). The four movements (Adagio allegro, Adagio sostenuto, Allegretto, and Vivace) have forms with traditional implications. The opening horn call and a following scale-wise passage in the slow introduction become the two principal themes (in reverse order) in the subsequent Allegro. The slow second movement is based on Round Me Falls the Night, from the composer’s Hymns and Responses for the Church Year (1956). The third movement, in trio form, serves as the traditional dance movement and is followed by a finale in free rondo form, which draws the thematic material from the preceding movements and concludes with a chord containing all 12 tones of the scale. Persichetti composed his massive Symphony for Band during a time when directors vigorously sought repertoire that distinguished bands as serious performance groups.
Alfred Reed (1921 - 2005), Hounds of Spring
Alfred Reed was an American composer, arranger, conductor and educator. He began his musical studies at age ten on trumpet, and by high school he was performing professionally in the Catskills at resort hotels. He served during World War II in the 529th Army Air Force Band, for which he created more than 100 works, and following the war was a student of Vittorio Giannini (whose Symphony concludes this program) at Juilliard. He was staff composer and arranger for both the National Broadcasting Corporation and the American Broadcasting Corporation. In 1953, Mr. Reed became conductor of the Baylor Symphony Orchestra at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, at the same time completing his academic work; he received his B.M. in 1955 and his M.M. in 1956. In 1966 he left this post to join the faculty of the School of Music at the University of Miami, holding a joint appointment in the Theory-Composition and Music Education departments. With over 250 published works for concert band, wind ensemble, orchestra, chorus, and various smaller chamber music groups, Reed is one of the nation’s most prolific and frequently performed composers. According to the composer, his composition Hounds of Spring is meant as "a magical picture of young love in springtime... an attempt to capture the twin elements exuberant youthful gaiety and the sweetness of tender love, in an appropriate musical texture." It draws upon the Algernon Charles Swinburne poem of the same name (1865). Hounds of Spring is structured in an exciting, rhythmic overture in a fast-slow-fast format. It was commissioned by, and dedicated to, the John L. Forster Secondary School Concert Band of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and its director, Gerald A. N. Brown. The world premiere was in Windsor on May 8, 1980, conducted by the composer.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Theme and Variations, Op. 43a
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian and American modernist composer, music theorist, teacher, and a leading proponent of atonal music. He taught composition in Vienna and at the Prussian Academy of Arts (1925–1933), resigning in anticipation of Nazi Germany's civil–service restrictions. He immigrating to the United States, where he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles (1936–1944). His early works like Verklärte Nacht (1899) and Gurre-Lieder (1900–1903, orch. 1910–1911) represented a synthesis of Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner. He then moved to a twelve-tone technique by1923 and structured works like Moses und Aron (1923-32) and the Variations for Orchestra (1926–1928). As the world learned of the Holocaust, he memorialized its victims in A Survivor from Warsaw (1947). The Israel Conservatory and Academy of Music elected him honorary president in 1951. In 1943, Arnold Schoenberg composed Theme and Variations, op. 43a after numerous requests for a wind band composition by his dear friend and president of G. Schirmer Music, Carl Engel. Not written in the composer’s famed twelve-tone style, Opus 43a establishes itself clearly as a tonal work in g-minor. Schoenberg gives himself free reign to assert his mastery of the contrapuntal techniques developed in his prior twelve‐tone compositions by utilizing variation form. The 21-measure theme is followed by seven variations of increasing complexity which often mask the melody with various contrapuntal techniques. The original theme returns toward the end of the work, culminating in a subtle tip of the hat to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
Vittorio Giannini (1903-1966), Symphony No. 3
Vittorio Giannini was an American composer who attended the Milan Conservatory from 1913 to 1917. He studied violin with Hans Letz and composition with Rubin Goldmark at The Juilliard School in New York. Giannini taught at Juilliard from 1939 to 1941, New York’s Manhattan School of Music from 1941 to 1956, and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1956 to 1965. Giannini was also the first director of the North Carolina School for the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC (1965-6). As a composer, Giannini won three consecutive Prix de Rome. His technique was late romantic style coupled with an Italianate vocal style. In the late 1940s, he moved toward a lighter neo-classical style. In his later years his compositions were characterized by more intense romanticism incorporating greater dissonance and tonal freedom. His students included Alfred Reed. The Symphony No. 3 was composed on a commission by the Duke University Band and its conductor, Paul Bryan, during the summer of 1958 when Giannini was in Rome Italy. The work is structured as a late Classical, early Romantic symphony of four movements. The first movement is in traditional sonata-allegro form, which consists of three major sections –– exposition, development, and recapitulation. The second movement is a gentle and reflective adagio and the third a playful and short allegretto. The fourth movement, marked Allegro con brio, is a fast-paced tour de force for both woodwinds and brass, providing the energy and excitement one would expect from a symphonic finale.