Coleman, Brahms, Ravel & Holst: May 2–4, 2025
- cbeeson69
- May 2
- 11 min read
Updated: May 2
Valerie Coleman
Fanfare for Uncommon Times
DIVE IN!
Valerie Coleman (1970 – ) is an American composer and flutist from the United States. She is the founder of the wildly successful woodwind quintet Imani Winds from which she retired in 2018 to focus on her composing career as it had begun to eclipse their performing and touring schedule. Your Classical of Minnesota Public Radio has said "Composer Valerie Coleman does a little bit of everything. She is a flute virtuoso, a famous composer, a model for Black musicians worldwide and a mentor to her students."
HIGHLIGHTS
If the title seems familiar to you, it may be due to its similarity to Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man or Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman.
Valerie Coleman composed Fanfare for Uncommon Times in 2021 for a 2020 commission from Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City.
Chicago based arts journalist Kyle MacMillan interviewed Coleman in 2024 in advance of a Chicago Symphony performance of the Fanfare in which she quoted the following:
“It has joy in it. It has a lot of grit, it has a lot of fight, and it has a lot of energy. I wanted to convey the message of not only solidarity, but send out energy to whoever listens to it — that they feel stronger for the experience. That they are able to get through these uncommon times with a little more pep in their step.”
“It’s every living composer’s goal to have a robust circulation of their works, so I feel that Fanfare for Uncommon Times, because it speaks to now, it has a particular relevance that allows it to be programmed a little bit more. And I like to think that audiences really get it — the quirky aspects of it, but also the patriotism and the humanity of it.”
“You hear all sorts of things, in it because right now everything is just so complex in the world, and that was only a few years ago [when it was written], but nothing has changed in that way. You already know. I don’t need to spell it out.”
Fanfare for Uncommon Times is for a small ensemble of brass and percussion. It begins somewhat pensively, and then opens into a glockenspiel and xylophone driven groove which leans toward hopefulness and joy before finding an energetic finish.
A typical performance lasts about 6 minutes.
Johannes Brahms
Schicksalslied
(Song of Destiny)
DIVE IN!
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was a German composer and pianist from the middle Romantic era. Composed between 1868 and 1871, Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) firmly solidified Brahms as a major choral work composer even before his celebrated German Requiem.
HIGHLIGHTS
Schicksalslied is a composition for chorus, and an orchestra of pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. It is sung entirely in German on a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin.
It flows seamlessly in three sections, marked as movements: Adagio (slow tempo) "Ihr wandelt droben im Licht" (You walk up there in the light), Allegro (spirited tempo) "Doch uns ist gegeben" (But it is our fate), and a return to Adagio: orchestral postlude.
It took Brahms 3 years to complete the work due in part to him wrestling with the ending. Ultimately he decided to present the text "as is" without any return to a lighter celestial text but rather concluding with an orchestral postlude drawn from the more hopeful sounding opening music. In this way he threads a needle, offering a ray of hope in the music for the listener's contemplation after hearing Hölderlin's heavier take on the suffering and futility of human existence in comparison to that of the spirit world.
A typical performance lasts about 15 minutes.
🎉FUN FACT ALERT! 🎉 Somehow the autograph manuscript of Schicksalslied resides in the United States Library of Congress. At least as of May 2, 2025... That's right. The Library. Of Congress. A library and research service for the United States Congress and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Let's hope they're using it.
English Text translation
Adagio:
You walk up there in the light
on soft ground, blessed spirits!
Gleaming, divine breezes
touch you lightly,
as a female musician's fingers touch holy strings.
As fateless as a sleeping
infant, the Heavenly Ones breathe.
Chastely guarded,
as in a modest bud,
eternally bloom
their spirits,
and their blessed eyes gaze in calm,
eternal clarity.
Allegro:
But it is our fate
to have no rest anywhere.
Vanishing, falling,
suffering human beings
go blindly from one
hour to the next
like water from cliff
to cliff, thrown
downward for years long into Uncertainty.
Maurice Ravel
La Valse
DIVE IN!
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a French composer of the Modernist era. He is perhaps best known for his exceptional orchestration - the selection of specific instruments or combinations of instruments to color sounds. Ravel's compositions never fail to capture the imagination of the listener as we are whisked away to a soundscape that routinely includes a large and vibrant palette of tone colors. In La Valse, a wild combination of several reworked traditional Viennese waltzes, Ravel also takes advantage of his skill for layering sounds to create a new take on this venerated form.
HIGHLIGHTS
Maurice Ravel composed La Valse between 1919 and 1920, initially intending for it to be a ballet work. He also created a solo piano transcription. The solo piano work is rarely performed due to its very challenging technical requirements. It is primarily performed as an orchestral work now.
Ravel left this note at the beginning of his manuscript to set the scene: "Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth. Set in an imperial court, about 1855."
La Valse is definitely a grand scale waltz but it only ever hints at what we've come to understand and expect from a lively, or delicate, or flowing social dance practiced in high society spaces with controlled specified movements and a sense of monied class. Instead it sounds very much like the birth, evolution, and wild death spiral life story of the waltz. A bit like Rose and Jack's disorienting closeup spinning scene in Titanic before everything goes to holy heck.
The first sounds we hear are the primordial goo of waltz DNA being formed. Usually waltzes establish a clear 3 beat pattern right away, with strong emphasis on beat 1 and lesser/least emphasis on beats 2 and 3 respectively. Instead, we get a low indistinct rumbling with a sharp beat 3 and a weak beat 1. It seems like the music is trying to decide what shape to take.
Soon thereafter it becomes clear this is indeed a waltz, but with the introduction of each new melody we also feel time ebbing and flowing in a way that doesn't always make sense if we're trying to find our dance steps. Is it hesitant, a little tipsy, hiding and planning an ambush? Hard to know! Meanwhile the colors of the instruments in the orchestra are so beguiling that we're led down a path of wonderment until it's too late to turn back.
The second half showcases all of the melodies we've already heard but this time they're fragmented, stretched, presented in surprisingly different instruments. The orchestra begins to sound desperate and wild. This is about the time listeners realize they're getting cooked like lobsters in a pot. Feels good in that nice warm water until it's roiling and there's no escape!
A typical performance of La Valse lasts about 12 minutes.
Some have speculated that Ravel was commenting on World War I where he saw firsthand the horrors that otherwise cultured humans can inflict upon one another. For his part, Ravel rejected this interpretation but if art exists primarily in the observations of others and can be experienced differently depending on context then it does beg the questions 'Why choose the Viennese waltz?' and 'Why birth, distort, and ultimately destroy it?'.
try some fun nerdy stuff!
In La Valse, Ravel is poking fun at tradition. He uses material from Viennese waltzes to compose this piece. Ravel distorts these tunes in many creative ways until some of them are hardly recognizable! Gather your nerd posse and choose a favorite well known tune that you all know well. Sing it together once in its traditional way. Now facilitate a brainstorming session for creative ways to alter or distort this tune without completely changing it. The tune should be at least somewhat recognizable as a shell of its former self, but don’t be afraid to go a little overboard! [for example: suddenly change to a very fast or slow tempo, make random silences at key moments, replace words with odd percussion noises, insert a fragment of a different song, repeat a fragment of material several times, etc.] Choose a few of these and map out the result on the dry erase board you know you have because you are a proud nerd. 🤓😎 Try singing it together. This may take a couple of tries, but will be well worth the effort! How different is it from the original? Is it still possible to hear where your new creation got its start? How did it feel to perform the new version versus the older one?
Now listen to the last three minutes of La Valse. Ravel has already done some pretty creative things to alter his chosen waltz tunes, but the ending definitely takes the cake! Catalogue as many changes as you can. Listen a second or third time if possible. What did you notice that Ravel did to distort or alter the traditional waltz music? [ex. getting faster until it's ridiculous, sudden dynamics and tempo changes, repeated series of quick crescendi, added “memory” of a traditional waltz in the middle of everything, repeated tiny fragments in a frenzied way, etc.] Did you and Ravel make any of the same choices? How did it feel to engage in a creative process that mirrors Ravel's?
Gustav Holst
The Planets
DIVE IN!
Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was an English composer whose style was influenced by late German Romantic era composers, French Modernist composer Maurice Ravel, and English folksong. His symphonic suite The Planets has captured the imagination of listeners since the moment it was first heard and remains solidly in the top 100 most popular pieces of long form composed music for orchestra. Enjoy getting to know a bit more about the piece and composer, and have a great time listening!
highlights
Holst was inspired to write a symphonic suite on the planets in 1913 and began working on it in 1914 just as World War I was threatening.
Holst completed The Planets in 1916 but had to wait for a first performance until after the war had concluded in 1918. This performance was for a private invitation audience comprised primarily of colleagues and family.
His composer daughter Imogen was at this private performance and wrote “Even those listeners who had studied the score for months were taken aback by the unexpected clamour of ‘Mars’. During ‘Jupiter’ the charwomen working in the corridors put down their scrubbing-brushes and began to dance. In ‘Saturn’ the isolated listeners in the dark, half-empty hall felt themselves growing older at every bar. But it was the end of Neptune that was unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women's voices growing fainter and fainter in the distance, until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence.”
The first public performance of The Planets wasn’t until 1920. This is also the first time we get confirmation from Gustav Holst that the subject matter is not about the science of the planets, and is only loosely based on the astrological or mythological significance of the planets. He preferred each movement to be characterized by its subtitle. He writes “Jupiter brings jollity in the ordinary sense, and also the more ceremonial kind of rejoicing associated with religious or national festivities. Saturn brings not only physical decay, but also a vision of fulfillment.”
The anthem-like theme in the center of Jupiter has captured the hearts of many different listeners. It was adapted to the poem “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and has been used in the funeral services of Princess Diana of Wales, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and US Senator John McCain. It has also become the school song for a bunch of high schools in Texas and one in Melbourne, Australia. Covers have been made by bands as varied as Swedish extreme metal band Bathory, American noise rock band Harvey Milk, English folk trio Kerr Fagan, and the Japanese girl band Little Glee Monster. You dedicated video gamers may recognize it from Civilization V. 😎
🎉Fun Fact Alert!🎉 “Holst” is the name of a crater in the Lennon-Picasso basin on Mercury. Science nerdery FTW!!
Holst’s score is massive and calls for 4 flutes including piccolo and alto flute, 3 oboes and English Horn, 3 clarinets and bass clarinet, 3 bassoons and contra bassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 2 trombones plus tenor trombone and bass trombone, tuba, 2 players on 6 timpani, 3-5 players covering other percussion and keyboards, organ, 2 harps, and the usual string section of violins, violas, cellos, and basses. Additionally, in Neptune there are two women’s choruses located off stage.
A typical performance of the full suite lasts just under an hour.
Listening map
Here is a listening map that can guide you through the piece. Read it in advance or while you’re listening! (Bonus activity - try to find the music that influenced noted film score composer John Williams for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and more!)
Mars, Bringer of War
This movement is powerful and dense, and should inspire fear or anger. It was written first in the series, during the months leading up to the outbreak of World War 1. The powerful sense of darkness and foreboding is felt right away in the repeated rhythms as juxtaposed by the long low brass notes that begin to build toward an impenetrable wall of sound.
Venus, Bringer of Peace
This movement begins with a soulful solo horn, answered by woodwinds. Violin and oboe solos later mirror this dialogue and the music generally flows gently throughout with sweeping melodies in the violins and gentle pulsing in the harps.
Mercury, the Winged Messenger
Here we are treated to the feeling of Mercury literally and figuratively flying at top speed around the orchestra from woodwinds to strings and within each of those sections in rapid bursts of cascading notes. Periodically we have the sense that telegraph machines are at play with quick short-long rhythms spelled out in the violins and glockenspiel. And yes, I looked into the code of the rhythm, which spells HES, HE5, or HEO depending on which system you apply. So it appears to be a nod rather than a message. :)
Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity
This music is full of vibrancy and joy with splashes of color and rhythmic vitality throughout. The middle section is hymn like and gives way to a return of the joyful opening material even as it weaves the noble theme in at the finish.
Saturn, Bringer of Old Age
In this music we experience an other worldly heavy stillness which is somehow also underscored by various ticking clock sounds. Some of these sounds are less obvious - plodding timekeeping from the woodwinds, and some more so - metallic chimes in the percussion.
Uranus, the Magician
This music, depending on its treatment, can be heard as mischievous pranking or something more sinister. It has a rhythmic vitality to it that can be deceiving, as the dissonant primary theme suggests something much more devilish than lighthearted. This interpretation can be further confuzzled by the fact that Holst builds that theme on the letters in his name, picking the letters out as they fit with the English and German systems. GuStAv Holst = G-Eflat-A-B. This is a common practice with the most famous examples being Johann Sebastian BACH [Bflat-A-C-B], Dmitri SCHostakowitsch [D-Eflat-C-B], and Sergei Rachmaninoff [quarter-eighth-eighth-quarter].
Neptune, the Mystic
To finish this work, Holst gives us the stillest, softest, and most unsettlingly dissonant music. There is flow but not a focused sense of pacing or pulse. Just when the music sounds like it might be settling, a chorus from very far away becomes part of the texture and ultimately takes over as the orchestra stops, leaving the chorus to slowly completely fade out .
Nerd ActivitY
The Planets has a title that could inform the sounds we might hear. On your own or with a group of friends, suggest a title for a short musical ‘poem’ or ‘painting’ for symphony orchestra. How might it sound? What instruments would you choose and why? What sort of tempo or movement or mood might it need to display? Get creative! You could make this into a journaling game by taking turns coming up with titles for everyone else to jot down their ideas in a 3 minute thought shower, then read them aloud, and choose a winner. WHO NEEDS TIKTOK WHEN YOU HAVE MUSIC NERDERY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS???
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