Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Overture to Fidelio, op.72c (1814)

Scored for: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, and strings

Performance time: 6 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 19, 1980; David Zinman, conductor

Leonore Overture no.3, op.72b (1805)

Scored for: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings

Performance time: 14 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 24, 1935; Ebba Sundstrom, conductor

Writing of his only opera, Fidelio, Ludwig van Beethoven said, “It is the work that caused me the worst birth pangs, the one that brought me the most sorrow, and for that reason, it is the one most dear to me.” Beethoven makes no exaggeration, as it took the composer over a decade and multiple rewrites before achieving the operatic success he had long sought. This is why four different overtures to the opera exist. The final version, written for the 1814 production of the opera, is known as “Overture to Fidelio,” while the overture written for the 1806 revision of the original 1805 opera is known as “Leonore Overture No. 3.” (Leonore was Beethoven’s preferred title of the opera and is used to distinguish between the 1805/6 versions and the more familiar 1814 version, Fidelio.)

The plot of Fidelio is said to be based on a true story from the French Revolution. The heroic tale provides a powerful endorsement of democracy and freedom—themes that are just as relevant today as they were during the Napoleonic Wars that were raging at the time of Beethoven’s composition. In the opera, a nobleman named Florestan is wrongfully imprisoned by his political rival, Don Pizarro, a prison governor. Florestan’s wife, Leonore, disguises herself as a young man named Fidelio and infiltrates the prison as an errand boy. She earns the trust of the jailer, Rocco, whom Pizarro has instructed to starve Florestan to death. When news reaches the prison that a government official named Don Fernando is coming to investigate allegations of cruelty, Pizarro decides to hasten Florestan’s demise and execute him himself. He orders Rocco and “Fidelio” to dig a grave for Florestan. As Pizarro advances to strike Florestan dead, Leonore leaps between them with a pistol drawn, revealing her true identity. At that moment, Don Fernando arrives, and Rocco explains Pizarro’s murderous plot. Fernando imprisons Pizarro, and Leonore and Florestan rejoice in their reunion.

While Overture to Fidelio is more concise and appropriate in the context of an opera, Leonore Overture No. 3 is the grandest and most imposing of the four overtures. Using Mozart’s opera overtures as a guide, Beethoven maps out the entirety of the opera’s drama so effectively that the overture holds up on its own as a concert piece. The emotional journey is one of darkness to light, from Florestan’s dank dungeon cell to Leonore’s heroic rescue and Don Fernando’s arrival, marked by off-stage trumpet calls.

Margaret Allison Bonds (1913-1972)

The Montgomery Variations (1964)

Scored for: three flutes including piccolo and alto flute, three oboes including English Horn, three clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings

Performance time: 24 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Margaret Bonds grew up in an affluent Black family in Chicago. Her mother opened their home to young Black artists, writers, and musicians in the community, including composer Florence Price, who would later become Margaret’s teacher. Growing up in this environment, Bonds demonstrated musical talent early on. While a student at Northwestern University, she was already making a name for herself. She won the Wanamaker Prize in 1932 for her song “Sea Ghost” and was the first African American soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she performed Price’s Piano Concerto at the World’s Fair in 1933.

Although Bonds is best known for her vocal music, especially her arrangements of traditional spirituals, her wide-ranging compositions included jazz arrangements, film music, popular songs, musicals, and orchestral pieces. Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes was a profound influence. Bonds faced intense racial prejudice while at Northwestern, where she was forbidden to use the library, dining hall, and other facilities. Discovering Hughes’ work during this time was a lifeline. They soon struck up a deep creative partnership and friendship, and he encouraged her to move to New York City. In addition to composing, Bonds was an active performer. She also served as music director for musical theater institutions, taught music to children living in underserved communities, and organized a chamber society to promote the work of Black composers.

Bonds composed The Montgomery Variations after visiting Montgomery, Alabama, and the surrounding area in 1963 while on tour with Eugene Brice and the Manhattan Melodaires. Dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Montgomery Variations were written in the wake of the horrific firebombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which claimed the lives of four little girls and injured dozens more. Melodically based on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” the variations ruminate on Montgomery’s history as a central hub of the Civil Rights Movement.

Sadly, Bonds never heard this work performed. However, she did provide her own program notes for each variation, reproduced below.

I. Decision

Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., and SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference], Negroes in Montgomery decided to boycott the bus company and to fight for their rights as citizens.

II. Prayer Meeting

True to custom, prayer meetings precede their action. Prayer meetings start quietly with humble petitions to God. During the course of the meeting, members seized with religious fervor shout and dance. Oblivious to their fellow worshippers, they exhibit their love of God and their Faith in Deliverance by gesticulation, clapping, and beating their feet.

III. March

The Spirit of the Nazarene marching with them, the Negroes of Montgomery walked to their work rather than be segregated on the buses. The entire world, symbolically with them, marches.

IV. Dawn in Dixie

Dixie, the home of the Camellias known as “pink perfection,” magnolias, jasmine, and Spanish moss, awakened to the fact that something new was happening in the South.

V. One Sunday in the South

Children were in Sunday School learning about Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Southern “die-hards” planted a bomb and several children were killed.

VI. Lament

The world was shaken by the cruelty of the Sunday School bombing. Negroes, as usual, leaned on their Jesus to carry them through this crisis of grief and humiliation.

VII. Benediction

A benign God, Father and Mother to all people, pours forth Love to His children—the good and the bad alike.

Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981)

Five Freedom Songs

Scored for: percussion, strings, and solo soprano

Performance time: 20 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Jessie Montgomery will be familiar to many Chicago classical music fans. Currently the Mead Composer-in-Residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Montgomery has already established herself as a composer of international renown. She captures the 21st-century American experience in her music by mixing elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social awareness into classical frameworks.

Conceived in collaboration with soprano Julia Bullock in 2017–2018, Five Freedom Songs sources music from the historical anthology Slave Songs of the United States. Published shortly after the Civil War in 1867, this anthology of over 136 lyrics and melodies was made by educators and musicologists who traveled the South transcribing music from people in newly freed communities. They also included notes on performance practice and stories about the contexts in which these songs were performed. Some of them were sung during times of rebellion, others during worship, and others while working in the fields. Bullock noted a commonality underlying the diverse experiences these songs captured: “After going through all of these songs, which, yes, acknowledge the violence and the trauma and the oppression that was very much a reality at that time, what was deeply inspiring for me to read and also to vocalize is an affirmation of life.” Montgomery and Bullock set aside the title Five Slave Songs in favor of Five Freedom Songs to capture this sense of aspiration.

“We wanted to create a song cycle that honors our shared African-American heritage and the tradition of the Negro spiritual, while also experimenting with non-traditional stylistic contexts,” Montgomery explains in her program note. Setting both well-known and more obscure spirituals from the anthology, Montgomery used the contexts behind each song to inform her musical treatment. For instance, the transcription of “I Want to Go Home” as a seven-note melody free from any rhythmic indications led her to incorporate elements of Gregorian chant, which is also sung without a regular beat. In “My Father, How Long?,” which emerged from a jail in Georgetown, South Carolina, at the outbreak of the Great Rebellion, the strings evoke the sound of a chain gang with percussive sounds. The funeral song “Lay dis Body Down” calls upon the musicians to improvise their lines at their own pace but in relation to the surrounding textures, creating what Montgomery calls a “swirling meditation.” “My Lord What a Morning” paints the image of the stars as they “begin to fall”—an image that reoccurs in the final song of the set, “The Day of Judgment.” This song, which originated around Louisiana, “is set as an uneasy celebration over the refrain of a traditional West African drumming pattern,” Montgomery explains.

Program Notes by Katherine Buzard