Obama Inauguration Music & Symbolism, Part 2

This post was supposed to be a discussion of the John Williams Inauguration composition Air and Simple Gifts. But the piece itself just wasn’t that interesting! So how about some brief comments and links, and have some more Marian Anderson?

The piece (see video below) consisted of an air that felt primarily soothing, rather like a sunbeam that comes through the window warms part of your carpet on an otherwise chilly day. The “Simple Gifts” portion was an obvious nod to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which is perhaps the quintessential American classical composition. So quintessential, probably, that it’s unnecessary to point out that Anthony McGill’s gorgeously played clarinet entrance on the “Simple Gifts” melody is a verbatim quote from the Copland version. (Listen to that on YouTube, with some Ansel Adams photographs.)

Here’s the video from the Inauguration:

Alex Ross gathers some reviews, and offers some hopes for what an Obama administration might do for classical music and the arts. He also links to a brief video of Obama narrating Copland’s Lincoln Portait.

By now the “scandal” has broken that the musicians, due to the cold temperature, were marking along to a recording they’d made — the instrumental equivalent of lip-synching. There have been a few “Milli Vanilli” quips, but it’s not like they hired, well, better musicians to do the playing behind the scenes. My favorites were the attempts to tie this “scandal” to the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, where the “cuter” girl lip-synched for the girl with the better voice. Whether they could have found “cuter musicians” than Ma, Perlman, McGill and Gabriela Montero is pretty subjective, but believe me when I say the use of a prerecording was the right call. Musical instruments are made of wood, metal, fabric and glue. Know what happens to those materials in cold weather? They contract. Strings, inparticular, get brittle. The brass band hit several clunkers in those fanfares they played as people were walked in.

So, let’s get back to Marian Anderson and why she was such a big deal. Some of my favorite clips:

Handel’s “He Shall Feed His Flock” in a very slow performance that would certainly never be allowed in today’s era of “early music authenticity.”

Schubert’s “Erlkoenig” — listen to how successfuly Marian differentiates the voices.

“Sometimes I fee Like a Motherless Child”

For those reading this on a feed - this is Bonnie Gibbons talking, not John. It’s come to my attention that author names aren’t being included on the feed, which I’ll try to get fixed. Generally, if the post discusses a piece of music in detail it’s John, because that’s what he does for a living. With a day job in web site development, I’m generally the one with the digital music industry news, or the “around the web” stuff. Due to my respect for this day job, I rarely have an opportunity to discuss music in detail, and never did get the chops to, say, discuss the music of George Perle, who passed last week.

Obama Inauguration Music and Symbolism, Part 1

View at Britannica.comWhatever your political persuasion in the 2008 election, it’s beyond dispute that the inauguration of an American president of African descent is historic. Given that Obama has lived so long in, and represented, the Land of Lincoln, it was inevitable that he’d tap into the Lincoln mythology with gestures such as his train trip into DC and his taking of the oath of office using the same bible that Lincoln used in 1861.

A piece of symbolism missed by the TV commentators, not to mention me at the time, was the backstory of Aretha Franklin’s performance of “My Country Tis of Thee.” As a lover of true contralto voices and a history buff, I’m a little sheepish that it took a belated visit to The Rest is Noise to remind me that Marian Anderson sang the same song on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. Anderson, an internationally successful opera singer, had been denied permission to perform to an integrated audience in venues owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution and a local white public school.

These YouTube video show Anderson’s performance along with Franklin’s. The Anderson performance includes an introductory speech by Harold Ickes, who had authorized the performance in his capacity as Secretary of the Interior.

Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been referencing Anderson’s performance in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

At least one TV commentator quoted this excerpt as Aretha stepped up to the podium Tuesday, but in none of the network videos I’ve seen did they mention Marian Anderson at that moment.

Anderson was celebrated by by Queen Latifah (paying homage through words and a similar style of fur coat) at Sunday’s Lincoln Memorial concert. But not during the inauguration TV coverage in conjunction with Franklin’s performance of the same song, seven decades later, in such vastly different circumstances.

Part 2 of this post will discuss the John Williams chamber piece premiered at the ceremony.