Suffice to say that Michael Daugherty and his musical style springs directly from the heart of contemporary American culture.\u00a0 He now occupies an esteemed position as Professor of Composition in the music school of the University of Michigan, and has written compositions for just about anybody and everybody in the \u201cofficial\u201d world of classical music culture\u2014major orchestras, music schools and conservatories, distinguished performers, enterprising conductors\u2014you name it, he is clearly the current darling of progressive concert music.\u00a0 He has a \u201cZelig\u201d-like persona whose musical roots and subsequent musical education seems to have touched most every base.\u00a0 But his background could not be more prosaic\u2014in the best sense of the word.\u00a0 He grew up, like the average American kid, surrounded by the pervasive influence of television, rock and roll, rampant commercialization, cathartic political events, in short, just about everything condemned by European intellectuals as typical of the \u201cdepravity\u201d of American society.\u00a0 Growing up in a musical family of middle class tastes, he played in rock bands, accompanied country-western performers on the Hammond organ at county fairs, carried the bass drum in marching bands, studied at North Texas State, and played jazz piano, as well as cocktail piano, at a lounge on the Jersey Turnpike.<\/p>\n
After moving to New York, where he hobnobbed with such avant garde<\/em> intellectuals such as Milton Babbitt and Pierre Boulez, he moved to Paris where he studied electronic music, later studying in Germany with Ligeti and Stockhausen and, well, you get the idea.\u00a0 Along the way he received a doctoral degree from Yale, writing on Ives and Mahler.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tales of Hemmingway<\/em> for cello and orchestra was commissioned by the Nashville Symphony and a consortium of several other regional orchestras.\u00a0\u00a0 The premi\u00e8re was given in April of 2015 by that ensemble, with Zuill Bailey as soloist.\u00a0 As we observed, Daugherty is a composer who takes particular inspiration from the most disparate elements of the extra-musical world of his milieu.\u00a0 The history of music generally has been populated with composers who were more than comfortable writing music that was abstract and referred only to itself.\u00a0 But, starting roughly two centuries ago, and coinciding roughly with the Romantic Movement art in and literature, many composers\u2014but certainly not all–sought stimulus from the world around, and Daugherty is without question \u201cExhibit A\u201d in that regard.\u00a0 So, his cello concerto stems from his perception of Ernest Hemmingway\u2019s life and literary style, and more specifically, four of the author\u2019s published works.\u00a0 It must be said that, notwithstanding the potent inspiration of the details of these four stories on the composer, the astute listener really doesn\u2019t need them. \u00a0In reality, they are for the composer, not for the listener.\u00a0 The four movements stand more than adequately on their own musical foundations as adroitly crafted musical abstractions.\u00a0 So, you really don\u2019t need a program to \u201ctell the players.\u201d<\/p>\n The first movement, inspired by the early Nick Adams stories of fishing in the secluded woods of upper Michigan, is a lush evocation of tranquility and repose.\u00a0 While the orchestra has its powerful moments in the limelight in this pursuit, there are eloquent moments where the solo cello\u2014almost in recitative\u2014sings in a human\u2019s impassioned voice.\u00a0 In the second movement, the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War is the background of the drama.\u00a0\u00a0 Therein, the protagonist of the story, Robert Jordan, accepts a suicide mission, and Daugherty accordingly composes a grotesque, variegated march that leads to death.\u00a0 The music plods, stumps, dashes and lurches\u2014driven by a welter of tour de force writing for the cello.\u00a0 The deadly march is interrupted intermittently by existential musing of the cello.\u00a0 This nightmare of a march staggers to inevitable, cataclysmic demise, presaged by chimes, leading to the obvious:\u00a0 \u201cFor Whom the Bell Tolls.\u201d Hemmingway\u2019s The Sun Also Rises<\/em> is the genesis of the last movement, wherein Daugherty takes full advantage of the panoply of the running of the bulls and the violence of the bullring to generate his musical drama.\u00a0 The movement opens with an adroit imitation of Flamenco guitar by the solo cellist, which soon moves into a vivacious Spanish-tinged dance.\u00a0 Rhythmic filigrees and pensive moments in the solo part from time to time yield to melodic episodes in the orchestra, in a brilliantly orchestrated weft of give and take.\u00a0 After a dramatic pause, glissandi<\/em> by the cellist leads to a charge to the end, but in a bit of a surprise, the superficial blandishments of the bloody entertainment are abandoned for a brief moment of existential introspection by the soloist.\u00a0 That short contemplation, explains the composer, is a \u201cmusical illumination of the novel\u2019s enigmatic epigraph.\u201d\u00a0 From Ecclesiastes 1:5\u2014\u201cThe sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasten to his place where he arose.\u201d<\/p>\n –Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n \u00a92019 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[72],"class_list":["post-285","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-michaeldaugherty"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIn the composer\u2019s words, the third movement is \u201c. . . an elegy to the struggle of life and death between man and nature.\u201d \u00a0The travails of old fisherman, Santiago, in The Old Man and the Sea<\/em> become a musical meditation on the search for \u201cthe truths of man\u2019s existence with dignity and grace.\u201d\u00a0 Along the way, Daugherty can\u2019t resist a few touches of Hispanic harmonies before the delicate and color-infused orchestration brings the meditation to a gentle, reflective close.<\/p>\n