This work is an homage and pays tribute to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is commonly called “The Black national anthem.” The text was first written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson, an American writer and civil rights activist who also led the NAACP. Its first performance was in celebration of President Lincoln’s birthday on February 12, 1900, in Jacksonville, Florida, by a group of schoolchildren. The poem was set to music by Johnson’s brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and as a complete work, adopted by the NAACP as its official anthem. It is often said that music is the soundtrack of our history and our lives.
Today, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is known as the soundtrack of the Black Civil Rights Movement. Xavier Foley—a brilliant bassist and composer, winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Sphinx Competition Laureate—created two separate versions of the work “Lift Ev’ry Voice,” commissioned by the Sphinx Organization. One of the versions is a setting for the Sphinx Virtuosi, while the second incorporates parts for Sphinx’s professional vocal ensemble, Exigence.
This piece was created in 2020 as a special feature under the Sphinx Virtuosi’s program Land of the Free, which illuminated the wealth of musical talent among American composers. Appearing now as part of Sphinx’s digital program This Is America, the work has become a beloved standalone. The inspiration for the commission came at a time when ideals of unity were invoked amid uncertainty, tragedy, and hope. In his music, Foley brings out the sonority and virtuosity of the string instruments to feature the familiar melodic material, while uncovering new timbres and sounds, almost symbolically encouraging all of us to look and listen anew, beyond the isolation of the global pandemic and the racial and cultural divide in our country. Today’s soundtrack for the hopeful times ahead is ushered in by Foley’s new tribute to a treasured piece of the American historical and musical heritage.
The A-Minor String Quartet is Florence Price’s second work of its kind, which was preceded by her G-Major Quartet in 1929. In terms of the style and language, this work embraces a more mature, later harmonic and melodic profile of the 20th century. Importantly, this work offers insight into the soulful musical materials paying homage to the composer’s heritage. The gentle, lyrical, and song-like quality of the second movement is both refreshing and comforting in character. The third movement, called Juba, invokes a popular style of dance that stems from African traditions. The last movement offers an almost improvisatory breadth of the composer’s fluent writing, rounding out the work as a fine example of the string-quartet medium.
This piece evokes the atmosphere of northeastern Brazil and was written initially for accompanied violin. Recorded in different versions on several albums by the Brazilian violinist and composer Ricardo Herz as the featured soloist, the most recent version is on the album Nova Música Brasileira para Cordas with Herz and Camerata Romeu. Herz himself adapted this orchestral version especially for this Sphinx Virtuosi tour.
“Mourinho” is a forró and was written in 2001. Herz uses several rhythms and comping techniques for the orchestra, based on the percussion instruments and claves of the forró style, and using the string instruments as if they were the zabumbas, triangles, and accordions typical of northeast Brazil.
Seven is a tribute to the essential workers during the global COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to those who lost lives and suffered from the crisis. The piece for solo cello ends with seven bell-like sounds, alluding to New York City’s daily 7 PM tribute during the lockdown: the moment when New Yorkers clapped from their windows, connecting with each other, and expressing appreciation for those on the front lines.
Banner is a tribute to the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which was officially declared the American national anthem in 1814 under the penmanship of Francis Scott Key. Scored for solo string quartet and string orchestra, Banner is a rhapsody on the theme of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Drawing on musical and historical sources from various world anthems and patriotic songs, I’ve made an attempt to answer the question: “What does an anthem for the 21st century sound like in today’s multicultural environment?”
In 2009, I was commissioned by the Providence String Quartet and Community MusicWorks to write Anthem, a tribute to the historic election of Barack Obama. In that piece, I wove together the theme from “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,”— the commonly named “Black national anthem”—by James Weldon Johnson (which coincidentally share the exact same phrase structure).
Banner picks up where Anthem left off by using a similar backbone source in its middle section, but expands further both in the amount of references and also in the role of the string quartet as the individual voice working both with and against the larger community of the orchestra. The structure is loosely based on traditional marching band form where there are several strains or contrasting sections, preceded by an introduction, and I have drawn on the drumline chorus as a source for the rhythmic underpinning in the finale. Within the same tradition, I have attempted to evoke the breathing of a large brass choir as it approaches the climax of the trio section.
A variety of other cultural anthems and American folk songs and popular idioms interact to form various textures in the finale section, contributing to a multilayered fanfare. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is an ideal subject for exploration in contradictions. For many Americans, the song represents a paradigm of liberty and solidarity against fierce odds, while for others it implies a contradiction between the ideals of freedom and the realities of injustice and oppression. As a culture, it is my opinion that Americans are perpetually in search of ways to express and celebrate our ideals of freedom—a way to proclaim, “We’ve made it!” as if the very action of saying it aloud makes it so. And for many of our nation’s people, that is not the case.
—Jessie Montgomery
Let Us Garlands Bring is a song cycle for baritone and piano composed by Gerald Finzi between 1929 and 1942. The cycle consists of five songs inspired by William Shakespeare. Having premiered on October 12, 1942, at the National Gallery of London, the performance and the cycle itself became a dedication to the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Finzi later arranged the work for baritone and string orchestra, which is the version heard on this evening’s program, featuring our beloved guest artist, collaborator, and Sphinx Medal of Excellence alum Davóne Tines.
I remember hearing “I Know I’ve Been Changed” in my father’s church on Sunday morning during baptisms. The congregation would surround the pool of water singing this spiritual jubilantly, anxiously waiting for the solemn moment when the parishioner would be submerged. This act was a statement of dedication to a changed life. It was a public display of symbolically burying an old lifestyle in the water and being raised out of the water as a new person. I chose to set this text in a way that is solemn and reverent because of its prayerful nature. I’ve composed a small musical theme that transforms throughout the piece under a bed of lush harmonies. I invite the audience to sing the final phrase with the performers—just like my experience in my father’s church.
—Carlos Simon
Alberto Ginastera composed his String Quartet No. 2 in 1958. His Concerto per corde (Concerto for Strings), Op. 33, came seven years after as an adaptation of the quartet for full string orchestra. The first movement, Variazioni per i solisti, is really a raw-sounding and clearly challenging theme and variations, where soloists lead prominently in a complex dialogue with the orchestra. This is followed by Scherzo fantastico, which leaves listeners with a sense of chaos and disorientation—a frantic chase, perhaps. The Adagio angoscioso explores the concept of sound from a contemplative perspective, paying tribute to the past and incorporating traditional melodic elements. The piece concludes with the Finale furioso: colorful, rhythmic, almost breathless. This movement showcases folk idioms, changing meters, and hidden melodic ideas from preceding movements, all expressed through excellent writing for the string medium (much like Bartók, an inspiration behind much of Ginastera’s work).