Morton Gould

* American Ballads
* Spirituals for Strings
* American Symphonette No. 2
* American Salute

London Philharmonic/Kenneth Klein
Albany TROY202 Total time: 69:11

Gould:
   * Symphony on Marching Tunes - Quickstep
   * Fall River Legend - Cotillion
   * Philharmonic Waltzes
   * Latin-American Symphonette
   * Festive Music*
   * Fanfare for Freedom
   * Windjammer - Main Title
Ginastera:
   * Estancia Ballet Suite

*Maurice Murphy (trumpet)
London Symphony Orchestra/Morton Gould
Citadel CTD88130 Total time: 62:50

Summary for the Busy Executive: The Age of Gould.

We live in odd times, children of Manfred and Faust.  We pull long faces
and value sorrow, and we dismiss the smiler and the joke.  Life becomes to
a great extent suffering and those who contend with it, heroes.  Wit and
elegance we deep down distrust as shallow fun.  I suspect, for example,
that most people think Bette Davis a better actor than Cary Grant or
Mozart's Symphony No.  40 a greater work than his Symphony No.  39, perhaps
because the later piece is in a minor key.  We aspire to the tragic and the
solemn.

Yet it's probably harder to be light than heavy - levity more difficult
than gravity.  It requires effort to float above the earth.  There's a
reason why the Church considers "levitation" a miracle and why the Buddha
smiles.

The question "What is light music?" set me off on the above.  One could
consider almost everything on these two CDs "light" in both senses:
radiant and buoyant.  To some extent, Gould's career as a successful
commercial musician determined much of his output.  He often entertained,
rather than lectured or preached.  The American musician he reminds me
most of is Bernstein, although each hated the other, probably because Gould
was Bernstein before there was a Bernstein - a musician who could turn
everyday pop into something extraordinary.  Behind both, of course, is the
tremendous figure of George Gershwin.  The one success that eluded Gould
was Broadway and pop song.  Gould flourished in the days of radio symphonic
orchestras, the Depression sending musicians' wages so low that it made
such orchestras possible.  The most famous, of course, was Toscanini's NBC
Symphony, but CBS also had one (led by Bernard Herrmann), as did Mutual.
Gould became a professional composer and arranger in his teens - a genuine
prodigy who wrote directly on full score paper, usually to deadline, rather
than first making piano sketches.  Indeed, the nature of his work made full
orchestra the norm, and he didn't begin to compose chamber music until very
late in his long career.  Most of the works on these CDs are "light," but
they also contain surprises.  The "light" work is never sloughed off.  It's
light in the same sense as Mozart's Nozze di Figaro - as good as the genre
gets.  Furthermore, one meets with genuine poetry - I won't say as a
surprise, since Gould's artistic intentions remain admirably clear - but he
rises to and often transcends each occasion.

Gould's influences include such figures as Gershwin, Copland, Thomson,
19th-century dance music, spirituals, jazz, pop music of the day, and,
behind them all, the towering figure of Stravinsky.  Later, Ives also
affected Gould's music - particularly the Ives notion of musical
simultaneity - and Gould recorded several Ives pieces.  Yet, in spite of
this mix, you recognize a Gould work within a few notes.  Gould led the
double musical life of commercial musician and classical musician.  If he
created hi-fi concept albums in the Fifties, he also wrote for Agnes de
Mille and Balanchine.  Perhaps for most of those who think of him at all,
the Latin-American Symphonette and the American Symphonette No.  2 have
crowded out the Spirituals for Orchestra and Fall River Legend.  In this
view, he may become merely a slickmeister.  Furthermore, we apparently find
it hard to hold more than a few Great Composers in our heads at any one
time.  At this point, we seem to admit Ives, Copland, Barber, Carter, and
perhaps Gershwin and Bernstein to the Pantheon, as well we should.  But the
gates need to swing open wider.  Gould is one of those American interwar
and postwar musicians - along with Piston, Diamond, Schuman, Sessions,
Mennin, Fine, Talma, Hanson, Foss, Blitzstein, Lees, Bergsma, Shapero, and
Thomson - too good to lose.  A heap of marvelous music - I'd contend even
"classic" music - awaits rediscovery.

Two of the works on the Albany disc may very well stand as Gould's biggest
hits - American Salute, which has become a hi-fi demo classic, and the
"Pavane" from American Symphonette No.  2.  Gould has written often
about his coinage of the term "symphonette." At the time, he thought of
himself as terribly up-to-date, especially when words like "dinette" and
"kitchenette" began to appear in the language during the Thirties.  Later
on, he realized the tackiness of it.  Nothing dates quite so fast as the
cutting edge.  The work itself, however, is ever-new.  The "Pavane" has
been arranged every which way, often by Gould, and shares the status of
Beloved Pops Classic with several works of Leroy Anderson (another
underrated composer).  It seems to spring up everywhere, and yet never
wears out its welcome - a key to its considerable quality.  The entire
work, however, amounts to three perfect miniatures.  Rhythmically vigorous
- as fiddle tunes and quicksteps are - with never a wasted note, it gets
your body moving or your grin going.  The American Salute, written during
World War II, presents variations of the Civil War march "When Johnny Comes
Marching Home." Gould not only wrote it in an evening, he wrote and revised
it the same evening.  It's a piece consisting almost exclusively of first
thoughts - in this case, first thoughts of great incisiveness.

The American Ballads and the Spirituals for Strings belong roughly to the
same type of piece - not variations, exactly, so much as variants in the
sense of Vaughan Williams's Five Variants on "Dives and Lazarus".  That is,
in both works, the composers take apart their base melodies, cutting them
into their essential pieces and shapes, and then recombine the parts into
new profiles.  The American Ballads go further than the Spirituals in this
regard, probably for several reasons.  First, Gould has always revered
spirituals, and they've called forth some of his best work:  Spirituals for
Orchestra and Symphony of Spirituals among them.  One hesitates to tamper
with perfection.  His most radical work on this material, Spirituals for
Orchestra, uses totally original themes.  The traditional melodies he
treats with great restraint.  Second, Gould I believe created these
arrangements for one of his commercial concept albums.  If you advertise
"spirituals," you'd better give the audience what it expects to find.
And yet even here Gould does not merely orchestrate hymns.  He builds
substantial symphonic movements - often combining two different spirituals
of similar lyric content and playing one off against the other.  On the
other hand, Gould dares a lot more with the Ballads, variants on "The
Star-Spangled Banner," "America the Beautiful," "The Year of Jubilo,"
"Taps," "The Girl I Left Behind Me," and "We Shall Overcome." Throughout
each movement, one hears fragments of the base tunes raised to the surface
and then submerging again.

The Citadel CD drives me a little crazy because it provides excerpts
from larger pieces.  It's like being tantalized with "Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony" and offered just the first movement - frustrating and annoying,
one step up from "The Hundred Greatest Moments in Music," which gives you
only a Famous Theme and thoughtfully eliminates the boring development.  On
the Citadel CD, instead of the Fall River Legend, we get the "Cotillion"
movement only.  On the other hand, Gould does give us the entire
Latin-American Symphonette, Festive Music, and Philharmonic Waltzes,
as well as the brief Fanfare for Freedom.  All of these composer-led
performances are not only authoritative, but quite fine.

Fanfare for Freedom was part of the same series of World War II fanfares
(commissioned by the remarkable Eugene Goossens) that produced Copland's
Fanfare for the Common Man.  Most of the fanfares were dedicated to
specific fighting units - the medical corps, the signal corps, the airmen,
the free French, and so on.  Copland and Gould were the only two composers
of the bunch to take notice of the ideas people were dying for.  Both works
build from simple, even austere, ideas, but Gould's work more closely
adheres to the conventional idea of a fanfare.  Copland, on the other hand,
produces something sui generis, and I think it significant that Copland's
is the only fanfare of the series to lead a significant concert life beyond
its premiere.  Nevertheless, the series as a whole contained no real miss,
and Gould's contribution brilliantly riffs on the major triad (do-mi-sol,
C-E-G) for a thrilling one-and-a-half minutes.

The New York Philharmonic commissioned Gould's Philharmonic Waltzes in 1947
as an accompaniment to a fashion show, believe it or not - a fund-raising
benefit for the orchestra.  This is a quintessentially American idea, I
think:  pleasure + pleasure = more pleasure.  Great music plus good-looking
women in pretty clothes gives you more than merely great music.  Gould came
up with music that transcends its silly occasion.  It celebrates movement
and would make a terrific ballet.  You can practically see a Balanchine
corps de ballet as the music plays.  I also find it an interesting example
of what I call the "Broadway waltz," of the kind written by Richard Rogers
and Leonard Bernstein.

Festive Music was commissioned by the Tri-City Symphony Orchestra in
1964 - the three cities in question being Rock Island, Illinois, Moline,
Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa.  Gerard Schwarz recorded the middle
movement only on Delos DE3166.  This recording supersedes the Delos.  It's
definitely minor Gould, but nevertheless interesting.  The first movement
- "Fanfare" - again plays with the major triad.  The second - "Interlude"
- pays homage to Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke, since (as viewers of the Ken Burns
documentary Jazz know), the jazzman was born in Davenport.  The movement is
not particularly jazzy, reminding me instead of Beiderbecke's Impressionist
piano compositions, like "Candlelight." A solo trumpet soars over an
ensemble of mainly strings, evoking the Iowa prairie, much like Copland's
Suite from The Red Pony or even Quiet City.  Though there's more Copland
here than Gould, it's Copland very well done indeed.  The finale - "Dance"
- is a rip-roaring 9/8, full of ingenious, physically exciting
cross-rhythms.  I've never heard scherzo-like rhythm broken up in so
many surprising ways as here.

The major work on the CD, the Latin-American Symphonette, has for some
reason received very few complete recordings.  The only other (off the
top of my head) was Howard Hanson's on Mercury.  Gould wrote his fourth
"little symphony" in 1940, during a major craze for Latin rhythms in
American pop.  Think of Gershwin's Cuban Overture, Copland's El Salon
Mexico and Danzon Cubano, and even Cole Porter's beguines.  This piece
isn't an entirely-straight evocation of the Real Thing, but of its pop
manifestations.  There's as much boogie-woogie in its movements as conga
and tango.  At certain points, one can almost hear the Andrews Sisters.
The most "legit" movements are the "Tango" and "Guaracha," and I don't
believe it a coincidence these movements are also the most performed.
Nevertheless, the piece is a lot of fun - an American classic of sorts.
Each movement is recognizably the dance it purports to be, as much a matter
of Gould's seizing upon the characteristic rhythm, and yet the course of
each movement surprises.  Gould also handles the percussion section
superbly, as well indeed as the Cuban, Argentinean, and Brazilian musicians
the dances belong to.  It must be a joy to play.

However, for the real thing, turn to Ginastera's 1941 Estancia.  This
suite is probably his best-known work, sort of Bartok on the Pampas, taking
folk rhythms and melos and constructing a highly sophisticated "primitive"
idiom.  You have many performances to choose from - including at least one
of the complete ballet.  Gould's holds up very well indeed in a crowded
field.  Indeed, Gould and his London band do brilliantly throughout the CD.
This is one very attractive disc, beautifully recorded.

Steve Schwartz