This Is It! Part Two
The complete piano works of Neely Bruce, performed by the composer
Sunday 16 February 2014
Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan
University
An improvised
prelude, using seven Duckworth weights
Prelude in A major,
Op. 28, No. 7, by F. F. Chopin
A Prelude for Sam
Three Friendly Fugues
Katchen Coley
Carl Viggiani
Clem W. Hitchcock
Crackin’ Lobsters: A New
Culinary Rag
Four Friendly Fugues
Blake Reynolds
Louise Faircloth
Lorry Yelding
Dr. Hoggard
Memories of You 2012
(William Duckworth
memorial version, w/Duckworth weights)
A Partita for
Virginia Ellen
Prelude
Fugue
Chaconne
Reel
Introduction and
Variations
The theme of this afternoon’s recital is memory. Each of
these pieces is closely associated with a departed friend or relative. It is
important to remember those who have left this world, sometimes with sorrow,
but more often with joy and pleasure.
What I call “Duckworth weights” were used by the composer William Duckworth in his landmark set
of pieces entitled The Time Curve
Preludes (see below). They consist of five lead weights, taped together, so
that they hold down a specific key of the piano. The resulting resonance
becomes a part of the composition, or, in this case, the improvisation.
Resonances differ from piano to piano, of course, and vary with the acoustic of
the performing space. Each performance with Duckworth weights will be somewhat
different.
The Chopin A major prelude was the favorite composition of
my grandmother, Lela Mae Hemphill Neely.
She was a schoolteacher, a businesswoman, and an aspiring pianist in her youth.
For many years she was the pianist at the First Baptist Church in Mendenhall,
Mississippi, where she also gave piano lessons. My first experience at the
keyboard, as a small boy, was standing on her piano bench and banging on the
keys of her piano. She asked me to play this prelude at her funeral, but for
various reasons that did not happen. To make amends, I play it from time to
time at memorial events (for Ron McCutcheon, for example).
Sam Lowe was a
Wesleyan alumnus who died suddenly two years ago in Birmingham, Alabama (his
home town and mine). Sam made a name for himself as an excellent free-lance
jazz musician in New York and New Jersey, and went home to Birmingham to pursue
a second career as a church musician in one of Birmingham’s biggest black
churches. A concert in his memory was held in the Wesleyan Chapel in May of
2012, during alumni weekend, when this piece was premiered. This prelude is based
on the letters of his name — Samuel Hayes Lowe — in the manner of the Friendly
Fugues.
The first of my Friendly Fugues was written as an
eightieth-birthday present for Katchen
Coley. Katchen was a founding director of The Connection in Middletown, an
outspoken advocate for environmental issues, and one of the most outrageous,
lively people I have ever known. Shortly before she died in 2013, at the age of
89, she was honored by the City of Middletown for her ceaseless efforts to
conserve the Maromas area of our town.
Carl Viggiani was
Professor of French at Wesleyan, a World War Two veteran, and for several years
the personal secretary of Albert Camus. His favorite composer was Chopin. This
fugue was composed shortly after his death. The subject utilizes his full name
— Carl Albert Viggiani, Senior — a name he never used in life.
Clem W. Hitchcock
was a retired employee of the State of Connecticut (he worked in the statistics
office), a life master bridge player, and an amateur vocalist with an
insatiable appetite for singing. He was a member of Wesleyan Singers for many
years, and sang in many, if not most, of the community choruses in Central
Connecticut at one time or another. He took great pride in the fact that he
often performed “The Star Spangled Banner” at the beginning of Rock Cats games.
This fugue was a present for his seventieth birthday.
“Crackin’ Lobsters,” like the following fugue, is dedicated
to Blake Reynolds. Blake was a loyal
Wesleyan alum who lived in Cos Cob when I met him. He subsequently moved to
Maine. He was a great fan of my ragtime playing, and established three
scholarships at Wesleyan, named in my honor. The fugue was a present for his
ninetieth birthday. The rag was inspired by a dinner he gave for friends and
family at an excellent lobster restaurant near Damariscotta. At a certain point
in the evening all conversation ceased throughout the entire room. All one
could hear was the sound of lobsters being cracked. Later I remarked to Blake
that “Crackin’ Lobsters” would be a great name for a rag. He was delighted with
the suggestion.
Louise Faircloth
was the mother of my good friend and roommate at Indian Springs School, Jim
Mustin. She was widowed twice — first, when her three children were small. She
raised them while teaching in the English Department of the University of
Alabama at Tuscaloosa (my alma mater as an undergraduate). Her specialty was
English romantic poetry, especially Wordsworth. When all of the children were
out of the nest she married James Faircloth, professor of engineering. After a
few wonderful years together, he died suddenly. In her second widowhood, when
she was retired from the university, she became an expert in the art and craft
of needlepoint, and had a second career as a needlepoint designer. Her full
name was Louise Tyson Goodwin Mustin Faircloth. All of these names are carved
on her tombstone. The fugue uses all of
the names, cumulatively, to form six different subjects. (The sixth subject is
a lively variation on the rather somber fifth.) The longest of my Friendly
Fugues, it was a present for her 100th birthday.
My sister-in-law Joan married Lorry Yelding, an Englishman whose given name was Lorimer. (No one
ever called him Lorimer.) He was a witty, charming man, who loved to play golf,
eat well, drink good wine, and take Joan on trips all over the world. He owned
a printing company in Roxbury, Connecticut, and had been retired for several
years when he married into our family. We would congratulate ourselves on our
good fortune in marrying two of the legendary Behuniak sisters. The fugue was a
present for his ninetieth birthday.
Dr. Hoggard was
my high school glee club conductor, my first composition teacher, conducting
mentor, and altogether the single most important musical influence in my life.
His full name, which I use in the subject, along with his ubiquitous title, was
Doctor Lara Guldmar Hoggard. He was principle staff conductor for Fred Waring,
director of music at Indian Springs School (my alma mater, fifteen miles south
of Birmingham), conductor of the Midland-Odessa Symphony Orchestra in Texas,
and William Rand Keenan Professor of Music at UNC Chapel Hill. He was in every
way a larger-than-life character — poverty-stricken as a boy in Oklahoma, a national
choral conducting sensation when he was barely out of his teens, a notable
career in the US Navy in World War Two, etc. Robert Phillips is writing his
biography. Like the fugues for Blake and Lorry, the fugue for Dr. Hoggard was a
ninetieth-birthday present. (Even though I knew him from when I was twelve
years old until his death over fifty years later, I could never address him by
his first name. He was always Dr. Hoggard.)
I met William
Duckworth in the group composition class we took with Ben Johnston at the
University of Illinois. Our children played together in the bathtub when they
were toddlers. I played the premiere of his best-known work, The Time Curve Preludes, at Wesleyan in
1978 and recorded it soon thereafter. His principal choral work, Southern Harmony, was commissioned by
Wesleyan Singers in 1980. We wrote “Memories of You” collaboratively in the
late 1960s. It is for any four musicians, voices and/or instruments, and can be
performed in an indefinite number of ways. When the piece was performed in 1975
in Town Hall Bernard Holland, writing for The
New York Times, dismissed it as “a bit of Cagean irrelevance.” This version
for solo piano was incorporated in a performance by seven all-star musicians at
Bill’s memorial concert at Le Poisson Rouge in the fall of 2012.
Virginia Ellen was
the wife of Jim Mustin and the daughter-in-law of Louise Faircloth. She was a
successful lawyer and a total charmer. She took a remarkable set of photographs
of my piece CONVERGENCE at Lincoln Center in 2002. Her death was sudden and
unexpected. The partita was written at the request of her husband. Her name is
incorporated in each of the four movements, not just the fugue.
To satisfy part of her requirements for the Yale Doctor of
Musical Arts, Teresa Escandon asked
me to compose the “Introduction and Variations.” She played the piece several
times, as have I. When I first came to Middletown, Teresa was a local celebrity
who played major concerts in Crowell Concert Hall. She was married to Dr.
Speight, a retired local physician. Upon his death she moved to Florida to
become professor of piano at the University of Miami. An enthusiast for the
music of Liszt and a protégée of famed Liszt interpreter Jorges Bolet, she was
in the process of editing the complete works of Liszt, as played by Bolet, at
the time of her death.
* * * * * * *
Art is long, life is short. Since the passing of my wife
Phyllis I have thought a great deal about life, death, and art. Many of you
will know that I have produced three concerts in Phyllis’s memory, and will
continue to do so, on or around December 8 of whatever year it is. Today’s
recital is a way to remember other friends, relatives and colleagues who are no
longer with us, whose lives were and are inexorably intertwined with my life,
and with my piano music.
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