Program Notes Hammond Organ Concerto & Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony

Baião N’ Blues (2023)
by Clarice Assad (b. Rio de Janeiro, 1978)

Acclaimed Brazilian-American composer, singer and pianist Clarice Assad has written more than 90 works, which have been performed around the world. Her manifold activities encompass the worlds of classical, jazz, pop, and world music, where one area constantly influences and enriches the others. Her father Sérgio Assad and her uncle Odair are both virtuoso guitarists who have formed the Assad Brothers Duo, and Clarice also frequently collaborates with her father performing their own special brand of Brazilian music.

Long based in the United States, Clarice Assad is a perfectly bicultural musician, a fact she celebrates in Baião N’ Blues. This work was commissioned by KMFA, Classical 89.5 in Austin, Texas, and premiered in Austin by the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Douglas Kinney Frost, on September 24, 2023.

The baião is a musical style originating in the Northeastern regions of Brazil, and is characterized by a strong rhythmic beat. In this brief composition it meets, and blends with what the composer calls the “soulful essence of American blues.” As the composer further noted: “Baião N’ Blues showcases the power of music to transcend cultural boundaries and connect people through the art of listening.”

Concerto for Hammond | Tonewheel Organ and Orchestra (2022)
by Brian Raphael Nabors (b. Birmingham, Alabama, 1991)

In our times, a thirty-something composer is still considered a young composer, yet Brian Raphael Nabors has already built a large catalog of works on all genres, and his music has enjoyed great success both nationally and internationally. A classically trained pianist, Nabors–currently on the faculty of Louisiana State University–has also worked as a church musician, as well as in R&B, jazz and gospel. His ballet Blood in the Soil, created in collaboration with the dance company Black Iris Project and paying tribute to the history of African-American farmers and agriculturalists, received its premiere in New York in 2024.

The score of Nabors’s Concerto for Hammond | Tonewheel Organ and Orchestra contains the following note from the composer:

Back in 2017, I began to tap into a much deeper part of my artistic expression that eventually became the foundation of my voice and purpose as a composer. I asked myself the question of how I could create work that would be a mirror for all of our human experience. As my artistic identity became clearer it was evident that I needed to take the journey inward to where my musical foundations began. I was raised the son of a pastor and church musician in a Black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was there that my relationship with sound began in the womb of my mother, who had been playing the Hammond organ since she was 13 years old. I, too, learned the instrument around the same age. Little did I know, this sound of incredible spiritual power had been a part of a long history of inspiration, refuge, and perseverance. While finishing up my studies, I knew I had to write this concerto. Just as much as my music seeks to connect people from all walks of life, the Hammond organ is a connector itself and the perfect catalyst for sharing a message of togetherness.

In the history of American music, it has seamlessly crossed genres and broken barriers. From the spiritual silos of the Black church to the smooth and vivacious world of Jazz, to the hardy soulfulness of Rock, the Hammond has been there. This concerto is my love letter to all that has made me the artist I am. It is a love letter to the beauty, pain, and struggle that American music was born from.

The piece is divided into 3 movements: a rhapsody, threnody, and gospel praise break.

The first movement, Rhapsody, is an exploration of American sound. It is a celebration of the many cultural influences that make the US such a unique place. In a nutshell, it is everything we continue to strive for; fluid cultural integration. I send the soloist and orchestra through a whirlwind of genres. There’s Latin flavor, modern jazz, hard rock, all thrown into a contemporary sound block.

The second movement, Invocation, Threnody for the Victims of Senseless Violence, Racism, Hatred & Bigotry presents a lot of hard truths that concern the well-being of our nation’s people. Unfortunately, even in this current day and age, America is no stranger to tragedy. Within recent years, we’ve had numerous isolated events of terror: mass school shootings, church shootings, shootings in public places, unlawful killings of unarmed African American citizens, and meetings of unjust racist/hate groups who threaten our ability to simply have peace by pushing an agenda of hate and division. To top it off, a global pandemic. We all simply have not had a chance to breathe. I wanted this movement to be a moment where we pay homage to all of those innocent people lost, but most importantly reflect on who we are, and re-examine our core values if we are to live in a nation where everyone, regardless of where you come from, can prosper.

This movement features the traditional American hymn Amazing Grace and the African-American spiritual Oh Freedom. In partnership with the orchestra, the organ introduces these inspirational themes with sound interruptions symbolic of a very cut-throat, visceral pain to create an all-encompassing duality of hope and tragedy. After a roaring improvised cadenza, the strings split into 14-part divisi, and voices throughout the orchestra gradually gather and ascend to a soaring climax, with each individual voice creating a counterpoint representing the souls of innocent victims ascending to claim their peace.

Finally, we have the third movement, Finale, that is essentially one large gospel praise break between the organ and orchestra. It is a glimpse of what freedom sounds like and the peace that we’ll have when we all understand, as Dr. Maya Angelou said, that “we are all more alike than we are unalike.” This movement is lightning fast, bringing about the sound world of the Afro-American church, where echoes of praise ring out amongst the musicians.

Concerto for Hammond | Tonewheel Organ and Orchestra was commissioned by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Carlos Izcaray, Music Director, and by members of Sound Investment.

I would like to extend a word of thanks to Dr. Douglas Knehans, the composition faculty of the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, and many of the countless friends, colleagues and peers who whole-heartedly supported the creation of this work. I would like to send a special thanks to members of the Nabors and other extended family who continued to encourage me as I pursued this rigorous endeavor. You have my love and affection.

Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”) in C minor, Op. 78 (1886)
by Camille Saint-Saëns (Paris, 1835 – Algiers, 1821)

With his third and last symphony, Camille Saint-Saëns set out to create a masterpiece. At 51, he was–and had long been–one of the most famous musicians in France, equally successful as a composer, conductor, pianist, and organist. (For many years, he served as the organist of the Madeleine, one of the landmark churches in Paris.) His career had started with the unqualified endorsement of such luminaries as Berlioz, Liszt, and Gounod, and he had come to be considered a luminary himself. At the same time, he had reason to feel that some of his best efforts in the field of composition were not sufficiently appreciated. He had won great acclaim for his concertos and other virtuosic solo pieces. However, his symphonic poems, such as Le Rouet d’Omphale (“Omphale’s Spinning-Wheel”), met with little enthusiasm in Paris, and the opera Samson and Delilah, which he himself saw as his most important work, had to be premiered abroad. At home, Saint-Saëns was locked in a bitter rivalry with César Franck. He was antagonized by Franck’s students, and was increasingly isolated in the Société Nationale de Musique (which he had helped found), a situation that, soon after the premiere of the Third Symphony, led to his resignation as the society’s president.

Saint-Saëns, then, wanted to make a major statement, and the invitation of the London Philharmonic Society to write a symphony provided just the incentive he needed. He showed his work-in-progress to Franz Liszt (who had been a constant source of encouragement) when the older man passed through Paris for the last time in his life in 1885. Saint-Saëns conducted the premiere of his completed symphony in London on May 19, 1886, to a standing ovation. It was a success in France as well.

The symphony is divided into two parts, but each part can be broken down to two movements, so that the traditional four-movement symphonic structure is not hard to recognize (opening movement + Adagio, and scherzo + finale). The inclusion of an organ solo in a symphonic work may seem unusual, but it was not without precedent, as Saint-Saëns’s mentor Liszt had used an organ in his Hunnenschlacht (“Battle of the Huns”); Saint-Saëns included a piano in his orchestra as well, with two pianists playing four-hands.

Saint-Saëns’s method of motivic transformation also follows Lisztian models. Much of the piece is based on a single motif whose variants are heard throughout the two parts and four movements. As in Liszt’s symphonic poems, the motif undergoes major changes in rhythm, tempo, orchestration and general character. The organ first enters in the “Adagio” section, with a major solo followed by many more later on. In the final movement, the main motif is transformed into a solemn chorale and then into a fugue. The work ends with a magnificent and majestic climax.

Saint-Saëns was well aware of the symphony’s significance in his career. He never attempted to write another symphony; instead, he returned to writing operas, concertos, and chamber music during the remaining 35 years of his life. As he said about the “Organ” Symphony in later years: “I have given all I had to give. What I have done I shall never do again.”