march 13/14, 2022
Ludwig van Beethoven
Horn Sonata in F Major, Op. 17
Shawn Okpebholo
Two Black Churches
Bedřich Smetana
Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15
Music reveals its power to heal through two works inspired by sorrow. After the heartbreaking loss of his daughter, Smetana wrote his autobiographical Piano Trio to come to terms with his grief. Two Black Churches by distinguished UC-CCM Alumnus, Shawn Okpebholo, is a powerful musical reflection on two horrific racist attacks, decades apart.
Shawn Okpebholo, composer
Program Notes
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
Horn Sonata in F Major, Op. 17
Historically, one of the most interesting facets of Beethoven’s horn sonata is the man for whom it was composed. Renowned horn virtuoso Giovanni Punto was born Jan Václav Stich, the son of a Bohemian serf bonded to Count von Thun of Žehušice. Under Thun’s patronage, Punto received an outstanding musical education and developed the groundwork that would help him grow to be one of the most noteworthy masters of hand stopping techniques for natural horn. At age 16, he returned to Thun’s estate but after four years fled and adopted the Italian variant of his name to avoid further offending the count.
Punto went on to build a career as one of Europe’s most colorful soloists, and his renowned virtuosity inspired Beethoven to compose the horn sonata upon their meeting in Vienna in 1800. The sonata was composed with great haste—Beethoven began composing only the day before the work’s premiere on April 18, 1800. By the performance, the horn’ part had been written, but Beethoven improvised the piano accompaniment. Later that year he did commit the accompaniment to writing.
All three movements include prominent parts for both horn and piano. The first movement, Allegro moderato, is built upon simple horn calls made more elaborate with the chromatics Punto specialized in. By contrast, the second movement is a brief funeral march whose brevity is a bit suspicious—perhaps the result of Beethoven’s rush to finish the piece—but drives to an abrupt end that Beethoven disguises with a blink-and-you-miss-it transition to the Rondo finale.
Shawn Okpebholo (1981 – )
Two Black Churches
Two Black Churches is a song set in two movements composed for baritone Will Liverman and pianist Paul Sánchez. This work is a musical reflection of two significant and tragic events perpetrated at the hands of white supremacists in two black churches, decades apart: The 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which took the lives of four girls and the 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, that resulted in the deaths of nine parishioners. The text of the first movement is a poem by Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham, a narrative account of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing from the perspectives of the mother of one victim and her child. Stylistically, this movement includes 1960s black gospel juxtaposed with contemporary art song. At moments, the civil rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome,” and the hymn, “Amazing Grace,” are referenced subtly. While there are strophic elements consistent with the poem’s structure, the work is also rhapsodic, though serious and weighty in nature. The text of the second movement is a poem written specifically for this composition by Marcus Amaker, poet laureate of Charleston, South Carolina, called The Rain. This poem poignantly reflects the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Set in the coastal city of Charleston, which often floods, The Rain is a beautifully haunting metaphor on racism and the inability of Blacks in America to stay above water—a consequence of the flood of injustice and the weight of oppression. In this composition, the number nine is significant, symbolizing the nine people who perished that day. Musically, this is most evident through meter and a reoccurring nine-chord harmonic progression. The hymn, “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,’” is quoted in this movement. This hymn was sung at the first service in the church after the shooting, testifying to a community that chose faith and hope over hate and fear.
Notes by the composer
Texts for Two Black Churches by Shawn Okpebholo
BALLAD OF BIRMINGHAM from Cities Burning
By Dudley Randall
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”
Dudley Randall, “Ballad of Birmingham” from Cities Burning. Copyright © 1968
The Rain
by Marcus Amaker, Charleston, SC Poet Laureate
When the reality
of racism returns,
all joy treads water
in oceans of buried
emotion.
Charleston
is doing
everything it can
to only swim
in a colorless liquid
of calm sea
and blind faith.
But the Lowcountry
is a terrain
of ancient tears,
suffocating through
floods of
segregation.
When gunshots
made waves,
we closed our eyes,
held our breath
and went under.
And we are still
trying not to
taste the salt
of our surrounding blues
or face the rising tide
of black pain.
DEDICATION
Two Black Churches is dedicated to the four girls who lost their lives in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Addie Mae Collins (age 14)
Carol Denise McNair (age 11)
Carole Robertson (age 14)
Cynthia Wesley (age 14)
Two Black Churches is also dedicated to the nine men and women who lost their lives in the 2015 Charleston church shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (age 45)
Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd (age 54)
Susie Jackson (age 87)
Ethel Lee Lance (age 70)
Depayne Middleton-Doctor (age 49)
Clementa C. Pinckney (age 41)
Tywanza Sanders (age 26)
Daniel L. Simmons (age 74)
Myra Thompson (age 59)
Bedřich Smetana (1824 – 1884)
Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 15
Bedřich Smetana experienced hardship and loss early in life. The composer’s 30s were marked by a series of personal losses that heavily influenced his art. On June 9, 1854, the Smetana’s’ second daughter, Gabriela, died, and on September 6, 1855, their eldest daughter, Bedřiška, followed her to the grave. Bedřiška was not only the composer’s namesake but also shared his love of, and talent for, music. Losing her struck Smetena particularly hard, and he immediately began writing his G Minor Piano Trio, which he dedicated “in memory of our eldest child Bedřiška, whose rare musical talent gave us such delight; too early snatched from us by death at the age of 4-1/2 years.”
The serious tone of this trio is unmistakable—all three movements are in G minor with diversions into major keys seemingly only for musical contrast rather than to lighten the somber mood. The first movement is overwhelmingly intense in its emotion, but an elegiac spirit also peeks through. The opening theme grows from a violin solo to a passionate outpouring before giving way to a lyrical second theme based on one of Bedřiška’s favorite tunes. Through the development and recapitulation, Smetena establishes an intense—at times frenzied—back and forth between light and dark motifs that becomes a unifying factor throughout the trio. The second movement is laid out as a worried scherzo with two trios, each offsetting the gloom that surrounds them. The first offers a sighing, swaying melody of tender expression; the second is a march that is by turns luminous, then regal, then an outpouring of full heartbreaking majesty. The finale opens in bustling compound rhythm, with the strings energizing the texture further through occasional plucks of pizzicato. A gorgeous, reflective theme is introduced by the cello and then answered immediately by the other instruments above embellished piano configurations. Near the end, Smetana inserts a funereal section, a slow march that the piano punctuates with what seems to be the tolling of bells.