TO THE PLANETS AND BEYOND



Joseph Packales
B. 1941

Joseph Packales
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 101

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Joseph Packales was born in New York City and received his education at The Eastman School of Music, Cleveland State University, and Kent State University. He has served the faculties of Skidmore College, Belknap College, and Cleveland State University and was, from 1984-1999, Composer-in-Residence and Associate Professor of Music at The University of Texas at El Paso. He has recently retired from the University of Southern Maine, where he taught composition and theory courses since 1999.

Packales' list of works includes piano, orchestral, choral, and chamber pieces in addition to an opera, Scenes from the Life of The Virgin Mary, the musical score to the outdoor drama, Viva! El Paso!, and a ballet, Lilith. He has fulfilled commissions from such artists and organizations as The Fox Trio, Christiane Edinger, The Figaro Trio, The Ohio Arts Council, The Presidential Orchestra of Turkey, The Columbus Symphony Orchestra, The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and The El Paso Symphony Orchestra. His works have been performed throughout the United States, and in many other countries.

Packales has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and has received the Howard Hanson Prize, several Macdowell Colony fellowships, a major grant from the I.B.M. Corporation, and two grants from The National Endowment for the Arts. Packales writes about the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra: "Now and then when the mood is right, I attempt to compose a piece in a traditional and popular style. This concerto is one of those: a piece I tried to make as accessible as possible for the audience as well as the performers.

"To that end, I have incorporated musics I love: Hasidic, Turkish, Tango, and the styles of Ravel and Bartók. The listener will experience a kaleidosope of musical styles and traditions all bound up within my own music-making, if I have been successful. The Concerto was completed in 2008 and a brief description follows:

The opening movement is infused with the spirit of the tango, as is much of the music I have written since the mid-1990's. A lively section follows which builds to a full orchestra treatment of the main tango melody. A cadenza is next, after which the movement ends softly with the otherwordly sound of the celesta.

"The second movement is a very slow hymn for the cello accompanied by strings, clarinets and horns. A thoughtful section in slow Sarabande rhythm interrupts, and then the hymnlike music returns marked 'hushed.' A crescendo builds before the movement trails off to silence.

"The last movement is a wild dance-like ride. Moments of some of the 'foreign' musics intervene and the concerto ends with a slam-bang ascending passage for everyone."



Gustav Holst
1874-1934

Gustav Holst
The Planets

Composer, educator and conductor Gustav Holst is known outside his native England essentially as a one-work composer. The Planets, composed between 1914 and 1916, gained him international fame, but he detested its popularity. Snippets of its opulent music with its broad orchestral palette have also been favorite fodder for television commercials.

Holst came from a musical family and was taught the piano by his father. He was a precocious, but not a particularly healthy, child who started composing while in grammar school. As a teenager he developed neuritis in his right arm, forcing him to give up the piano, but he picked up the trombone as a cure for his asthma. At the Royal College of Music, which he entered in 1893, he continued with the trombone in addition to composition, and from 1897 to 1903 performed as a freelance trombonist, mostly with opera companies. The experience inspired him to write numerous works for brass band, including two Suites for Military Band and Hammersmith, the latter written for the BBC Military Band.

Holst was influenced by mysticism and developed his own individual blend of Indian music and English folksong. His early works were inspired by the Vedas, Sanskrit holy verses, which he modified and adapted for his own compositions. In 1908 he wrote a chamber opera, Savitri, based on a story from the great Sanskrit epic Mahabharata.

A quiet introverted person, for most of his life Holst devoted his musical efforts to teaching. From 1905 until his death he taught music at St. Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, where many of his compositions were written for the school's orchestra and chorus. In 1906, on his doctor's advice, he went on vacation to Algeria and bicycled in the desert. The experience was the inspiration for the orchestral work Beni Mora. When it was first performed in England, one critic complained, "We do not ask for Biskra dancing girls in Langham Place." Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams once noted that had the piece been premiered in Paris, it would have made Holst a household name some ten years earlier than his success with The Planets. In 1932 Holst was visiting lecturer in composition at Harvard; among his students was composer Elliott Carter.

The inspiration for The Planets was not astronomy, but astrology, to which Holst was introduced in 1913, when he began studying the writing of the aptly named astrologer, Alan Leo. He attempted to depict in music the clearly defined astrological "personalities" and influences of the seven planets (Pluto was not discovered until 1930 and has now been demoted anyway.) His musical language was strongly influenced by the new developments in music at the time, especially by Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky and Edward Elgar.

Holst arranged the seven movements according to musical, not astronomical, criteria. Thus their arrangement does not correspond to their orbital distance from the sun:

Mars, The Bringer of War: This martial movement with its brutally percussive machine rhythms, was actually written a few months before the outbreak of World War I. According to Holst's directions, it is to be played slightly faster than a regular march, to give it a mechanized and inhuman character.

Venus, The Bringer of Peace; is typical of the andante movement in a four-movement symphony. After a long introduction, the movement develops two lyric melodies, one initiated by a solo violin, the second by a solo oboe. &

Mercury, The Winged Messenger is a scherzo with a perpetual motion rhythm and sparkling orchestration.

Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity, with its broad central British folk-like melody was strongly influenced by Edward Elgar.

Holst considered Saturn, The Bringer of Old Age, with its serene and subtle orchestration, as the best movement.

Uranus, The Magician: This movement appears to owe quite a lot to Paul Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but there is a question whether Holst was familiar with that score. &

Holst added wordless female voices to Neptune, The Mystic, recalling Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe as well as Debussy's "Sirenes" from Nocturnes. &