Northwestern State University
Presents
American Reflections
November 3, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Gershwin: An American in Paris (Arr. John Whitney)
An American in Paris was born out of George Gershwin’s desire to bridge the gap between American popular jazz and European classical traditions. He traveled to Paris in the spring of 1928 to study with Maurice Ravel who famously remarked that it was better to be a "first-rate Gershwin than a second-rate Ravel," fearing that strict classical training would ruin the composer's natural jazz instincts. Nevertheless, he soaked in the atmosphere of the French capital, famously incorporating street sounds such as taxi horns. He completed the work after returning to New York and it was premiered December 13, 1928. The original Carnegie Hall program notes described the piece as an impression of an American visiting Paris: "imagine, then, an American visiting Paris, swinging down the Champs-Elysées on a mild, sunny morning". Gershwin aimed to portray the tourist as he "listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere," eventually experiencing a brief "spasm of homesickness" before concluding in a celebratory finale.
The structural and thematic breakdown of this arrangement operates as follows:
Walking Theme & Taxi Horns: Sauntering down the avenue swinging a walking stick with carefree confidence.
Transition to the Café: A fast development of the walking theme leading us to the café.
The Solo Trumpet Blues: After a few glasses of wine, he becomes homesick with a 12-bar blues.
The Triumphant Return & Coda: Breaks out of his homesickness realizing how unforgettably awesome is Paris! The walking theme returns and the coda has a brief statement again of the blues but with a brighter feeling reflecting the brightness of the Paris streets.
William Hofeldt: Lullaby
About the Composer
Chicago-born composer William Hofeldt studied music education at the University of Illinois and composition at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A dedicated educator, he spent 15 years teaching school orchestra in Wisconsin before transitioning into a career as a CPA, though he continues to be heavily commissioned as a prominent voice in string literature.
About the Piece
Originally composed for violin and piano, Hofeldt later expanded Lullaby into a lush masterwork for full string orchestra. Imbued with deep personal warmth, the piece features an affectionate dedication to his daughters, Amie and Tifani, capturing the gentle, comforting essence of a bedtime song. The music flows from a quiet, rocking motion into a resonant climax before gently fading into a peaceful, quiet slumber.
Aaron Copland: John Henry
Aaron Copland wrote John Henry in 1940 as a short, descriptive orchestral fantasy for a CBS radio broadcast titled ‘School of the Air”. The goal was to write something exciting and brief for young audiences.
The Legend: The music depicts the American folk hero John Henry, an African American laborer who raced a steam-powered drill to save workers' jobs. He won the race but died of exhaustion with a hammer in each hand.
The Sounds: The orchestration uses percussion like the anvil, sandpaper, triangle, and snare drum to simulate chugging trains and hammering steel. The piece starts quietly with distant brass and woodwinds. Then builds tension through unique orchestration that simulates the sounds of hammering steel and a moving locomotive. The structure features rolling wheels driven by accelerating rhythmic momentum and piercing dissonant accents that capture the mechanical screeching of train wheel flanges grinding against the iron rails.
Kevin Puts: Marimba Concerto
Marimba Concerto (1997) emerged from my close collaboration with marimbaist Makoto Nakura, for whom I also composed several solo and chamber works in the Nineties while still a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music. In recent years, rising star Ji Su Jung has championed the concerto and eagerly expressed an interest in recording it. Commissioned by Nakura and the Vermont Symphony Orchestra for a tour around the orchestra’s home state, the concerto’s opening melody was probably inspired by my hearing a pianist warming up on the stage of the Eastman Theater as I passed through it on the way to class. The harmonic progression he played – a series of chords whose bass line descended by step while the upper notes outlined simple triads – struck me as poignant in its simplicity. I have always felt close to the key of E flat, due to its rich qualities and probably also to the many works of Mozart written in this key, in particular two of his piano concertos that served, in many ways, as a model for this concerto. The first movement spins forth from this melody as the marimba embellishes it virtuosically. The second movement, cast in more elegiac hues than the first, employs only the string section of the orchestra, which introduces reflective four-voiced textures that are eventually taken up by the solo marimba. The third movement, an athletic moto perpetuo for the marimbaist, gradually recalls the elements of the first movement’s melody, culminating in a reprise of this melody within the context of this final movement’s more dance-like nature.
-Keven Puts
Movement Subtitles: Each movement's subtitles are drawn from the poetry of the composer's aunt, Fleda Brown:
I. "...terrific sun on the brink" (Flowing)
II. "...into the quick of losses" (Broad and Deliberate)
III. "...logarithms, exponents, the damnedest of metaphors" (Presto non troppo)
Charles Ives: Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting”
After graduating from Yale in 1898, Ives would pursue two careers simultaneously: one as a musician (church organist and composer) and another as a marketing strategist for a life insurance company.
In 1901, as part of his church duties, Ives composed three organ pieces: a prelude, a postlude and a piece for communion. These pieces have since been lost but they survive in an elaborate and reworked form as the movements of Ives’ Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting.
Childhood Memories and the Inspiration of a “Camp Meeting”
In the nineteenth-century life was difficult in rural America on farms and in small towns. There were no safeguards for farmers. A year of bad weather could be disastrous. “Camp Meetings” were a religious movement to life be more bearable by supporting each other, socializing, and praying to a loving God who would protect them. Rural farmers and townsfolk would gather together at a central location to sing, pray and hear circuit preachers sermonize for several days at camps.
As a four-year-old boy, Charles Ives witnessed one of the last great camp meetings at Redding, Connecticut in 1878. His father, who had been a band master in the Civil War, led the singing of hymns, as Ives later recalled in his memos:
“I remember, when I was a boy—at the outdoor camp meeting services in Redding—all the farmers, their families and field hands, for miles around, would come afoot or in their farm wagons. I remember how the great waves of sound used to come through the trees—when things like Beulah Land, Woodworth, Nearer My God to Thee, The Shining Shore, Nettleton, In the Sweet Bye and Bye and the like were sung by thousands of ‘let out’ souls….Father, who led the singing, sometimes with his cornet or his voice, sometimes with both voice and arms, and sometimes in the quieter hymns with a French horn or violin, would always encourage the people to sing their own way.”
Memories of this early childhood experience was the inspiration for Ives’ Third Symphony.
Unlike his First and Second Symphonies, Ives’ Third, flips the traditional structures that had predominated since Haydn and Mozart of exposition of themes then development. Instead, he starts by developing the themes then states them at the end. And instead of four movements, we have three; Old Folks Gatherin’, Children’s Day and Communion. Each depicting various scenes from the meeting, unfolding organically according to its own, unique pattern. And, in place of the large post-Romantic orchestras of Mahler and Strauss, we have a smaller, quieter chamber orchestra in which the strings prevail, often assuming the role of a singing congregation:
Nearly all of the melodic material in the symphony is derived from traditional protestant hymns, such as Azmon (“O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”), Woodworth (“Just as I Am”), and Erie (“What a Friend We Have in Jesus”). These melodies are not presented straight, or entirely until the very end. Instead, they are fragmented, nostalgic memories that Ives creates with techniques of musical development used by composers from Bach to Brahms.
Many of the symphony’s other unusual qualities may also have been inspired by the sounds Ives heard at the camp meeting in Redding. The expressive chromatic harmonies may sound reminiscent of contemporary German composers like Strauss and Reger, but it is unlikely that Ives knew their music as it was still rarely performed in America at this time. In addition to being the products of his own musical imagination, Ives’ chromatic harmonies may also be artistic renderings of the way untrained singers often change key in the middle of a song.
Of particular interest are Ives’ “shadow passages,” usually short phrases played by a flute, oboe, or solo violin that clash with the rest of the orchestra. These “shadow passages” may reflect lone voices in the congregation that “sing their own way.” One extended shadow passage occurs at the end of the first movement, played by a solo violin. Perhaps the most magical moment in the score is the ending, in which church bells sound off-stage in a distant key.
While Ives’ contemporaries, in 1904, would have regarded many of the sounds as mistakes, but Ives asks us to take them as they are. For him, the sound of the untrained voices at the camp meeting possessed an authenticity and spiritual expression that could not be matched by more ‘correct’ music. Describing the singers at the camp meetings, Ives said, “Most of them knew the words and music (theirs) by heart and sang it that way. If they threw the poet or composer around a bit, so much the better for the poetry and the music. There was power and exaltation in these great conclaves of sound from humanity.
When Ives played through his symphony on the piano for friends and acquaintances, it met with universal incomprehension.
Misunderstood and an artist way ahead of his time, Symphony No. 3 would not be premiered until 1946 by Lou Harrison and the New York Little Symphony. It took the Great Depression, World War II and far more dissonant examples of modern music for the musical community to finally understand Ives’ nostalgic vision, and the symphony was awarded the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for music.
Movement Structure
Old Folks Gatherin' (Andante maestoso): This movement portrays weary, folks; farmers, families, farm hands, and townsfolk arriving at camp afoot or by wagon. Untrained voices singing from their hearts, various hymns like Azmon ("O For a Thousand Tongues We Sing"), Erie ("What a Friend We Have in Jesus"), and Woodworth ("Just As I Am").
II. Children's Day (Allegro): An exuberant, playful, and fast-paced scherzo. We hear the pitter patter of little feet, running and skipping. There are bouncy fragments of simple tunes like “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”, “The Happy Land”, and “Father I Stretch My Hands to Thee” tossed about back and forth like a ballgame. We hear games of hide-and-seek and chase that build to a tiring climax before winding down slower and slower, becoming drowsy, there is one last attempt to stay awake before drifting off to sleep.
III. Communion (Largo): The most contemplative and serene movement depicts the most sacred and holy of rituals in the Christian Faith. Using developed fragments of “Just As I Am” in counterpoint as if several voices are singing it their own way. It bows it’s head reverently at the end with the final phrase of “Just As I Am”, hints of “Silent Night” fragments, and distant church bells.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Overture to Egmont
Beethoven was a passionate supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution and, quite possibly, the American Revolution as well. His music often reflects his deep belief in freedom, human dignity, and resistance to tyranny.
Egmont was originally a 1787 play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It tells the story of Count Egmont, a nobleman who defies a despotic ruler and stands against oppression. Egmont is eventually arrested, falsely accused of treason, and sentenced to death.
On the night before his execution, Egmont has a vision of a woman who represents freedom—often understood as an image of Lady Liberty. She tells him that although he will die, his death will inspire others to rise up against tyranny.
In his final speech, Egmont calls upon his fellow countrymen: “Friends, take heart. Behind are your parents, your wives, your children. Guard your sacred heritage and defend all you hold most dear. Fall gladly, as I do now!”
Egmont's death is therefore not presented as a defeat. His sacrifice becomes the catalyst for liberation. With his death, the people are inspired to rise, the bonds of tyranny are broken, and freedom triumphs.
