It was August of 1942 when Aaron Copland received a letter from Eugene Goosens, the British conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Goosens had decided to replicate a project he had done in Britain during World War I, when he had commissioned British composers to write patriotic fanfares to help with the war effort. The idea was to do the same thing with American composers, as the United States had recently entered World War II. Copland was one of 18 composers who agreed to write a piece, and during the 1942-1943 season, the Cincinnati Symphony performed the new fanfares as the opening works on concerts between October 1942 and April 1943. Copland delivered his fanfare in November, and Goosens was immediately struck not only by the music, but by the title of the work. Whereas most of the works that were submitted had military or nationalistic titles, Copland chose to title his work Fanfare for the Common Man, a term which had been coined by Henry Wallace, Vice President during Franklin Roosevelt’s third term. Wallace had called the twentieth century the “century of the common man,” and Copland was drawn to the phrase, writing, “It was the common man, after all, who was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army. He deserved a fanfare.” Goosens was so enamored of the piece that he chose to program the work on the orchestra’s March 12, 1943 concert, since it was close to income tax time in the U.S. Copland later recalled, “I was all for honoring the common man at income tax time.”

The three-minute work for brass and percussion was an immediate success—Copland later went on to incorporate it into the finale of his Third Symphony—and is the only one of the original 18 fanfares to have found a permanent home in the standard repertoire. Copland’s ability to create an atmosphere of majesty is unparalleled. Opening with arresting percussion, three trumpets, playing in unison, intone a simple theme, a stirring clarion call of honor. The work builds as the remainder of the instruments join, section by section, until all the brass and percussion, together as an army, bring forth an extraordinarily powerful wall of sound. The effect is magnificent, stirring, heroic, and everything Goosens had hoped for in terms of galvanizing the war effort. Fanfare for the Common Man far exceeded that initial goal, however, and has continued to be utilized on countless occasions, from Olympic competitions to public memorials. Eighty years after its premiere, the work has penetrated the American psyche as a representation of the ideals of heroism, sacrifice and community—principles that sometimes seem lost, but can still resonate deeply, inside every “common man.”

Although Antonín Dvořák wrote nine symphonies, the last five were the only ones published in his lifetime, and the Eighth Symphony was long known as “No. 4” in its order of publication. In the 1950s, the current numbering—based on order of composition, rather than publication—came into use, and the G Major Symphony was reborn as No. 8. Dvořák’s father was the butcher of a tiny town on the banks of the Moldau River about ten miles north of Prague, and Dvořák’s music is often said to capture the essence of this rural upbringing. (He kept these simple tastes when he moved to New York in 1892; he was a frequent visitor to Central Station and the harbor and reportedly had an impressive command of the train schedule.) The G Major Symphony is an excellent example of Dvořák’s ability to bring the countryside and its people to life.

As he was to do several years later when composing the Ninth Symphony (From the New World), which was written amidst verdant Iowa farmland, Dvořák composed his Symphony No. 8 in relative seclusion—this time at his country home in his native Czechoslovakia. Unabashedly tuneful and irresistibly cheerful, the symphony’s casual grace was paralleled by its reported ease of composition; as Dvořák remarked at the time, “melodies simply pour out of me.” Indeed, Dvořák completed the symphony in a remarkably short period, finishing all but the orchestration in less than a month. The first symphony he had written in over four years, the Eighth was special to Dvořák. As he once said of the work, “It is different from the others, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way.”

As Dvořák suggests, the first movement, marked Allegro con brio, defies expectations. Although the piece is written in G major, the opening theme is in G minor]. Dvořák brings it back at key structural points, gradually redefinining the theme as an introduction rather than a primary melody. Numerous catchy tunes pervade the movement, prompting Leoš Janácek to say of the work, “You’ve scarcely got to know one figure before a second one beckons with a friendly nod, so you’re in a state of constant but pleasurable excitement.” Following an Adagio consisting of shifting moods, keys, and colors, the lush, waltz-like Allegretto grazioso recalls similar movements of Tchaikovsky or Brahms. A solo trumpet heralds the concluding Allegro ma non troppo, its call gradually revealed as the opening phrase of the main theme, first presented in the cellos and then wildly transformed in the variations that follow. Taking listeners on a journey through a range of moods that almost recall his Slavonic Dances, Dvořák arrives briefly at a bucolic peace that abruptly gives way to a joyful end.

Hard at work on The Marriage of Figaro , which received its premiere at the National Court Theater of Vienna on May 1, 1786, Mozart nevertheless managed to squeeze in three of his most famous piano concertos between December 1785 and March 1786—K. 482, K. 488, and the C Minor Piano Concerto, K. 491. It is generally believed that the works were composed for Mozart’s Lenten subscription concerts at the Burgtheater. Despite the lack of supporting documentation, the composer most likely premiered the C Minor Concerto at the theater in April 1786.

The second of two concertos Mozart composed in a minor key, the C Minor is intensely dramatic—an interesting choice for a Viennese public with a seemingly insatiable desire for light theater. The work boasts one of the richest orchestrations Mozart ever employed, featuring clarinets in addition to oboes and strongly resembling the instrumentation Beethoven used fourteen years later in his First Symphony. (Beethoven often expressed his admiration for K. 491 and made clear allusions to it in his third concerto, written in the same key.) Mozart launches the opening Allegro with a fierce theme—but in triple time, an unusual feature that imbues the contrasting major sections with a lyrical lilt. The movement closes quietly, forming an almost nearly seamless transition into the ensuing Larghetto, which Alfred Einstein describes as moving in “regions of the purest and most affecting tranquility” with a “transcendent simplicity of expression.” In contrast to the Larghetto’s lyrical purity, the concluding Allegretto sounds even more dramatic. Unlike most 18th-century concerto finales—rapid, dancelike movements that serve as breathless conclusions—the finale of the C Minor Concerto is emotional and intense. As Mozart scholar John N. Burke writes, “If Mozart could be said ever to have ignored his public in a concerto and followed completely his own inner promptings, it was here.”

Praised for his “enviable grasp of orchestration” (The New York Times) and for writing music with “formal clarity and an alluringly mercurial surface,” Roger Zare is a native of Sarasota and an alumnus of the Sarasota Youth Orchestras. Drawing upon a wide range of inspirations, from math and science to literature and mythology, Zare’s colorful, energetic music has been performed around the world, and he has garnered an impressive number of awards, including the ASCAP Nissim Prize, three BMI Student Composer Awards, an ASCAP Morton Gould award, a New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission, the 2008 American Composers Orchestra Underwood Commission, a 2010 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Copland House Residency Award, the Grand Prize in the inaugural China-US Emerging Composers Competition, and many other honors. Zare received his DMA in 2012 from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty, Paul Schoenfield, Bright Sheng, and Kristin Kuster. He also holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory (M.M. '09) and the University of Southern California (B.M. '07), and his previous teachers include Christopher Theofanidis, Derek Bermel, David Smooke, Donald Crockett, Tamar Diesendruck, Fredrick Lesemann, and Morten Lauridsen. Zare is an assistant professor of music at Appalachian State University and previously taught composition at Illinois State University.

NEOWISE was commissioned by the Trinity Symphony Orchestra, directed by Dr. Joseph Kneer, with generous support from the Stieren Arts Enrichment Grant. As Zare describes the work,

“During the summer of 2020, a rare sight emerged in the night sky. Comet NEOWISE rounded the sun and spent weeks visible to the naked eye during July. Only discovered months earlier, NEOWISE became the most impressive comet to fly by our planet in decades. I have always been an avid follower of astronomy and remember vividly seeing comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, amazed by its sinewy shape and pale glow. Since then, there have not been any comets visible to the naked eye in the northern hemisphere until NEOWISE. The year 2020 was marred by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries, including the United States, locked down to slow down the spread of this extremely contagious disease, disrupting the lives of countless people around the world. While humanity was unable to do so many things that had been taken for granted, nature put on a show.

“This piece portrays the journey of comet NEOWISE through the inner solar system from our viewpoint on Earth. As the comet very gradually gains speed falling towards the sun, the music begins distantly and mysteriously, with an undulating carpet of sound in the strings supporting a questioning clarinet solo. Low brass chords swell in and out of focus and gradually replace the woodwinds, leading the music to grow in speed and energy. The woodwinds sing a graceful and winding melody over a blanket of delicate strings and tambourine rhythms, continuing to build steam as the comet accelerates towards Earth. Rounding the sun, the comet's coma expands and the music blossoms, suddenly pulling back in speed and scope and returning to the vast openness where the music began. A solo bassoon imitates the original clarinet solo, and the brass chords turn into a luminous chorale that launches the music to a high velocity once again. A more massive climax punctuated by bells and resounding brass chords sees NEOWISE traverse our skies. As the comet speeds away from us, the mysterious texture from the opening returns a final time. The clarinet solo also returns, but now from offstage, distant echoes from an eventful close encounter with the Earth.”