From Growth Possibilities: Metamorphosis in Vagn Holmboe’s Tuba Solos (Laura Potter, University of Kansas, 2013).

Vagn Holmboe was a Danish composer from central Jutland, the peninsula that forms the western portion of Denmark. He was the son of a merchant, and both of his parents were amateur musicians who encouraged artistry among their children. Holmboe entered the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen in 1926, partially on the recommendation of famed Danish composer Carl Nielsen. A prolific composer, Holmboe wrote in every genre and is known in Scandinavia particularly for his symphonic works and chamber music. He rarely travelled and never promoted himself outside of northern Europe. He is little known in the United States, and his works are performed here infrequently.

Holmboe’s music is consistently melodic and thoughtfully crafted in a distinctive, generative style, incorporating influences from Brahms, Bartók, Nielsen, folk music and natural processes. He was a musical craftsman, guiding small seeds of inspiration into coherent and integrated musical structures. Holmboe wrote three pieces for solo tuba: Concerto (1976), Sonata (1985) and Intermezzo Concertante for tuba and strings (1987). He also included soloistic writing for tuba in his chamber music, such as his two brass quintets (1961-1962, 1978) and Notater for three trombones and tuba (1981).

Intermezzo Concertante for solo tuba and strings, composed in 1987, was dedicated to Michael Lind. (Lind, for whom Holmboe had written the Tuba Sonata in 1985, was tubist of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra from 1977 to 2010, a member of the Philharmonic Brass Ensemble, and founder of the Swedish Tuba Society.) The score is signed ‘Årre boreale,’ indicating that it was composed at Holmboe’s home in the forest near Lake Årre.

The Intermezzo Concertante, a through-composed work about eight minutes in duration, caters to Lind’s strengths — tone and lyricism rather than virtuosic pyrotechnics, and focuses on melodic development. The features that Holmboe appreciated in Romanian folk music mark the melodic and rhythmic features of Intermezzo. A ‘severity’ of melody is prevalent, especially in the tuba lines, which are simple and austere for much of the work. These gestures are under- pinned by a rhythmic vitality in the string parts, which often take up elements of rhythmic ostinato (i.e., an ‘obstinate’ repeating figure).

Manny Albam had established himself as one of the country’s leading jazz and popular arrangers and composers by the time West Side Story opened on Broadway in September 1957. He was so impressed with the show that he immediately arranged much of its music for big band, which earned him a Grammy nomination when he recorded it with an all-star ensemble in 1959. Leonard Bernstein, composer of the musical and then Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, was so impressed with Albam’s work that he invited him to composer something for his orchestra. Albam took the challenge to heart and studied classical composition for three years with Tibor Serly, a student of Kodály and protégé of Bartók. (Serly completed both Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto and Viola Concerto.) Though nothing came of Bernstein’s suggestion, Albam composed for concert, film and television, and taught at several colleges for the rest of his career. One result of Albam’s contact with Bernstein, however, was meeting the Philharmonic’s renowned tubist, Harvey Phillips, who commis- sioned him to write a piece for tuba and strings for a recital of new compositions for his instrument that he planned for Carnegie Recital Hall in January 1958. The Quintet for Tuba and String Quartet was premiered on January 8th, but was little known until it was recorded in 2018; the score remains unpublished. The Quintet comprises an opening movement with much dialogue between tuba and strings, an expressive Adagio, a witty Scherzo, and a spirited Allegro.

In autumn 1885, Sibelius traveled sixty miles south from his hometown of Hämeenlinna to enroll in the Helsinki Music Institute, founded just three years earlier by the Finnish composer, conductor and critic Martin Wegelius. The school was still in its infancy then, without instruction in wind instruments, an orchestra or a professional string quartet, but it suited Sibelius’ youthful desire to become a violin virtuoso. He was placed under the tutelage of Mitrofan Vasiliev, a former violinist in the imperial string quartet in St. Petersburg, and made sufficient progress to appear as a soloist several times during his first academic year and to be invited to play second violin in the Institute’s newly formed string quartet. The following year, however, Sibelius began to question whether he had either the technique or the nerve to be a successful performer, and when he entered Wegelius’ composition class his interest started to shift toward creative work. (“Often I wanted to throw in the towel,” he later admitted, “and live the life of an idiot for which I have always felt myself well qualified. But it was my fate to want to compose.”)

For his last three years at the Institute, Sibelius balanced his violin playing with remarkable creative initiative, undertaking well over a hundred choral numbers, piano pieces and chamber works for piano and strings, some for class assignments, some out his own apparently irresistible volition. Following his graduation in 1889, Sibelius vacationed at the coastal resort of Loviisa with his brother, Christian, who was completing his medical training in Helsinki while also studying cello at the Music Institute (Sibelius composed a little Canon in G minor for their own fraternal enjoyment) before heading to Berlin in September to study privately with Albert Becker on a Finnish government scholarship. Though he found Becker to be “an old fogey from head to foot,” Sibelius benefitted from his instruction and composed the five-movement Piano Quintet in G minor before returning to Finland in June 1890. That summer he composed a Quartet in B-flat major and an Adagio in D minor for string quartet, and was also awarded another government grant to continue his studies in Vienna later that year with Karl Goldmark and Robert Fuchs.

The provenance of the Adagio in D minor of 1890 is uncertain. Sibelius scholar Kari Kilpeläinen, who edited the score for its first publication, in 1997, speculated that it was originally intended as the slow movement of the contem- poraneous String Quartet in B-flat major but ultimately not included there. The score was among the large collection of manuscripts of Sibelius’ early works donated by his family to the Helsinki University Library in 1982. In form, the Adagio is a set of free variations on a broad, elegiac theme that is treated with nimble decorative figurations, imitatively and in elaborated textures.

The multi-talented Lon Chaffin is a composer, author and visual artist who has served as a music administrator, choral director, voice instructor and music theory teacher at New Mexico State University for almost forty years. Along with his compositions for winds, percussion and strings, he has composed numerous choral works and written and directed several musical theater productions. His one-act opera, Grant and Grace, won the national Contemporary Americana Festival and was performed by the Boston Metro Opera. Many of Chaffin’s works have been performed nationally and internationally and several have been recorded on the Summit, Afinaudio and Centaur labels. As a speaker, he has given lecture/presentations on electronic music, music theater, integrating the music curriculum, and the math of music theory. Chaffin holds a Bachelor of Music from Wayland Baptist University and master’s and doctoral degrees from Texas Tech University.

Of his 2012 Doors for Tuba and String Quartet, inspired by the images of Albuquerque photographer Jim Gale, Chaffin wrote, “The first movement, “Stone-Layered Maze,” creates an atmosphere of mystery. The music moves as if through openings in a maze of layered-stone walls. It incorporates the use of rocks as an additional sound source. “Old Leaning Lumber” paints an aural picture of old, dilapidated wooden structures with open doors and windows. The music creaks, sways and falls. The string players occasionally tap on their instruments to add a percussive wooden timbre. “Out About Town” is based on an eclectic collection of door photos from all types of structures from all parts of town. It has the performers tapping the heels and toes of their shoes on the floor in this contrapuntal stroll with an asymmetrical meter. “Blue Door Blues” is an actual blues tune inspired by the multitude of blue doors seen throughout the southwestern United States. Even the blue church doors have their moment in the middle of the piece as the audience hears both an old-world chant and a gospel riff. The performers add to the mix with a few ‘cool’ finger snaps.”