Gershwin joined the Tin Pan Alley firm of Remick in 1914 (at the tender age of sixteen) as a “song plugger,” a pianist who played through the latest sheet music issues for any interested customer. He quickly became familiar with the most popular styles of the day, and was soon composing his own music — the piano rag Rialto Ripples dates from 1917, and his first hit, Swanee, was written in mid-1918 and introduced in a revue at the opening of the Capitol Theatre on Broadway on October 24, 1919. Even from those earliest years, however, Gershwin hoped to become more than just another dispenser of pop tunes, and in August 1919 he began two years of formal study of harmony, counterpoint and form with the Hungarian-born composer Edward Kilenyi, Sr. In addition to his regular exercises for Kilenyi (among which was an orchestration for two bassoons, two horns, viola, cello and bass of Bach’s chorale Freu’ dich sehr, O meine Seele), in 1919 or 1920 he wrote a little string quartet piece in a gentle, slow blues style that the young composer called Lullaby. Gershwin never intended that this classroom creation be published or performed in public, but he enjoyed having some of his string-playing friends give it an occasional private reading. He thought enough of Lullaby’s tune, though, to borrow it for use in the twenty-minute, one-act opera (i.e., sung throughout) Blue Monday, which was interpolated into George White’s Scandals of 1922. White cut Blue Monday after just one performance on the grounds that it was “too gloomy,” but the show’s bandleader, Paul Whiteman, was so impressed with Gershwin’s talent that the following year he commissioned him to write a concert piece for piano and orchestra — Rhapsody in Blue. The Lullaby, however, remained unper- formed in public until the harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler played it with string quartet at the 1963 Edinburgh Festival in Scotland (a most unlikely site for a Gershwin premiere!). The Juilliard Quartet shortly thereafter took up the piece in its original string quartet form, and played it in Washington, D.C. in 1967 and in New York a year later. The score was published for the first time in 1968 in versions for string quartet and string orchestra, and given its recording premiere by the Juilliard Quartet in 1974.

Denise Ondishko was born in 1960 in Bremerton, Washington, across the Puget Sound from Seattle, but had her first musical training at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore with piano lessons when she was seven. She soon developed an interest in composition, which she nurtured as a teenager at the intensive summer program of the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire. Ondishko did her undergraduate work in composition and piano at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and completed both master’s and doctoral degrees at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester; her composition teachers include Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Barbara Kolb, Leonardo Balada, Paul Dvorak and David Hogan. After graduating in 1986, Ondishko raised a family while working for twelve years in computer-networking as an information technology management specialist (Unix) and head of IT and telecommunications departments at several large institutions, including the University of Rochester and Hunter College at City University of New York. She changed careers in 1999 to become a public-school music teacher, earning the distinction of becoming a National Board-Certified Teacher in early childhood music. She has taught public-school music to every grade from pre-kindergarten to college in Arizona, New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia. In addition to her two other careers, Denise Ondishko has composed for orchestra, wind ensemble, solo voice and solo instruments, saxophone with digital audio, choir, children’s theater and elementary school band, and received prizes and awards from BMI, United States Federation of Music Societies, Eastman School of Music and Northern California Viola Society. Her string quartet Cloudshifts, with photographic images by violinist Susan Britton, was commissioned and premiered by CityMusic Cleveland in March 2021.

Notes by Denise Ondishko:
It is a great honor to write this new work on the theme of “Equality, Justice and Hope” for the Pantheon Ensemble. I am grateful for this opportunity to explore how each culture has become a part of the melting pot of our beautiful country. I have enjoyed the challenge of teasing out the unique meanings of equality, justice and our hope for freedom for this composition, and finding ways to share this understanding in three individual movements. To me, these values are like a three-legged stool: interdependent on each other for balance, strength and the integrity of the whole; our hope for personal freedom is gained with equality built on the foundation of justice. I hope the listener will find inner wis- dom in the sum as well as the parts of this music beyond what I humbly offer. May the music of A More Perfect Union help us listen to one another’s unique voices, guide us toward living in harmony in the world, and feel the strength of our joy.

Equal Voices, a rondo, is the first and longest of the three movements, and requires the most attentive listening. Eighteen historic American and immigrant folk songs are woven together, while maintaining a quintessential drumbeat used by Native Americans — it might be thought of as the heartbeat of our living country. When these songs are played simultaneously, one might imagine the songs in conversation: listening and commenting on one another’s ideas, as one instrument gives a musical comment to another. A recurring section uses Native American, Early Colonist and Black Slave songs. The contrasting sections introduce immigrant cultures, roughly chronological to our country’s development. By the end, six songs are playing simultaneously — all six performers having equal voice! [Ondishko’s detailed description of the musical sources and expressive intent of this movement is below, following the paragraph on Hope!]

The second movement, Healing Rain of Justice, is an homage to seeking balance. The idea is inspired by a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” This movement is a purely musical invention built on pleasing harmonies; unlike the other movements it does not quote existing songs. It seeks to find balance between fast and slow, harmony and dissonance, high and deep, loud and soft, long and short — many of the ways music may be governed. The movement starts off with a flashy downpour in the piano, but quickly takes a misstep into discord and asynchrony. Just when the situation seems unsalvage- able, the rules of harmony gather each part into a place alongside the other parts, like rainwater pooling in bedrock, and forms a lovely choral ballad. This move- ment will leave the listener feeling refreshed, grounded, and at home.

Hope! is a celebration of the personal freedoms we enjoy within our lives and communities. It sends a message of hope, joy and unity, ending with an powerful statement of strength. The recurring section is built on the hymn Woke Up This Mornin’ (With My Mind Stayed on Freedom) with changed rhythm that gives it momentum. The second, contrasting section, is built on the Civil Rights hymn We Shall Overcome. Also appearing in part or whole are America the Beautiful, Amazing Grace and Steal Away. An invented motif is repeated throughout, ultimately played in unison by the entire ensemble. This motif was invented by singing a mantra of these three words: Freedom! Justice! Equality!

***

While writing Equal Voices, it fascinated me that some melodies appeared to be louder than others. This can only be the result of my mind, not my ears, filtering the lesser-known melodies to a subservient level of attention. To help balance this, I doubled these “quieter” melodies so they might vie for the lis- tener’s attention. Ultimately, it was only through a growing familiarity with each culture’s song that it achieved an equal voice in my mind. I hope this happens for listeners, the simple beauty of hearing one melody melt in with another — known or unknown!

After the introduction (including America the Beautiful), the folk and patriotic melodies occur in roughly historic order over the five-hundred-plus years since the “New World” was discovered. Since during the first 300 years of our country only three races were recognized (White, Native and Black), these cultures recur throughout this rondo-form movement. The first song is a Native American Wabanaki “Round Dance.” This call-and-response song is about equality, togetherness, celebration and respect. Round dances encourage everyone to participate, to join in and become a part of the circle. In a circle everyone is equal. This song was used as a form of civil disobedience in a Native American demonstration in Canada in 2012.

The unmetered version of the Protestant hymn, Old 100 (also known as the Doxology), is used to demonstrate the resolve of the first settlers, Puritans from Europe. This group was to set the foundation for American society.

The Black slave song Steal Away was, and is, used as a covert form of protest and lament for the condition of the African slaves in the first 246 years of our new country, from 1619, before we were a country, until Emancipation in 1865.

During the first contrasting section, three folk songs celebrate the success of the new European immigrants: Washerwoman (Irish), Santa Lucia (Italian) and Happy Wanderer (German). That order, however, does not coincide with the order in which these cultures became naturalized as American citizens. The playfulness of this segment shows how much fun is to be had when we work well together.

The return of the opening section overlays two songs that are among the earliest to be truly American: Yankee Doodle from the Revolutionary War and Dixie from the Civil War.

During the second contrasting section, an East European Jewish folk song, A Redele iz di gore Velt (“The Whole World is But a Wheel”), is representative of the mass of immigrants from East Europe in 1880. (This includes the compos- er’s own Ukrainian ancestors.) The lyrics are still meaningful today:

The whole world is but a wheel / Spun around by time / Happiness and sorrow / honor and wealth / Merely roll on beside it / One lives his entire life in poverty / Another lives in wealth / In the twinkling of an eye / the opposite may be true / With the spinning of the wheel. (from www.folkways.si.edu/jewish-life-the-old-country)

Next in this musical melting pot is a Chinese folk song from Taiwan, Ali Mountain. This is a graceful and balanced song that I often used in my music classes. Following this is the Mexican folk song La Cucaracha using harmony from the United Farm Worker’s Anthem. Copyright restrictions do not allow the use of some of the more popular melodies from the Civil Rights movement, so fragments of two other songs make brief, cameo appearances, buried deep in the texture. They are included out of respect and appreciation for all they mean to a living people.

Throughout the work, the patriotic America the Beautiful appears in whole and in part. This melody is easily modified to partner with the melodies of various cultures, changing its meter, harmony and mode. In doing so, it is an example of the flexibility needed to assimilate new ideas. The first phrase of My Country ‘Tis of Thee occurs midway.

Lastly, We Shall Overcome, the hymn used by Dr. King, is brought back with an overlay of a phrase from the Women’s Social and Political Union song: [English composer and suffragette] Ethel Smyth’s The March of the Women. The folk hymn Amazing Grace tops off the harmony in the closing section in a passage where six simultaneous melodies come together.

The Montmartre household of Ernest Boulanger was one of the most musically sophisticated in late-19th-century Paris. Ernest’s father, Frédéric, taught cello at the Paris Conservatoire; his mother was the celebrated soprano Marie-Julie Boulanger. Ernest won the Prix de Rome in 1835, became a successful opera composer in Paris and a teacher of singing at the Conservatoire, and was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1870. In 1877, he married Raïssa Mychetsky, one of his most talented voice students, when he was sixty and she nineteen. Among the family’s friends and regular visitors were Charles Gounod, Gabriel Fauré, Jules Massenet and Camille Saint-Saëns. It was into this privileged musical environment that Nadia Boulanger was born in 1887; Marie-Juliette Olga (Lili) came along six years later.

Nadia entered the Paris Conservatoire when she was ten to study harmony with Paul Vidal and composition with Widor and Fauré; upon her graduation, in 1904, she won first prizes in harmony, counterpoint, organ, fugue and piano accompaniment. She also studied organ privately with Vierne and Guilmant. Boulanger composed industriously during those years, mostly songs and choral pieces, and in 1908, she placed second in the Prix de Rome competition with her cantata La sirène. Her parallel career as pianist and organist was promoted by the noted piano virtuoso and composer Raoul Pugno, who not only helped her become assistant organist at the Madeleine Church in 1906, but also appeared frequently with her in duo-recitals and even collaborated with her in composing a song cycle (Les heures claires, 1909) and an opera, La ville morte, based on a libretto by d’Annunzio; the opera was completed and scheduled for its premiere in 1914, but Pugno’s death and the start of World War I prevented itsperformance. Little Lili Boulanger had begun to demonstrate a real talent for composition by that time, however, and Nadia concluded that her younger sister had inherited the family genius in that field. Nadia wrote a few more songs and chamber pieces, but soon after Lili’s death, in 1918, she abandoned composition completely. “Not bad, but useless,” Nadia said dismissively of her own works.

Nadia’s genius lay elsewhere, in teaching. She began teaching privately as a teenager — Lili’s earliest counterpoint lessons were with her sister — and got her first formal post teaching piano at the Conservatoire Femina-Musica in 1907. From 1908 to 1918, she taught harmony at the Paris Conservatoire, and from 1920 until the outbreak of war in 1939, she served on the faculty of the École Normale de Musique. She spent the years of World War II in America, lecturing at Wellesley, Radcliffe, Juilliard and the Longy School in Boston, and returned in 1946 to the Paris, where she taught piano accompaniment at the Conservatoire until 1957.

The core of Boulanger’s pedagogical career, however, was at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, an outgrowth of an investigation of the state of music in the American army undertaken during World War I by the renowned conductor Walter Damrosch at the behest of General Pershing. Intensive training in performance and composition at Fontainebleau was carried out under the guidance of noted French musicians, and Ravel, Widor and Robert Casadesus were among the school’s early directors. Boulanger became a founding faculty member of the American Conservatory in 1921, and she remained affiliated with the school for the rest of her life; she was named its director in 1950. The students started showing up at Fontainbleau (and, for additional private instruction, at her apartment in the Rue Ballu) as soon as the school opened its doors—Copland and Thomson in 1921, and then literally hundreds more for the next half-century, from Piston, Carter and Harris to Diamond, Bernstein, Piazzolla and Glass. Boulanger’s method was direct, demanding and effective: she insisted that her students master the craft of musical composition through the intensive study of past masters, and then apply that learning to developing an appropriate style of their own. In addition to the seismic impact that her teaching had on the music of the 20th century, Nadia Boulanger also made noteworthy contributions as an organist (she was soloist in the premiere in New York of the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra that Copland wrote for her in 1924; Walter Damrosch conducted) and as a conductor (she was the first woman to lead both a complete orchestra concert in London and subscription programs in Boston and New York; she made pioneering recordings of Monteverdi’s madrigals in the late 1930s; she conducted the premiere of Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto in Washington, D.C. in 1938). Among the many honors that Boulanger received before her death, in Paris on October 22, 1979, were the Order of St. Charles of Monaco, the Order of the Crown of Belgium, honorary doctorates from Oxford and Harvard, an honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Music, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and nomination as a Grand Officier de la Légion d’Honneur.

Boulanger held as early-20th-century models for her students the works of Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky, but her own compositions, all completed before she turned 35 in 1922, are most heavily indebted to the lyrical and subtle idiom of her teacher Gabriel Fauré, qualities heard in her lovely Three Pieces for Bass and Piano of 1915.

By the time Dvořák undertook his Piano Quintet in A major in 1887, when he was nearing the age of fifty, he had risen from his humble and nearly impov- erished beginnings to become one of the most respected musicians in his native Bohemia and throughout Europe and America. His set of Slavonic Dances of 1878 (Op. 46) was one of the most financially successful music publications of the 19th century, and the work’s publisher, Fritz Simrock of Berlin, convinced Dvořák to add a sequel to it in July 1886 with the Slavonic Dances, Op. 72. (Dvořák received almost ten times the payment for Op. 72 as he had for the earlier set.) Simrock also saw the possibility of financial gain on the chamber music front at that time, and he encouraged Dvořák to compose a piece for piano and strings. To meet Simrock’s request, in the spring of 1887 Dvořák dusted off a Piano Quintet in A major he had composed in 1872 but filed away after its premiere as a failure. His attempts at revision proved futile, however, so he decided to compose a completely new Quintet in the same key, which he did between August 18th and October 8th at his recently acquired country summer home at Vysoká. The composition was enthusiastically received at its premiere, in Prague on January 6, 1888, and quickly became a favorite of chamber players through- out northern Europe and Britain.

The cello presents the Quintet’s lovely main theme, almost folkish in its simple phrasing and expressive directness. This motive progresses through a number of transformations before the viola introduces the subsidiary theme, a plaintive tune built from a succession of short, gently arching phrases. The main theme, rendered into the melancholy key of the viola’s melody, returns to close the exposition. Both themes are treated in the expansive development section. A full recapitulation and a vigorous coda round out the movement. The Dumka was a traditional Slavic (especially Ukrainian) folk ballad of meditative char- acter often describing heroic deeds. As was typical of the folk form, the Dumka that occupies the Quintet’s second movement uses the slow, thoughtful strain of the opening as a returning refrain to separate episodes of varying characters. The movement may be diagrammed according to a symmetrical plan: A–B–A– C–A–B–A. The “B” section, quick in tempo and bright in mood, is led by the violin before being taken over by the piano. “C” is a fast, dancing version of the main Dumka theme given in imitation. Though the Scherzo bears the subtitle Furiant, the movement sounds more like a quick waltz than like the fiery, cross- rhythm dance of Bohemian origin; the central trio is occupied by a quiet, lilting metamorphosis of the Scherzo theme. The Finale, woven from formal elements of sonata and rondo, abounds with the high spirits and exuberant energy of a Czech folk dance. The playful main theme is introduced by the violin after a few introductory measures; contrasting material offers brief periods of repose. The development section includes a fugal working-out of the principal theme. A quiet passage in the coda provides a foil for the joyous dash to the end.