Notes for: July 29, 2014
John Corigliano is one of the most honored of American composers of classical music. His honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Symphony No. 2; the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan; the Academy Award Oscar for Original Music Score for The Red Violin; and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award, financially the most generous prize in American music, for his Symphony No. 1.
Corigliano came to prominence in 1964 when, at the age of 26, his Sonata for Violin and Piano was the only winner of the chamber-music competition of the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York State Council for the Arts, and National Symphony Orchestra followed, as did support from Meet the Composers, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
The son of John Corigliano Sr., for 23 years the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, young John attended P.S. 241 and Midwood High School in Brooklyn, and studied composition at Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music. Today he is Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, and is on the faculty of the Juilliard School.
Voyage for Flute and String Quintet is the second arrangement of one of Corigliano’s most familiar works. It was first composed in 1971 as an a cappella choral work – a setting of Richard Wilbur’s translation of Baudelaire’s famous L’Invitation au voyage. In 1976, the composer arranged it for string orchestra. The version that we hear tonight was made by Clare Hoffman, a prominent flutist in New York City and the music director of the Grand Canyon Music Festival.
In program notes for the original work, Corigliano writes:
Wilbur’s poignant setting depicts a world of obsessive imagination — a drugged version of heaven full of sensual imagery. The music echoes the quality of the repeated refrain found in this lush translation: “There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, richness, quietness and pleasure.”
Hoffman’s arrangement captures the dream-like character of that version.