Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990)
TRANSCRIPTION
The Saint Cecilia Club
requests the honor of your presence
at a concert to be given
in the Grand Ballroom
of the Hotel Plaza on
Wednesday evening, the thirteenth of December [1944]
at half past eight o'clock.
Compliments of Ernst Bacon
Please present this card at the door Hotel
Woodstock1
(Bacon writes) "includes my new choral
work2.
I'll phone you and hope to visit. Madi 3
will be here after Sat [urday]."
Notes according to Sam Farrell,
Bacon's grandson:
1) The
purpose for noting "Hotel Woodstock" has not been determined.
2) The choral work was From Emily's Diary which my information
lists as a
cantata. The chorus is S.A.
and there are solos for soprano and alto. The
instrumentation is 1-1-2-1, 2 horns, strings, and piano. I believe it was
commissioned by the St. Cecelia Society of NY. The premiere was at the NY Plaza Hotel
and was conducted by H. Ross
organist at the Glens Falls Opera. The date was December 13, 1944. G. Schirmer published a piano score in 1947.
3) Madi is Bacon's sister, Madi Bacon, short for Madeline, who among other
things, founded the San Francisco Boys Chorus."
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Note: The following was written by
Ernst
Bacon's grandson, Sam Farrell:
Born in Chicago 100 years ago on May 26,
1898. Bacon's Austrian mother gave him a love
of song and an early start on the piano.
Although his varied career included appearances as
pianist and conductor, along with
teaching and directing positions, his deepest preoccupation
was always composing. His
musical awards included a Pulitzer Fellowship in 1932 for his
Symphony in D minor and
three Guggenheim Fellowships.
From his first job as opera coach at the
Eastman School in the early '20s, he went on to receive a Masters Degree from the
University of California at Berkeley. He later taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of
Music under Ernest Bloch. During the 1930s he was director of the WPA Federal
Music Project
and Orchestra in San Francisco and founded the Carmel Bach Festival. At Syracuse
University he was director of the School of Music from 1945 to 1947 and composer in
residence
and professor of piano until his retirement in 1963.
In 1964 he returned to the West, settling in
the small town of Orinda, east of the Berkeley hills.
Here, as everywhere else, he drew
his greatest inspiration from nature, jotting down notes as he explored local trails. His
fertile imagination and constant creative efforts left little time for self-promotion, and
although nearly blind in old age, he continued to compose until the very end of
his 91
years.
At the age of 19, while majoring in math at
Northwestern University, Bacon wrote a complex
treatise exploring all possible harmonies.
However, when he began to compose music in his 20s,
he rejected a purely cerebral
approach. He took the position that music is an art, not a science,
and that its source
should be human and imaginative, rather than abstract and analytical.
Ernst Bacon was self-taught in composition,
except for two years of study with Karl Weigl in
Vienna. Experiencing the depression of
post-war Europe first hand, he understood that the
avant-garde movement reflected the
pessimism of its origins. Bacon set out instead to write music
that expressed the vitality
and affirmation of his own country. Sometimes compared with Bela
Bartók,
Bacon incorporated into
his music the history and folklore, as well as the indigenous music, poetry, folksongs,
jazz rhythms, and the very landscape of America.
Like Franz
Schubert (q.v.), a large body of more than
250 art songs is at the heart of an oeuvre
that also includes numerous chamber,
orchestral, and choral works. According to Marshall Bialosky,
Ernst Bacon was "one of
the first composers to discover Emily Dickinson... and set a great number
of her poems
into some of the finest art song music, if not actually the very finest, of any American
composer in our history." He was deeply drawn by Walt Whitman's amplitude of vision,
as well as
by the poignant economy of Dickinson. Other poets with whom he felt an
affinity included Sandburg
(who was a personal friend), Blake, Brontë, Teasdale, and
Housman.
(contributed by Sam Farrell samfarrell@mindspring.com)
Rev. 01/04/2004
BACK
TO AMERICAN ROOM
