SonataPalooza I – Vol. III

Like Hindemith, Flor Peeters wrote his Trumpet Sonata during WWII, albeit during its concluding year. Peeters remarks, “I steadfastly refused to play public concerts sponsored by the German officials or their friends during the war.” A noted concert organist, composer, and educator, Peeters kept up a clandestine and dangerous courier activity during the war between the Catholic bishops of Belgium and Holland. It is possible that this sonata was composed at his home, or in the abbey at Tongerlo prior to the completion of his Concerto for Organ, Op. 52 (1944). The familiar religious space provided him an artistic solitude for many compositions while the war was being waged. As soon as the war ended, his compositions, performances, and teaching took him all over the world.

In John Hoffman’s book Flor Peeters – His Life and His Organ Works (1978), Peeters reflects on his early years in Thielen, Belgium. “Very early I was interested in brass instruments (I still am), and I often went to the rehearsals [of] the village brass band.” While organ and piano were his primary instruments, he played violin and various brass instruments, and was already composing at the age of 12.

There is a similarity between the first movement of the Organ Concerto (Op. 52), and the first movement of the Trumpet Sonata (Op. 51) that should be mentioned. The second themes of the first movements of both works are remarkably similar in their intervallic contours and melodic pacing. The chorale-inspired Aria shares itself with a version for solo organ, Op. 51a, and the Finale – a galloping pattern of articulated and syncopated sixteenth matches a version for solo piano, Op. 51d.

Halsey Stevens writes, “Since about 1950 I have pursued a course which seems to me consistent, which retains connections with the music of the past while at the same time it takes cognizance of the music of the present. The forms of this music are in the main clear-cut, almost classical (which is not necessarily to say neoclassical); reprises are seldom literal, but usually considerably varied. ‘Themes’ constantly grow, chameleon-like in their transformations. Rhythm plays an important part in the developmental process, and very often obviates other kinds of motivic treatment. Tonally, there are clearly defined areas, though scales are of many varieties – modal, mixed modal, chromatic, arbitrary, including octotonic, and of course diatonic and pentatonic forms. I have sought usually for instrumental parts which are idiomatic for the instruments specified, without becoming a slave to fingerings and embouchures. Except for works with a text, I have written nothing of a programmatic nature; most of my titles are of the simplest kind: sonata, suite, studies, leaving the listener free to imagine his own program – which may be as fanciful as he likes.”

With the composer’s guidance, it is then quite easy for both the musicians onstage and the listeners in the audience to assimilate their experiential musical reference points toward their individual and collective experiences, respectively. We love this directive. We know of Stevens’s admiration and life-long study of Bartók (Stevens wrote the first definitive study of Bartók’s music), and there is dancing and singing folk-inspired music, irregular metric patterns, long-short rhythmic emphases on strong beats, and a creative counterpoint composite in the rhythms, particularly in the outer movements. In the second movement, we hear influences of Copland as Stevens paints an American impression of the open expanse of the Midwest. Of course, there are many more mini pictures to paint. The Halsey Stevens archives are available through the Music Division of the Library of Congress, and more information can be found at http://www.halseystevens.com.

In Joseph Machlis’s book Introduction to Contemporary Music (1961), Machlis beautifully describes the adaptation of the sonata form by 20th-century composers. “In our time, as formerly, they [composers] affirm the primacy of form in the musical tradition of the west: form as the supreme gesture of creative will and imagination; as the subjugation of all that is capricious and arbitrary to the discipline, the logic, the higher unity of art.” This description has a direct comparison and inherent link to the search American composers were on in the 1920s – to explore and find a true American expression in their individual aesthetics.

Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Harry Partch, Roger Sessions, and Virgil Thompson were all a part of the American push, searching for their expression through different life experiences in America and Europe. Antheil has the distinction of fitting into both categories. His individuality created fame and fervor with his abstract and futuristic Ballet méchanique (1927). Copland, already developing into the composer who would capture the American sound and conscience, wrote of Antheil, Cowell, and Sessions [among others], “… one needn’t be particularly astute to realize that he [Antheil] possesses the greatest gift of any young American now writing.”

However, Antheil’s music reached a transition point as the depths of disappointment and lost hopes affected him. He wrote, “… here in 1941, I could at last label myself a complete failure.” In books about modern music from the 1950s and ’60s, the description of Antheil’s music as abstract, futuristic, and motoric changed to a simpler, neoclassical flavor, influenced by jazz and Romantic tendencies. He penned six symphonies and numerous instrumental pieces and Hollywood film scores. It can be noted that Copland, Thompson, and other composers of repute also looked toward Hollywood to achieve financial security. As Antheil’s music changed, audiences became more receptive to his music, and he found himself on a list of the most-performed American composers, including Copland, Barber, and Gershwin. Over time, for symphonic programs, Antheil’s music has become “the odd man out.”

Antheil wrote ten sonatas – for piano, violin, and trumpet – with the Trumpet Sonata being his last in the genre. It contains all the imagination and creativity that the modern sonata form calls for, as described by Machlis. We find virtuosic writing for both the trumpet and piano, tempo shifts, mood swings, quick dynamic changes, a constant “go” (mechanical) in the rhythms of the fast movements and starting and stopping – all as if this music were to be set to a cartoon, or the score representing a mad abstract of 1950s life in New York City.

Antheil wrote this Sonata in 1951, inspired by trumpeter Edna White (1892-1992), whom he met on one of his many trips from Hollywood to New York to work on the music for Walter Cronkite’s CBS program The Twentieth Century. Film scores and opera were on his mind, as the completion of his opera Volpone and a few movie scores bookended this composition. Could these have inspired his most bravura moments and overtly lyrical writing in the Trumpet Sonata?

Harry Herforth (1916-2013), a former trumpet player with The Cleveland Orchestra (1951-1958) and revered educator at Kent State University, premiered Antheil’s Sonata during the summer of 1953 at the Yaddo Arts and Music Festival in Saratoga Springs, New York.