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Victory through peace – that elusive peace that is yearned for throughout the world, achieved only through people-to-people connections.
More than one million people took to the streets in the United Kingdom on May 8, 1945, celebrating the ending of World War II in Europe . The United Nations was formed that same year to maintain peace..
The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it. General George Marshall
For the last two centuries, composers have written great music honoring war heroes – Beethoven's music is a good case in point. Contemporary composers are writing music about world peace – Schoenberg's Peace on Earth is a good case in point.
Victory over adversity – a personal victory often achieved through a special people-to-people connection.
More than 2000 Special Olympics athletes from almost 100 countries competed in the 2009 World Winter Games.
“ Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” Special Olympics motto
Nancy Bloomer Deussen says, “…when I was composing this piece ( Ascent to Victory) , I wanted to make it clear that all who participate in the Special Olympics are winners.”
This uplifting program celebrates the human spirit!
Egmont Overture
Ludwig van Beethoven
A spirit for freedom
On the morning of June 5, 1568, Count Lamoral van Egmont was beheaded in a Brussels marketplace; his head was displayed on poles until three in the afternoon. A popular Flemish military leader fighting for justice and national liberty against the Spanish invaders, he had been captured and ordered executed by the Duke of Alba, the Spanish King's representative sent “to take control of the situation.”
The Count's beloved wife, Kl ä rchen, was so distressed over his sentence that she took her own life, but she appeared to him in a dream in his jail cell, telling him that his death would inspire his countrymen – first to rebellion and then to their freedom. That dream enabled the Count to face his death with courage and dignity.
A hero immortalized
This is just the kind of story to inspire Beethoven, so when Johann Goethe asked him to write incidental music for his poem based on the event, he enthusiastically accepted. What he composed was genuine theatre music, portraying the concept of heroic idealism but staying true to the essence of the drama in terms of mood and tension. The brilliant closing music is that of the drama's “Victory Symphony,” played as Egmont climbs the stairs of the gallows, confident in the rightness of his cause and the future of his beloved country.
Ascent to Victory
Nancy Bloomer Deussen
A place where I belong
Special Olympics Kuwait speed skater Ali Taher, 25, loves Special Olympics because, he said, “They treat me like a normal person – they understand!” His coach Isa Karam agrees, “Special Olympics makes everyone aware of people with intellectual disabilities – even in my country – and it makes us all feel joyful that people are getting together as a world society and doing something good – it's a blessing.”
It all started in July 1968 in Chicago when Eunice Shriver organized the 1 st International Special Olympics Summer Games in Chicago in which 1000 individuals with intellectual disabilities participated. Forty-two years later, Special Olympics has proven that people of all backgrounds, cultures, races and ages can work together peaceably to celebrate what they have in common and to focus on those in need.
We're all winners
Ascent to Victory was composed in 1997 by Nancy Bloomer Deussen as a double commission for the American Composer's Forum and the Mission ( California ) Chamber Orchestra to commemorate the Special Olympics. The music starts out quietly, with the dreaming and contemplated possibilities. It then moves through the workout training and concludes with the final victory theme.
No “atonal” for me
“For me, melody is foremost,” Bloomer Deussen says. “Contemporary tonal composers were virtually dismissed from the classical music hierarchy from 1940 until about ten years ago … hundreds of young composers were not only discouraged from composing tonal melodic music but were actually punished and shunned for doing so … (they) just waited until the tide of atonality began to recede. That time is now and tonality is returning.”
Nancy 's career as a composer began in the 1950s and from the outset she drew inspiration from the natural world. Espousing a strong environmental ethic, she is keenly aware that human life now and in the future will depend on the conservation of the Earth's precious resources, as reflected in the evocative titles given to many of her scores. She lives in California 's Bay Area.
Peace on Earth
Arnold Schoenberg
Hope springs eternal
Is there hope for international peace? How can it be achieved? Arnold Schoenberg explored these questions in his Peace on Earth composition, based on text by Swiss poet Ferdinand Meyer. The text has prompted many questions through the years – for example, how can a new order of youths forging danger-free flaming swords for the cause of right assure peace on earth?
Schoenberg's Peace on Earth, originally written for an a cappella chorus in 1907, left no doubt that peace can be achieved out of conflicts and that hope prevails. His D major conclusion gives listeners and performers reason to be optimistic.
It is interesting that this is the only piece of Christian sacred music that Schoenberg composed. Born a Jew, he converted to Christianity when he was 24 years old. He did sketch out an oratorio Jacobs Ladder but never completed it. Going back to his Jewish roots, he composed the opera Moses and Aaron , but only completed two of the three acts.
When Hitler was proclaimed Chancellor in 1933, Schoenberg left Germany for Paris – and back to his Jewish roots – where he declared his intent to re-enter the community of Israel through a liberal Jewish congregation. He came to the United States that fall and never returned to Europe . His last works included several that focused on his appreciation of the miracle of Israel .
Peace on Earth (English translation, 1999 by Joe Monzo)
There the shepherds their herds
left and the angel's words
carried by the lowly gate
to the mother with the child,
led the heavenly followers
away in the starry space to sing,
continued the sky sounding:
“peace, peace! On the earth!”
Since the angels thrive so,
O like many bloody acts
had the struggle on wild horses,
the armor-clad fully-plowed!
in like some holy night
sang the Choir of Spirits fearing,
urgently imploring, softly accusing:
“peace, peace…on the earth!”
But it is an eternal faith
that the weaklings not to the robbers
from each shameless murder-gesture
will to-fall always:
something like justice
wove and produced in murder and dread
and a realm wants to be pleased,
that the peace sought the earth.
Gradually will it be taken-shape,
govern themselves its holy office,
weapons to forge without danger,
glame-swords for the right,
and a royal species
begins to blossom with strong sons,
whose bright pipes roar:
“peace, peace on the earth!”
Symphony No. 5
Ludwig van Beethoven
The ringing won't stop
The year was 1804 and Ludwig van Beethoven was in trouble. He had all of this music floating around in his head just waiting to be put down on paper but his ears rang incessantly with a severe form of tinnitus. He was going deaf and he had known it for at least eight years.
Da-da-da-duh
So what did he do? He began writing what is considered by many to be the greatest symphony ever written: Symphony No. 5. The famous da-da-da-duh figure that opens the symphony may be the most familiar melody in all of classical music.
Beethoven denied that the famous introductory “call” represented the knock of Fate at his door, but that supposition remains even today. Carl Czerny, his student and friend, claimed that Beethoven got the theme from the cry of a songbird which was piercing enough to penetrate his increasing deafness when he took walks in the Vienna woods.
We will never know the genesis for those four notes but we do know that the four-note motif became forever associated with the voice of doom for enemies and the triumph of the victor in battle – a heroic sound if there ever was one.
It wasn't the best of circumstances
It was a very cold Viennese winter night in 1808 when Symphony No. 5 debuted. There was no heat in the Wien Theatre, the orchestra didn't play well and the concert lasted four hours! That was the setting for the debut of Symphony No. 5 – and Symphony No. 6; in fact, No. 6 was performed first! It wasn't until a year and a half later that another performance of No. 5 led to rave reviews from music critics.
The most popular man around - 200 years later
Beethoven himself might have been surprised at its popularity 200 years later. This is the one symphony that regularly appears in inaugural concerts of new orchestras as when the Philadelphia Orchestra first sounded in 1900. It was associated with the Allied victories during WWII, and it's popularity has soared in the 21 st century - in concert halls, movies, television and even video games.
“This is the symphony that, along with an image of Beethoven, agitated and disheveled, has come to represent greatness in music.” Phillip Huscher ( Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
Beethoven was the original radical and iconoclast. His vision of classical music was so idealistic and courageous that, if performed properly, still causes the skies to fall and the earth to shake. It takes a gutsy orchestra to make it sound more than just “classical” – to make it, instead, a relevant message of revolution and hope. Jung-Ho Pak
