 Hello and welcome to Music and More, where we discuss great music with great musicians while having a lot of fun. My name is Elliot Moore and I'm the conductor of the Longmont Symphony Orchestra. We have got a wonderful show lined up for you today. We're going to be looking at Claude Debussy's final sketch for La Mer, which of course describes the sea. Also, I'm going to be introducing you to the new Concertmaster and Associate Concertmaster of the Longmont Symphony Orchestra. And also, of course, I'll be taking your questions. But we received a question this week that I thought was such a great question that I wanted to address it right off the bat. The question was, Maestro Moore, how do you study your scores and preparation to conduct them? Well, how about we take a closer look at that first? I always begin my study of a composition with one hour of background research. There are many places that you can go to conduct your research. For online options, there is of course Wikipedia. But also, there are great websites that have scholarly program notes written by the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony, and I've always found a plethora of information on those websites. Also, there's a great website called Scribe.com and I found all kinds of scholarly research that I can't find anywhere else on that website. But of course, there are also books that can be very, very helpful. This one by Sir Donald Francis Tobi, Essays in Musical Analysis, is a wonderful book. There's also a book by Peter Brown that is just exceptional for doing all kinds of background research. This one is one of my favorites if I'm conducting a Beethoven Symphony. It's called On the Performance of Beethoven's Symphony and it was written in 1906. And if I'm conducting maybe a seminal work of the symphonic repertoire, the Cambridge Music Handbooks can be very, very helpful. As I'm conducting my research, what I do is I will write down some of those notes in my score and like that I can recall the information at a later date. Well, let's get started, shall we? We'll research into Beethoven's first symphony. Really, the work is indebted to his teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn, as well as to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And while he takes a lot from these two giants, these two masters of the symphonic form, he's also finding his own voice and he does that by putting in frequent sports on. The work was premiered on April 2, 1800 in Vienna at a theater that Beethoven rented himself to kind of put this concert on as a sort of, you know, announcement of his arrival in Vienna, on the musical scene in Vienna. And on that same program, he programmed his septet as well as a symphony by Mozart. He also, of course, programmed his first symphony, which I was just studying, but also he had excerpts of an oratorio from his teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn. And in this way, he's really putting himself on par with these two giants that have come before him. I consider my score to be a kind of musical diary where all of the information that I've assimilated can be really studied and recollected very quickly before, let's say, a first rehearsal. And in that way, the music really comes flooding back to me. Paulie, give me a second. I'm in the middle of making a video. So as I was saying, the music comes flooding back to me. Herr Beethoven, I was just explaining your first symphony to our viewers. Was I doing okay? Was there anything that I missed? Yes, it was okay, but you missed something very important. I did? What did I miss? You did not tell your friends to whom I dedicated the first symphony. Don't you think that is quite important? To His Excellence, Mr. von Sweden. Who is that? You know, as my friend Franzi used to say. Franzi? You know, Franz Joseph Haydn. Franzi. As Franzi used to say, Van Sweden's music is as stiff as the man himself. That's so interesting. Tell me more. I used to go over to Van Sweden's house. We would play Bach and Handel. That's why I learned to love that music. It's such great music. Wow! Also, it was Van Sweden who changed the customs around music. Sometimes people would talk between movements. Sometimes people would clap between movements. Sometimes people would clap in the middle of movements. Now, one time I was at the performance of one of my friends, Wolfie. And what happened was, you mean Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? As I was saying, there was a performance with Wolfie. And the audience, they started clapping in the middle of the piece. Just a few bars in, really. Why? Because they liked it so much. But then, there was another time where Van Sweden was there. And people were talking. And what did he do? He stood up. He stood up and he was a big man. And he glared at them. And they knew they had better how to de-clapper. Yeah, it works every time. Wow! So that's how classical music audiences became afraid of clapping at the wrong spot. And that's also how people learn how to respect the music by staying quiet. But tell me, why did you actually dedicate your symphony to this man? And why not? By dedicating my symphony to Van Sweden, by programming works, by Haydn Mozart. I was placing myself in the company of greatness. Well, you certainly belong there. Hey, can I get you something to drink? Don't you think it's a bit early for that? Don't worry. I have to stay hydrated at this altitude. It's so much fun to be in quarantine with the master himself, Herr Beethoven. Well, next we're going to head outside and meet our new concertmaster and associate concertmaster and get to hear them play. Well, it is my pleasure to introduce to you the Laumont Symphony's new concertmaster, Ben Ehrmantraut, as well as our new associate concertmaster, Kina Ono. Ben, I've got to ask you, what are you going to play for us today? Today we have for you a special piece. It's a box double violin concerto. Great. Can't wait. Take it away. It was awesome, wasn't it? Ben, thank you so much for being our new concertmaster. And Kina, thank you so much for being our new associate concertmaster. We are so glad to have you. Kina, I wanted to ask you, where are you from? I'm from Minnesota, and I moved to Boulder a year ago. Well, welcome. Thank you. And Ben, what about you? Where are you from? I was born in Bismarck, North Dakota. Well, and when did you move to the region? Well, I came here about three years ago. Well, that's the same time I came here. That's awesome. And also, another thing I'm always interested in is how old were you when you began playing the violin? I was six years old. Six years old? No. And I was eight. Eight. I've got one last question for these amazing violinists. What is the thing that you're most looking forward to in terms of returning to the Longmont Symphony season? Sure. Well, with the Symphony especially, you get to play lots of music with people. And I think that's what I miss most about making music is doing it with people. Awesome. And what about you? I had to say the exact same thing with my colleagues and I'm especially excited to sit next to Ben this season. Well, we're thrilled to have both of you, so thank you so much for joining the Longmont Symphony. All right. Next, we're going to be talking about Claude Debussy's wonderful 20th century French orchestral work, La Mer, or The Sea. It's very challenging to talk about this work without talking about what inspired it. Claude Debussy was very inspired by Japanese art and in particular, one artist by the name of Hokusai. And Hokusai had a very famous painting called The Great Wave, or Under the Wave, off Kanagawa. And what Debussy did was, as a young student, he was in Rome, studying in Rome. And he would go through old antique shops looking for Japanese artifacts. And what happened as he got older was as a professional composer, he kept a lot of these artifacts and artwork on his walls where he would compose. And chief among these paintings that he had was a framed copy of Hokusai's The Great Wave. Certainly, one of the many parallels between Hokusai and Debussy was that they placed style over realism and they placed tremendous emphasis on creating vibrant energy with brilliant colors. For Debussy, it was very important for him to create a sense of feeling of the water. Here you can see and hear how the bows of the violins create a swirling sensation of water. Also, the ferocious height and terrifying form of Hokusai's wave are depicted at this moment in the third movement when the Great Wave builds and then crashes. Claude Debussy's masterpiece, La Mer, is a wonderful example of his desire to create music which was atmospheric rather than music which is overtly representational. It includes nods to French impressionism as well as to Japanese art. Well, here is a performance of the Longmont Symphony performing back in 2018, the third sketch of Debussy's La Mer. Wasn't that an awesome performance by your Longmont Symphony Orchestra musicians? Way to go, guys. Well, now it's time to move on to your questions. I think that if there is a symphony and wanting to conduct recently that I've never conducted before, it would be Brookner's Seventh Symphony. My favorite TV show? I think I'd have to say Yellowstone. Oh, there's no doubt. The happiest moment of my life was when my daughter was born. Did I ever struggle with feeling motivated to practice? Definitely. Especially when my mom would say, Elliott, go practice. That was always really a challenge for me. That said, I think that if you are struggling with feeling motivated, there are some things you can do. Sometimes sitting down with your instrument can be really the hardest step. And if you can just have a routine that gets you started, that can really be helpful, whether that's practicing scales or some kind of warm-up exercise that you always go to. Those things can really help. Oh, I don't think there's any question about this one. Definitely the most famous person on my cell phone would be Herr Beethoven. Thanks so much for watching, and don't forget to tune in next time to Music and More.