William Howard Schuman, one of America’s most celebrated and accomplished composers, was born in NYC in 1910, to Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named, incidentally, for the 27th President of the United States, William Howard Taft, but his family called him Bill.
He played violin and banjo as a child, and formed a dance band in high school, “Billy Schuman had his Alamo Society Orchestra”, in which he played string bass- and they did local weddings and bar mitzvahs.
While writing popular songs as hobby, (including a staggering 40 in collaboration with the great lyricist Frank Loesser) Schuman entered NYU’s School of Commerce to pursue a business degree—until a fateful day in 1930 when he attended a Carnegie Hall concert of the NY Phil, conducted by Arturo Toscanini that changed his life. He said of that night, “I was astounded at seeing the sea of stringed instruments, everybody bowing together. The visual thing alone was astonishing. But the sound! I was overwhelmed. The very next day, I decided to become a composer.”
And what a career followed: 8 symphonies, the first ever Pulitzer Prize for music in 1943 for his Cantata No. 2, adapted from poems by another great American artist, Walt Whitman, a world-renowned concerto for violin, an opera based on “Casey at the Bat”. He taught composition at Sarah Lawrence, became president of the Julliard School, founded the Julliard String Quartet, became president of Lincoln center, won another Pulitzer in 1985 for half a century of contributions to American music as composer and educator, and received the National Medal for the Arts in 1987.
Inaugurating the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, we are pleased to perform for you his 1956 composition, Chester Overture for Band, adapted by the composer from his own orchestral work entitled New England Triptych. It is based on a tune written by arguably the first great homegrown American composer, of European stock, William Billings, first published in 1770. Chester was so popular that it was sung from Vermont to South Carolina, and became THE unofficial anthem of the American Revolution, sung around the campfires of the Continental Army and played by fifers on the march.
You’ll hear the original Billings chorale at the start of the piece, before Schuman breaks it into fragments of intense development which call to mind the struggle and tumult, but also the determination, the yearning for freedom during those difficult Revolutionary War years.
Program notes by John Rabinowitz
