This year marks the 50th and 100th anniversaries, respectively, of the deaths of Charles Ives and Antonín Dvorak.
At 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24, more than 20 musicians — drawn largely from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences — will present “A Chamber Music Concert Celebrating Anniversaries of Antonín Dvorak and Charles Ives.”
The concert is free and open to the pubic and will be in the Uncas A. Whitaker Hall for Biomedical Engineering auditorium.
The program will begin with a group of works by Ives, including Study, op. 20 for piano, performed by undergraduate Mark Tollefsen, and a set of songs performed by soprano Christine Johnson, a 2002 master’s graduate in vocal performance.
Violinist Dana Edson Myers, of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, will then join clarinetist Paul Garritson and pianist Maryse Carlin, both WUSTL instructors, for Ives’ Largo for clarinet, violin and piano.
In addition, Johnson will sing Ives’ At Sea, followed by Adagio Sostenuto, an instrumental piece Ives based on the song, which will feature Garritson on the basset horn, an early version of the clarinet.
Johnson will also sing Dvorak’s much-beloved Songs My Mother Taught Me and a setting of the same title by Ives, followed by “An Old Song Deranged,” an unpublished and rarely performed instrumental version of the Ives piece, which will also feature Garritson on basset horn.
The program will conclude with Dvorak’s famed Serenade for Winds in D minor, Op. 44, a hallmark piece of music for wind instruments. Dan Presgrave, instrumental music coordinator in the music department, will conduct.
Ives (1874-1954) is widely considered the most inventive American composer of the early 20th century, renowned for his use of dissonance — which had been advocated by his father, a town bandleader with revolutionary musical ideas — and quotation.
He studied music at Yale despite conflicts with his traditionalist instructors. (His single-minded dedication also disappointed the athletic department, which felt that he would have been a great sprinter.)
Ives never became a professional musician but formed Ives & Myrick, one of the most successful insurance agencies in New York, where he became a pioneer in estate planning. In his spare time, Ives composed well over 200 works, most before the age of 45, after which his health failed.
Dvorak (1841-1904) grew up in a small Czech town not far from Prague. He left school at age 12 to learn butchery, his father’s trade, and to help in the family’s adjacent inn. Recognition of his talents by a teacher led to his study of organ and viola at the Prague Organ School.
In the 1880s, his career as a composer was established by the premieres of eight symphonies and performances in England and Russia, the latter at the invitation of Tchaikovsky. In 1891, Dvorak accepted an offer by Jeanette Thurber to become director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music, where he wrote his famed Symphony No. 9 (From the New World).
For more information, call 935-4841 or e-mail staylor@wustl.edu.