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I. Ring Shout
A ring shout is an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual, first practiced by enslaved Africans in the West Indies and the United States, in which worshipers move in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands. To evoke the celebratory nature of this dance, I have asked the percussionist to use a large stick on a wooden floor board paired with fast moving passages in the strings and woodwinds.

II. Waltz
Cotillion balls existed for “upper-class” families as they allowed aristocratic families to vie for better marriage prospects for their daughters. However, cotillion balls were segregated and expensive, and did not include Black Americans. Debutante balls finally appeared in Black social circles during the 1930s, in large part due to the efforts of Black sororities, fraternities, and growing number of affluent Black Americans. The waltz was the dance of choice in these environments.

III. Tap!
Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. For this movement, I have emulated the sound of the tap with the side rim of the snare drum in the percussion section. The strings play in very short, disconnected passages alongside the brass drawing on jazz harmonies.

IV. Holy Dance
Protestant Christian denominations, such as The Church of God in Christ (C.O.G.IC.), Pentecostal Assemblies of God, Apostolic, and Holiness Church, among many others, are known for their exuberant outward expressions of worship. The worship services in these churches will often have joyous dancing, spontaneous shouting, and soulful singing. The music in these worship services is a vital vehicle in fostering a genuine spiritual experience for the congregation. This movement calls on the vibrant, celebratory character that still exists in many churches today. I have composed music that mimics the sound of a congregation “speaking in tongues” (murmuring in an unknown spiritual language) by asking the orchestra to play in a semi-improvised manner. Often referred to as a “praise break”, the music propels forward continuously with the trombone section at the helm. The section moves to a climatic ending with the plagal “Amen” cadence.

Instrumentation: two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, vibraphone, marimba, tubular bells, piatti, suspended cymbal, splash cymbal, tambourine (headed), tam tam, triangle, wood blocks, shaker, 2 whip, wood drumsticks on hard surface (large wooden stick on wooden floor board), tom toms, two snare drums, bass drum, claps, xylophone, strings.

The composer started with “Im Abendrot” (“At Sunset”), by 19th-century German writer Joseph von Eichendorff. The verses describe a weary couple seeking peace, not unlike Strauss and Pauline, his wife of more than 50 years (she frequently performed his music during her early career as a soprano). The words apparently spoke to Strauss on another level, too; he had copied them out a few years earlier in his diary beneath a newspaper clipping about the bombing of Dresden.

After completing “Im Abendrot” in May 1948, he selected three Hermann Hesse poems that complemented the nostalgic, in-the-gloaming mood of Eichendorff’s. They were composed quickly: “Frühling” (“Spring”) and “Beim Schlafengehen” (“Going to Sleep”), during the summer of 1948, and “September,” aptly enough, in September that year.  

Having remained faithful to the sound-world he created as a young man with such tone poems as Don Juan and such operas as Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss was not likely to break new stylistic ground with the Four Last Songs. Still, there is something different about them. As Strauss biographer Michael Kennedy observes, “It is often said they could have been written at any time in his career, but I believe they could only have been written at the end. They are the music of old age and wisdom and serenity, of death and transfiguration.” Literally, in the case of “Im Abendrot”; more about that in a moment.

Bathed in vernal imagery and metaphoric implication, “Frühling” starts off in a brooding minor key as the singer remembers the long wait “in dark caverns” for signs of spring. But mood and harmony quickly shift to send the vocal part soaring with memories of “blue skies and birdsong.” The music subsides for a concluding image of an old love renewed: “You know me again … your blessed presence quivers through my limbs.”

There are more quivers, subtly conveyed by instrumental shimmering and back-and-forth harmonies, when “September” begins. The singer describes a rain that “sinks cooly on the flowers” while summertime “shudders quietly to its close.” The gently undulating vocal line takes on a deeper radiance to capture each picturesque detail of “the dying dream that was this garden.” Strauss treats the orchestra exquisitely throughout, nowhere more tellingly than after the singer’s final words, when a solo horn (the composer’s favorite instrument) adds to the lulling epilogue.

With “Beim Schalfengehen,” the emphasis shifts from the natural to the human: “The day has tired me … my senses long to sink into slumber.” After those words, the vocal part goes silent and a solo violin sculpts a spacious, radiant arc. Re-entering, the singer traces and expands on that arc to convey a soul soaring freely into “the magic circle of the night,” where it can “live deeply, and a thousandfold.” The descending motion in the orchestral coda, like drooping eyelids, makes an ineffable effect.

After a sumptuous introduction (this song employs the largest orchestral forces of the four), “Im Abendrot” gives the singer an unhurried melodic line that enhances each word of the text about longtime companions who, “through want and joy,” have “walked hand in hand.” After seeing a pair of larks climb into the haze (Strauss uses trilling flutes to convey their flight), the lovers feel the solitude around them: “How tired we are of traveling. Is this perhaps death?” 

In 1889, Strauss composed a viscerally descriptive tone poem, Death and Transfiguration. The rising, reassuring theme he used in that piece to represent transfiguration is subtly recalled by a horn at the moment the singer in “Im Abendrot” muses about mortality. During the poignant coda, the larks return. Their high trill, etched against deep, plush orchestral chords, suggests a contented embrace of the fading light.

Instrumentation: three flutes (third doubles piccolo), piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, one bass clarinet, three bassoons (third doubles contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, keyboard, strings. 

Although such ubiquity makes it easy to take the symphony for granted now, the music remains as bold and daring as it was when first played on December 22, 1808. Not that many listeners noticed much of anything during this all-Beethoven marathon in Vienna that also included the premieres of Symphony No. 6, Piano Concerto No. 4, and the Choral Fantasy. As if the length of the concert wasn’t trying enough, a lack of rehearsal made for a very bumpy night, and a lack of heat in the theater made for a teeth-chattering one.

Soon enough, though, as performances gradually spread, the distinctive force of the Fifth hit home. And it didn’t take long for people to decide that they knew what Beethoven was trying to say with this music. Most famously, his secretary and early biographer, Anton Schindler, claimed that the composer likened the first notes of the Fifth to “Fate knocking at the door.” 

But Schindler was known for stretching the truth so much that, as Fred Mertz once said about Lucy Ricardo, he could have gotten a job at a pretzel factory. On the other hand, several years before completing this symphony, Beethoven wrote to a friend: “I will seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.” So you can argue that backs up at least the gist of Schindler’s claim. But, wait—Beethoven pupil Carl Czerny said that the composer told him the opening notes were actually inspired by the call of a yellowhammer in a Viennese park. Rather takes the thump out of that fateful knock, doesn’t it?

Whatever the case, the da-da-da-DAH motif makes for one heck of an attention-grabbing first theme. It offers melodic and rhythmic possibilities that Beethoven exploits throughout the opening movement, including his second theme, which kicks off with the same four-note motto. After an edgy development of those themes, Beethoven begins to recapitulate the material with just as much relentless thrust, only to stop everything for a brief, plaintive oboe solo. The effect is like a movie that cuts abruptly from a stormy exterior scene to an indoor shot of a solitary character trying to be calm and brave. This ever-amazing passage is just further proof of the Fifth’s potency.

After the first movement’s virulent coda pounds home the C minor tonality, there’s a welcome shift to A-flat major for an Andante built around an elegant melody that undergoes several variations. The four-note motto from the symphony’s start can be heard, sometimes subtle, sometimes forceful, during this movement.

The Scherzo, which puts the emphasis back on C minor, commences with a softly creeping idea in the strings that leads to an outburst from the horns, and their four fiercely hammered notes point back, yet again, to the motto. (Some analysts dismiss the idea that this motto permeates the whole symphony, but don’t let them spoil the fun of listening for any pattern that might suggest even a dab of the da-da-da-DAH’s DNA.)

After a spirited contrasting passage that finds string sections chasing each other, fugue-style, the Scherzo’s initial material returns, now soft and strangely expectant. From this spooky passage, Beethoven fashions a seamless transition into the last movement (eschewing a clean break between movements was a revolutionary idea in his day). Memories of agitation and tension from earlier in the piece evaporate amid the finale’s uplifting dose of C major. Trombones, piccolo, and contrabassoon make their first appearance here, welcome reinforcements for this clear-cut triumph. Almost clear-cut—Beethoven surprisingly brings back ominous music from the Scherzo, a reminder, perhaps, that demons are always lurking somewhere. But the celebratory declarations soon resume, boosted by a shift into presto gear for one last, visceral jolt.

Instrumentation: two flutes, piccolo, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings.