Ravinia 2025 Issue 5

Recent compositional highlights include the Mass for the Endangered (2018), a work commis- sioned by Trinity Wall Street that combines the time-honored structure of the Latin polyphon- ic Mass with urgent prayers for all endangered animal life and the fragile environment they/ we inhabit. Snider’s newest opera, Hildegard — based on the life of the 12th-century abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen—is scheduled to be premiered in the fall of 2025. An active leader in sharing new music, Snider has co-curated the Look & Listen Festival in modern art galleries (2001–7) and serves as Co-Artistic Director of New Amsterdam Records (2007–present). Her grants and awards include support from the Jerome Composers Commissioning Fund, Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, National En- dowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Opera America, and the Sorel Medallion from the Eliz- abeth & Michel Sorel Charitable Organization Inc., among others. In 2014, she received the prestigious Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award for Female Composers, which included a com- mission from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra “in the spirit of recognizing and supporting the creation of new orchestral works by women.” Snider’s thoughts immediately gravitated to the unwavering grit, fierce determination, and indomitable spirit of the city and its residents. “When I received the commission to write this piece, I thought I would try to write something about hope—it being an essential element of Detroit’s narrative of endurance, or indeed any narrative. Early into my sketches for the piece, I stumbled upon the idea that sounded to [me] like hope incarnate: a bold, noble, full-hearted little melody surrounded by sunlight and dignity and shiny things. I thought that maybe I would open the piece with it and then have the music journey through some adversity to find its way back to an even bigger, bolder statement of op- timism. Growth! Triumph! A happy ending! But that wasn’t what happened. The piece opens with the shiny statement of hope and sets out on an uncertain journey to find it again—but can’t. Instead, it encounters strange new echoes of the motif in different, unfamiliar settings. It follows digressions trying to resolve related but new mu- sical arguments. Eventually, it finds its way to sol- id ground, though this piece is quite a bit darker than where we began. But to my mind this arriv- al feels more trustworthy, more complete, more worthy of celebration because it feels more real.” The writings of Philip Levine (1928–2015), a poet born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Detroit, further inspired Something for the Dark . Levine began working the night shift at the Chevrolet Gear & Axle Plant in Hamtramck at age 14, an experience that drove him to “find a voice for the voiceless”—his fellow factory workers. He entered Wayne State University in Detroit at age 22, completing his bachelor’s degree during the school year while attending the fabled Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in the summer. Levine earned an MFA from the University of Iowa and received the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University in 1957. The following year, he joined the English faculty at California State University–Fresno, a position he held until 1992. Levine’s numerous honors include the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry ( The Simple Truth ), two National Book Awards ( Ashes: Poems New and Old , 1980, and What Work Is , 1991), and an appointment as the 2011/12 United States Poet Laureate. Levine nev- er returned to live in Detroit, but the work- ing-class values, dreams, and aspirations of his hometown always remained within. “While writing the piece, I was reading some Detroit poets on their take on the city, and grew better acquainted with the work of Philip Levine. The last two lines of [the poem] For Fran struck me as an apt motto for the kind of clear- eyed reflection on endurance that runs through his poems about Detroit. In preparing the flower beds for winter, Levine’s wife becomes a sym- bol of the promise of renewal in general: ‘Out of whatever we have been /We will make some- thing for the dark.’ Levine has said that much of his poetry about Detroit was born of the hope that [Detroit] might be reborn inside itself, out of its own ruins, phoe- nix-like, rising out of its own ashes. Except I don’t see it in heroic terms. The triumphs are small, personal, daily. Nothing grandly heroic is taking place; just animals and men and flowers asserting their right to be, even in this most devastated of American cities. “ Something for the Dark is a meditation on the promise of renewal, and the hard-won wisdom that attends the small, personal, daily triumphs of asserting one’s right to be.” The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and conduc- tor Giancarlo Guerrero gave the world premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Something for the Dark on April 14, 2016. Philip Levine CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835–1921) Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, op. 33 Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings and solo cello As a young boy Camille Saint-Saëns exhibited Mozartean precocity, composing his first piece at age 3. Organ and composition studies began at 7. His official piano recital debut came at age 10; as an encore, Saint-Saëns offered to play any of Bee- thoven’s 32 piano sonatas from memory. He en- tered the Paris Conservatory at 13. Like Mendels- sohn before him, Saint-Saëns held deep interests in “old” music by Bach, Handel, and Mozart and frequently performed their works on his recitals. In 1861, Saint-Saëns joined the faculty of the École Niedermeyer in Paris, where his students included André Messager and Gabriel Fauré. Louis Niedermeyer had founded the school with the sole purpose of training church musicians, and the curriculum accordingly centered on con- servative fare of organ-playing and Gregorian chant. Saint-Saëns, by contrast, brought a more complete knowledge of contemporary trends in musical compositions to his classroom. The founding of the Société Nationale de Mu- sique in 1871 under Saint-Saëns and Romaine Bussine proved a decisive event for French composers. The society’s motto—“Ars Galli- ca”—proclaimed the noble goal of promoting French art. Throughout much of the 19th cen- tury, works by German composers (especially instrumental pieces) had dominated French concert programs. French artists found few op- portunities for performances of their own com- positions. Saint-Saëns wrote, “Not so very long ago, a French composer who was daring enough to venture onto the terrain of instrumental mu- sic had no other means of getting the work per- formed than to give a concert himself and invite his friends and critics. As for the public, it was hopeless even to think about them. The name of a composer who was French and still alive had only to appear on a poster to frighten everyone away. The chamber music societies, flourish- ing and numerous at the time, restricted their Camille Saint-Saëns RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 83