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John Duffy
Heritage Fanfare and Chorale
Heritage Suite for Orchestra
Heritage Symphonic Dances
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Williams, conductor
Joseph Silverstein, conductor
John Duffy has composed more than 300 works for symphony orchestra, theater, television and film. He and his music have received many awards in recognition of his excellent contributions to music: two Emmys, an ASCAP award for special recognition in film and television music, a New York State Governor's Art Award, and the (New York City) Mayor's Award of Honor for Arts and Culture.
John Duffy grew up in the Bronx, one of 14 children of Irish immigrant parents. When he was still a young man, composition studies with Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Luigi Dallapiccola, Solomon Rosowsky, and Herbert Zipper proceeded concurrently with his career and early successes in theater. He credits Rosowsky for insisting uncompromisingly on learning the craft of music composition and developing the discipline and patience necessary to the art.
Duffy's profound regard for language, its beauties, and its powers, suited him ideally for his work in the theater, television and film. He acquired a reputation early on as a first-class interpreter of ideas and emotion, a brilliant orchestrator, and a sensitive colleague.
His appointment, in his twenties, to the post of music director, composer and conductor of Shakespeare Under the Stars in Yellow Springs, Ohio, was the first in a succession of similar posts at John Houseman's American Shakespeare Festival (Stratford), the Guthrie theater, the Long Wharf Theater, and the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, and for NBC and ABC television in New York City.
He composed some of his notable theater scores for Broadway and Off Broadway production of The Ginger Man, Macbird, Mother Courage, Playboy of the Western World, and many Shakespeare plays, including a memorable collaboration with Houseman for Macbeth.
Duffy has also composed distinguished concert music for a variety of commissions, among them A Time for Remembrance (cantata for soprano, speaker, and orchestra); Symphony No. 1: Utah; Freedom Overture; Concerto for Stan Getz and Concert Band; and the award-winning score for the nine-hour PBS documentary, narrated by Abba Eban, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune called the music "haunting, memorable and brilliant."
As founder and president (1974-1995) of Meet The Composer, an organization dedicated to the creation, performance, and recording of music by American composers, he initiated countless programs to advance American music and to aid American composers.
In April 1997, the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performed Duffy's Unity, a work commissioned by Owens Corning for the opening celebration of its new corporate world headquarters. His opera, Black Water, based on the libretto by writer Joyce Carol Oates and commissioned by the American Music Theater Festival, received its premiere in Philadelphia in April 1997, an event widely reported and reviewed and featured on National Public Radio, and CBS Sunday Morning. Duffy's Testament for chorus and band, commissioned for the 50th anniversary celebration concert of the Kennebec Valley (Maine) Music Educator's Association, was premiered in Skowhegan, Maine in January 1998. He is currently composing an opera on the life and times of Muhammad Ali.
Mr. Duffy's music appears on the CBS and Koss labels.
For me, images, poetry, drama, dance evoke musical ideas. As I sit at a play, or watch a film or even walk down a street, musical phrases unfold in my mind. While I'm working in the solitude of my studio I may look at pictures or read a bit in a book, and I hear music. I had to learn the requisite skills before I could write music, like every composer. That took study, but almost anyone who wants to can attain some level of craftsmanship. Learning how to discipline worktime is still harder. Yet, through craft and discipline, one's mind and spirit can become free to express feelings and ideas. In lucky moments, these skills are enhanced by inspiration, which, for me, is a form of belief. When it is there, it is like a presence in the room which brings forth and gives meaning to the process of creation.
I was deeply drawn to film and film music as a young music student. At that time, many major composers were writing for movies and turning their film scores into concert works. Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky and Lieutenant Kije, Copland's Red Pony and Quiet City. Walton's Hamlet, Bernstein's On The Waterfront, and Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra are examples. So, too, Heritage Symphonic Dances and Suite for Orchestra, and Fanfare and Chorale started as scores for the nine-part TV series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews. From the sound track I created concert music, which I trust will stand on its own, but the original impulse for this music was film.
Heritage Fanfare and Chorale
Fanfare and Chorale was composed to make music available for joyous commemorative occasions. Its roots reach back to Baroque ceremonial fanfares (around 1700-1750). Composers such as Bach and Handel, were often commissioned to write this kind of music for public celebrations.
Heritage Suite for Orchestra
Heritage Suite for Orchestra was inspired by characters and events in Jewish history. The Overture starts with the theme of Prophets. This leads to small musical sections evoking different lands of the Jewish dispersion: North Africa, Spain,
medieval Europe and modern America. The second movement, David and Bathsheba, is a romance. The radiant, sensuous lyrics of the Song of Solomon inspired this section. Dance before the Golden Calf portrays Moses descending from Mount Zion with the Ten Commandments and witnessing the frenzied dancing of the Children of Israel before the idol. Destruction of the Temple depicts the Roman army's brutal attack on Jerusalem in 70 C.E. It is followed by Diaspora, recalling the scattering of the Children of Israel across the earth. Here we hear a pensive song that might have been played by an imaginary violinist fiddling his heart out in an Eastern European shtetl. Prophecy, the final segment, evokes the words of the prophets who foretold the return of Jews to the Promised Land and the establishment of a peaceable kingdom in which "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid" (Isiah 11:6).
The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, Gibbs Smith, president, commissioned Symphony No. 1 in order to draw attention to the endangered, pristine wilderness lands of southern Utah. The score is dedicated to Gibbs Smith and the Sierra Club. Paul Connelly and the Orchestra of St. Luke's gave the premier performance at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, November 29, 1989.
I began sketching musical ideas for the symphony while hiking through southeastern Utah in the spring of 1988. The landscape of this glorious state astounded me. Dramatic contrasts of light and shadow. Violent changes in weather. Expansive vistas. Here in these ancient Indian ruins, canyons, cathedral-like mesas and fantastical slabs of rock is a spiritual presence and aesthetic wonder of pure, majestic, humbling wilderness. The title of the first movement comes from John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. "In God's wildness lies the hope of the world."
In the first movement, two musical themes, one rhythmic and jagged, the other lyrical and expansive, create the qualities of Utah's wildness and spaciousness. The movement closes with a majestic chorale.
The second movement suggests the beginning of life. While composing Requiem I had a fleeting vision of a moment when life was first created on earth, with creatures crawling out of the primordial mud and birds soaring in the air. The Requiem mourns the loss of the natural wonder of ancient Glen Canyon, which in 1961 was covered by flood waters in order to create a state recreation area.
The four A-minor chords that close the Requiem are followed immediately by the festive themes and melodies of the last movement, Puwa, which means "life force" in the Ute language. My dedication of the score expresses my dedication to the life force of Utah's wildness: "To Gibbs Smith, Johnny Appleseed visionary of Utah, and to his Sierra Chapter colleagues who work tirelessly as volunteers to preserve the glorious, threatened wildlands of Utah. They are truly pioneers of the spirit, bravely guarding precious treasures of the earth. To them we and future generations owe bountiful thanks."
Heritage Symphonic Dances
If you think about it, dance, of all music forms, elicits the most universal response from men, women, and children, regardless of their background or nationality. You can tell people by their dances, and, even today, folk cultures express themselves through ritual and dance. I wanted to tell the story of the Jewish people through dance and, because Jews settled in so many countries, I drew on a wide range of material in creating this work.
David's Dance introduces the Heritage theme, which is based on the notes of the Shofar, an ancient Hebrew ritual trumpet made from a ram's horn. The Bible recounts that David danced naked before the Lord to the accompaniment of horns, harps, tambourines, and cymbals. I tried to recapture his wild abandon by swirling together those ancient sounds in fast-paced 6/8 time. The Rabbi's Dance is Eastern European in flavor and uses minor modes and augmented seconds closely associated with Jewish music. While composing this dance, I imagined a rabbi in a Polish or Russian landscape floating magically through the air like a fantastical figure in a Chagall painting. Renaissance Dance evokes Venice in the high Renaissance (around 1550), when Jews flourished in Italian cities. Spanish Dance conjures up the splendor of the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry in Moorish Spain when Jews, Christians, and Moslems worked in peaceful harmony. Castanets near the end of this movement recall the flamenco. America is a musical mini-history of the USA. Jewish immigrants, along with countless millions of pioneers and refugees, brought to the United States their diverse cultures and their visions of hope. Bright, brash, optimistic with a touch of melancholy, the music starts with train sounds, city noises, and auto horns. Moves to a hoe-down, then a cakewalk, and finally a restatement of the Heritage theme.
Waltz, which concludes Heritage Symphonic Dances, is an ebullient love song. Here I wanted a dance of affirmation which would lift people from their seats and out into the night. I thought of Albert Einstein when I wrote this waltz. I imagined him, filled with the same innocent joy that shines forth from his portrait on my studio wall, dancing among the stars.
Heritage Fanfare and Chorale (3:16)
Heritage Suite for Orchestra
David and Bathsheba (4:20)
Dance of the Golden Calf (2:15)
Destruction of the Temple (1:57)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Williams, conductor
Requiem for Glen Canyon (7:06)
Joseph Silverstein, conductor
Heritage Symphonic Dances
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Williams, conductor
John Duffy's heart-stirring music has won many awards. Heritage, Fanfare and Chorale, Heritage suite for Orchestra and Heritage Symphonic Dances come from his score for the nine-hour PBS series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews, narrated by Abba Eban, which earned Duffy an Emmy Award. These works and Symphony No. 1: Utah resound with Duffy's reverence for tradition, love of life and celebration of freedom.
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