Composed for the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic, an orchestra comprised of professional and semi-professional musicians in Alexandria, Virginia, and conducted by Erin Freeman. Learn more about the orchestra here. Learn more about Erin Freeman here.
PROGRAM NOTE
An obsolete machine that reproduces the picture and sound of a movie on a small screen on which filmmakers once edited film, a moviola’s function has been superseded by digital film editing, which is done on computers. Moviola is a 26-minute tone poem in three movements for large orchestra inspired by evenings spent as an adolescent in the Oriental Landmark Theater in Milwaukee. Every day a different double bill (old, and new; arty, and dirty; sacred, and profane) was screened. I grew to adore not just the films but the ritual of going to the movies itself, not to mention the often lavish, always evocative, musical scores for them.
The first movement, called Exit, Pursued, takes as its starting point what is probably the most famous Shakespearean stage direction, at once hilarious and perplexing because it seems to appear without warning in A Winter’s Tale. Either the bear interlude serves as the tragic end of Antigonus or as the comic start to the second half of the play.
The second movement, called Glass Heart, celebrates guileless tendresse. I first wrote the gymnopédie theme for the Flower Girl in a score that I wrote for Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights; the second theme (heard first in a solo for the alto flute) is one that I have used for years in musical works inspired by both Orson Welles and Chaplin.
I first sketched the theme of the final movement as a setting of the words of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Ample Make This Bed” in March 1985. I returned to it to underscore Dr. Jekyll's fiancée Millicent and her evolving character when I crafted a score to the great silent Barrymore Jekyll and Hyde a few years ago. I titled the final movement Sixteen Kisses as it gives sixteen musical variations from that score to celebrate the cinema’s most durable dramatic beat—the kiss.
Conductor Erin Freeman.