Program Note:   

Studs Terkel notably described Music from Shining Brow in a 1997 interview with Hagen on Chicago’s WFMT as “brassy music for a brassy architect.” A stirring medley of melodies from the opera Shining Brow (1992), Hagen composed it in tandem with the opera for performance in the lobby during intermission. The suite has four parts: Part I is called Hymn to Nature in the opera. Part II begins at measure 58 and is based on music from that Act I, scene 2 Workmen's Chorus. Part III begins at measure 96 and consists of music sung by a Runyon-esque barbershop quartet of drunken newspapermen. Part IV begins with a return of the melody of the Hymn to Nature combined with a variant of the barbershop quartet tune and a jig in the trumpets. The suite closes, and the coda begins, at measure 192, with a reprise of the Hymn to Nature.