Arthur Foote: Cello Concerto in G minor, Op. 33

Arthur Foote (1853-1937)

Cello Concerto in G minor. Op. 33

I. Allegro ma non troppo
II. Andante con moto 10:23
III. Allegro comodo 17:23

Douglas Moore, cello
Rochester (MN) Symphony Orchestra
Jere Lantz, conductor

Arthur William Foote (5 March 1853 in Salem, Massachusetts -- 8 April 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American classical composer, and a member of the "Boston Six." The other five were George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker.

The modern tendency is to view Foote's music as "Romantic" and "European" in light of the later generation of American composers such as Aaron Copland, Roy Harris and William Schuman, all of whom helped to develop a recognizably American sound in classical music. A Harvard graduate and the first noted American classical composer to be trained entirely in the U.S., in some sense he is to music what American poets were to literature before Walt Whitman.

Foote was an early advocate of Brahms and Wagner and promoted performances of their music. Foote was an active music teacher and wrote a number of pedagogical works, including Modern Harmony in Its Theory and Practice (1905), written with Walter R. Spalding. It was republished as Harmony (1969). He also wrote Some Practical Things in Piano-Playing (1909) and Modulation and Related Harmonic Questions (1919). He contributed many articles to music journals, including "Then and Now, Thirty Years of Musical Advance in America" in Etude (1913) and "A Bostonian Remembers" in Musical Quarterly (1937).

The Cello Concerto dates from 1894. It is in three movements, of which the first two are connected by a recitative-like transitional passage. The first movement, Allegro ma non troppo, is in an extended ternary, rather than sonata form. The second, Andante con moto, features a tender-hearted second theme over tremolo strings, while the finale, Allegro comodo, brings the concerto to a spirited conclusion.