Michael Daugherty: TALES OF HEMINGWAY for Cello & Orchestra (2015)—Zuill Bailey, Nashville Symphony

MICHAEL DAUGHERTY
TALES OF HEMINGWAY (2015)
for Cello and Orchestra
I. Big Two-Hearted River (1925, Seney, Michigan) (0:00)
II. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940, Spanish Civil War) (5:29)
III. The Old Man and the Sea (1952, Cuba) (11:33)
IV. The Sun Also Rises (1926, Pamplona, Spain) (18:11)
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Copyright © 2015 by Michael Daugherty Music. Copyright in all countries. All rights reserved.

Publisher: Michael Daugherty Music
To rent performance materials, visit www.billholabmusic.com
To purchase a score, visit www.sheetmusicplus.com
For more information on Michael Daugherty and his music, visit www.michaeldaugherty.net

Instrumentation:
2 Flutes (2 doubles Piccolo), Oboe, English Horn, 2 Bb Clarinets, Bassoon, Contrabassoon, 2 Horns, 2 C Trumpets, 2 Trombones (2. Bass), Timpani, 2 Percussion, Harp, Violoncello Solo, Strings

Duration: 28 minutes
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TALES OF HEMINGWAY for cello and orchestra was commissioned by the Nashville Symphony and a consortium consisting of: the Asheville Symphony, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, the Erie Philharmonic, the Redwood Symphony, the South Florida Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony.

The world premiere performances and recording of the concerto took place April 17-19, 2015, with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero,with Zuill Bailey, solo cello, at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, Tennessee. The recording of the concerto on Naxos was awarded three GRAMMY Awards in 2016: Best Contemporary Classical Composition(Michael Daugherty), Best Classical Instrumental Soloist (Zuill Bailey), Best Classical Compendium (Nashville Symphony Orchestra).

TALES OF HEMINGWAY evokes the turbulent life, adventures, and literature of American author and journalist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). His terse, direct, accessible writing style, combined with a mastery of dialogue and brilliant use of omission and repetition, made him one of the most influential and original writers of the 20th century. Hemingway’s distinctive body of work was also informed by his larger-than-life experiences.

In his youth in Oak Park, Chicago, Hemingway was surrounded by music, where his mother was a prominent music teacher and he played the cello in school orchestras. Hemingway’s family owned a remote summer home on Walloon Lake near Petoskey, Michigan, where hunting, fishing, and camping were a family ritual. As an adult, Hemingway’s passion and expertise for deep-sea fishing in the Florida Keys and Cuba, big game hunting in Africa, bullfighting in Spain, and boxing were legendary.

Hemingway experienced the horrors and ironies of war as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I (1918) and as a journalist on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War (1937) and World War II (1944-45). In the 1920s, Hemingway was part of Gertrude Stein’s “Lost Generation” in Paris and haunted the bars and cafés with F. Scott Fitzgerald. During his lifetime, many of his works were made into Hollywood films, and his journalism and literature was syndicated in magazines and newspapers around the world, making Hemingway an international celebrity and a household name. Twenty-eight minutes in duration, my cello concerto is divided into four movements, which are inspired by one of Hemingway’s short stories or novels:

I. Big Two-Hearted River (1925, Seney, Michigan) (0:00)

In this story, Nick Adams is an emotionally scarred and disillusioned soldier from World War I who treks to Northern Michigan for a camping-fishing trip to try to regain control of his life. I have composed serene and passionate music that evokes a leitmotif in Hemingway’s writing: his belief that one can be healed by the power of nature through exploring isolated outdoor terrains.

II. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940, Spanish Civil War) (5:29)

Hemingway tells the tale of the last three days in the life of Robert Jordan, an American teacher turned anti-fascist Loyalist guerilla in Spain. The cello strums and plucks, leading the martyr’s march to battle the Fascists and to Jordan’s eventual death. As the chimes explode at the conclusion of the movement, the epitaph of the novel rings forth: “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

III. The Old Man and the Sea (1952, Cuba) (11:33)

As a musical response to Hemingway’s Nobel Prize-winning novella, I have composed an elegy to the struggle of life and death between man and nature. The cello represents the old fisherman’s journey as he searches for the truths of man’s existence with dignity and grace.

IV. The Sun Also Rises (1926, Pamplona, Spain) (18:11)

For the final movement of the concerto, I have created an exciting and dramatic sound world where I imagine the unhappy, aimless expatriate journalist Jake Barnes, his entourage (and Hemingway) in Pamplona, Spain, watching the running of the bulls and reveling in the spectacle of the bullfights.

—Michael Daugherty