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Program Notes

This program exhibits beautifully how a composer can take music that already
exists and transform it into its own wonderful musical experience. We start with
an exuberant fanfare for full orchestra that comes from humble beginnings — the
cherished hymn, Amazing Grace. We then present the Massachusetts premiere of
an evocative orchestral suite that encapsulates the drama and heart of the opera
from which the music comes. And, speaking of drama and heart, those qualities flow
like lava off the pages of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony. Better than anyone,
Tchaikovsky transforms the sounds of the orchestra into the full spectrum of human
emotion. Experiencing this music live will make your heart dance, sing, and, at times,
ache. It’s a full experience — much like life itself.
-- Steven Karidoyanes

The following program notes are by Laura Stanfield Prichard, © 2023

Fanfare on Amazing Grace Adolphus Hailstork
(b. 1941)

Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork III, professor of music
and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in
Virginia, has many Boston-area ties. He was the focus
of three Boston Pops Esplanade concerts in 1993, and
he has heard his works played at Harvard (including a
2021 Paine Hall 80th birthday concert) and by the BSO
(the Finale from his Symphony No. 1, An American Port of Call,
and Celebration). Last summer at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall,
the TMC Fellows featured movements from his String Quartet No. 1 (2002). In
2003, Hailstork composed Triumph in My Song, an oratorio on text by literary
prodigy Phillis Wheatley. Educated and enslaved in a prominent Boston
household, Wheatley (c1753-1784) was the very first published African American
writer (Poems on Various Subjects, 1773).

The well-known text of “Amazing Grace” was written by an evangelical Anglican
clergyman and abolitionist named John Newton. The author had gone to sea
as a young man, was impressed (recruited by force) into the Royal Navy, was
enslaved in Sierra Leone for three years, and then worked as a ship captain for
three voyages in England’s slave trade. He first spoke these words to illustrate
a New Year’s Day sermon as Curate of Olney, in Buckinghamshire. He became
the Rector of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London in 1779, and published
2022/23 Season Oh, the Places We’ll Go! PAGE 11
2022/23 Season Oh, the Places We’ll Go! PAGE 11