>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:22 >> Good afternoon. I'm so pleased to see you here. I'm, my David Plylar, I'm with the Music Division of the Library of Congress. And, I'm especially excited about this program. It's one that I wanted to do for a long time, every since I, I didn't realize that we had so many manuscripts of Charles Griffes in our collection. So, when I came across them, I'd always hoped that we'd have an opportunity to have these pieces performed along with several other items in our collection including two works by Amy Beach and then also the Cesar Franck Prelude, chorale et fugue. I remembered hearing Solungga Liu's recording of, or All Griffes Recordings, selections of his major piano works. And, I was really taken with it. So, she was willing to work with me on this program and put together something that was really quite something, so I think you'll be in for a real treat when you hear her play starting at 2. One of the nice things about it, it also includes what we believe to be a world premiere of a piano transcriptions of Griffes' of a WC work. So, I'll say a bit more about that soon. But, it's basically a work that's been hidden away or, at least, unplayed in public, we think, for about 102 years. So, just so you can get a sense of, kind of, the scope of our Griffes collection, we have two main areas where we hold Griffes' manuscripts. One is just kind of the general ML 96 manuscript collection. The other one is the Hineman [assumed spelling] Collection. We have a number of Griffes' songs in German, some in English. He spent about four years in Germany and so he tended to produce those German leader when he was in Berlin. But, there's several other works that he produced at that time that also have German titles like the Fantasy with Ephontisia [assumed spelling] title and whatnot. We also have, so the Hineman Collection, which is a collection that came to us with a number of different manuscripts already in it and then also things acquired to add to it over the years. So, part of these, of these collections are number of piano manuscripts in his hand. And, the items that are in red are manuscripts that we all have. One little note about it is that the Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan, where it says two sources, the manuscript sources that we have for that are not the piano version that you're going to hear today. They're two versions of the orchestral version that was done a bit later in life. And, I'll say a bit about that when we get to that piece. So, part of what, maybe before I start, one thing I'd like to know is how many of you know Charles Griffes' piano music? Okay, well we have some people who already know this music. So, I hope you're, well like, are familiar with it to the point where it's something that you're comfortable with or enjoy listening to on the side or something, I don't know. Lots of times, composers get into this kind of obscurity that they don't deserve and their music is quite on par with others of the same time period. And, just for quarks of fate, we don't know it as well as we would like to. And, that's why it's also a nice pleasure to be able to present this music today. One of the main reasons that we don't know as much of Charles Griffes' music is because he died so young, at the age of 35. And, it was an unexpected illness right at the, kind of, pinnacle of his, well, pinnacle, more like in a valley right before his career was about to take off. But he had produced a number of orchestral transcriptions of piano works that were really taking off. So, Pierre Monteux of the Boston City Orchestra performed the Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan to rave reviews. They played it again at Carnegie Hall a bit later in that year. And then, shortly thereafter, he was, that was actually the last time that Griffes appeared in public was at that Carnegie Hall Concert. And then, he was too sick to travel after that. But, shortly later, Stokowski in Philadelphia premiered several transcriptions of his earlier piano works, some of which you'll hear today. And then, those were well received. But, he was never able to hear them. ^M00:05:07 So, it's kind of a sad story. But, while it is a, you know, it's obviously not a good thing that we lost him so young, there's really quite a lot to celebrate about what he was able to accomplish in so short a time. He, and, you know, speaking to the pianist today about these works, and, one thing that she really brings out is that she doesn't feel like he ever repeats himself. There's this element of, while he's often described as an impressionist, a romantic impressionist or something like that, he's also very much in a Vanguard composer for the time. And, he's always experimenting with what he's doing. And, I think that you'll find that, across these pieces that we're going to listen to today. So, we're going to just take a kind of a quick survey. I'm going to show you, we'll focus on the main piano works that are going to be performed today, but also play you just the openings of a few other movements that you're not going to hear just so you can kind of get a sense of the breadth that he has to offer. Solungga also, very kindly, allowed me to use her CD. So, this is her recording. So, it's nice, and I have her permissions to use it which is always a pleasure. So, the pieces that, he wrote a lot of works in his short life, many of which are short and small. The pianos not, that's at the end there, is not his firs sonata. There are a number of others sonatas unpublished and they're the, they're his Biographer, Donna Anderson, has been working on creating editions of these other things. She is one of the people who clears the edition of the Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan for piano in the 90s. But, these things are not readily available with the exception of the Three Tone Pictures Opus 5, the Fantasy Pieces Opus 6, and the Roman Sketches Opus 7. The sonata's also very much available. And now, since the 90s, the Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan is available. The other pieces listed there that I'm not going to really play anything from, Winter Landscape, De Profundis, and the Legend. And, there are a number of other smaller little pieces. They're just examples of character pieces that are worth just checking out on your own, if you find this music interesting. One of the things I admire about Griffes, beyond just liking his music, is that he was a very avid and active and successful transcriber of his own work. So, the Three Tone Picture, of which we're going to hear two of them during the concert, he transcribed twice, once for Wind and Harp, Winds and Harp and then another one for kind of a dec tech plus piano. So, Five Winds and Five Strings. If you can hunt them down, they're really worth listening to, they're quite something and interesting to hear. So, starting with the Lake at Evening, this is, I'm just going to play the opening of it so you can get the sense of the kind of placid and beautiful writing that Griffes was known for. Sorry, it's not set up. ^M00:08:34 [ Background noise ] ^M00:08:39 [ Music ] ^M00:09:20 So, you have to forgive me for stopping, [inaudible] here. So, you know, one of the techniques here is to keep kind of a pedal point pitch going. The pitch changes a couple of times throughout the piece. But, you basically have this gorgeous melody that's maybe reminiscent of [Inaudible] towards the center of the piece which, in turn is reminiscent of Chopin Nocturne A Flat Major. But, the it's just kind of a perfectly formed piece. And so, I think that you'll enjoy that as an opener. We're not going to hear the Vail of Dreams. But, I also feel like you should hear this, just the opening of it, to see what kind of a different type of work this is already. All the works that we're going to hear today are composed, were composed between 1910 and 1919 in terms of including revisions. So, it's really a short period of his time. So, just bear that in mind as you hear the different varieties. ^M00:10:26 [ Music ] ^M00:11:07 So, all these works that have these kind of easy going beginnings in terms of just getting us into the sound world play, he tends to push the pianist quite a bit as the pieces progress. So, they, not only is there interesting development of the material itself but it also is demonstrative of his mastery of the use of the keyboard. He was a pianist himself. And, it would've been interesting to hear him play. But, you can already hear that this is starting to work into a different sound world. And, it's still doing sort of a peddle point type of, in this case instead of a single pitch, we're looking at chords that are repeating. ^M00:11:45 [ Background noise ] ^M00:11:50 We will hear the Night Winds. And, this is one where I think it's worth taking a listen to the version for winds, strings, and piano just because it's a kind of interesting orchestration. Here, one of the things, and there's lots of examples across the literature of works that evoke, you know, running streams and blowing wind and stuff like that. So, there, it's hard to do something terribly original along those lines, especially when you're writing already in the 20th century. But, he does something interesting here with the way that he divides up the pitches. You'll notice that it's using stacked 4ths, sometimes they're in 2nds and stuff like that. But, he tends to limit the gamut of things to still they're basically a modified triadic kind of a thing. And, eventually, they change, as you can see even by the end of that first page, there's chromatic, chromaticism is introduced or not. But, it's, what the effect is, at least to my ear, is it turns back a kind of wind motive into, it almost doesn't matter what it's doing. You'll aurally recognize it as the wind that was at the beginning. So, you might sense that there's lots of accompaniment that goes along with the melody that arises in that second system there. But, when it returns to that wind music, you'll immediately know it. And, it's because of the pitch content that he chose, in my opinion. So, let's hear a little bit of that. There's also this one, we won't play it to this point, but there's a remarkable change that happens at the end of the, towards the end of the work where he goes into E flat minor. And, you can see these just kind of bare chords in the base, not bare but they're just kind of suddenly, I think it's even marked in stereo so they're, and you still have the wind kind of coming back above it. But now, it's in this context of the settled E flat minor chords which never go away even though he moves away, kind of, he wobbles around a bit harmonically. So, it's a bit on the progressive side. Here's the opening of that. ^M00:14:05 [ Music ] ^M00:14:35 I always hate to stop. But, you'll get to hear it shortly. ^M00:14:38 [ Background noise ] ^M00:14:42 The next pieces that we're going to represent on the program are, we'll do the complete set, I won't be, but the pianist will be doing, thankfully not me, the Fantasy Pieces Opus 6. And these, these ones are more, it's a Barcarolle, a Nocturne, and a Scherzo. We have a, hopefully I'm not misremembering this but, we have the Barcarolle and the Nocturne manuscripts. And, originally it's, well that's the other piece. These were not always grouped this way in terms of what they were going to be. They kind of coalesced into this when he was going to get them, trying to get them published by Schirmer, and in particular, 1915, 1916 this period when he was able to convince Schirmer to actually publish his piano music. They have already published, earlier, I think it was early as 1910, 1911 something like that, a few of his songs, they've added a few more songs after that. But, it actually took a letter from Busoni to convince them to take on his piano works. And, thankfully, they did because they're, this is one of the ways we have some good editions with these. One thing I didn't notice, but you'll find in the program notes, once we get them, is these descriptions that he would attach to each of these. In this case, it's a poetic, it's actually, it's from a poem by William Sharp which is also is the poet who's pseudonymously is known as Fiona Macleod. So, they have some songs that use his, her texts as well. One of the things I just want to point out about this piece, and maybe I'll try to, this is a longer work, I'll see if I can get to the right spot to show you the second part of it. This one actually really reminds of Busoni. It strikes me as something that Busoni would do. So, an Barcarolle kind of Italianate type of music, the main melody that you see there just simply by itself, if you just look at the pictures there basically there's a whole tone scale. So, the E natural is the unexpected one, if we're thinking in B flat. And, not to get too technical about it or anything, but, what's interesting is he turns something that's so simple and lovely into something that's quite different which is that, on the right side of your screen, you'll see basically and A minor arpeggio's in the base, just very straightforward. And then, on the right hand, you'll have this stressed mark melody that uses the same pitch set. The B flat, just think of it as an A sharp, it's just another, sorry, another whole tone grouping, but in a different key. So, you're not hearing, well it's not really a key, it's this whole tone. But, you start to hear it as this kind of jostling things. But, it's a really beautiful effect and quite something as kind of just an eerie moment in the work. So, here's just a, to give us a sense of that let's hear it. ^M00:17:51 [ Music ] ^M00:18:45 I one to just go back and skip to that other spot. I think it's here. ^M00:18:49 [ Music ] ^M00:19:09 So, the eyeball method of trying to find that is clearly not the best way to do that. So, you'll hear it. Just, it'll be, it'll be clear. There's just different ways that he does it in terms of the just the position of different ideas. They're still quite recognizable and clearly meant to be melodic and accompanied in a very traditional way. But, there's some kind of cognitive dissonance that happens there between what you expect to hear and what you end up hearing. And, that's the kind of thing that I think is really attractive about his music, one of those things. I won't play this part, but, at the, towards the end, and there's another spot earlier in the piece where the music is very, kind of, mixed modal type of thing. You can see it gets quite big with these large combination scale arpeggios which are really effective piano writing there on that second system and down to the bottom. But also, that section at the top with kind of going back and forth between modes is quite effective. The Notturno is another piece that just immediately goes into a different world except that, you'll notice that the pitch collections that you'll hear at the beginning share something quite in common with that first piece we were looking at. So, if you have the E flat, the G, the F, and the A, you're looking at another collection there whole tones. So, let's hear the beginning of this. And, this is a very melodic work but develops in interesting ways. And, one of the things to listen for, when you're hearing the whole piece, is the way that Griffes morphs the accompaniment very naturally so that it gives what would otherwise be a too simple melodic idea, it gives it lots of space to grow and still remain very interesting. ^M00:21:10 [ Music ] ^M00:21:46 So, you can hear, you know, this is coming from the Chopin Nocturne realm but also very much the Debussy realm. And, particularly, actually, there's another piece on this program that is, quite deliberately from the Debussy Nocturne realm, speaking of Nuage, the clouds were from one of the Nocturnes. Griffes has a piece called Clouds that he, where he draws on some of Debussy's ideas there. I'm going a little bit fast just to make sure we are going to get through everything. There's some interesting stuff coming up as well. The Scherzo shows a completely different side of Griffes. So, everything we've been hearing so far has been pretty subdued. But, the Scherzo gets kind of ruckus. And he, eventually, he came back to it in 1919 and orchestrated it. It's a nice short orchestral piece. Really would be very good as an encore work. I think I have that. ^M00:22:43 [ Music ] ^M00:23:23 So, yeah it's a very different world. And, it has a nice contrasting trio section but still kind of maintains its energy all the way throughout it, if you're thinking of a Scherzo. This is that transitioning into the trio like section. And, the Roman Sketches are another set. So it's, the White Peacock is probably one of Griffes' most famous pieces. I'm not sure it's kind of a mix of what other people know it as a piano piece or an orchestral piece. But, in that case, it's interesting in both ways. And again, because he was such a good orchestrator, I think it's really worth taking a look at. There's some controversy about his orchestration. But, I tend to just admire the default of whatever the composer did. It's kind of worth getting at. And, that controversy comes specifically with the Pleasure Dome of Kubla Kahn. Well, I'll just say this now, since we're already talking about it. Frederick Stock Conductor made some changes for a 1928 edition, this is 8 plus years after Griffes passed away, saying that there was some discussions that he had with him about changes to the orchestration that, presumably, Griffes was in favor of. But there's, so not impugning, Mr. Stock on this, but there's some doubt as to whether they were, really would've been approved by him, had he lived. So, there's the early edition that Pier Monteux continued to use throughout his career, and, I know that Ozawa used that edition as well, the early edition where you also will hear the other version of ride through. But anyway, if you take a listen to their orchestrations, you'll see what I mean. And, there's some hideous synchresis there. But that's a good thing, I think. I don't like that, if everybody sounded the same. So, in any case, we're listening to the piano version not the orchestral version. And, the White Peacock has a fairly large poem, and this is actually the largest inscription that Griffes uses in this set. So, just kind of there on the side, it's kind of a different type of peacock than you might be thinking of. It's lots of use of words like pale and not colorful. It's more like a this misty blue smoke those types of things coming up. And so it, definitely, to my mind brings the idea of color to the forefront. So, this is a great example of really excellent orchestrating for the piano as well. So here, I feel like Griffes is trying to kind of channel a combination of Debussy and maybe Dukas as you'll hear with just the, if you, I'll just play the opening and you'll see what I mean, maybe. ^M00:26:10 [ Music ] ^M00:26:14 Oops this side. There we go. ^M00:26:16 [ Music ] ^M00:27:02 Yeah so that's there. ^M00:27:03 [ Singing ] ^M00:27:05 [ Background noise ] ^M00:27:11 So, one of the things that makes, I think, Griffes different in these kind of impressionistic types of works than other say French composers of the time is that he allows harmonic sound where it's actually mixed a bit. So, you notice that the stuff when it goes to the low F that you see there at the bottom in the middle, kind of rising, arpeggio that turns into a scale type of thing. It's sounds to me like it's in a different kind of world. And so, he allows those things to coexist and kind of explores it at the same time as opposed to just having to have a single minded focus harmonically. Yet, they still work together. So, I'm not saying that it's not a cogent argument that he's making. Night Fall, we will not hear today. But, just to give a listen to the opening and you'll see a little bit of, not an evolution in terms of it being a positive progression, but, more just where he's going with that whole peddle tone thing that we talked about. ^M00:28:15 [ Music ] ^M00:28:58 So, what he's doing here is clearly having to have that D sharp that's going to continue in there, but the context he puts around it, you know, all the tones around it, the D and the E, it's quite startling. But, instead of it being like this sort of big drawing attention to himself sort of thing, everything is very quiet. And, it's kept very much in this realm of exploring color and what dissonance can mean in that realm. So, it's not longer, it's not the kind of, you know, functional dissonance, in some sense it is, but in the way that you might see in some of his earlier works. ^M00:29:33 [ Background noise ] ^M00:29:37 We also won't be hearing this one, the Fountain of the Acqua Paola. These are all, all four of these Roman sketches are using William Sharp poems, or actually small portions of William Sharp poems. Here's just the opening of it. And, you can see what the traditions that he's drawing on, again, for water music, you know, with, look at the, what was available at the time by Liszt and Debussy and then Ravel. ^M00:30:09 [ Music ] ^M00:30:48 So, it changes character there. But, you'll notice that that, and this kind of, even as grouped in forest here, the sonnet groupings are three and it's a very kind of a recognizable thing just like we had at the Night Winds earlier, looking at that, like you recognize the wind when it comes back. Well, you recognize them maybe when you're looking back straight on at the fountain then maybe you wonder, attention wonders a bit, but then you're able to reorient yourself pretty quickly. And, that's, it's a, it's not, I'm not saying this is like the most amazing water accompaniment you can come up with or something like that, but, it takes skill to actually do something that's convincing like that and doesn't sound hackneyed or just like, you know, like an all birdie base, like up in the stratosphere, something like that. So, there's a good deal of thought that goes into those types of decisions. And, it seemed to come very naturally for Griffes. ^M00:31:37 [ Background noise ] ^M00:31:42 So, Clouds we will hear today. And, this is the one that, again, has that, a little bit of relationship with Nuages Debussy. Let's listen to just the opening. You'll see what I mean. But, this is, again, a case where Griffes is really able to grasp the poetic idea and run with it. ^M00:32:03 [ Music ] ^M00:33:03 So, it's, you can see like, if you're following through these and if you're to go through the order that they're written, you see the progression, you see where he's coming from with each one. But, they start to sound like they're coming, that there's a totally different composer even though you still know it's the same composer. And, that's because he's really exploring. Look at the meter of this one, 7/4. He's trying things out and there's kind of a wide scope that he's willing to explore including different types of modal groupings, different scales, other things like that. So, he's, you know, continuing to explore. We get to the next one, Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan, this is probably his best known work, especially an orchestral version. I say that because the piano version, strangely, was not published until the 90s, as I mentioned earlier, but also wasn't performed in public till 1984, I think, in the Coolidge Auditorium after received its premiere, James Tocco performing. So, it was, that's kind of a nice connection that we have here to this. But, why I said that that's strange is because the work started as a piano piece. He, I think he began the work, working out in 1912. You'll see in the program notes where he's getting his inspiration clearly from the Coleridge poem, but really just some particular aspects of the Coleridge poem, Kubla Khan. And he, so, he's working it out on the piano, he plays it for his friends. It's a different kind of feedback. He's continually working on it for about three years or so till 1915 or so. He tends, he keeps making improvements. But, he hears from two particular sources that may be or two bits of feedback that push him to make an orchestral version. And, one of those, again, is attributed to Busoni who apparently listened to the work and then said, you know, maybe that's an orchestral piece. And so, he took that to heart and he made the orchestral version. Again, we have, we'll have the two versions, we only have one of them on display today for space reasons, but, you'll be able to see what that looked like. And, that was still very much a developing work. But that's, again, the piece that kind of made his name just before he passed away. The piano piece itself, though, is, I think, I don't know the people who like Griffes like it. But, I think it's undervalued in terms of its significance in terms of piano writing. He is really successful in orchestrating well for the piano. And, that's something I think that you'll hear with this performance today. And, just to give you a sense of that, we're just going to listen to the opening of it, which starts kind of in the depths of the base and then kind of builds out from there. It's sectional in nature but it always has this sort of return to some of these ideas that are put forward at the beginning. ^M00:36:26 [ Music ] ^M00:37:25 I'm sorry to stop it for time sake. Also, we have a little bit of a sound trouble earlier, so it'll, it sounds much better with a live piano, so, you know, much fuller sound. So, this piece is interesting for a number of reasons. But, it's a particular importance to this pianist who has some Mongolian heritage. And, in fact, this is a photo that she gave me that her mother took and put into a book, Muren Hsie, and she's a well known Mongolian poet who writes in Chinese. This is from one of her books. This is actually some of the ruins of Xanadu with the summer palace of Kublai Khan. And, here's another example of things. So, she actually sent these along so I could include them just to give you a little glimpse of, there's other things that you can find on line to take a look at the actually historical Xanadu. In any case, there's this sense of expanse in this work that I think comes through very, just as well in the piano version as it does in the orchestral version. And so, it really, I think, is something to experience, if you haven't heard it before. And, if you have heard it before, it's a new experience again. I'm just going to play you, oops, a little bit of one other very significant Griffes piano work that we're not going to hear today. We considered the idea of programming it but it's just too much. So, we're already, the first half, by the way, is much longer than the second half. So, it's just the way that it worked out. But, I wish we could've put the sonata in there, but, just so you can see where he was going towards the later years, 1917, 1918 I'm going to play the beginning of each movement so you can get a sense of it. ^M00:39:26 [ Music ] ^M00:40:05 So, you can still sense that lyricism that's been present the entire time. But, it's a much more free lyric, lyricism when it comes to tonality and harmonic language. Here's a little bit of the second movement. ^M00:40:18 [ Music ] ^M00:40:43 Stop it there for time. That movement Griffes would orchestrate as well as an orchestral movement called, I think he called it a Nocturne. And the final movement. ^M00:40:54 [ Background noise ] ^M00:41:30 I don't know if any of you heard in there a little bit of Prokofiev 7, the 7th sonata. I do. >> The last movement? >> Yep. >> Yeah. >> Yeah there's some similarities there that, I think, are circumstantial. But then there's, let's see, yeah, so this sonata is well worth getting to know, it's worth taking a look. You can just see he's very much moving in a more modernist trajectory. The other pieces also, at the time, were considered to be modernist as well. They really sound a bit more familiar to us just because we've had the innervating century to get used to those sounds. Let's see, I think, yeah, last thing I think I have on here is just kind of an interesting little story about a piece. I don't have any examples of it because this is the piece that's going to be premiered today. So, this is a version of the central movement from Iberia Image for orchestra Debussy. I'm not sure what did that, but, anyway, so this is just the cover page of the manuscript that he transcribed in 1915 after hearing the work. What's interesting is that he didn't actually like the work that much with the exception of this one movement. So, he really took to it. Then, sorry for my washed out photo here, but, you can see just that it's a meticulously done transcription. And it's, Debussy himself did not do a solo piano version of this work. But, Duran commissioned I think Muran and the other people who have done solo piano versions later that are much easier to play than this one. However, the difficulties are worthwhile, I think, we'll see what you think after hearing it. But, almost throughout the entire work, he keeps it separated onto three stage just to be able to keep voices clear. And so, that's one of the things that's difficult to navigate but interesting to navigate. So, what's kind of cool about this, and I hope that maybe you can let people know about this as a, if you find this interesting, is that I came across that transcription, that manuscript when I was looking through just the Griffes materials. And, I noticed, it was catalogued, but I noticed in the literature it said that the piece was no longer extant. So, thought there was a mistake, it was a mistake. It in fact was extant, it was existing right there. But, because of that, nobody knew about it. And, that's why we're doing, Solungga was willing to learn it and put it together. And so, I made this version for her at first of the, an engraved form of it. And, what's kind of cool about it is we're going to put this online and probably as an attachment on the blog so that anybody who wants to download it and play it themselves can do so. So, we're hoping to do that next week or so. But, so if you want to, if this is something you want to just take a look at yourself and play through, you're more than welcome to. And so, it'll be available that way. Yeah. And so, I think I'm going to stop there because that's the end of my talk. But, thank you so much for coming and I think you're going to really enjoy it. And, I'm happy to take any questions if I can try to answer if anybody has any. >> Did you engrave that? >> If you can wait for it yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, just to record it. Can you ask a question. >> You engraved that right, that was my question. >> Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah. Anybody else? ^M00:45:31 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:45:50 Well that's a tough, I don't know that I'm really equipped to answer that question. but, what I can say is that, you know, that particular year that you're talking about also had a pretty big impact on both this composer and other composers, especially Cesar Franck, we're thinking of Tristan. And the emergence of that, basically, I mean you can start to see changes in lots of people's music that come right after their first hearing it once they've got a chance to hear it. >> [Inaudible] he was actually [inaudible] produce a movie and when that boy [inaudible] was exiled to Switzerland, he was hiking [inaudible], that's what influenced him 23 years later, [Inaudible]. And, I'm sensing these [inaudible] sort of seeing this recurrence. >> Yeah, I think I see where you're going with that. The, what I can say is that, I mean, really there's all these major histories, especially literary histories of the type of romanticism that goes into these things coming at the turn, at the end of the 18th century going into the 19th century. And, music starts to kind of catch up with it and then kind of intermingle with it as the century progresses in ever, you know, inventive ways. I actually don't think that that every really stopped except for in certain types, you know, Vanguard moves away from referential types of music or art production. But, I think it's right on to say that, especially at this time, if you're looking at, I don't like the term salon pieces because it's a bit diminutive. But, works that are character pieces, maybe be a better, character works for a solo piano that have a tie to a poetic source, which, in turn is, usually, some relation either some love or nature, it's very much following in that romantic path. And so, in that sense, impressionism is romanticism. Everything, it's all, all the isms just kind of blend together so. Sure, sure. ^M00:48:10 [ Background noise ] ^M00:48:13 >> Did you say that the manuscripts are on display right now? >> Some of them will be, most, yeah, a good number will be in the lobby as you enter the Coolidge Auditorium. >> Okay. >> Yeah, so you'll be able to take a look. ^M00:48:27 [ Background noise ] ^M00:48:31 All right, well, thank you so much. Oh wait there's one more question, sorry. ^M00:48:36 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:48:45 Yeah. >> And it's this open [inaudible] long space very different than, very different sound than I think a lot of other American composers. >> Yeah. There's a, you know, that's a good observation. Have you heard his music before or will this be? So, one thing you'll find is that he, as the pieces progress, they tend to get more chromatic or more, just a bigger type of sound. But, that sense of spaciousness never goes away, I find, in most of the pieces. So, that's a very good observation and it's definitely, there's definitely a sense of him setting that kind of space in which that music can take place in its best way. And it is, I think that the unique thing about it is, I mean lots of composers do that but rarely do they do it so, with such consistency across, even though it's quite different music in each one across this different works so. ^M00:49:48 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:49:58 Yeah. You know, that, a lot, [inaudible] a good example. And then, there's, of course, a religious component that tends to come into it. But, I think in, for me, with lots of these kinds of musical evocations, religiosity and any type of spiritual component regardless of any sort of doctrinal relationship just comes through in a way that composers think about this music. So, I think that definitely is a good observation that comes through. One last thing I should say is that I didn't hit the Beach in the Franck. We had a really nice talk earlier today by McCauley Kate and Miller about our Beach Holdings. And, if you don't know about those, we don't actually have a Beach collection but we have the A. P. Schmidt Collection or archive rather that's a, that was her main publisher. And so, we have a number of manuscripts and copies of manuscripts as well as other types of manuscripts with beach at the library. And, it's her sesquicentennial celebration. She would be 150, I think, in last September. So, if you weren't able to make it to the talk this morning. We do encourage you, if you have an interest in learning more about Beach, there are a lot of resources available at the library. And, the Franck, I'm not going to say anything about that only because it's such a well known work. But, it's, again, one of the great pieces that we also happen to have the manuscript for. So, that'll close out the program. So, thank you all so much for coming and enjoy the performance. ^M00:51:31 [ Applause ] ^M00:51:34 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E00:51:40