Beautiful Minds—Darkness & Light
Saturday, April 15th @ 7:30pm
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium
In advance of Mental Health Awareness and Pride months, we take a look at the musical expressions of mental health and identity struggles from two similar voices, separated by a century. Tyler Harrison’s “The Garden of Tears” is a thematically paired answer to Tchaikovsky’s “The Pathetique”. Powerful and transformative, this concert program will stay with you.
The Program
PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
(1840-1893)
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Opus 74
I. Adagio; Allegro non troppo
II. Allegro con grazia
III. Allegro molto vivace
IV. Adagio lamentoso; Andante
Intermission — After Tchaikovsky
TYLER HARRISON
(b. 1985)
World Premiere—Symphony No. 3, “The Garden of Tears”
I. Repression & Depression
II. Mania
III. The Teacher
IV. The Garden of Tears
Featuring Tchaikovsky’s powerful Symphony No.6, “The Pathetique”
Intensely beautiful and moving, Peter Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #6 “The Pathetique”, written just 9 days before his untimely death, clearly shows this great composer wrestling with darkness and light.
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“I love it as I never loved any of my musical children,” wrote Tchaikovsky about his Sixth Symphony. He had sketched a new symphony in the fall of 1892, but was dissatisfied with it. “I had completed a symphony which suddenly displeased me,” he wrote to his brother Anatol, “and I tore it up. Now I have composed a new symphony which I certainly shall not tear up.” By February, 1893, Tchaikovsky described to his nephew Vladimir Davidov “a symphony with a program, but a program that will remain an enigma to all. Let them guess for themselves; the symphony will be called merely ‘Programmatic Symphony.’ But the program is indeed permeated with subjectiveness, so much so that not once but often, while composing it in my mind, I wept.” However, between the two World Wars, a penciled note in Tchaikovsky’s handwriting was discovered: “The ultimate essence of the plan of the Symphony is LIFE. First part--all impulsive passion, confidence, thirst for activity. Must be short. (Finale DEATH—result of collapse.) Second part love; third disappointments; fourth ends dying away (also short).” Work on the symphony was interrupted by a trip to England to receive an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.By August, he was back home, writing to his publisher: “On my word of honor, never in my life have I been so satisfied with myself, so proud, so happy to know that I have made, in truest fact, a good thing.” The first performance of the Sixth Symphony took place in St. Petersburg on October 28, 1893, with Tchaikovsky conducting. The reception was lukewarm, one reviewer complaining that “as far as inspiration is concerned, this music stands far below Tchaikovsky’s other symphonies.” Even Tchaikovsky noticed that “something strange is happening to this symphony. It is not exactly disliked, but it seems to puzzle people. As for me, I am prouder of it than of any of my other compositions.” The day after the première, Tchaikovsky’s brother Modeste suggested Pathetique as a subtitle for the work and Tchaikovsky agreed. The new title acquired fresh irony when, on November 6, 1893, just nine days after the first performance, Tchaikovsky died. Whether his death was the result of cholera from drinking unboiled water or suicide by arsenic is still being debated. Sir Donald Francis Tovey wrote: “It is not for merely sentimental or biographical reasons that Tchaikovsky’s Sixth has become the most famous of all his works. Nowhere else has he concentrated so great a variety of music within so effective a scheme; and the slow finale, with its complete simplicity of despair, is a stroke of genius which solves all the artistic problems that have proved most baffling to symphonic writers since Beethoven. The whole work carries conviction without the slightest sense of effort; and its most celebrated features…are thrown into their right relief by developments far more powerful, terse, and highly organized than Tchaikovsky has achieved in any other work…All Tchaikovsky’s music is dramatic; and the Pathetique Symphony is the most dramatic of all his works.”
World Premiere: Tyler Harrison’s Symphony No.3, “The Garden of Tears”.
American composer Tyler Harrison’s World Premiere of “The Garden of Tears” is his thematically paired answer to Tchaikovsky's “The Pathetique”. Powerful and transformative, Harrison’s symphony ends with hope, as he says, “The garden of life thrives on the tears that water it, but it is laughter that ultimately defines its beauty.”
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Part One: Repression and Depression The first movement addresses two issues that both Tchaikovsky and I struggled with in our lives. We grew up repressed in societies overtly hostile to same-sex relationships, and we suffered from depressive episodes. Part Two: Mania The second movement is a musical depiction of the tension and euphoria experienced in mania. I used sharp changes in major and minor to portray this, along with “cloud” canons to convey the feeling of racing thoughts. The movement ends with what always follows a mania, an inevitable and crippling crash. Part Three: The Teacher The third movement is about how I discovered my passion for teaching. My identity as an educator has become an integral part of my life. I have learned more from my students than they could ever learn from me. Since I often teach piano, this movement features two pianos playing to each other in a canon, where the student learns by imitating the teacher. Part Four: The Garden of Tears The fourth and final movement considers life after escaping the darkness and finding purpose – how I turned my tears into joy and laughter. This part features multi-voice canons and fugues, including a “laughing canon”, where the orchestra "laughs" using the canonic theme. The third and fourth movements take themes from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 and transform them into a chorus of elation. My Symphony No. 3 invites the listener to consider a new narrative where sadness and depression can be overcome by hope and triumph. Mental illness is an ongoing battle, but it is not cause to give up hope. In fact, it can be a path to a glorious new beginning. I once saw my illness as a tremendous burden. I now understand that it is this very illness that has allowed me to see, feel, and hear the songs of the mountains. The Garden of Tears is a metaphor embodying both the struggle of mental illness and the hope required to survive it. The Garden thrives on the tears that water it, but it is the laughter and joy that ultimately defines its beauty.