Joan Tower: Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman
by Mic Holwin
appears on NewMusicNow, the American Symphony Orchestra League's website on new American works
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Introduction to Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1
Joan Tower's first thought upon being commissioned by the Houston Symphony Orchestra to write a fanfare was, "What's a fanfare? The only one I knew was Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. So I started thinking about that piece, and I knew I had to do something about that title." She calls Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1 a "quasi-tribute" to Copland, employing the same instrumentation as his famous 1942 brass and percussion work and referencing a "snippet of a theme" from it. Like its predecessor, Tower's Fanfare is characterized by an appealing openness and clarity in its sonorities.
Notes on Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman
Commissioned by the Houston Symphony Orchestra to commemorate the Texas sesquicentennial, Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which she refers to as her "only political piece," is dedicated to women who take risks and who are adventurous. After the success of the original, Tower was asked to write "one fanfare after the other" for various events: No. 2 was commissioned by Absolut Vodka in 1989; No. 3 (1991) was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its 100th anniversary; No. 4 (1992) for the 50th anniversary of the Kansas City Symphony; and No. 5 (1993) by the Aspen Music Festival for the opening of the Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall.
An increasingly popular curtain-raiser, Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman conjures a mood of expectancy from the timpani's first call to attention. Visual images come unbeckoned -- riders gathering for the hunt, a rebel alliance preparing for invasion, a royal procession lining up for its grand entrance. Tower leads the listener along in anticipation, as the filigree of trumpets gives way to majestic horns in a gradual build toward . . . well, we have to wait and see. It's a perfect opening work, concisely achieving a fanfare's goal: setting the stage for what follows.
It begins with a bass drum thud, calling to mind Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. Instead of the expected stately trumpet call, however, trumpets enter with a trill as they outline the main theme: an upward movement in fourths (F, B-flat, E-flat, A-flat), which creates a shimmer over a sustained major second in the horns. The effect is effervescent instead of definitive, breath in place of muscle.
After the opening exposition, trombones enter with a phrase of moving open fifths that could signal a queen's entrance; then a tuba opens up the pulse with triplets, which again ascend in fourths (C, F, B-flat, E-flat, A-flat).
Horns paint a Copland-esque "open sky" mood before the trombone fifths return, followed by the main trumpet theme, which builds into an agitation. Triplets in all parts ascend in pitch and volume to culminate in two timpani rolls.
Triplet phrases are traded back and forth between instruments until the trumpets' theme returns a final time, to once again ascend via fourths and build to a triumphant end.
Instrumentation: 3 trumpets in C, 4 horns in F, 3 trombones, tuba; timpani and 2 percussionists playing snare drum, medium bass drum, 3 cymbals, high gong, medium gong, large tamtam, 2 cymbals, tom-toms, large bass drum, medium temple blocks, and triangle.
Duration: 0:03:00
Commission/Premiere Information: Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1 was commissioned by the Houston Symphony Orchestra under the Fanfare Project and given its premiere on January 10, 1987, Hans Vonk conducting. The work is dedicated to, women who take risks and who are adventurous.
Publisher: Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1 is published by Associated Music Publishers.
About Joan Tower
A childhood in South America, an early passion for Beethoven and Stravinsky, a fondness for dancing -- Joan Tower's vigorous and savvy music is a distillation of her loves and influences. Evocative and intriguing titles like Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, Breakfast Rhythms, Platinum Spirals, and Red Garnet Waltz draw the listener in before the music does -- which it goes on to do, effortlessly.
Tower's father, an amateur violinist and mining engineer (his daughter's penchant for metallurgical titles is a tribute to him) provided her with a piano and lessons even when his work took the family to South America. Along with an appreciation of the classics, young Joan developed a fascination with Latin percussion, accompanying her South American nurse to local music festivals. "They would throw instruments at me to get me out of the way," reminisces Tower. "I would have a ball playing maracas, castanets, drums. So that started a whole love of percussion."
Tower's compositions balance the cerebral with the visceral, the precise, the dramatic. She cites Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Beethoven as early and primary influences. "I love his sense of architecture," she says of Beethoven. (Tower's Piano Concerto is an homage to the composer.) "Then when I heard the orchestral works of Stravinsky, they just blew my mind." Stravinsky's aggressive rhythms, along with the fluidity of works like Messiaen's simple but powerful Quartet for the End of Time, provided the foundation for Tower's bold compositional style. Accessibility, rhythmic energy, and a mooring in tonality define her music -- traits Tower shares with such contemporaries as John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse.
An advocate of new music and encourager of women composers, Tower was born in 1938 in New Rochelle, New York. While working on her doctorate in composition from Columbia University, where she studied with Otto Luening and Chou Wen-chung, she founded the contemporary music ensemble Da Capo Chamber Players, in 1969. With that group as an outlet, she focused on writing solo and chamber works, while at the same time serving as the ensemble's pianist.
Soon, the scales of performing and composing began to tip. "My pieces started to get played more and more, much to my amazement," she says. "My piano skills started to go down and my composing skills went up, so I clicked into being more of a composer." In 1984, she stepped down as Da Capo's pianist in order to focus on composing full time.
Gradually having moved beyond her serialist training, Tower was now writing more robust, lyrical works. Her first full-scale orchestral piece, Sequoia, was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra in 1981. Its enthusiastic reception led to Tower's appointment by Leonard Slatkin as composer-in-residence of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1985-88. There, she wrote Silver Ladders (1986), an orchestral work that enabled her to become the first woman awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in 1990. Tower was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1998.
Her best-known works, along with Sequoia and Silver Ladders, include Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman Nos. 1-5; Petroushskates (1980), a chamber work written for Da Capo's tenth anniversary; Wings (1981) for solo clarinet; the string quartet Night Fields (1994); the virtuosic concertos for violin (1991), flute (1989), piano (1985), and clarinet (1988); and Concerto for Orchestra (1991).
Tower is professor of music at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson in New York, where she has taught since 1972. She is co-artistic director of the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and is composer-in-residence at Deer Park Valley Institute in Utah and the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival. In September she began a three-year composer residency with the Orchestra of St. Luke's.
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