Symphony: This Will Be Our Reply by Lucas Richman

SYMPHONY: THIS WILL BE OUR REPLY
by Lucas Richman | Duration 32:00
1. Intensity (0:00:00)
2. Beauty (0:07:56)
3. Devotion (0:17:05)
4. Tikkun Olam (0:23:31)

Lucas Richman conducts the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and the University of Maine Choral Society in this performance from April 28, 2024.

Program notes by the composer:
In celebration of the Leonard Bernstein Centenary (August 25, 2018), Lucas Richman received permission from the Leonard Bernstein Office to create a new work for chorus and orchestra inspired by the speech Maestro Bernstein delivered to the United Jewish Fund two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Known as “An Artist’s Response to Violence,” the speech addresses the manner in which musicians might best use their abilities in the aftermath of tragedy:

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely,
more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” *
Leonard Bernstein

The three movements of Richman’s “Symphony: This Will Be Our Reply” (Intensity/Beauty/Devotion) expand upon these three directives, exploring the contrasts of great beauty and horrific violence that pervade our modern era. In the process of musically capturing the daily struggle to rise above the steady onslaught of incomprehensible savagery, certain motives can be traced throughout the work as they evolve from a place of benign passivity to orders of an imperative nature. Throughout the work, there are subtle nods to the legacy of Bernstein, including the use of the Hebrew language in the final movement.

The first movement, Intensity, embraces the notion of making “music more intensely” in that it pits the principal string octet, as a smaller community unit, against the dangers and distractions of the outside world, represented by the remainder of the orchestral forces. After a short introduction which introduces the “Tikkun Olam” motive in ominous form, the string orchestra first plays as a cohesive force that soon abandons the smaller group, leaving it to continue manifesting a traditional form of sonata-form style of chamber music while enduring a bombardment of interjections, ranging from random gun-fire bursts to mocking reflections of the octet’s musical gestures. Ultimately, with intensity of purpose, the octet breaks through with its own message of truth, reuniting with the larger community of string players.

The practice of defining beauty is a purely subjective affair and is, as such, truly mystifying. The second movement, Beauty, finds symmetries occurring in nature interwoven with a select palette of musical motives and a full range of orchestral colors. The result is an aural fabric with which the composer does not endeavor to depict one specific view of beauty but, rather, open the field for multiple interpretations. The repeated single-note motive introduced early in the movement is derived from a phrase found in the third movement at which point the chorus intones, “L’ma-an ha shalom (for the sake of peace).”

The third movement, Devotion, begins from a place of awe and genuflection with the chorus singing “Va’anachnu,” a devotional prayer heard during the Jewish High Holy Days. After the chorus makes a strong appeal to a higher power for enlightenment in the fact of tragedy, the work concludes with an anthemic setting of an original poem (“Tikkun Olam – Heal the World”) which uplifts the essence of Bernstein’s profound message.

Symphony: This Will Be Our Reply was commissioned by the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association (world premiere March 30, 2019; Dan Alcott, conductor), Bemidji Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony.

Instrumentation: SATB chorus, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English Horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Used by the permission of The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc.

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