April 2000

RELATED LINKS: Scholarship Benefit Concert Zukerman Featured at Benefit Concert

CAS Commissions Anthem By Carrie Secondo Last year, the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) commissioned an orchestral composer to create an original piece of music for the college. CAS Dean Daniele C. Struppa had a vision--he wanted to commission a piece of music that would somehow tie together the humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences. "I had been looking for an exemplar that embodies of the values of the liberal arts--an original orchestral piece seemed a perfect way to do that," says Struppa. Struppa's idea, made possible by an anonymous donation to the college, will premiere in April at the Fourth Annual Department of Music Scholarship Benefit Concert. The music, Beyond Sight: Tone Poem after Plato for Orchestra, is a 12-minute orchestral piece that will be performed for the first time Sunday, April 30, by the George Mason University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Anthony Maiello, Music. After consulting with several musicians, including Leonard Slatkin of the National Symphony Orchestra, and John Corigliano, one of America's leading composers, Struppa selected Dan Welcher to compose the work. Welcher, a composition professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has composed more than 70 works and has received grants and awards from institutions including the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Reader's Digest/Lila Wallace Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has been commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, and was Composer in Residence with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra from 1990 to 1993. Although this was the first time Welcher had taken a commission from a school orchestra, he says he accepted the job because he liked Struppa's passion. "He is a very dedicated and committed educator, and a philosopher as well. I wanted to see if I could, in fact, write a serious piece for a college orchestra that would move average listeners without pandering," Welcher says. Beyond Sight begins with a spoken introduction from Plato's Republic: "How, in truth, would we live, if we were cut off from education . . ." Paul Woodruff, chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Texas and an old friend of Welcher's, suggested Plato's Republic as a potential source of story line for the music. "I thought [Woodruff] might have an idea for me about a piece that demonstrated the interdependence of various branches of education. He steered me into Plato's cave--one of the most beloved and oft-dissected myths of the civilized world," says Welcher. "After I had begun work on this tone poem, which tells, wordlessly, Plato's story, it occurred to me to ask Paul to do a new translation/para-phrase of the story that might be read aloud at performances. That's the genesis of the spoken text," Welcher says. While a college commissioning its own musical composition may be rare, Struppa hopes to use Beyond Sight often at CAS events. It will be used at the college convocations in May and just may become the next "Pomp and Circumstance."