NJSO gives Cone Symphony world premiere tonight

NJSO and the Music of Edward T. Cone: A Retrospective

Tonight, the NJSO gives a unique world-premiere presentation of Edward T. Cone’s Symphony at the Richardson Auditorium in Princeton. Composer and Princeton University Department of Music Chair Steven Mackey joins Music Director Jacques Lacombe to host the special lecture/concert program.

The event is the capstone of the NJSO’s multiyear New Jersey Roots Project, celebrating the music of composers who were born in New Jersey or whose artistic identity was significantly influenced by their time spent the Garden State.

Jacques Lacombe launched the New Jersey Roots Project in his inaugural season as NJSO music director. Among the 17 Roots works—including four world premieres—the NJSO has presented to date, five are works by Cone, an influential figure as both a composer and a professor at Princeton University. “Cone’s music has been a great discovery,” Lacombe says. “It helps us draw a more complete picture of musical life in New Jersey during the mid-20th century.”

As the NJSO presents Cone’s Symphony, we look back at the career-spanning works by Cone the Orchestra has presented through the New Jersey Roots Project.

Dover Beach (1941)

NJSO performances: January 13–16, 2011

Cone wrote the ambitious Dover Beach—a setting of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” for baritone and orchestra—at age 24, during his student years at Princeton. The gripping piece captures the implacability of nature (manifested by the sea and its tides) and a sense of despair about the human condition. At this early stage of his career, Cone was writing in a neo-tonal, post-romantic musical style that is well suited to the Victorian text. His Dover Beach is sympathetic to the cadences of the language, with many well-rendered examples of text painting.

Elegy (1953)

NJSO performances: March 21–24, 2013

Elegy is related to Cone’s 1942 An Overture for the War, which he composed as a master’s candidate at Princeton prior to entering the Army shortly after the United States declared war on Japan and Germany. Ten years later, Cone composed Elegy. The piece has motivic connections to the earlier Overture but functions well as an independent movement. Cone did not specify any individual in whose memory he was writing; however, the memory of World War II was still fresh at the time he composed it. The most striking aspects of this piece are its lyricism and raw emotion. The opening has a mournful, mysterious quality, and one hears more anxiety early on than one would expect from an elegy. At the end, like a heart beating, the music loses strength, takes one last quiet breath and evaporates.

Concerto for Violin and Small Orchestra (1959)

NJSO performances: November 27–28, 2010

Cone’s Concerto for Violin and Small Orchestra synthesizes modernism and tradition. In 1959, many American composers were embracing post-Schoenberg serial theories and techniques. Yet, Cone’s concerto is a surprisingly traditional work, using conventional instruments and compositional techniques. His language is certainly modernist, but definitely not 12-tone. NJSO Concertmaster and soloist Eric Wyrick says: “This piece is well-crafted with a fine sense of texture and balance, and there are many wonderful moments of instrumental color. I’m impressed with his violin writing. Everything fits in the hands very well. Cone knew where the instrument would sound best for his needs, and he gives the soloist an opportunity to show expression. It jumps right out at you how much talent he had as a composer.”

Music for Strings (1964)

NJSO performances: March 22–25, 2012

Cone composed Music for Strings as part of the New Jersey Tercentenary Festival of Music. The single-movement work shows off Cone’s command of string writing—Music for Strings has dense textures, complex rhythms and sudden changes of dynamics. A brief Andante tranquillo section provides some relief from the agitation and tension that dominate the piece. The quiet Andante mode returns toward the end, ushering in a cadenza for string quartet before the hushed close.

Cadenzas for Oboe and Violin (1979)

NJSO performances: January 9–12, 2014

Lacombe says: “Cone’s earlier compositions have extremely complex rhythms and different layers, which made them quite challenging. The Cadenzas are relatively late—they are more transparent and less complex rhythmically. The back-and-forth dialogue is almost like a Baroque concerto grosso.” Indeed, the oboe and violin soloists are in near constant dialogue—from parallel motion to whimsical back and forth exchanges—throughout Cone’s last orchestral piece. Sometimes their material is complementary; elsewhere, Cone strives for maximum contrast, taking advantage of the striking difference in timbre and method of sound production between a wind and string instrument. While the rhythms and textures are fairly straightforward in the string orchestra, the unaccompanied duo-cadenzas demand agility and finely tuned ensemble between the two soloists.