For the Peace of Cities

“Once it was considered mandatory to commission new music for all state occasions, for civic and religious events, for personal celebrations and memorials. A composer like Franz Joseph Haydn was considered a skilled craftsman, like a silversmith, whose work was required to add importance, meaning, and beauty to an event.

“For our 50th anniversary, the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony wanted to commission a new work — certainly a fitting act for a mature musical organization. We also wanted to thank the late Dr. Edward Kezur for his friendship and support of the orchestra. This music is dedicated to him.” — Philip Koplow

Composer Philip Koplow (1943-2018) arrived in the greater Cincinnati area in 1976 when he was appointed composer-in-residence at Northern Kentucky University. Koplow, a Cleveland native, received his musical education at Kent State University and earned a doctorate at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the eminent American composer Donald Erb. He considered himself a survivor of both childhood learning disabilities and the school shootings at Kent State University in May of 1970. His struggles to learn to read and his experiences during the turbulent Vietnam War era left him with a driving need to communicate and a belief that music — new music — was an important way to affirm humane and “classical” values:

“With the arts we can keep faith with our ancestors, speak for justice, and even address the most tragic and painful issues. If you are hurt and angry don’t use violence — write a poem or a song. Use your feelings to create something.”

The Martin Luther King Jr. assassination took place on the composer’s birthday, and became a viola sonata and later a work for viola and orchestra. Reactions to the Vietnam War became a string quartet, and the shootings at Kent State a choral work. The 1952 Moscow executions of six Jewish poets became The Night of the Murdered Poets commemorative concert (with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, 1983) which saw the premieres of works by Koplow, Bonia Shur, and Jonathan Kramer — all settings for chorus and orchestra — of poems by the martyred poets. For the 25th anniversary of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the composer created a work based on Bosnian folk music for two violins and orchestra: For the Peace of Cities (… Sarajevo .. Dayton ..). This music was also a hymn of thanksgiving for the Dayton Peace Accords which ended the war in Bosnia.

How Sweet The Sound… exists in an earlier version for solo cello (1985). The first half of this work was composed in a surgery waiting room while Koplow’s wife, Cordelia, was having minor surgery. The same week the brilliant young cellist, Gita Roche, had come to live with the Koplow family for the summer. Roche had been the principal cellist of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra during the “Murdered Poets” concerts, and held the fourth chair in the Baltimore Symphony cello section. This earlier version, Variations On A Hymn Tune, has been in the repertoire of several cellists and recorded by Jan Slavik on the Master Musicians Collective label.

The orchestral version “retains the perspective of a solo cello piece, so it is conceived differently than if I had set out to write an orchestral piece,” according to the composer. Like the solo version, the orchestral work takes full advantage of available “colors.” It is underpinned with much delicate and ringing percussion. The work opens and closes with a long sustained high note (“a”), which forms a mysterious unity between the beginning and the ending. From the first high note a descending melody floats down through the strings. This introductory melody returns several times, forming interludes. A series of variations on the great old hymn Amazing Grace follows. Each variation is in a new key, implying that God’s love and inspiration is available to all people in all times.