Lettie Beckon Alston

“1. Playful,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston.

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 14:12:16 +0000

“1. Playful,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston. Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/26/2020 - 08:12

Indigo Farmer

The Four Moods for Piano were composed in 1993. The first (Playfully) uses the upper and lower extremes of the piano for contrasting effects. Although a lot of Alston’s music has driving rhythms, this piece sounds rhythmically improvisatory, especially at the beginning. The style is dissonant, with unusual harmonies and clusters of notes. It is also more percussive than some of her other piano works, which have a clear melody.

A student could learn a lot through the rhythms of this piece. There are often rests on beat one, which requires the player to internalize the rhythm and feel the rests as part of the music. The rhythmic figures are not always intuitive, and would require excessive counting in order to learn. Then, making the music sound improvisatory or spontaneous would be difficult, especially while maintaining the correct rhythms. Unpredictable harmonies are a useful thing to learn how to manage as well. This would require the student to take concepts like shaping and phrasing and apply them in a harmonic context that is less familiar to most classical pianists.The large jumps in register also are a challenge for the ear, and the player has to use a volume and tone that lets the upper and lower notes be clear, while still contrasting.

Lettie Beckon Alston was born in Detroit in 1953. She received her doctorate in composition from the University of Michigan. She composes for orchestra, piano, voice, strings, and other instruments as well as synthesizers and electronically produced sounds.

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“2. Mysteriously,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 14:11:30 +0000

“2. Mysteriously,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/26/2020 - 08:11

Indigo Farmer

The Four Moods for Piano were composed in 1993. The second piece features repeated notes on the low end of the piano. It is dissonant and has impressionistic elements like repeated notes used for texture. Rhythm is central to this piece, and the repetition sometimes drives it forwards and other times creates eerie moments of suspense.

This piece requires mutes on the string, so a student would learn extended techniques from it. They would have to mute and unmute their string, which would be good practice for other newer pieces that require it. There are frequent meter changes and expressive markings like “accelerando” and “subito slow,” which leave more tempo liberty to the performer than the usual “a tempo.” Alston marks tempo changes almost as freely as one would mark dynamic changes in this piece. There is also other text, in English, which directs pedaling and touch. One of the challenges in this carefully marked piece would be to follow all of Alston’s instructions, some of which are not used all of the time in classical piano, and also to interpret them to create a musical, mysterious effect.

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“3. Gloomy,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 14:07:51 +0000

“3. Gloomy,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/26/2020 - 08:07

Indigo Farmer

The Four Moods for Piano were composed in 1993. The third piece is marked “sweet and singing, rubato always.” Frequent rhythmic interruptions make it difficult to be always singing, although there are chromatic, Chopin-like groups of notes that are more lyrical. This piece has many different gestures and it is important to have good timing between them. It would be a musically challenging piece to play because the character and articulation changes often. It also uses mutes. A student would learn how to transition well between contrasting elements.

There is a section marked “dance-like” which starts with a 5/4 measure and continues in 4/4. The person has to be adaptable in finding a dance rhythm even though the meter is not consistent. Another challenging part is the section marked “cadenza like” at the end. There are a lot of flowing notes that the player would find small gestures in, and then repeated muted notes. The main challenge of this piece is the amount of contrast that happens in a short space.

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“4. Joyfully,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 14:06:50 +0000

“4. Joyfully,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/26/2020 - 08:06

Indigo Farmer

The Four Moods for Piano were composed in 1993. The fourth mood, Joyfully, is fast paced and rhythmic. It seems like the most technically challenging of the four pieces, mostly because of the speed. The dissonance and syncopation give this piece a lot of energy, and it has a more consistent pulse than the others, which makes it a satisfying finale.

There is a glissando at the end, which could be instructive if students haven’t played glissandi before. Most of the jumps that the hands make are not extremely large, but towards the end the fast chords in the right hand with octaves in the left hand would be hard to make clear while keeping the energy and intensity they need. There is melodic material present in more than one voice, which sounds like call and response. It makes the writing complex to play and to listen to. Sometimes two equally important voices are happening simultaneously. It teaches a different kind of listening, where the student must change their focus quickly between voices. This happens a lot in Bach, but what is different about this music is that the motifs are less rhythmically predictable, so it adds another layer of difficulty.

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Variations on “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” by Lettie Beckon Alston

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 04:37:42 +0000

Variations on “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” by Lettie Beckon Alston Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/25/2020 - 22:37

Indigo Farmer

These variations are inspired by the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” written by John Rosamund Johnson with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson for a group that was celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in the year 1900. It was sung by a chorus of five hundred African-American children in Jacksonville, Florida, and as the years progressed it became more popular, and today it is known as a sort of national anthem for African American people.

Lyrics:

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.

The piece begins with an introduction like one would hear in a church hymn, which uses a phrase from the theme and ends with a fermata. The theme is a simple and contrapuntal statement of the melody. It is much more tonally accessible than Alston’s other piano works.

Variation one is slower than the theme, with 16th-note embellishments in the right hand that weave above and below the melody line. This section could be potentially difficult to voice. The first variation is romantic sounding, and has sixths and large leaps within chords. ��Ĺ��ý halfway through the variation it becomes suddenly quiet and static, and then there is a pattern in the right hand that sounds like French impressionist music, especially when it is harmonized in thirds. Still within the first variation, the tempo changes to “tempo 1,” the tempo of the theme, and then more romantic accompaniment patterns ensue. The closing notes of the introduction are clearly stated as a transition between all variations.

The second variation is marked “playfully,” and right away there are two note slurs on everything in the right hand, with the first notes of the slur being a minor second. This is harmonically, shocking, especially after the romantic sounding first variation, and requires the performer to have enough stylistic variety in their playing to make this shift convincing. It moves away from the extreme dissonance a few bars later, with mostly major seconds, and then becomes “Dreamy (with rubato),” until it changes keys to a minor mode. Eight bars before the third variation, Alston introduces a syncopated rhythm still in the character of the minor section, but foreshadowing the next variation.

The third and last variation is heavily syncopated, with octaves in the middle/high register and accented pickup notes that give it a distinctly ragtime sound. This also presents stylistic challenges for students who are not used to playing ragtime. Surprisingly, right before the last page, material from the first variation returns in its original form, going back to the romantic sound, which ties these very different sections together. It is not until the second to last bar that a syncopated gesture returns to close the piece.

The length of these variations and the large jumps in the hand make it quite difficult, but it is also a fascinating piece because the variations start with a simple theme and then seem to progress through time- starting with romanticism, then impressionism, then a dissonant and Prokofiev-like second variation, and finally syncopated and ragtime.

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Performed by Indigo Farmer.

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Rhapsody No. 1, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 04:33:19 +0000

Rhapsody No. 1, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/25/2020 - 22:33

Indigo Farmer

The first Rhapsody in this set is 4.5 pages. It is marked “well marked with motion.” It features rhapsodic elements typical of the romantic period like switching between duple and triple rhythms. One of the frequent rhythmic gestures is four sixteenths and an eighth note, followed by another four sixteenths and an eighth (in 6/8). This is difficult to connect musically, because there is the temptation to start over on each one, which ends up sounding vertical. Another challenge is the repetitive rhythm in the melody which makes harmonic changes the most important element in phrasing. Since Alston’s harmonies are not always simple, the performer has to become comfortable with her harmonic language to make sense of the piece, although frequent dynamic markings help with interpretation. As opposed to Alston’s Moods for Piano, the Rhapsodies are somewhat easier to follow melodically, because they use repetition and stepwise motion.

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Rhapsody No. 2, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 04:32:06 +0000

Rhapsody No. 2, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/25/2020 - 22:32

Indigo Farmer

The second Rhapsody is marked “Solemn,” and is slow- the quarter note is 60 bpm. It has a wide variety of meter, 6/4, 5/4, 4/4, 3/4, and 2/4. The third page begins with 2/4 meter and changes tempo markings to “marked with motion,” the same as the first Rhapsody. There are big leaps in the left hand that happen pretty quickly, which would be hard to play. The fourth page has straight eighth notes for a few bars in a repeating pattern, followed by rests and then two more bars of eighths, which requires good timing and direction in order to make it convincing. Towards the end, there is also an extremely slow section, where the quarter note equals 58 bpm, and there are mostly whole and half notes. The articulation in this piece is varied, and unusual for the tempo. For example, it becomes staccato, still in the slow tempo, and Alston writes that it should be played without pedal. Then the performer has to choose the duration of the staccatos so that they still sound musical and have direction, and execute it without the pedal. There are a lot of dramatic dynamic contrasts and sixths which make this piece sound rhapsodic, while the harmonic language is still distinctly Alston’s.

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Rhapsody No. 3, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 04:28:39 +0000

Rhapsody No. 3, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 04/25/2020 - 22:28

Indigo Farmer

The third Rhapsody in the set is 4 pages long. It is very fast, the quarter note is 132 bpm, but the beginning is mostly eighth and quarter notes. It is marked “playfully,” an indication that appears in both the Variations on Lift Every Voice and Sing (in the second variation), and the Four Moods for Piano (the first Mood). I have not seen this marking a lot elsewhere besides in Alston’s music, but it is a distinguishable character in all of these places where it appears. In the Variations and in this Rhapsody, there are minor seconds attached to the melodic notes, which are dissonant but not agonizing- this could be a characteristic of the playful mood. Although the third Rhapsody is probably the most difficult of the three in terms of tempo, the rhythms and pitches appear in patterns a lot, which makes the piece sound accessible and speechlike. Often, it sounds like there is call and response between the hands, (although the material is not the same, they alternate taking the lead). In the middle, the tempo changes to quarter equals 100, and there is a group of seven notes in one beat, and “expressive” is written under it. This could mean that the player doesn’t have to play them perfectly evenly in time, because that would be technically very difficult.

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Lettie Beckon Alston

“1. Playful,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston.

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“2. Mysteriously,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

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“3. Gloomy,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

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“4. Joyfully,” from Moods for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

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Variations on “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” by Lettie Beckon Alston

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Rhapsody No. 1, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

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Rhapsody No. 3, from Three Rhapsodies for Piano, by Lettie Beckon Alston

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