4/28/20

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Jennifer Higdon (1962- )

I was first exposed to Jennifer Higdon’s All Things Majestic when it was programmed for a side-by-side workshop the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra had with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. We only worked on the first movement, Teton Range, which served as a significant challenge for me as a high-school horn player. That being said, I had immediately been intrigued by the style of the piece, especially with it having been composed in 2011. Hearing (and playing small part of) the piece came at a time when I knew I wanted to study composition, and yet I also knew how unaware I was of the contemporary classical music scene. In a sense, Jennifer Higdon was a gateway into my own future professional field, and one of many guiding influences for my own aesthetic. She is the recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto, as well as three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in the years 2010, 2018, and 2020. If her resume wasn’t impressive enough with those credentials, she has also been a professor at the Curtis Institute of Music since 1994.

Higdon’s style is largely neo-romantic, yet it stays constantly fresh with new unexpected harmonies and direction that always seems genuinely organic. By this, I mean that her pieces often abandon traditional form in favor of naturally flowing ideas. This is very apparent throughout All Things Majestic, which almost comes across as sonic mosaic of scenic hikes. The piece was commissioned for the Grand Teton Music Festival, and Jennifer Higdon was very excited to write the piece, later saying this about the final product: “[All Things Majestic is] a tribute to not only the festival and it’s home, the Tetons, but also to the grandeur and majesty of all of our parks.” In only 20-25 minutes, the piece ventures through four picturesque scenes of the park, conveying geographical elements in the music. For example, in I. Teton Range, the brass seems to tower above the listener, conveying both the immensity and sublime beauty of the mountains. The harmony develops slowly, becoming more rich and complex as the piece moves forward and builds in orchestration. While grand, Higdon is careful not to play all of her cards at the beginning, allowing the movement to slowly come alive. As the movement builds, it ends with one final rising flourish from the entire orchestra, as if to give the listener that rushing sensation that a hiker might feel just as they look up at the vast horizon from atop a mountain peak. From there, Jennifer Higdon takes the listener to II. String Lake, a much more peaceful scene, and then to III. Snake River, a fast-moving ride through rapids and effervescent woodwind melodies. IV. Cathedrals then moves away from the spirited nature of the river and to a much more contemplative, almost spiritual, soundscape of the Tetons.

Perhaps what I admire so much about All Things Majestic is how the piece seems as if it were painted. While Higdon may be a century removed from the wave of impressionistic composers, I certainly think there is some similarities in how she approaches this music. The depiction of the landscape, while very tonal, rejects a fair bit of the harmonic logic that was so defining of the Romantic era. In some sense, that is perhaps why the piece seems unhinged from orchestral cliches, and so perfectly descriptive of natural landscapes. There is only one other composer that immediately comes to my mind when thinking of pieces like All Things Majestic, and that would have to be the legendary Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen composed a 12-movement, 90-100 minute long orchestral work titled Des Canyons aux étoiles… (which translates to “From the canyons to the stars…”) which was inspired by his own trip to the landscape (and birds) of Bryce Canyon, another national park. While very different in aesthetic to Higdon’s work, each piece aims to depict the almost-indescribable beauty of these American parks (and if you have not heard Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles…, I would highly recommend giving it a listen at some point).

In my final remarks, I would like to tell a brief story. On March 6, 2020, I attended a Nashville Symphony Orchestra concert not knowing that it would be my last public concert for quite some time. Programmed on that concert was Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Jennifer Higdon’s Low Brass Concerto, and once again I was reminded by how original Higdon’s voice was. The piece was spectacular, and so it was incredibly satisfying to see Higdon go onstage following the piece and receive a rousing standing ovation for her piece. There always seems to be more to her music than what immediately meets the eye, and as I listen to All Things Majestic, I can’t help but notice the sheer number of things (melodies, harmonic shifts, motif fragments, etc.) that are all happening simultaneously without the piece sounding too chaotic. While I usually mention at some point in these posts how the composer I am writing about has influenced my own writing, I really want to drive the point home for Jennifer Higdon. There is a short list of living composers which I genuinely aspire to honor and learn from, and Higdon is one of them. Now, I didn’t just bring up my final-concert-in-Nashville story just to be nostalgic, I also brought it up because the recording which I am linking below was done by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. So, while I wish you could have been there with me at the concert on March 6, I hope that this spectacular recording of All Things Majestic conducted by the one and only Giancarlo Guerrero serves as the next best thing.