Michael Daugherty (1954 - Present)

Introduction
Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. He studied music composition at the University of North Texas (1972-76), the Manhattan School of Music (1976-78), and computer music at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris (1979-80). Daugherty received his doctorate from Yale University in 1986 where his teachers included Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Roger Reynolds, and Bernard Rands. During this time, he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York, and pursued further studies with composer György Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-84). After teaching music composition from 1986-90 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the School of Music at the University of Michigan in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition and a mentor to many of today’s most talented young composers.

http://www.michaeldaugherty.net

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Work Analysis
Tales of Hemingway is a concerto for cello and orchestra composed in 2015 by the American composer Michael Daugherty. The music is inspired by the writings of the famous American writer Ernest Hemingway.Tales of Hemingway for cello and orchestra (2015) portrays four of the novelist’s stories in music of sweeping drama and poetry. Daugherty sends the cello soaring and singing with the orchestra as he summons key moments in the Hemingway books. The solo writing calls for an artist of eloquent persuasion, and Zuill Bailey more than meets the score’s demands with playing that combines fervour and poetry. In February 2017 the piece won three Grammy Awards, for Best Classical Compendium, Best Classical Instrumental Solo and Best Contemporary Classical Composition.The concerto is composed in four movements, each drawn from a different work by Ernest Hemingway. The musical score includes extensive program notes written by the composer, explaining the inspiration for and design of each movement.

I. Big Two-Hearted River (Seney, Michigan, 1925)

This movement is based on Hemingway's short story about a soldier home from World War I who travels to Northern Michigan to work through his PTSD. The program notes in the musical score the composer explains that he created "a leitmotif [symbolizing the idea that] one can be healed by the power of nature through exploring isolated outdoor terrains."

II. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940, Spanish Civil War)

The cello represents the main character in this popular Hemingway novel, Robert Jordan. At the conclusion of the movement, the chimes are meant to represent the famous line from the novel: “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

III. The Old Man and the Sea (1952, Cuba)

This movement is an elegy representing the struggle between man and nature which is the main theme of the Hemingway novella.

IV. The Sun Also Rises (1926, Pamplona, Spain)

This movement uses heavy Spanish musical influences to represent the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain which is the setting from the Hemingway novel from which this movement takes its name.

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Observations
Movement 1 was my favorite as it was very interesting. The story opens with Nick arriving by train at Seney, Michigan, to find that a fire has devastated the town, leaving "nothing but the rails and the burned-over country.”] While following a road leading away from the town, he stops on a bridge where he observes trout in the river below. After, he hikes up a hill and rests at a burned stump. While smoking a cigarette, he discovers an ash-blackened grasshopper crawling on his sock, and detaches it. His first spoken words in the story are "Go on, hopper .... Fly away somewhere."Later in the day he relaxes in a glade of tall pines and falls asleep. When he wakes, he hikes the last mile to the edge of the river where he sees the trout feeding in the evening light "making circles all down the surface of the water as though it were starting to rain."He pitches his tent, unpacks his supplies, cooks his dinner, fills his water bucket, heats a pot of coffee, and kills a mosquito before falling asleep.