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2022 update and expansion of original version that appeared in the 2004 AAA Festival Journal
As may be observed in the title above, the next two commissioned works in the AAA Composers Commissioning Committee chronology after those discussed in the last article of this series were written for accordion plus other instruments (other than additional accordions, as in Henry Brant’s Sky Forrest, for accordion quartet). At this point, in the early 1960s, the Committee was endeavoring to produce as many varied musical forms employing the accordion as possible, and now included chamber ensemble and large orchestral or band forms (though the concertos for accordion and orchestra by Paul Creston and Henry Cowell preceded these commissions). To accomplish this, Elsie Bennett succeeded in bringing two new American composers onto the scene, the famous and long-established David Diamond and an unknown young doctoral student at the Eastman School of Music, Louis B. Gordon.
(Hear full recording, the link of which accompanies the composition title on the Composers Commissioning Committee home page list of works at https://www.ameraccord.com/aaacommissions.php)
David Diamond, who was eighty-nine years old and close to death when the first version of this article was written in 2004, and living in his native city of Rochester, New York, was one of the few surviving major American composers born in the first two decades of the twentieth century. A man of strong personal convictions, both musically and in general, he never embraced the fashionable atonal music prevalent in much of his era (though some of his compositions in the 1960s used twelve-tone themes in places), preferring to remain an essentially post-romantic/neoclassical composer across his long and prolific career.
Diamond’s widely varied output includes four dramatic works, seven ballets, eleven symphonies (the seventh and eighth of which were premiered by the Philadelphia and New York Philharmonic Orchestras around the time he wrote Night Music), concerti, many songs and song cycles, a large and varied body of chamber music, and film and radio scores as well as incidental music. All musical pendants agree that his most well-known and frequently performed work is Rounds, for String Orchestra (1944).
From 1951 through 1965 (and hence during the period in which he composed Night Music as well as his two consequent AAA commissioned solos, Sonatina and Introduction and Dance, to be discussed in later installments of this series ), 
Diamond lived almost exclusively in Florence, Italy, partly to avoid what he viewed as the homophobic and antisemitic injustice visited upon many American artists such as himself at that time by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. However, neither distance nor politics deterred Elsie Bennett from tracking down the expatriate composer and persuading him to sign a contract, dated December 8, 1960, to write a chamber work for accordion and string quartet for the then reasonable remuneration of $250 (roughly equal to $2371 as of this 2022 expansion of the original 2004 article). Therefore, most of Diamond’s correspondence with Elsie Bennett was from Florence, though he occasionally came back to the United States for increasingly longer periods of time to accept teaching positions at the State University of New York, Buffalo (1961, 1963; the period in which he wrote Night Music and Sonatina), the Manhattan School of Music (1966-67), and the Juilliard School of Music (1973-86), finally retiring from that avocation at age 82.
Diamond and Bennett remained in touch and on cordial terms from the 1960s through the end of their lives. Only three years younger than Diamond, both Elsie and the composer died four months apart in the middle of 2005. Nonetheless, the always perseverant Elsie managed even in death to make a “cameo,” though anonymous, appearance in one of the numerous and exhaustive obituaries on Diamond, this one by Bret Johnson in the British newspaper The Guardian (viewable at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jun/17/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries) wherein he mentions the triumphant world premiere of Diamond’s eleventh and last symphony in 1992. Enter Elsie after the concert, characteristically trying to persuade the composer to produce yet one more work for or including accordion, thus possibly tying the score of Paul Creston’s four AAA commissions:
| [U]ndoubtedly the most impressive [of Diamond’s symphonies] is the huge Symphony No. 11 (1992), in many ways a summation of everything that had gone before, expressed on a canvas of Brucknerian dimensions. At the premiere in Avery Fisher Hall, New York, a lady went up to him afterwards in the green room and asked for an accordion piece. "Madam," he said, "I have a whole opera to orchestrate over the next year." |
The opera to which Johnson refers is The Noblest Game, which remains in manuscript form thirty years later as of this writing, still unorchestrated and unperformed, in the David Diamond Papers preserved at the Library of Congress.
Returning to matters regarding Night Music, extensive correspondence between Bennett and Diamond in the early 1960s reveals many editing and publication problems that were not entirely ironed out until its publication by Southern Music in 1964. Diamond, who claimed familiarity with the accordion before the AAA commissions, consulted with Carmen Carrozza at first, and many changes were made in the score. By accident, however, the original, unedited version was sent to Joseph Biviano, who was to premiere it with the Beaux Arts String Quartet, and who then struggled with what he regarded as various awkward left-hand and register switch changes in certain places. After the premiere, Biviano then submitted multiple suggestions for changes to the composer, many of which echoed Carrozza's concerns and most of which appear in the final published score. In the meantime, Diamond also consulted with an accordionist of presumed competence in Florence, to whom he referred only by his last name, Conforti, who saw no performance difficulties in the original version of the left-hand part.
Nevertheless, Diamond endorsed making the piece as easily and naturally playable as possible, and therefore sanctioned the Carrozza/Biviano changes. Markings in red pencil, mainly involving register switches and left-hand chordal button changes, appear throughout the final hand-written full-score copy submitted by Diamond to Bennett with the date of completion, September 17, 1961, noted by the composer following the final measure. It is uncertain as to who of the two accordionists involved with the project, Biviano or Carrozza, wrote the changes on the manuscript.
A somewhat amusing sideline to this story is that Diamond would not grant Bennett the personal interview she always asked of all her commissioned composers for purposes of publicizing the latest works, stating in his correspondence with her that "I do not permit myself interviews or publicity involvements.” He further explained that this was to “avoid an aspect of present-day public relations between the artist and the conformist public I find distasteful and futile. Here today, gone tomorrow is all it fosters.” (Letter of January 6, 1961.) He further and more vociferously elaborated on this repugnance of interviews in a later letter (April 25, 1961) answering Bennett’s request for a private conference on the piece itself:
| I do not like any kind of exploitation publicity about myself; what you want to do with the music, by all means do. Of course I will meet with you and talk with you but please do not ask me about myself! Human egos sicken me. There is too much in this world to do for others, I cannot suffer the self-preoccupations of people when there is so much agony in this world of ours. |
As if to reinforce these feelings, he dedicated Night Music to the memory of Wallingford Riegger, who had composed the solo Cooper Square, the second AAA commissioned work (about which see the article in the 1999 edition of the AAA Festival Journal), strongly reminding Bennett in a letter dated November 22, 1961, to not overlook that fact in her reporting, and admiringly referring to his late friend as "one of the few saintly people I knew [in] this infamous world."
As for describing the piece itself, Diamond continued to write in the January 6 letter that "my music will speak for itself at any time if it is any good." All he would eventually offer was a terse, one-phrase description of Night Music ten months later in the above cited November letter: "The Night Music is in the form of a three-part elegy." However, though Bennett could not persuade Diamond to say much about his commissioned piece, she did at least succeed in getting him to write his thoughts about the accordion itself and how he proposed to use it in his music (also in his November letter):
| The accordion is an instrument that challenges the contemporary composer. My own interest centers mainly about the instrument’s sonority and the need to bring to that instrument more than the huff-puff sonority associated with [it]. Also, the need to bring a more polyphonic texture to the writing for that instrument (almost always utilized as a quasi-percussive, bellows, harmonically exploited instrument). For years I had hoped to use it in some orchestral work. I never found the occasion. This commission satisfies a more exigent request: the necessity to bring a more dignified artistic conception to that instrument’s literature. |
Regarding the overall plan for Night Music, Diamond had written to Bennett earlier on August 14, 1961, that it had originally been in four movements; but he was now "not happy about the form,” indicating that the four movements made it “a cut-up structure rather than a placid, flowing one." He therefore decided to "recast" the form and proclaimed that it was now a "one-movement work - much better this way - and [it] creates exactly the effect I want."
The music nevertheless falls into three distinct sections that may be described as an A/B/A1 form overall: A: an Adagio of 94 measures; B: an Allegro moderato of only 28 measures, shortened further in performance time by switching to duple meter from the opening Adagio’s predominance of quadruple meter and later alternations of triple and sextuple meters; and A1: a varied version of the first Adagio that is only about one third the length of the original.
The opening Adagio begins with a suave, flowing, chromatic, nine-bar motto in the solo accordion the two phrases of which are divided between the right- and the left-hand manuals. The string quartet then enters without the accordion to complete a kind of double period phrase. After this, the opening four-bar motto phrase heard only in the accordion's right-hand part continues to be developed, mutated, and transposed in many ways between the accordion and the strings. (See Example 1 below).
Example 1
Example 1. Beginning of opening Adagio of Night Music, with solo accordion (systems 1 and 2); string quartet alone, first in full octave unison (system 3) and then in rich polytonal harmony (system 4); followed by accordion and string quartet in fuller, more contrapuntally complex interplay (system 5). Sound sample 1
The mood is generally placid and fluent, and the texture considerably contrapuntal. As alluded to above, much effort was made by Carrozza and Biviano in choosing register switches (a task Diamond willingly turned over to them) that would allow a pleasant variety of accordion timbres and its both blending or contrasting with the strings where desired.
The Allegro Moderato that follows is a rather unexpected, though pleasant, trot that breaks this dreamy mood, but only briefly, before the initial quiet theme, now much shortened and simplified, returns. (See Example 2 below.)
Example 2. First 12 of the brief Allegro moderato’s 28 measures, featuring the accordion with prickly string pizzicato accompaniment. Sound sample 2
The returning, truncated Adagio ultimately leads to the pianissimo final bars that are dominated by a brief single-line accordion solo in the upper octaves utilizing the right-hand “piccolo” single-reed register, bringing the listener back full circle, at least by implication, to the beginning premises of this ten-minute nocturne.
Though the music is largely polytonal in its counterpoint and harmony and has a few moments of high chromatism and considerable dissonance in the more dramatic and intense passages, the closing accordion solo quietly cadences on a single high B-flat, forming with the full string quartet below a peaceful A-flat-major 9th chord in first inversion.
Joseph Biviano and the Beaux-Arts Quartet premiered Night Music in a concert at the Carnegie Recital Hall on May 3, 1962 (two years before its publication by Southern Music), that also included string quartets by Juan Crisostomo Arriaga, Vittorio Rieti, and Beethoven. Elsie Bennett was there with composer Robert Russell Bennett (a twice-commissioned composer by the AAA whose second contribution was also for accordion and string quartet and completed the next year; discussed in the 2009 AAA Festival Journal) and other AAA Board members. She later reported in a letter to Diamond, who was, as usual, in Italy at the time, that she and her colleagues were quite pleased with the work, finding it to be “very beautiful.”
Though referring to the quintet rather dismissively as a "near-novelty," Raymond Ericson, of the New York Times, offered a fairly similar though more detailed description of Night Music in his column as a "quietly flowing work” whose harmonies were "uncharacteristically sweet and poignant, with relatively mild dissonances arising from the constantly interweaving voices.” He also rightfully stated that the composer "managed to blend the reedy tone of the accordion with that of the quartet part of the time, usually when the strings could envelop the accordion in their own sound. But when the latter was allowed to stand out, its bland tone failed to supply sufficient contrast" (which I believe could be remedied via some registration changes and free bass substitutions of some of the combined stradella chordal buttons). He qualified this remark, however, by saying that it was a "pretty, atmospheric work that should have some popularity," and that it was "nicely played” by the string ensemble and Biviano.
Elsie Bennett quoted Biviano in her letter to Diamond in Florence saying that the Allegro segment was “so great that everyone felt that they wanted to hear more of it, but it only lasted 16 [actually 28] measures.” Diamond replied to Bennett in a consequent letter that "no—the Allegro must be short; like the kind of strange agitation that comes over a beautiful night weather-wise, and metaphysico-wise [sic]. A passing change, something not to be captured or repeated. Tell Biviano this."
Night Music has enjoyed many consequent performances since the premiere, featuring such accordionists as Mogens Ellegard, Patricia Tregellas, Bill Palmer, Joan Cochran, Charles Camilleri, Don Balestrieri, and Anthony Galla-Rini. In 2004, the late and one-time AAA President (2001-2004 term), Dr. Carmelo Pino, recorded the work for the Albany label with the Potomac String Quartet in Washington, DC. It is included in the fourth of this four-CD collection of Diamond's eleven highly acclaimed string quartets that were composed between 1936 and 1968, including his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra. Night Music falls between the fifth and sixth quartets (1960 and 1962 respectively) and was added to this ambitious project as a special bonus.
Diamond did ultimately get to hear all his accordion works performed at one time or another, as confirmed in a 1993 postcard to Bennett remarking that he had heard “some very good performances of all the accordion pieces over the years.”
Interestingly, the next AAA commission had connections to Rochester, New York, as well, as is evident in an August 5, 1961 letter from Elsie Bennett to Willard Palmer:
I am commissioning a band work which will feature the accordion to be six to eight minutes in length. This time we are not dealing with a really well-known composer. We decided to commission this man because he is working on a doctorate at Eastman School, and I thought this would be a way of getting the schools more interested in the accordion. It happens that the man is a friend of yours and we spoke quite a bit about you. It seems that he knows the accordion quite well through you. His name is Louis B. Gordon. Do you remember him? He says that Mr. Fennell is to conduct a spring concert in Houston and he was wondering, if this number gets written, and if Fennell will include it, would you perform it. Naturally, I am all for it. Will you? Of course, there are many ifs, but I wanted to know your reaction as soon as possible. |
Gordon was indeed completing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition in 1961 at the famed Eastman School of Music. Carmen Carrozza, who ultimately premiered the work, informed me that to the best of his memory the then thirty-five-year-old composer was working on a special ensemble project that year and decided to do something heretofore never done at Eastman, namely, to write an orchestral or band piece featuring accordion.
Dr. Gordon was a native of Beaumont, Texas, where he was born in 1926, and played frequent popular music jobs on piano in his youth. At some point he came to work with accordionist Willard “Bill” Palmer, of the famous Palmer and Hughes duet team, and professor of accordion at the University of Houston, and gained considerable knowledge of and interest in the accordion. Therefore, while at Eastman he apparently entertained the hope that one of its most nationally prominent faculty members, Frederick Fennell, the widely heralded conductor of the famed and often recorded Eastman Wind Ensemble, might perform his new work, which he eventually entitled “Aria, Scherzo, and Finale,” at the Houston concert. Elsie Bennett, who had recently commissioned Gordon to compose the piece, therefore wrote to Palmer for Gordon, as indicated above, asking if Palmer would be willing to play the accordion part if the piece were included in the program.
At the beginning of the next year, Bennett reported further progress of the project, with some changes since its inception, in another letter to Palmer accidentally dated January 3, 1961 (a slip-up many make at the beginning of the New Year). It was mainly a query about progress on Paul Pisk’s ill-fated second AAA commission, Adagio and Rondo Concertante (about which see the 2005 article), but which cheerily added that
[T)he Louis Gordon work seems to have turned out well. Mr. Gordon was in town last week with the music which he hadn’t orchestrated as yet. Our committee felt that he should orchestrate it for chamber orchestra rather than symphonic band as we had previously considered. [Jotted in pencil afterwards: “Now thinks he will do both”) Try to work on getting it a performance in Texas. Joe Biviano is so excited over it, he already has two performances planned for it as soon as it is ready. |
The Houston Fennell concert proposal to include the Gordon work apparently never materialized, nor are there any letters in the exhaustive Pisk/Palmer/Bennett correspondence file in Bennett’s collection in which Palmer responded to Bennett regarding it. Finally, there is no band version in the Bennett CCC score collection as the penciled-in note in the above letter suggested would be created; but the final hand-written accordion/piano orchestral reduction and full orchestral scores are there.
Regarding all these arrangements for Gordon’s piece, it is highly unusual to discover that in Bennett’s vast and well-organized correspondence files, there appear no letters to or from the composer or even a copy of a contract. In fact, because of this lack of documentation, it is even unknown as to who first contacted whom proposing the commission: Bennett to Gordon, as would be the usual custom, of course, or, Gordon to Bennett, which I believe likely, given the former’s interest in and knowledge of the accordion world. In addition, one can only speculate that there were likely two contracts, the first of which would have been to assign a work for accordion and band and a second to score it for accordion and orchestra instead; and that the dates on the agreements would likely have been approximately the same as or close to those of the two letters from Bennett to Palmer regarding Gordon, namely sometime in August 1961 and January 1962 respectively. A photo of Bennett and Gordon is dated by Bennett in her photo album as June 15, 1961, suggesting a possible earlier date for the drawing up of an agreement. The one and only certain establishment of commitment regarding the transaction is Gordon’s declared date of completion, January 30, 1962, which he wrote, as so many composers do (Including Diamond, as indicated above), after the last measure of the hand-written score he submitted to his patron.
All these observations aside, Carmen Carrozza, rather than Biviano, for reasons unknown, eventually give the premier with the Civic Orchestra as part of a three-day recital/symposium at Eastman in early April 1962.
In the fall of that year, Gordon accepted a teaching position at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in Madison, New Jersey, where he remained until his retirement in 1992. On October 18, 1964, Carrozza performed the work again, this time at the University, with the Tercentenary Chamber Orchestra (founded and conducted by Gordon and made up of Fairleigh Dickinson students and community professionals). Though there were no critics present, the work and performance were mentioned in an article by Richard F. Shepard on contemporary music for the accordion in the November 29, 1964, edition of the New York Times (Section 2, p. 1, "Composers Try to Upgrade the Accordion"). Both artist and composer recall that the two performances were very successful, and the work well received by the audiences.
On November 28, 1964, the AAA honored Dr. Gordon, along with four other commissioned composers of greater note, Henry Brant, Paul Pisk, Alexander Tcherepnin, and Otto Luening, at a special dinner at the Statler Hilton Hotel, in New York City. All were presented with plaques by Carmen Carrozza and Eugene Ettore, citing their important contributions to the growing serious repertoire for accordion.
Gordon tended to be a ‘tonal’ composer (as did Diamond, but to a lesser degree) who preferred to write "accessible" music for the public rather than subscribe to the more generally, though often unfairly judged, “abstract” atonal techniques prevalent in the concert works of most of the second half of the twentieth century. In this respect he was quite the opposite of his classmate and dorm roommate, Robert Hall Lewis (1924-94), during their graduate years at Eastman. Interestingly, Lewis was my composition mentor during my graduate years at the Peabody Conservatory. By then (the 1970s and 1980s) he was enjoying international notoriety as a frequently performed and recorded figure whose music was almost exclusively atonal in makeup. Despite its merits, then, such a neoclassical work as Gordon’s Aria, Scherzo, and Finale would have unfortunately not put its creator into such a critically acclaimed limelight during that period. It might have generated more interest had it been composed in the 1930s or 1940s when composers more of the ilk of David Diamond represented the then fresher, still more evolving development of neoclassicism (though, admittedly, still running neck and neck with that of atonality, especially concerning constantly evolving techniques in twelve-tone serialism).
Considering his preferred musical language, then, Gordon very aptly described his new work in Bennett's April 6, 1962, press release and the November 1964 issue of Accordion and Guitar World. It reveals a blend of traditional tonal practices gently tinged with some mild extended tertian harmony and rather familiar hemiolic metrical twists:
The Aria movement explores the lyrical features of the accordion's violin and clarinet registration. [In] the Scherzo and Finale movements, the technical agility of the accordionist is put to test, as is the polychordal potential inherent in the instrument's button system. This composition is tonal and is more demanding rhythmically than in its other musical aspects. It also explores the possibilities of 3/4 versus 6/8 time to an interesting extent. |
The accordion part is not particularly difficult for a seasoned professional specializing in contemporary music nor does the orchestral part present any daunting challenges for either the players or the conductor. This was no doubt deliberate on the part of the composer, who wished to create a piece that was easily rehearsed and performed. Relative to this possible goal, a peculiar note appears around measure 183 of the original score, stating that certain orchestral parts are "optional if soloist not an accordionist." Obviously, Gordon wished the work to be so accessible that a non-accordionist keyboard artist could play the solo part (which is considerably difficult in the right-hand part at this point in the music) in a pinch. The optional orchestral parts duplicate the notes of the accordion's left-hand part. This further suggests that the latter could possibly be forfeited elsewhere in the piece if, for example, a pianist, who would not be familiar with the left-hand button format, were to tackle it.
Aria, Scherzo, and Finale was published by Pietro Deiro Publications in 1962. It is scored for a considerably busy chamber orchestra consisting of flute, oboe, B-flat clarinet, bassoon; two French horns, B-flat trumpet, trombone; timpani, with optional second timpanist in a rather extended optional duet segment; a considerably large array of other percussion instruments, also with some optional parts, and thus also implying that one percussionist would do, but that it would be better to have two, if feasible: snare drum, finger cymbals “or triangle,” tambourine, tambour de Basque, suspended cymbal, xylophone, Glockenspiel “if available,“ “optional in some places,” and to be “hit with a tiny metal rod;” harp; and standard strings, including double bass. All comes together extremely well and is well balanced with the accordion part in both tutti and instrumentally slimmer passages, resulting in lovely tonal colors and memorable melodic lines.
As the title implies, Aria, Scherzo, and Finale is in three distinct, easily distinguishable sections, though performed attacca throughout.
The first 57 measures, marked “Andante,” constitute the opening “Aria.” The accordion enters almost immediately, at the end of the second measure, establishing the rather carefree main theme, clearly in a lilting 3/4 meter, while contending against the subtle tension created by an undertow of quiet, undulating, syncopated waves in the strings via a 6/8 pulse of alternating eighth- and quarter-note values. (See Example 3 below.)
Example 3. Beginning of Aria with the principal theme in the accordion part creating hemiola with the orchestra. Sound Sample 3
The rhythmic complexity caused by the metrical hemiola between the accordion and the orchestra that threads throughout the movement is occasionally relaxed by straightforward eighth-note pairs, constituting a kind of second main motif, beginning at measure 24. However, even at that point, the stalwart eighth-note dyads in the accordion part are countered by eighth-note triplets in the orchestra. (See Example 4 below.)
Example 4. Measures 23-27 of Adagio with secondary motive of straightforward eight-notes, though, in this excerpt, experiencing hemiola with eighth-note triplets per beat in parts of the orchestral accompaniment. Sound Sample 4
Nonetheless, there are many other spots in the Adagio where the entire ensemble has several measures of “escape” from the hemiolic net altogether and experience even-numbered rhythm in all the parts.
A prolonged B-flat/A-flat harmonic dyad in the low brass and accordion at the very end of the Adagio, possibly acting as a kind of introductory pseudo-dominant 7th bridge to the next movement, suddenly explodes into an ebullient group of three considerably dissonant and hammered staccato polychords that sends the allegro Scherzo movement into a joyous romp, now with a minimum of polyphonic hemiola and more of melodic shifts of the entire ensemble between sextuple and triple meters, clearly signified by the new double time signature of “6/8 + 3/4” in the score. In addition, in this merry frenzy, Gordon allows more playful harmonic dissonance to fall where it may than in the comparatively demure Adagio. The orchestration also becomes more unleashed than before, with more and varied percussion, both pitched and unpitched, pizzicato strings, and harp. (See Example 5 below.)
Example 5. Beginning of Allegro movement, measures 58-66. Also marked “doppio movimento,” with metronome setting of quarter note equals 162 “at least.” The rhythmic pattern in the accordion part in the last three measures is encountered frequently in the first half of the movement. Sound Sample 5
As happened in the first movement, the Scherzo next introduces a highly contrasting and distinctly more direct, less metrically complicated second theme after fifty measures of busy development of the first in a new and singular, non-shifting 2/4 time signature, marked “poco mosso, m. m. = 162 at least.” The style is immediately choppy and primitivistic, set off by a constantly stomping eighth note accompanimental figure—an F/C perfect fifth or C/F perfect fourth dyad-- in the lower woodwinds, strings and left-hand bass of the accordion that soon ushers in an equally rigid and aggressive melody in the instrument’s treble range. The melody is followed in strict canonic imitation two beats later in the treble instruments of the orchestra. (See Example 6 below.)
Example 6. Second principal theme of the Allegro movement, with primitivistic, beating harmonic F/C or C/F dyad accompaniment to main theme in the treble ranges occurring in close canonic imitation two beats apart between the accordion and the orchestra. Sound Sample 6
Intensity increases across the next fifteen measures and reaches a fever point aptly marked “agitato” before gradually lessening in passion to a brief, more bucolic, though still playful, and now more intimate and thinly orchestrated version of the initial theme of the movement. In this setting the accordion carries the main melody in counterpoint with a quieter, domesticated, flowery, and at times trilling version of the second, previously stiff and militaristic theme that has been “domesticated” in large part by the return of the split sextuple/triple meter time signature. (See Example 7 below.)
Example 7. Altered and reorchestrated return of principle theme of the Allegro movement in the accordion part, moving in counterpoint with the rhythmically adjusted second theme in the other instruments. Both themes have now undergone considerable change in mood. Sound Sample 7
The last four of the eleven measures of this initially serene, waltz-like section abruptly turn forte, climatically ending on a fully orchestrated and sustained cadential trichord, F-sharp/B/C-sharp (as read from the lowest note upward in the score, but possibly analyzed in its basic form as an inverted C-sharp/F-sharp/B quartal chord). Following is an equally dramatic and flamboyant 21-measure solo accordion cadenza (marked as such in the score) that, in the tradition of the classical era concerto, is a climatic virtuosic tour-de-force of thematic material from the main body of the composition that also serves as an exciting bridge to the finale of the work. (See Example 8 below.)
Example 8. Beginning of the 21-measure solo accordion Cadenza, bridging the Scherzo to the Finale.
Sound Sample 8
The Finale, marked “Tempo Primo (Andante),” follows, commencing with and mostly developing the opening theme of the first movement (see Example 3). Lasting 32 measures, it is the shortest, though possibly most dramatically intense, movement of the work, with several more rapid and challenging melodic and harmonic right-hand passages for the accordionist than encountered in the previous movements.
Dr. Gordon remained active as a composer following his retirement from Fairleigh Dickinson University, fulfilling commissions in the eastern middle states region for the New Philharmonic Orchestra, Hanover Wind Symphony, University of Delaware Wind Ensemble, and the Colonial Symphony. In addition, it was my great pleasure and privilege to perform his AAA offering in its accordion and orchestral piano reduction form with the composer himself at the piano in the 2005 AAA Master Class and Concert Series program at the Tenri Institute in New York. When I informed him a year or two afterwards that Professor Philip Tate, orchestra conductor at The College of New Jersey, where I served as Professor of Music Theory and Composition from 1991 to my retirement in 2020, and offered accordion as a Music elective, was considering having me perform it with the TCNJ Orchestra, he sent me the original large conductor’s score and all the instrumental parts, asking me to keep them. Unfortunately, however, Tate retired before a performance date could be realistically set. Perhaps in my present status as Professor Emeritus of that institution, I will be able at some point to persuade my former colleagues to schedule a performance date not too far in the future after all, thus helping to rekindle Elsie Bennett’s hope that the work would inspire future music composition students and faculty to someday write for or include accordion in some of their own works.
In closing, Gordon, in addition to his contributions to the musical academic realm and the classical accordion repertoire, had every right to be exceedingly proud of his very musical and artistic family. His wife Anita was a career pianist who made her concert debut at Carnegie Hall in 1968, recorded for CRI and Musical Heritage, and coached and performed in the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble at the Vermont Music and Art Center at Lyndon College. Their two sons, Alan and Joshua, are active in the arts as well. Joshua is a highly sought-after cellist, presently with the Lydian String Quartet, in residence at Brandeis University where he has been on the music faculty for many years. His very eclectic brother Alan is a lawyer, writer, composer, lyricist, and actor who has five published novels to his credit as of this writing. He is also currently affiliated with the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He has written such hits as "Happy Together" and "She'd Rather Be with Me” and been involved with such films as Scary Movie I and Heart Like a Wheel, television shows Suddenly Susan, The Simpsons, and Ally McBeal, and many commercials. (See Alan’s extensive and witty website alan-gordon.com for more information.)
The following AAA commissioned works were performed in 2004 and 2005 when the first version of this article appeared in the 2004 issue of the AAA Festival Journal: Jose Serebrier's Danza Ritual, performed by Robert McMahan, and Passacaglia and Perpetuum Mobile, for accordion, strings, brass and percussion, performed by McMahan on accordion and William Schimmel playing the orchestral reduction on piano, and "cover versions" of Alexander Therepnin's Partita and Dr. Schimmel's Spring Street Ritual, performed by Kamala Sankram and Benjamin Ickies respectively, all at the Tenth Annual Master Class and Concert Series, Tenri Institute, New York City, August 27-29, Dr. Schimmel, producer and moderator; David Diamond's Sonatina, performed by Beverly Roberts Curnow, John Franceschina's For Elsie (world premiere; dedicated to Elsie Bennett for her 85th birthday celebration), performed by Kevin Friedrich, and Lukas Foss's Triologue, for accordion, violin, and cello (world premiere), performed by McMahan, accordion, Airi Yoshioka, violin, and Madeleine Shapiro, cello, at a concert entitled "From Frosini to Foss: A Half Century of Contemporary Music for Accordion," The Graduate Center, City University of New York, March 11, 2005, produced and moderated by McMahan. Separate articles and announcements about these Tenri and CUNY concerts appeared in the 2004 issue of the AAA Festival Journal. They may presently be read in the CCC section of the AAA website.
The AAA Composers’ Commissioning Committee welcomes donations from all those who love the classical accordion and wish to see its modern original concert repertoire continue to grow. The American Accordionists’ Association is a 501(c)(3) corporation. All contributions are tax deductible to the extent of the law. They can easily be made by visiting the AAA Store at https://www.ameraccord.com/cart.aspx which allows you to both make your donation and receive your tax deductible receipt on the spot.
For additional information, please contact Dr. McMahan at grillmyr@gmail.com
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