ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-FOURTH SEASON
Sunday, March 23, 2025, at 3:00 Northeastern Illinois University
CSO Chamber Music Series
Max Raimi Viola
Hillary Horton Flute
Eleanor Kirk Harp
Sara Dailey Muñoz Mezzo-soprano
SAINT-SAËNS Fantaisie in A Major, Op. 124
HILLARY HORTON
ELEANOR KIRK
JAN BACH
Eisteddfod, Variations and Penillion on a Welsh Harp Tune
HILLARY HORTON
MAX RAIMI
ELEANOR KIRK
INTERMISSION
RAIMI Two Stephen Ackerman Poems If I Had as Many Hands as Vishnu Effortless Affection
HILLARY HORTON
MAX RAIMI
ELEANOR KIRK
SARA DAILEY MUÑOZ
World premiere
DEBUSSY Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp
Pastorale
Interlude
Finale
HILLARY HORTON
MAX RAIMI
ELEANOR KIRK
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.
COMMENTS by Richard E. Rodda
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
Born October 9, 1835; Paris, France
Died December 16, 1921; Algiers, Algeria
Fantaisie in A Major, Op. 124
COMPOSED 1907
James Harding titled the final part of his 1965 study Saint-Saëns and His Circle “The Legend” and opened it with the following priceless anecdote:
One day in the 1890s, a devout Breton peasant woman bought a packet of chocolate. It contained the picture of a saint, one in a series of cards depicting famous people given free with every packet. As the woman’s son was very ill and prayers for his recovery had so far gone unanswered, she decided to invoke this saint of whom she had never heard before, vowing that should he cure her son, she would always display the holy effigy on her own person. Almost immediately, her plea was met: the boy returned to health, and ever afterward, she carried reverently attached to her bosom the yellowing likeness of Camille Saint-Saëns.
Though Saint-Saëns was never canonized by the Church, he certainly was lionized by the musical world. The fiftieth anniversary of his debut as a virtuoso pianist at age eleven provided the catalyst for a stream of honors, awards, citations, memberships, honorary degrees, and demands for personal appearances that continued unabated until the day he died. His health deteriorated gradually during his later years, but his tenacity and remarkable energy never flagged. Saint-Saëns visited the United States for the first time in 1906, giving concerts of his music in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington (D.C.) despite being seriously ill with diphtheria. He attended the unveiling of a statue in his honor in Dieppe in 1907 and left enough mementos of his life to the town to establish a Camille Saint-Saëns Collection at the Musée de Dieppe. He represented France at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, conducting his choral work Hail California, written especially for the occasion. In 1916 Saint-Saëns made his first tour of South America, and in May 1920, he took part as conductor and pianist in a festival of his music in Athens. He gave a solo recital
this page: Camille Saint-Saëns, as photographed by Pierre Petit (1831–1909) in 1900 | opposite page: Jan Bach, ca. 1980
at Dieppe in August 1921 in observance of his eighty-sixth birthday and put in two hours of practice at the keyboard on the morning he died, December 16, 1921, in Algiers. Saint-Saëns allowed that he composed music as easily, naturally, and inevitably as an apple tree produces fruit, and he remained active and creative to the very end of his long life.
Three times during his later years, Saint-Saëns applied his art of beauty, precision, and formal perfection to music for the harp: Fantaisie for Solo Harp, op. 95, of 1893, Fantaisie for Violin and Harp, op. 124, of 1907, and Morceau de Concert for Harp and Orchestra, op. 154, of 1918. The Fantaisie in A major for Flute (originally violin) and Harp, op. 124, was composed early in 1907 at Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera, where Saint-Saëns had
JAN BACH
Born December 11, 1937; Forrest, Illinois
Died October 20, 2020; Dekalb, Illinois
gone to rest after overseeing the first production in thirty years of his opera Le Timbre d’Argent (The Silver Bell) in nearby Monte Carlo. He dedicated the score to the harpist Clara Eissler and her sister Marianne, who enjoyed a modest career as a violinist. (Marianne recorded the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria in 1905 with the celebrated diva Adelina Patti, then completing her international round of farewell appearances.) Saint-Saëns eschewed the classical forms he usually favored for his instrumental works in the fantasy in favor of a sectional construction: an introductory passage of improvisatory nature; an Allegro of more robust character that reaches an impassioned climax; a scherzo-like episode with a contrasting pastoral interlude; an Andante built above a repeating ostinato figure in the harp; and reminiscences of the first two sections as a coda.
Eisteddfod, Variations and Penillion on a Welsh Harp Tune
The answer to the inevitable question is, no, Jan Bach was not a direct descendant of that immense eponymous clan of musicians who streamed
through eighteenth-century Germany and into the music history textbooks, though he was one of this country’s most distinguished and frequently performed composers. Jan Bach was born in Forrest, Illinois, on December 11, 1937, and received his professional training at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where he earned his doctorate degree
in musical arts in 1971. His composition teachers included eminent pedagogues, such as Roberto Gerhard, Aaron Copland, Kenneth Gaburo, Robert Kelly, and Thea Musgrave. Bach taught at the University of Tampa from 1965 to 1966, and from 1966 until 2002, he served on the theory and composition faculty of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, receiving the institution’s Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in 1978 and its first Presidential Research Professorship four years later. His creative catalog encompasses a wide range of traditional genres, including orchestral works, opera (The Student from Salamanca won the competition for a new, one-act American opera sponsored by the New York City Opera in 1980 and was premiered by that company on October 9, 1980, in a production by Beverly Sills), piano pieces, concert band scores, songs and choral compositions, and much chamber music. His many honors included the Koussevitzky Award at Tanglewood, first prize at the First International Brass Congress in Montreux (Bach was a horn player and wrote many pieces for brass instruments, including a horn concerto), a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and first prize in the Nebraska Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra Competition. In addition, his
works were nominated six times for the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Jan Bach on Eisteddfod
Eisteddfod was composed in the summer of 1972 at the request of the Orpheus Trio to whom the work is dedicated. Its title (literally, a “sitting down together”) refers to a legendary Welsh contest in which the heroes fought against each other with games and musical instruments. The only surviving musical relic of these contests is the penillion, an ancient form of Welsh music practice in which a harpist plays a well-known air while a singer extemporizes a somewhat different melody over it.
In this work, the competition takes its form as a set of variations and penillion on Ymadawiad y Brenin (Departure of the King), a tune first appearing in The Welsh Harper of 1839 that I first heard in a recorded performance by harpist Osian Ellis. The opening viola cadenza exposes the textures and motifs that shape each of the twelve variations to follow. Only at the end of the work is the tune heard in its original form, played by the harp and serving as the harmonic basis for the return of previously heard material in the other two instruments.
MAX RAIMI
Born June 21, 1956; Detroit, Michigan
Two Stephen Ackerman Poems
COMPOSED 2024
Max Raimi, born in Detroit in 1956, studied viola with Ara Zerounian before earning degrees in viola performance at the University of Michigan and later at the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Lillian Fuchs. In 1984 he joined the viola section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In addition to his work in the CSO, he is frequently heard in chamber performances in Chicago, on the radio, and at music festivals throughout the United States.
A prolific composer, Max Raimi has received commissions from many ensembles and institutions, including the Chicago Symphony, Library of Congress, and American Chamber Players. Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony performed the world premiere of his Three Lisel Mueller Settings in March 2018, a Chicago Symphony Orchestra commission. A recording of that work was released in 2023 on the CSO’s Resound label. In February 1998, his Elegy for twelve violas, harp, celesta, and percussion was performed at three Chicago Symphony
above: Max Raimi, photo by Todd Rosenberg
subscription concerts conducted by Daniel Barenboim. His compositions have been recorded on the Capstone and Egan records, Gasparo, Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Peace Studies labels.
Max Raimi’s arrangements have enjoyed wide circulation as well, having been performed by pianist Daniel Barenboim, among others. In August 1985, a sellout crowd at the old Comiskey Park heard the Chicago Symphony viola section play his arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a Chicago White Sox game; a three-viola version was twice performed at the old Chicago Stadium for Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. On two occasions, Riccardo Muti has conducted Raimi’s orchestration of the University of Michigan fight song “The Victors” at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor.
Stephen Ackerman worked as an attorney in the Legal Counsel Division of the New York City Law Department for over thirty years, retiring in 2019. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Columbia University, where he studied with Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro; a master’s from the Johns Hopkins University (The Writing Seminars Program), where he studied
COMMENTS with David St. John; and a juris doctor from Boston University. While at BU, he took a course in the Creative Writing Program with Linda Gregerson. His poems have appeared in many publications, including Best New Poets 2010, Boulevard, Columbia Review, Jewish Quarterly, Mudfish, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Plume, Red Wheelbarrow, Salamander, Seneca Review, Upstreet, and Western Humanities Review, as well as on Poetry Daily. Stephen Ackerman was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts, lived in Brooklyn for many years, and now lives in Poughquag, New York.
Stephen Ackerman’s debut poetry collection, Late Life, won the 2020 Gerald Cable Book Award and was published by Silverfish Review Press in 2022. More information about Late Life can be found at stephenackermanpoetry.com.
Max Raimi on Two Stephen Ackerman Settings
Needing something to read on a flight a few years ago, I picked up a Harper’s magazine at the airport, where I stumbled upon Stephen Ackerman’s poem “If I Had as Many Hands as Vishnu.” I was immediately bewitched by its unique combination of the erotic, the whimsical, and the vulnerable, as well as its outwardly eccentric yet flawlessly apt sequence of images and scenarios. I set it to music but thought that the song was somehow not complete in itself. I had, in the meantime, obtained Late Life, a collection of Ackerman’s poetry, and was very pleased to discover “Effortless Affection,” which I set as a companion piece.
I must confess that living with this poetry took me a bit out of my comfort zone as a composer. My music tends to be acerbic and hyperactive, far removed from the world these poems inhabit. So, I learned once again how to write consonant harmonies and to refrain from piling on too many notes. As I have never formally studied musical composition, I consider working out these settings to be among the most valuable composition lessons I can recall.
If I Had as Many Hands as Vishnu
I would touch you tenderly
And then touch myself tenderly
As I wished to be touched by you.
I would open four books
And read four passages
With my four tongues
And these choristers would be Scheherazade for the four Queens
Of you. If I had as many hands as Vishnu
I would draw silk with one hand from my sleeves, Blindfold you with silk with another, lash you
With silk with another, remove the blindfold
With another. I would text you with a free hand and Telephone you with an idle hand
To report that I had applied WD-40 to the valves
With one hand, removed the soufflé
From the oven with another, scattered
The seed for the songbirds across the surface
Of the earth with another,
Leashed the dogs with another
And was now in the field playing long toss
As I washed your hair with another.
There would always be one hand
Soothing you with the vowels
Of a sign language that I perfected
By listening to the sounds the signs
Made in you and I would release
The fingers of my left-most hand
To do as they please while my right-most hand
Conducted the string section and the brass and The wind, the west wind, which traveled down
The lifeline of one of my many hands.
I could not foretell how long I would live,
For all my hands told a different story,
And I could not foretell how long we would love,
Though all my hands sought to please you.
(Please turn the page quietly.)
COMMENTS
Effortless Affection
All last requests are granted and this is mine: grasp my affection in your hand and hold it there, gather my affection into your heart and store it there, draw my affection in simple lines in your mind and foster it, further it, funnel it into all the coastal plains and lowlands where daily life and memory flow together. Let the river rise And overflow, let the grasses
In the meadow near the river Bend in the current where my love Has flooded your land.
—Stephen Ackerman
from his debut poetry collection, Late Life, published in 2022 by Silverfish Review Press stephenackermanpoetry.com
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Born August 2, 1862; St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, France
Died March 25, 1918; Paris, France
Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp
COMPOSED 1915
Debussy looked for the inspiration, style, and temperament of the Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp far beyond the impressionism of his earlier
works to the elegance, emotional reserve, and textural clarity of the music of the French baroque. The sonata’s ethereal opening movement unfolds as a series of episodes based on themes that, at first encounter, seem like little more than wispy arabesques. There are, however, five fragmentary but distinct thematic entities here, which are later
above: Claude Debussy, photographed by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820–1910), 1905.
Bibliothèque nationale de France
recapitulated in a different order to round out the movement’s form. The first two motifs are melancholy strains that introduce the flute and the viola; the third is an open-interval, drone-like motif for viola and harp; the fourth is a lyrical melody in the flute’s lower register supported by arching arpeggios in the viola; and the fifth, an animated ensemble passage in an uneven meter. The motifs are heard at the end of the movement in this order: 2–4–5–3–1. A quicker dance-like section occupies the middle of the movement.
Though the interlude, a reminiscence in pastels of the durable old form of the minuet, is Debussy’s most obvious tribute here to the music of the baroque, its whole-tone theme, parallel chord streams, and modal harmonies plainly mark this as a product of the twentieth century. The form proceeds by twice interpolating a vaguely Oriental
duple-meter episode (B) into the delicate triple-meter minuet (A): A–B–A–B–A.
The finale grounds its apparent evanescence of expression in a carefully crafted development of its themes. Most of the movement grows from mutations of the three motifs that are presented in quick succession at the outset: snapping viola pizzicatos, quicksilver falling arpeggios from the flute, and a longer viola melody anxiously juxtaposing duple and triple rhythms. As the movement nears its end, the tempo slows to admit a brief recall of the flute theme that opened the first movement before a short, animated coda closes the sonata.
Richard E. Rodda, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.
CSO Chamber Music
4/6 CSO Chamber Music at the University of Chicago
4/8 CSO Chamber Music at the Driehaus Museum
4/27 South Loop Quintet at South Shore Cultural Center
6/10 Mozart & Britten with the Chicago Symphony Chamber Players
Max Raimi Viola
A native of Detroit, Max Raimi has been a violist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1984. He is an active chamber musician and served as a chamber music coach at Northwestern University for many years.
Raimi is a prolific composer, having received commissions from many ensembles and institutions, including the CSO, Library of Congress, and American Chamber Players. In February 1998, his Elegy for twelve violas, harp, celeste, and percussion was performed at three Chicago Symphony subscription concerts conducted by Daniel Barenboim. In December 2017, violinist Gil Shaham performed his work Anger Management as an encore at a CSO subscription concert, and in March 2018, Riccardo Muti and the CSO gave the world premiere performance of his Three Lisel Mueller Settings, a CSO commission.
Hillary Horton Flute
Hillary Horton is a freelance flutist based in Chicago. She performs frequently with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Grant Park, Milwaukee, and Grand Rapids symphonies. Previously, Horton was the assistant principal flutist of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra for ten years. While in Alabama, she served on the music faculty at Samford University, taught master classes at the universities of Alabama and Alabama-Birmingham, and served as a clinician for state and local honor bands and music education conferences. Horton has frequently performed new music as part of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, an organization that promotes and commissions new works by composers in Alabama. Originally from Washington (D.C.), Horton received her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, where she studied with Walfrid Kujala, John Thorne, and Richard Graef.
Eleanor Kirk Harp
Eleanor Kirk is principal harpist with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, praised for her fine contributions and standout solo work. She served as acting principal harp with the Santa Fe Opera for its 2024 season, Grant Park Symphony Orchestra for the 2022 season, and Detroit Opera for its 2023–24 and 2024–25 seasons. Kirk was principal harpist with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 2018 to 2022 and frequently performs as a guest with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Chamber music highlights from the past year include new membership with the Chicago Harp Quartet and appearances on the Rush Hour and Dame Myra Hess concert series, which were featured on Chicago’s classical music radio station, WFMT. An active soloist, Eleanor Kirk performed concertos with the Bach Week Festival Orchestra and the Illinois Symphony Orchestra in their 2021–22 season.
With degrees from Columbia University and Chicago College of Performing Arts, she is a dedicated educator, serving as harp faculty at the People’s Music School and the Young Artist’s Harp Seminar. Her students have received top honors at the Greater Chicago Chapter of the American Harp
Society Competition, Illinois American String Teachers Association Concerto Competition, and the Midwest Harp Festival Competition.
Kirk is a founding member and development director of 5th Wave Collective, a Chicago-based classical music ensemble dedicated to the performance and promotion of music by womxn.
Sara Dailey Muñoz
Mezzo-soprano
Sara Dailey Muñoz is a mezzo-soprano vocalist from Chicagoland with a passion for performing new and underperformed works. She has sung with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Chamber Series, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and Earlham College, among others. Muñoz has appeared on the Indiana University Opera Theater stage as Meg Page in Falstaff, Alma March in Little Women, and the Mistress of the Novices in Suor Angelica. She frequently lends her voice to oratorio works, both as chorister and soloist.
Sara Dailey Muñoz is a former member of NOTUS, IU’s choral ensemble dedicated to performing new choral works, with whom she sang the world premieres of several new pieces. Muñoz earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Indiana University.
