SPOTLIGHT ON CANADIAN REPERTOIRE / REGARD SUR LE RÉPERTOIRE CANADIEN

Study Guide for

The Composition
The Beethoven Machine was premiered on 11 December 2003,
under the baton of Michael Mucci, leading the Longmeadow
Michael Colgrass’s High School Wind Ensemble in Massachusetts. The work is
approximately a 3.5 level of difficulty. Its technical demands are
The Beethoven Machine fairly simple, but it makes a few sophisticated demands on the
players. The instrumentation is as follows:
Mark Hopkins Flute 1, 2, 3 Tenor saxophone Tuba
Oboe Baritone saxophone Timpani
The Composer Clarinet 1, 2, 3 Trumpet 1, 2, 3 2 cowbells & high triangle
Michael Colgrass (b. 1932) began his musical career in Chicago, Bass clarinet French horn 2 large coffee cans & brake drum
where he entered the profession as a jazz drummer in the 1940s. Bassoon Trombone 1, 2, 3 Ratchet & low triangle
Alto saxophone 1, 2 Baritone Bells (glockenspiel)
He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1954 with a
degree in performance and composition, and pursued further This list is very practical: note the multiple flute parts, and single
studies with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Festival and Lukas double-reed and French horn parts. Double-reed and French horn
Foss at Tanglewood. After serving two years as the timpanist in players are sometimes in short supply in smaller music programs
the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart, Germany (but, usually there will be enough flutes.) By scoring to account
he spent eleven years as a free-lance percussionist in New York for these specific needs, Colgrass makes the piece more accessible
City, where he performed with the New York Philharmonic, to a wide assortment of school bands. The percussionists need to
the American Ballet Theater, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz seek out some extra instruments from everyday objects, a common
Quartet, the original West Side Story orchestra on Broadway, the practice in modern percussion writing.
Columbia Orchestra’s Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky series of
LPs, numerous ballet and opera productions, and jazz ensembles. Colgrass describes the piece as follows:
He organized percussion sections for Gunther Schuller’s  he Beethoven Machine, for young band, is based on a sonatina
T
recordings and concerts, as well as for premieres of new works written by Beethoven as a child. The band is divided into what I call
by John Cage, Elliott Carter, Edgard Varèse, and many others. the “Children’s Orchestra,” made up of the [wood]winds, and the
“Adult Orchestra,” which is made up of primarily brass instruments.
During this period, he continued composition studies with A handful of musicians makes up a third group, a funny-sounding
Wallingford Riegger and Ben Weber. little machine that somehow has the ability to crank out music in the
style of Beethoven.
He was awarded the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Déjà
vu, a work commissioned and premiered by the New York “The Machine” opens the piece, out of which comes the Children’s
Philharmonic (which has been performed many times in its Orchestra playing their playfuful version of Beethoven’s melody.
This music is answered by the Adult Orchestra, in a more mature
arrangement for wind orchestra). He also received an Emmy Beethoven style, almost like parents saying “This is the way it should
Award in 1982 for a PBS documentary “Soundings: The Music be.” “The Machine” brings the children back again, playing blissfully
of Michael Colgrass,” and has been awarded two Guggenheim in their own light manner, and adults respond in a minor key,
fellowships, a Rockefeller grant, First Prize in the Barlow and ominously asserting their authority. As the music develops, the two
Sudler International Wind Ensemble Competition, and the 1988 orchestras gradually find a common ground and finally play together
in one style and finish in harmony – though the astute listener will
Jules Léger Prize for Chamber Music. notice that the Adult Orchestra somehow got maneuvered into
Colgrass created a method of teaching children, and their teachers, playing in the children’s key (B-flat!)
how to write music using graphic notation. In 2009, he worked The Beethoven Machine is dedicated to children of all ages.
with the Middleton Regional High School in Nova Scotia, where
students composed seven pieces for band in three days, and This program note reveals the interaction at the heart of Colgrass’s
conducted them in a public concert on the fourth. As a result, idea for this work. He has used the same kind of “stream of
his method was adopted by the Nova Scotia education system consciousness” interactions in some of his more advanced,
for inclusion in the junior-high curriculum. The following year, large-scale works, like Dreamdancer for alto saxophone and
he had students at Toronto’s Rockcliffe Middle School write a wind ensemble. In Dreamdancer, Colgrass splits the ensemble
group composition for the Esprit Orchestra in three days, and into three anthropomorphic parts, each with a specific national
it was premiered on 25 May 2010 with Alex Pauk conducting. style, and engages in a philosophical dialogue through their
interactions.
See Canadian Winds/Vents canadiens 3/2 (Spring 2005) for an
interview with Michael Colgrass and a list of his compositions In The Beethoven Machine, he does much the same thing.
for wind and percussion ensembles. Further information can be Instead of geopolitical musings, The Beethoven Machine poses
found at <[Link]/>. questions about the meaning of “serious” versus playful music.
Even when the two competing ensembles join forces, all is not
Colgrass holds dual Canadian/American citizenship, and resides resolved. An ambiguous harmony concludes the work, leaving
in Toronto with his wife, Ulla, a Danish arts journalist and editor. the listener with an uneasy sense that this unity was temporary.

Vents canadiens • Canadian Winds • Spring / printemps 2012 7