Forging an American Music Identity (FAMI), organized an amazing three-day conference in New York City and concluded on Friday as Leon Botstein led the American Symphony Orchestra in Dudley Buck’s Festival Overture on the American National Air, three Spiritual arrangements by Harry T. Burleigh (with soloist J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano), Wagner’s American Centennial March, and finally George Frederick Bristow’s Symphony N. 5, op. 62, “Niagara.”  The entire program was moving and engaging, but I would like to focus on the latter work. Composed in 1893, Bristow’s “Niagara” Symphony had received its premiere and only previous performance, conducted by the composer, in Carnegie Hall in 1898 (where Friday’s concert also took place).

While influenced by Beethoven, Bristow worked to compose music expressive of American experience, culture, values and lore. This recent New York Times article (gift link, no paywall)  honored the 200^th anniversary of his birth. The Niagara, his last work, follows a four-movement format, with the weighty final movement bringing in vocal soloists and chorus, (think Beethoven’s 9^th). Botstein’s Playbill notes are HERE, and Daniel Goldmark’s  HERE).

The Allegro opens with an ominous sense of foreboding and drama, before a compelling melody emerges. Bristow left no detailed program, but it is easy to imagine flowing streams and swirling eddies churning in minor keys before a surprise ending in major. 

The gentle Andante features a trombone choir warmly intoning a hymnlike melody, then energized by a trumpet fanfare. The hymn returns in several varied strophes, with an ornate violin filigree (concertmaster Cyrus Beroukhim was the sparkling soloist), and several other varied repetitions including an oboe melody with rippling accompaniment figure in the cellos. It concluded with a harmonically adventurous cadence. With its pensive warmth, this movement has some parallels with the third movement of the 9^th.

In the Scherzo, the turbulent white-water adventure gets the adrenaline going, with cascading short phrases and the piccolo getting a huge workout capping those agitated waves. As a lifelong orchestral musician (he was for many years concertmaster of antecedent of the New York Philharmonic), Bristow has a brilliant facility in his use of the entire span of the orchestra.  Then, flowing into a calm pool, we hear the soothing song “Long time ago,” in varied statements surrounding a developmental passage.

The fourth movement, a majestic choral cantata with vocal soloists, is in six sections: Maestoso – Allegro – Andante – Allegro – Andante – Allegro furioso.  The edition used for this modern premiere is by choral conductor Timothy J. Cloeter, who studied and edited this movement for his 2016 DMA Document, and it, including the entire 1,247-measure score of this movement is available here as a PDF.  The other movements of the Symphony were edited by the FAMI committee.  Charles Walker Lord, author of the poem “Niagara,” is not known otherwise; like Bristow, he taught in the New York Public Schools. Stellar vocal soloists graced the traversal: Anna Thompson, soprano; J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano; Freddie Ballentine, tenor; and Alan Williams, Bass; and James Bagwell directed the Bard Festival Chorale.

Following a festive instrumental introduction the chorus enters unison with the poem of praise sung to the music of the Doxology; instruments then add grandeur to the statement. The poem and its illustrative music evokes the rapturous beauty of the majestic torrent, and offers praise to the Creator of that beauty. Bristow’s brief quote from the “Hallelujah Chorus,” “King of Kings, Lord of Lords,” acknowledges this Divine Maker.  The work both illustrates and pays tribute to the majestic and powerful waterfall and the divine Creator of this infinite and eternal work of nature. In rhyming couplets, the poet addresses both the Niagara directly, and the “Great Architect.”

“Ye rapids, sparkling, foaming, dashing wildly” has a turbulent accompaniment, while “ye giddy whirlpools, round and round a dancing” swirls into a fugato that expands to stately grandeur.  The return of the trombone chorale from Movement Two now has added solo soprano commentary in an elegant filigree.  Following this, the orchestra sinks to a subdued hush, and a poignant bassoon soliloquy emerges (played with expression by Gina Cufarri). It is surely instrumental recitative, not the stentorian kind of Beethoven’s 9^th, but rather a moment of hushed interior reflection, as if the poetic narrator is so overcome by the emotion of the glorious vision that they must retreat from words and have a quiet, pensive moment.  

Then in a final chorus, “impetuous, leaping, echoing forth thy thunders,” with fugal elements again evoking the cascading cataracts, the power of nature as a manifestation of “Majesty Divine.”

It is so rare to attend a performance of something this old and still completely unknown and unavailable in any audio format (nor is the text available online, apart from the above-mentioned thesis). Having to respond on a single hearing to a newly composed work is common, but to experience an unjustly neglected one written over a century ago, and in such an impressive scale of grandeur is quite singular. Having witnessed this hidden treasure emerge from its burial and released to the world, I submit, “Let it never be entombed again!”

Further details about the performance are in the Press Release of the American Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Katherine K. Preston (leader of the FAMI committee) provides an excellent biography: George Frederick Bristow (2020: University of Illinois Press)

While there is no recording available of the “Niagara” Symphony, I recommend listening to his Symphony N. 4 in E minor, Op.50 “Arcadian” (1872), with Botstein and the ASO.  It has a program of the American pioneers facing the harrowing journey west, and begins with a moving viola soliloquy (that returns, with tenacity).

Liane Curtis (Ph.D., Musicology) is President of Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy and The Rebecca Clarke Society, Inc.  Her website is here.