From the Maslanka Archive features media and stories of David's life and work. This week, we are excited to feature Julian Velasco's interview of Gary Green from the Wharton Center in East Lansing, MI from October 24, 2017.
From the Maslanka Archive features media and stories of David's life and work. This week, we are excited to feature Part 2 of Julian Velasco's interview of David from his home in Missoula, MT in 2016.
From the Maslanka Archive features media and stories of David's life and work. This week, we are excited to feature Part 1 of Julian Velasco's interview of David from his home in Missoula, MT in 2016.
Maslanka Weekly highlights excellent performances of David Maslanka’s music from around the web. This week, we feature three of David’s compositions that Gary Green championed: Symphony No. 8, Symphony No. 4, and Symphony No. 3.
From the Maslanka Archive features media and stories of David's life and work. This week, we are excited to feature pictures from the outside of David's residence in Missoula, Montana taken during a visit by Stephen & Andrea Steele in 2008.
Maslanka Weekly highlights excellent performances of David Maslanka’s music from around the web. This week, we feature three of David’s compositions that contain the feeling of lament: Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble, Hohner, and Symphony No. 3.
Kate Sutton’s Master’s thesis is a study on David’s Third, Fourth, and Ninth Symphonies with special emphasis on their themes on nature. She explores the influence that moving to Missoula, Montana had on David for Symphony No. 3, his connection to the “powerful voice of the Earth” in Symphony No. 4, and the themes of nature and water in Symphony No. 9.
David Maslanka and the Natural World: Three Studies of Music for Wind Ensemble
PDF, 4MB
Abstract:
The music of American composer David Maslanka (b. 1943) is informed by his deep connection to the natural world. This connection permeates his music and results in powerful works imbued with a wealth of spiritual and environmental meaning, including three of his symphonies for wind ensemble (Nos. 3, 4, and 9). Many of these natural connections emerge from Maslanka’s meditation process; his ability to consciously explore dream images allows him to embrace an understanding of the Earth and his environment. In Symphony No. 3, Maslanka combines impressions of the mountains, skies, and prairies of his new Missoula, Montana environment with dream images of both animal and American Indian spirits. Symphony No. 4 was inspired by the same western Montana landscape, stemming from Maslanka’s perception of a “voice of the Earth.” This piece also reveals connections to nature through the recurring use of the hymn tune “Old Hundred.” Maslanka identifies four concepts that guide Symphony No. 9 (nature, water, time, and grace); he also incorporates birdcalls, a story about whales, and settings […]
Dr. Brenton Alston’s doctoral dissertation on David’s Symphony No. 3 focuses on how the work came to be commissioned and David’s compositional approach to writing the work. The research presents a thorough analysis of each of the composition’s five movements with concluding performance considerations. Finally, the appendices provide interview transcripts, facsimiles of the original program notes, an article about the premiere, and more.
David Maslanka’s Symphony No. 3: A Relational Treatise on Commissioning, Composition, and Performance
PDF, 19.9MB
Abstract:
The purpose of this essay is to examine David Maslanka’s Symphony Number Three for wind ensemble. The music of David Maslanka has been performed throughout the world and has received high acclaim from periodical and newspaper reviews. David Maslanka has written four symphonies for wind ensemble. Gary Green commissioned Symphony Number Three while he was Director of Bands at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. Since the premiere performance of Symphony Number Three in November of 1991, there have been seven performances. This essay will examine elements of the commissioning process, musical analysis, and conclude with performance aspects of Symphony Number Three.
Remarks given at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Nov.15.1992, before a performance of Symphony No.3.
I want to give a few thoughts on the roots of music and its purpose in human life.
Music comes supposedly from the human heart and mind. These are but two of the vibratory receiving centers of the human organism. The human organism comes from Planet Earth. We say “from dust to dust.” Each body is built from the elements of Earth and is continually recycling elements from the Earth. We eat food every day. To what end? So that we have “energy”. To what end? To have feelings and ideas, to make music, and to make many other things.
Bodies are fluid, recycling every seven years, so that each of us experiences a continual interaction with Mother Earth. The source of music then, would seem to be the Earth. We come from the Earth; if we are intelligent and spiritual, then the Earth is intelligent and spiritual, and by extension, the universe is intelligent and spiritual. If the Earth is the seed, then all that we see around us is the flowering and unfolding of that seed. And all of it is in continuous, fluid, interactive motion.
Music is one voice of the Earth, and by extension, one voice of the universe. That voice rises up through this wonderful human body – a body made of cells, cells made of molecules, molecules made of atoms, atoms made of neutrons, protons, electrons, electrons made of…pure energy. […]