Music Notes – Sunday, August 23rd:
This Sunday’s musician is Bill McNally
About Sunday’s guest musician:
The New York Times calls him “a hot item” and “powerful,” and the Santa Barbara Independent called him a pianist, “…with great sympathy and insight.” William McNally is a two–time winner of the World Championship Old–Time Piano Playing Contest, and three–time winner of their New Rag Contest. He now serves as their Contest Coordinator, and he has since taken on the role of the Scott Joplin Foundation’s Ragtime Kid Program Director. His performance of George Perle’s Concertino for Piano, Winds and Timpani at Tanglewood, conducted by Cristian Măcelaru, was hailed for its “nimble,” “miraculous,” “sharp soloing.” As a collaborative pianist, McNally has performed with a wide range of musicians, including the Verona String Quartet, mezzo–soprano Davida Karanas, the Mark Morris Dance Company, and many others.
His album Dream Shadows was released to high acclaim: reviews in Fanfare Magazine—two of them—called the recording “highly natural and persuasive…his prismatic range of touch and tone allows him to trace out the shifting moods of the music—from the sentimental to the nonchalant to the smashing—with unusual sensitivity…the disc is so good, from beginning to end, that it’s hard to know what to highlight…a treasure!” McNally’s “serious classical” CD with works by Brahms, Reger and Busoni was lauded by the New York Times as “effortless…fascinating…mercurial… and intelligently curious.” This June, Rivermont Records will release Piano Puzzles & Magic Trix, McNally’s recording of the complete solo piano works of Arthur Schutt, packaged with the first serious biography of Schutt. It is paired with novelty works by Vincent Matthew Johnson, and it also includes the premiere recording of four works by Art Tatum.
He completed his doctorate at CUNY’s Graduate Center, where he studied with Ursula Oppens and wrote a ragtime–focused dissertation. He has served on the faculties of Texas State University, CUNY Queens College, and Temple University. He currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife Daria and nine–year–old son Nick, where he spends most of his “free” time cooking, biking, hiking, and cleaning up loose chess pieces. Check out his two upcoming outdoor performances for Piano Cleveland this July! For more information, visit http://www.williammcnally.com.
Centering Music: Delirium (1926, Arthur Schutt)
The prolific 1920s and ’30s band pianist Arthur Schutt (1902-1965) wrote Delirium in 1926, at the height of his career. It was his most successful tune, recorded four times across 1926 and ’27 with the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra, Red and Miff’s Stompers, the Charleston Chasers, and the Carl Fenton Orchestra (with Schutt himself at the piano). Many other bands recorded it afterwards. The timpani (hardly a normal part of a band’s percussion set) plays a prominent role in this tune’s opening, and joins the piano solo that follows the delirious augmented clock chimes.
Song: Though I May Speak with Bravest Fire – English folk melody/Hopson
“Though I May Speak with Bravest Fire”, more commonly known as “The Gift of Love”, is a hymn setting by American composer and performer Hal Hopson (1933-2025), who was primarily known for hymns and other sacred music. Hopson’s words are an adaptation of I Corinthians 13, the well-known love passage from Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians which is often read at wedding ceremonies. The tune for this hymn is “O Waly Waly”, a flowing folk melody from the British Isles which dates back at least 400 years, and is most commonly set as “The Water Is Wide”. This well-loved tune has been set for voices and instruments hundreds of times, both by traditional composers (such as Benjamin Britten and John Rutter) and folk musicians (Pete Seeger and Joan Baez among many others).
Joys and Concerns Music: Blithe Bells (1931, Percy Grainger, after J. S. Bach)
The aria “Schafe können sicher weiden” (“Sheep may safely graze”) from the Hunting Cantata, is one of the most beloved melodies of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Recently made popular to pianists via Leon Fleischer’s 2004 recording in an arrangement by Egon Petri, numerous other arrangements (for solo piano as well as other instruments and combinations) have been made. This unusual arrangement by Percy Grainger (1882-1761), which he called “Blithe Bells,” was what he called, “a free ramble…The ramble is colored by the thought that Bach, in writing the melody in thirds that opens and closes the number, may have aimed at giving a hint of the sound of sheep bells.”
Offertory Music: Pine Apple Rag (1908, Scott Joplin)
Pine Apple Rag (sic) is one of the best-known compositions from the “King of Ragtime” Scott Joplin (1868-1917). Featured alongside The Entertainer and Solace in the movie The Sting, Pine Apple Rag follows traditional rag form while also beginning to hint at blues and boogie styles. Joplin composed it in 1908, not long after he had moved to New York City, and around the time he began serious work on his opera Treemonisha.
Song: Lean on Me
First released in 1972, “Lean on Me” was the first and only number one hit for R&B legend Bill Withers (1938-2020). In 1987, a remake by the reggae band Club Nouveau won Withers a Grammy Award for Best Song and made “Lean on Me” one of only a handful of songs to have reached #1 both in its original form and then later as a cover version. The song was notably performed by Mary J. Blige at the concert celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009, and is included in our Singing the Journey hymnbook as #1021.
Postlude: Vem Cá, Branquinha (1909, Ernesto Nazareth)
The Brazilian choro style was in many respects similar to American ragtime: both utilize syncopated rhythms applied to sixteen measure strains, both derive from Afro-American roots, and both styles can legitimately be considered their country’s first authentic musical styles. In its early years choro was typically played by a trio of flute, guitar and cavaquinho (a small Portuguese guitar similar to a ukulele), yet the best known compositions of the style were written by and for pianists. “Vem cá, branquinha” (“Come Here, Little Blonde One”) was one of more than two hundred compositions for piano by Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934). It is a light-hearted romp that turns ragtime upside-down.
-Notes by Bill McNally and Mike Carney