MANHATTAN BEACH MUSIC Raising the Standards of the American Concert Band and BANDS all Over the WORLD Exclusive Australian Distribution by Future Music
PROGRAM NOTES
The word acadiana refers to a region comprising much of the southern half of the state of Louisiana, where Cajun culture and heritage are most predominant. Acadiana honors that heritage, and completes a trilogy of Cajun inspired works I have composed for concert band over a twenty-five year period. The trilogy, comprised of Cajun Folk Songs (1989), Cajun Folk Songs II (1996), and the present work (2015), draws from personal childhood memories growing up in South Louisiana, and captures in music my lifelong love of Cajun music and culture.
Acadiana is composed in three movements. The first is a bright and lively dance that makes use of two different Cajun rhythmic features: 1) un valse in deux temps (a waltz in two times), a Cajun dance rhythm that alternates between triple and duple meters; and, later in the movement, 2) a lively Cajun two-step dance.
The second movement, composed in memory of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, serves as the emotional heart of the entire work. It is constructed as a set of six variations on an ancient Cajun ballad, La fille de quartorze ans, (The fourteen-year-old-girl). The melody, which doesn’t appear until about ninety seconds into the movement, is first stated by the piccolo and tuba four octaves apart from each other. As the variations unfold, the music slowly grows in volume and speed, finally bursting out into a wildly chaotic climax. Amidst this chaos, several old Cajun folk songs make short, cameo appearances, and combine with original music to create a complex, frenzied texture that reminds me of some of the wonderful melodic pastiches of American composer Charles Ives. The energy eventually collapses into dark and powerful sustained brass chord, which in turn slowly gives way to a final, prayer-like statement of the melody.
Beginning without a pause, the final movement is an exalted dance that makes use of a variant on an old Cajun folk melody whose origins are clouded by history (as is the case with so many folksongs). The tune may have first appeared in the folksong Jeunes gens campagnard (Young Country Gentlemen); however, many years later, in the late 1920s, a variant of the tune was used for the song Allons a Lafayette (Let’s go to Lafayette). My own melodic variant is quite removed from either of these ascendants, while still upholding their inherent joie de vivre. From beginning to end, the finale is an exuberant celebration of life. Laissez les bon temps rouler (“let the good times roll!”)
