Remembering: Songs of the American West

SKU: PR.465000130

ISBN 9781598064070. UPC: 680160600144. 9x12 inches.

Following a celebrated series of wind ensemble tone poems about national parks in the American West, Dan Welcher’s Upriver celebrates the Lewis & Clark Expedition from the Missouri River to Oregon’s Columbia Gorge, following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Welcher’s imaginative textures and inventiveness are freshly modern, evoking our American heritage, including references to Shenandoah and other folk songs known to have been sung on the expedition. For advanced players. Duration: 14’.
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery to find a water route to the Pacific and explore the uncharted West. He believed woolly mammoths, erupting volcanoes, and mountains of pure salt awaited them. What they found was no less mind-boggling: some 300 species unknown to science, nearly 50 Indian tribes, and the Rockies.Ihave been a student of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which Thomas Jefferson called the “Voyage of Discovery,” for as long as I can remember. This astonishing journey, lasting more than two-and-a-half years, began and ended in St. Louis, Missouri — and took the travelers up more than a few rivers in their quest to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. In an age without speedy communication, this was akin to space travel out of radio range in our own time: no one knew if, indeed, the party had even survived the voyage for more than a year. Most of them were soldiers. A few were French-Canadian voyageurs — hired trappers and explorers, who were fluent in French (spoken extensively in the region, due to earlier explorers from France) and in some of the Indian languages they might encounter. One of the voyageurs, a man named Pierre Cruzatte, also happened to be a better-than-average fiddle player. In many respects, the travelers were completely on their own for supplies and survival, yet, incredibly, only one of them died during the voyage. Jefferson had outfitted them with food, weapons, medicine, and clothing — and along with other trinkets, a box of 200 jaw harps to be used in trading with the Indians. Their trip was long, perilous to the point of near catastrophe, and arduous. The dream of a Northwest Passage proved ephemeral, but the northwestern quarter of the continent had finally been explored, mapped, and described to an anxious world. When the party returned to St. Louis in 1806, and with the Louisiana Purchase now part of the United States, they were greeted as national heroes.Ihave written a sizeable number of works for wind ensemble that draw their inspiration from the monumental spaces found in the American West. Four of them (Arches, The Yellowstone Fires, Glacier, and Zion) take their names, and in large part their being, from actual national parks in Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. But Upriver, although it found its voice (and its finale) in the magnificent Columbia Gorge in Oregon, is about a much larger region. This piece, like its brother works about the national parks, doesn’t try to tell a story. Instead, it captures the flavor of a certain time, and of a grand adventure. Cast in one continuous movement and lasting close to fourteen minutes, the piece falls into several subsections, each with its own heading: The Dream (in which Jefferson’s vision of a vast expanse of western land is opened); The Promise, a chorale that re-appears several times in the course of the piece and represents the seriousness of the presidential mission; The River; The Voyageurs; The River II ; Death and Disappointment; Return to the Voyage; and The River III .The music includes several quoted melodies, one of which is familiar to everyone as the ultimate “river song,” and which becomes the through-stream of the work. All of the quoted tunes were either sung by the men on the voyage, or played by Cruzatte’s fiddle. From various journals and diaries, we know the men found enjoyment and solace in music, and almost every night encampment had at least a bit of music in it. In addition to Cruzatte, there were two other members of the party who played the fiddle, and others made do with singing, or playing upon sticks, bones, the ever-present jaw harps, and boat horns. From Lewis’ journals, I found all the tunes used in Upriver: Shenandoah (still popular after more than 200 years), V’la bon vent, Soldier’s Joy, Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy (a hymn sung to the tune “Beech Spring”) and Fisher’s Hornpipe. The work follows an emotional journey: not necessarily step-by-step with the Voyage of Discovery heroes, but a kind of grand arch. Beginning in the mists of history and myth, traversing peaks and valleys both real and emotional (and a solemn funeral scene), finding help from native people, and recalling their zeal upon finding the one great river that will, in fact, take them to the Pacific. When the men finally roar through the Columbia Gorge in their boats (a feat that even the Indians had not attempted), the magnificent river combines its theme with the chorale of Jefferson’s Promise. The Dream is fulfilled: not quite the one Jefferson had imagined (there is no navigable water passage from the Missouri to the Pacific), but the dream of a continental destiny.