Composer Steven Stucky’s musical work about a pivotal day in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the ‘best contemporary classical composition’ category. August 4, 1964 was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony and was given its world premiere, with Jaap van Zweden conducting in May last year at the Meyerson. The 70-minute work — with a libretto by Gene Scheer, who also wrote the libretto for the opera Moby-Dick — concerns the day Johnson informed Americans of the purported attack by the North Vietnamese on an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin — the same day that the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers were found in Mississippi.
For Art & Seek, critic Olin Chism wrote:
Stucky’s musical style is considerate of the audience, with appealing melodies and harmonies, but enough astringency to impart a sense of gravitas. His use of the orchestra is highly effective, and I felt that the music for the four soloists, especially the men, projected a distinct sense of individuality. Orth even managed a kind of Texas twang at times — not easy to do when you’re singing.
Van Zweden directed a performance that was both highly dramatic and subtle, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus were in fine shape.
James Ostereich in The New York Times wrote:
You can hear ghosts of Bernstein in the jazzier or bluesier moments, and you can hear Benjamin Britten in the flesh. The cascading brass figures in the Schwerner number, “I Wish to Be a Part of That Fight,” are right out of Britten’s “War Requiem” of 1962, as are many other gestures throughout. But Mr. Stucky has assimilated it all in a distinctive voice that speaks as compellingly and vividly to our time as it might have to Johnson’s.
Mr. van Zweden, hailed in his debut as music director a week before, scored another triumph here. And the orchestra’s assured and gritty performance was rivaled by that of the large Dallas Symphony Chorus, both corporately and individually, in shifting solo snippets charting the course of the fateful day.
The Times also ran an extensive feature about the work Naxos eventually released the CD recording on its DSO Live label. The 55th Grammy Awards ceremony will be held Feb. 10 — August 6 is up against Stephen Hartke (Meanwhile – Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays); Tania León (Inura for Voices, Strings & Percussion); Ugis Praulins (The Nightingale); and Einojuhani Rautavaara (Cello Concerto No. 2, “Towards the Horizon”).
About Stucky’s GRAMMY nominated composition August 4, 1964 on DSO Live, music critic Scott Cantrell wrote in The Dallas Morning News: “Stucky is a master of orchestral writing, his palette alternately portentous and atmospheric. Music director Jaap van Zweden gets stunning playing from the DSO, captured with a glorious panoply of Meyerson Center reverberance.”
In addition to Stucky’s August 4, 1964, other GRAMMY Award nominees for “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” are Stephen Hartke (Meanwhile – Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays); Tania León (Inura for Voices, Strings & Percussion); Ugis Praulins (The Nightingale); and Einojuhani Rautavaara (Cello Concerto No. 2, “Towards the Horizon”).
“The GRAMMY Awards process once again has produced a diverse and impressive list of nominations across multiple genres,” said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy. “This year’s nominees truly represent an exceptional and vibrant creative community that exemplifies some of the highest levels of artistry and excellence in their respective fields. Combined with the fifth year of our primetime nominations special, we’re off to an exciting start on the road to Music’s Biggest Night, the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards, on February 10.”
This is the first GRAMMY nomination for a composition by Steven Stucky. His pieces have appeared in two previous GRAMMY Award-winning “best performance” categories, by pianist Gloria Cheng (2008) and choral group Chanticleer (1999). The sole GRAMMY nomination for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra was in 1982 for an all-Richard Strauss recording of Death and Transfiguration, Don Juan and “Dance of the Seven Veils” with Music Director Eduardo Mata on the RCA label.
First performed on September 18, 2008 by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Stucky’s August 4, 1964 is a concert drama commissioned by the Dallas Symphony for the 100th anniversary of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s birth. The work centers on the day that two key issues in Johnson’s Presidency converged: the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. On that day President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara decided to bomb North Vietnam, escalating the Vietnam conflict, and the bodies of three slain civil rights workers were discovered in Mississippi.
Scheer’s libretto juxtaposes these events and uses White House telephone tapes, letters from the slain civil rights workers and their mothers, speeches by President Johnson, and other contemporary sources for the majority of his text. Two of the four vocal soloists (soprano and alto) portray the mothers of the slain civil rights workers, and the two other soloists portray McNamara (tenor) and LBJ (baritone).
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