Classical guitarist Michael Brennan in concert Sept. 11

Tickets are $5 for all seats, with special discounts available for students and seniors. For ticket reservations or further information, contact the Merillat Centre for the Arts at (260) 359-4261 or www.huntington.edu/mca. The box office is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Michael Brennan instructs guitar, theory, and worship ensembles at Huntington College. He holds Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in classical guitar performance from California State University, Fullerton.  Brennan is a member of Pi Kappa Lamda, a professional honors fraternity for musicians.  He is also an active performer and arranger of guitar music.  

Brennan studied with David Grimes and has played for Frederic Hand, John Duarte, Marc Teicholz, and Margarita Escarpa in masterclasses.  Mr. Brennan has taught at various schools across the United States including Mount San Antonio College, Cincinnati Bible College, University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music Summer Guitar Workshop and Communiversity, Reid School, School for the Creative and Performing Arts and the University of Utah Continuing Education.  

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Program notes
Faculty Recital of Michael Brennan
September 11, 2001    Huntington College

John Dowland—Fantasia
            John Dowland was one of the greatest lutenist/composers of the late Renaissance.  He is known primarily for his lute songs, but he also composed many works for solo lute including galliards, jigs, almains, and fantasias.  A fantasia, or fantasy, is a work that does not adhere to a strict form and evolves freely, almost as if it were being improvised.  This fantasia begins as a simple, introspective canon and develops into a wonderfully jubilant and triumphant reverie.

Manuel Maria Ponce--Suite in A
           Ponce was one of the preeminent Mexican composers of the twentieth century.  He is most closely associated with the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia (1893-1987).  It was through the prompting of Segovia, who was continually requesting new works from Ponce, that this suite was born.           
            Fritz Kreisler was a virtuoso violinist of the early twentieth century and was somewhat eccentric.  He was known for programming “forgotten works” by important composers on his recital programs, duping his unsuspecting audiences because they were, in actuality, his own compositions..  Suite in A was written to give Kreisler a “taste of his own medicine.”  Segovia and Kreisler, as legend has it, were to share a recital and Ponce wrote this work for the occasion.  But on the program it was attributed to German lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1686-1750).  J.S. Bach was the first choice, but by this time musicologists had become quite familiar with Bach’s music and would have recognized it as fraudulent.  S.L. Weiss, who was a little-known composer (at that time), was a natural second choice.

Fernando Sor--Fantasia Elegiaca
            Sor was a leading figure of the early nineteenth-century frenzy known as “guitaromanie.”  He was a Spaniard but spent most of his life in Paris, the hub of guitar activity in Europe.  His music, for the most part, is solidly classical in its style.  However, his later works begin to reveal his latent romanticism.  Such is the case with Fantasia Elegiaca, his last, large work.  As stated earlier, a fantasia is a free-form piece.  An elegy is a funeral song, written to commemorate a death.  This somber, profound work is one of Sor’s finest compositions.

Lennox Berkeley—Sonatina
            Ponce was an important composer in the conservative “Segovia school” while Berkeley, was part of the Julian Bream (b.1933) “school.”  Bream is an English guitar and lute virtuoso whose chief interests lie in the proliferation of English music.  From Purcell (1659-1695) to Edward Elgar (1857-1934), England was without an important composer.  During the late nineteenth-century nationalist movement in Europe, England’s renaissance, by comparison, was somewhat late.  In addition to Berkeley, Bream has procured the talents of other English composers such as William Walton, Alan Rawsthorne, and Benjamin Britten.  In contrast to Segovia, whose tastes were decidedly romantic, Bream likes more adventurous, even atonal music.  While this work is not atonal, it does stray into other tonal areas.  Despite its distinctly English character, it has several Spanish elements, including Phrygian cadences, rasgueados (strumming), and most notably, numerous hemiolas (three notes against two).

Francis Kleynjans—Nocturne in D, Nocturne in E
            Modern French composer Francis Kleynjans has written some 400 works for the guitar including A l’aube du dernier jour (Dawn of the Last Day).  This startling program work depicts the last few hours of a condemned man’s life and won first prize at the 22^nd Radio France Guitar Competition.  These Nocturnes, however, are more in the tradition of Chopin.  They are charming and lyrical with a touch of gentle chromaticism.

Isaac Albéniz—Leyenda
            Albeniz’s music has long been a favorite for guitarists.  Though, he never wrote for the guitar, his music is perfectly suited for the instrument.  Spanish idioms, which are most associated with the guitar, are essential elements found in Albeniz’s music.  Albeniz is one of the leading composers of the late-nineteenth century nationalist movement in Spain.  Leyenda, or Legend, is one of Albeniz’s most famous works (when played on the guitar) and evokes images of matadors and bullfights.