Symphony No. 11 (The Year 1775) was commissioned by Jeff Leonard and the Lexington Bicentennial Band in celebration of the band’s 50th Anniversary and the 250th Anniversary of the first shots of the American Revolution.

My research process for this piece began with reading Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hackett Fischer, a wonderful examination of the events leading up to, and including, April 19, 1775. I then spent a day at Minuteman National Park, treading the grounds around North Bridge in Concord and following the path of the British Retreat, standing in the wooded hills at the site of Parker’s Revenge and imagining how those moments must have felt to the American militia.

The overall concept for the piece owes a debt to Dmitri Shostakovich’s own Symphony No. 11 (The Year 1905), a work inspired by the Russian Revolution of that year. My work follows a similar dramatic arc, including a faster second movement depicting the events of a specific day and a final movement which considers the larger impact of those events.

The symphony is structured in two large sections, with the first and second movements connected and the third and fourth movements connected. The pitch material for the entire piece is derived directly from William Billings’s famous revolutionary tune, Chester. The melody of Chester is constructed using a consistent subset of the major scale, called [0135] in set notation. The first two movements of the symphony alter the pitch set of Chester slightly to create an [0134] set which is replicated at the 5th scale degree, creating the following scale: C, Db, Eb, E, G, Ab, Bb, B. The final two movements use the original [0135] set, but with an inverted first one and then a normal one at the 5th scale degree, creating the following scale: F, G, A, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F.

The basic melodic/gestural ideas for the piece are:

Fanfare Motive - first heard in the off-stage trumpets at the beginning of the piece

Gesture of Defiance – two chord motive that uses the complete pitch set and occurs at most major structural arrival points

Revolutionary Theme - first heard with low voices near the beginning of the first movement and based on the first phrase of Chester

Liberty Theme – first heard in the mallets at the beginning of the third movement and based on the last phrase of Chester

Quotes from other songs of the time

The first movement, The Eve of Revolution, begins ominously in percussion, with the distant sounds of the Fanfare Motive heard in the trumpets, suggesting the inevitability of what is to come. The Revolutionary Theme dominates the movement, with two contrapuntal passages surrounding a sparse, soloistic passage. The movement builds to a climax before leading directly into the second movement.

The second movement, The 19th of April, begins eerily at 5 am on Lexington Green, as distant country bells gradually wake the surrounding regions. There are the approaching sounds of the marching British Regulars and then William Diamond’s drum roll leads to the first shot and a dramatic gesture of defiance from the Americans. Now begins a slow but determined British march that leads with inevitability to the standoff at Concord Bridge. After an intense moment of silence, the chaotic, day-long British Retreat begins, as the Regulars are hounded by the American militia all the way back to Charlestown, past Merriam’s Corner, around Bloody Curve, and into the site of Parker’s Revenge, where Captain John Parker’s men from Lexington have their retribution. The musical passages here include four distinct sections intended to suggest individual skirmishes throughout the day. In the midst of this chaotic music, sounds of familiar tunes can be heard, including bitonal versions of Yankee Doodle, The White Cockade, and The Rogues March. The movement concludes with a powerful reiteration of the Gesture of Defiance.

The third movement, A Glorious Day (the Dawning of America), is a reference to the words of Samuel Adams after he heard about the shots at Lexington. In contrast to the previous movement, this one changes to new pitch material and is focused entirely on the Liberty Theme, with a feeling of increasing hopefulness as darkness gradually gives way to the dawning of a new country.

The fourth movement, Liberty, seeks to reflect on the lasting impact of that day in April 1775. According to David Hackett Fischer in Paul Revere’s Ride, Revere believed in “New England’s inherited tradition of ordered freedom, which gave heavy weight to collective rights and individual responsibilities – more so than is given by our modern calculus of individual rights and collective responsibilities.” (Hackett Fischer xvii) The solo passages from the first movement return, accompanied by four contemporaneous quotes using the words of John Hancock and Thomas Paine. The words in each of these quotes resonated deeply with me, as if they could have been spoken today and had the same inspirational power and meaning. Indeed, even today “the birthday of a new world is at hand.”