Agnegram

“Agnegram was written to celebrate the 90th birthday of Agnes Albert and is a portrait of her sophisticated and indefatigably enthusiastic spirit. Agnes led a remarkable life. For half a century she was the San Francisco Symphony’s friend, mentor, patroness, and muse. She grew up performing music and mingling with musicians of all ages. She appeared as a soloist with Pierre Monteux on his last concerts as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. She loved young people, and one of her enduring legacies is the SFS Youth Orchestra.

The piece is composed of themes derived from the spelling of her name. A—G—E are obviously the notes that they name. B is B-flat (as this note is called in German). S is E-flat, also a German musical term. T is used to represent one note, B-natural, the “ti” of the solfège scale. From these arcane but not unprecedented manipulations (Bach, Schumann, and Brahms, among others, enjoyed this game), a basic “scale” of eight unusually arranged notes emerges, from which all the themes are drawn. The piece itself is a march for large orchestra.

The first part of the march is in 6/8 and is almost a mini-concerto for orchestra, giving brief sound-bite opportunities for the different sections of settling into a jazzy and hyper-rangy tune. The middle section of the march, or trio, is in 2/4 and settles into a kind of sly circus atmosphere. Different groups of instruments in different keys make their appearance in an aural procession. First, the winds in C play a new march tune saying “Agnes Albert.” Then, the instruments in F are heard playing the same tune. But as these instruments are transposing instruments, although the notes they play read A—G—N—E—S etc., the notes that are heard are completely different. They are followed by instruments in E-flat and B-flat until quite a jungle-like cacophony is built up—punctuated by alternately elegant and goofball percussion entrances. The section recalls many famous tunes that amused Agnes. There are surreal references to Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, and Irish lullabies, but they appear only to the degree that the notes that they have in common with her name will allow. The jazzy 6/8 tune reappears now in canon and the piece progresses to a jubilant and noisy ending.”

—Michael Tilson Thomas

Video MTT conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Agnegram in 2019

This recording was made with an earlier version of the score.

The brightest spark in Thursday night’s San Francisco Symphony concert in Davies Hall was […] Agnegram, a thoroughly enjoyable 90th birthday present to the Symphony’s indefatigable and broad-minded patron Agnes Albert. This turned out to be a spiky, vivacious march with a boisterous central trio a la Spike Jones. The main theme was derived from turning the letters in Albert’s name into musical notes (a game that goes back at least as far as the Renaissance); the music’s cheerful bravado captures her adventurous, fun-loving spirit. The orchestra gave it a zesty reading.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

Agnegram, as its composer/conductor dubbed the birthday offering, was a gas — a piece d’occasion, inspired, in equal parts, by Leonard Bernstein, William Walton and Spike Jones. He cast the work in the form of a march, trio and recapitulation of the march, and its flashes with the speed of summer lightning.”

—San Francisco Examiner

Music Director Tilson Thomas delivered an affectionate birthday card of his own design — his new four-minute composition, Agnegram. The work is a buoyant, exuberant, boisterous piece, influenced by Igor Stravinsky’s rhythms. Musical notes derived from the letters in her name from the fabric of this affectionate piece, one of the first heard here displayed the work of Tilson Thomas in his composer persona. At the Thursday performances, the orchestra played it with gusto.”

—San Jose Mercury News