David Maslanka (1943-2017) was an American composer whose probing and introspective music ranges from chamber music miniatures to large, epic symphonies. Born in New Bedford, MA, Maslanka studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (including a year at the Salzburg Mozarteum) and with H. Owen Reed at Michigan State University.  He spent his early career teaching at several institutions before dedicating himself solely to composition in 1990. He won several awards for his music, and he worked solely on commission for many years. His compositions for wind band won him particular acclaim, including more than a dozen concertos, seven symphonies (plus two more for orchestra), and several concert pieces, including A Child’s Garden of Dreams. His Symphony no. 10 remained unfinished at his death, and was completed by his son Matthew in 2018.

Maslanka’s Symphony no. 4 was written in 1993 on a commission from a trio of bands: the University of Texas at Austin Wind Ensemble, the Stephen F. Austin University Bands, and the Michigan State University Bands, directed by Jerry Junkin, Kevin Sedatole, and John Whitwell, respectively. It has since become a touchstone of the band repertoire, one that even the very finest ensembles and conductors aspire to, and one that connects deeply with players and audiences. Its finest performances mirror the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional depth of the composer, who offered the following program note in his score (links added by me):

The sources that give rise to a piece of music are many and deep. It is possible to describe the technical aspects of a work – its construction principles, its orchestration – but nearly impossible to write of its soul-nature except through hints and suggestions.

The roots of Symphony No. 4 are many. The central driving force is the spontaneous rise of the impulse to shout for the joy of life. I feel it is the powerful voice of the Earth that comes to me from my adopted western Montana, and the high plains and mountains of central Idaho. My personal experience of the voice is one of being helpless and torn open by the power of the thing that wants to be expressed – the welling-up shout that cannot be denied. I am set aquiver and am forced to shout and sing. The response in the voice of the Earth is the answering shout of thanksgiving, and the shout of praise.

Out of this, the hymn tune “Old Hundred,” several other hymn tunes (the Bach chorales “Only Trust in God to Guide You” and “Christ Who Makes Us Holy“), and original melodies which are hymn-like in nature, form the backbone of Symphony No. 4.

To explain the presence of these hymns, at least in part, and to hint at the life of the Symphony, I must say something about my long-time fascination with Abraham Lincoln. Carl Sandburg’s monumental Abraham Lincoln offers a picture of Lincoln in death. Lincoln’s close friend, David R. Locke, saw him in his coffin. According to Locke, his face had an expression of absolute content, of relief at having thrown off an unimaginable burden. The same expression had crossed Lincoln’s face only a few times in life; when after a great calamity, he had come to great victory. Sandburg goes on to describe a scene from Lincoln’s journey to final rest at Springfield, Illinois. On April 28, 1865, the coffin lay on a mound of green moss and white flowers in the rotunda of the capitol building in Columbus, Ohio. Thousands of people passed by each hour to view the body. At four in the afternoon, in the red-gold of a prairie sunset, accompanied by the boom of minute guns and a brass band playing “Old Hundred,” the coffin was removed to the waiting funeral train.

For me, Lincoln’s life and death are as critical today as they were more than a century ago. He remains a model for this age. Lincoln maintained in his person the tremendous struggle of opposites raging in the country in his time. He was inwardly open to the boiling chaos, out of which he forged the framework of a new unifying idea. It wore him down and killed him, as it wore and killed the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Civil War, as it has continued to wear and kill by the millions up to the present day. Confirmed in the world by Lincoln was the unshakable idea of the unity of all the human race, and by extension the unity of all life, and by further extension, the unity of all life with all matter, with all energy, and with the silent and seemingly empty and unfathomable mystery of our origins.

Out of chaos and the fierce joining of opposite comes new life and hope. From this impulse I used “Old Hundred,” known as the Doxology – a hymn of praise to God; Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow; Gloria in excelsis Deo – the mid-sixteenth century setting of Psalm 100. Psalm 100 reads in part:

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord
with gladness: come before his presence with singing… Enter into
his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise: be
thankful unto him, and bless his name.

I have used Christian symbols because they are my cultural heritage, but I have tried to move through them to a depth of universal humanness, to an awareness that is not defined by religious label. My impulse through this music is to speak to the fundamental human issues of transformation and re-birth in this chaotic time.

Mallory Thompson leads the US Navy Band in Symphony no. 4:

Here is “Old Hundred” in a monumental hymn setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams:

Maslanka also alludes to Bach chorales, including “Only Trust in God to Guide You”:

And “Christ Who Makes Us Holy”:

David Maslanka’s music is thankfully alive and well through the website of his foundation. See its detailed resource about Symphony no. 4 here. See more at the Wind Repertory Project, this University of Texas dissertation, and Glen Adsit’s reflection on what was to be Maslanka’s final guest residency, just months before he died. You can also view the score at Issuu.