Looking Back, Moving On

Metaphorical bridges have provided writers with symbols to express thoughts on a variety of subjects, including, but not limited to, thematic polarities such as loss and redemption, despair and hope, mortality, and immortality. While many of these pairings imply change or movement, nearly all imply a connection from one place or condition, spiritual or physical, to another.

Real bridges have also inspired authors, visual artists, and composers to respond in words, paintings, pictures, and music to specific bridges and to events associated with them. Bridges, Symphony No. 4 deals with three real bridges and with “bridge” as metaphor.

The poet Hart Crane wrote: “The very idea of a bridge is an act of faith.” The idea of “bridge” as a daring leap of faith is an underlying current that flows through all three movements, and it supplies a driving force to the symphony’s first movement, which takes inspiration from the 1974 book A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan.

The first movement, “Bold Advance, Heavy Toll: a Rhine Bridge Too Far at Arnhem,” evokes the devastating failure of an audacious, but ill-advised 1944 attempt to shorten World War II by dropping 35,000 troops behind enemy lines. An inordinate leap of faith was invested in a plan that required the capture of five bridges over the Rhine under extremely adverse conditions. A group of lightly-armed, valiant British soldiers, who tried desperately to secure the bridge at Arnhem, were overwhelmed by substantial German forces and tanks. The entire operation cost more than 17,000 Allied casualties, a far greater toll than the losses at Normandy. 

Woven into the generative motives of the first movement, the British war song Bless ‘em All contributed several melodic fragments that are embedded in a variety of settings. The high-energy, driven character of the movement intermittently yields to more static and stable passages, where layered musical textures become defined by lyrical lines and contrasting instrumental colors and combinations. 

The second movement, “Imagination and Endurance: Roebling’s Dream-Bridge Grows in Brooklyn,” was initially titled “Suspended Marvels.” However, after re-reading some lines in Whitman’s poem A Noiseless Patient Spider, my thoughts shifted specifically to my favorite bridge, crossed numerous times, on foot, in my youth. Whitman wrote: “Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.”  

The 1860’s brainchild of John Augustus Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge was a highly risky and courageous undertaking in 1869. Roebling lost his life due to an injury incurred while working to fix the position of the Brooklyn side tower. Construction was then taken over by his son Washington Roebling, who was also seriously injured and physically incapacitated for life while working on the bridge. Washington’s wife, Emily, mastered enough technical and engineering knowledge to collaborate with her husband and transmit his daily instructions to the workers. 

It took 14 long and difficult years and the lives of more than 20 men to bring Roebling’s dream to fruition. The completed bridge was indeed a “suspended marvel,” the longest in the world until the 1903 Williamsburg Bridge was constructed. Far ahead of its time, it was and is a tribute to the imagination, skill, tenacity, and courage of its builders. 

The final movement, “Strong Steel Emblems Vault the Channel: the ‘Verrazano,’” was inspired by the extraordinary Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that connects Bay Ridge (where I grew up), Brooklyn with Staten Island. Completed in 1964, it was at that time the world’s longest suspension bridge. From the corner of Fourth Avenue and 99th Street, where I lived in 1968, I loved to gaze up at the nearly 700-foot towers and the massive pairs of cables that swung up to and swooped down from the sky-scraping towers, reflecting the afternoon sun or glistening with lights at night. This stunning bridge, a sleek emblem of modern technological prowess, also had a history that included numerous challenges and adversities.

Building the “Verrazano” (the local colloquial spelling) cost the lives of three workers and the displacement of approximately 7,000 people, most of whom lost their homes to make way for the bridge’s path. Additionally, the rural oasis of farms, hills, streams, and wooded areas of 1950 Staten Island, where I camped as a boy, have been replaced by an urban borough of houses, businesses, and storefronts, bustling with people and traffic.

Unlike Whitman’s “gossamer threads” that I link to Roebling’s dream, the Verrazano projects a strong, streamlined, Art Deco arm reaching out over the Narrows tidal strait, the gateway that channels the waters of the 315-mile Hudson River toward the Atlantic Ocean.

Fused in varying degrees with elements of strength and tenacity, Crane’s visionary “act of faith” forms a kind of subtext for all three movements. Although conceived as part of a larger coherent whole, each movement of this symphony manifests a different aspect of this subtext, and can stand on its own as an independent work.

Bridges, Symphony No. 4 was commissioned for and is dedicated to the Florida State University Orchestra and its conductor, Alexander Jiménez, who premiered the work in Tallahassee FL’s Ruby Diamond Concert Hall on February 1, 2020.

— Anthony Iannaccone

With its three movements, Iannaccone’s fourth symphony is the longest work in this album. It was commissioned for and dedicated to the Florida State University Orchestra and its conductor Alexander Jiménez, and premiered in Tallahassee in February of 2020 under the baton of Jiménez, whose extensive experience and success with performances of Iannaccone’s orchestral works resulted in his conducting for this recording. 

Each of the movements has a title suggesting a bridge as its inspiration. In a program note for a Washington DC performance, the composer reveals the dual meaning of the word “bridge” in his fourth symphony. He states:

“Real bridges and metaphorical bridges have inspired authors and composers to respond in words and music to specific bridges and to events associated with them. Bridges, Symphony No.4 deals with three real bridges and also with “bridge” as metaphor. Hart Crane wrote: “The very idea of a bridge is an act of faith.” The idea of “bridge” as a daring leap of faith is an underlying current that flows through all three movements, and it supplies a driving force to the symphony’s first movement, which takes inspiration from Cornelius Ryan’s 1974 book A Bridge Too Far.”

The first movement, “Bold Advance, Heavy Toll: a Rhine Bridge Too Far at Arnhem” bears a reference to a bridge under siege in World War II. Certainly, that war has been lavishly treated in novels and films, but here Iannaccone artfully treats it in music. An aggressive opening, employing full orchestral forces, sets a propulsive tone with relentless accented syncopations. The composer tells us that the British song “Bless ‘em all” contributes melodic fragments to this movement, fragments that generate both small and extended thematic ideas. When the combative tone diminishes, Iannaccone’s gift for lyricism enters, but without depriving the music of underlying strength and forward thrust, as the title Bold Advance suggests. The movement is a true musical adventure with full and powerful orchestration enhanced by vibrant timpani and percussion. Quieter passages blend lyricism with colorful instrumentation, without ever abandoning inexorable forward movement. The movement eventually builds to its highest peak of energy, about which the composer says: “The final build-up to a brutal, even demonic climax (marked ‘Tutta la forza’ in the score) collapses in a brief triple-forte postscript for timpani, brass, strings, and percussion. With the driving force now spent, the music transitions to a fiercely mournful threnody (marked ‘Fervent, intense’ in the score) for strings, woodwinds, and horns.” The soft bell-like rings and elegiac flute that end the movement are especially moving.

The second movement, “Imagination and Endurance: Roebling’s Dream-Bridge Grows in Brooklyn,” begins softly with a quick but gentle seven-note motive in low woodwinds, violas, and cellos. The composer comments: 

“The rapid figure serves as a pickup to a series of sustained, overlapping harmonic clusters that grow from nothing to a dominating volume, and then diminish back to nothing. A flute solo that follows transforms the rapid figure into a songful melodic line. Half of the pickup figure is then appropriated by harp, celesta, and flutes and expanded into a long, rising-and-falling cascade of notes, an accompaniment to the entering lyrical triplet motif. The rising-falling cascade alters to a muted solo-violin accompaniment, which provides a quiet backdrop to a highly expressive violin-section theme, as an expansion of previous motives. The opening pickup figure now becomes the basis for a brief-but-intense development that transitions back to the gentle rising-falling harp-celesta cascade, this time as a backdrop to segments of the expressive violin theme, which is now recast against a layer of softly-sliding string glissandos. After an extended high-energy development, the movement returns to its earlier lyrical focus.”  

The third movement, “Strong Steel Emblems Vault the Channel: the Verrazano,” is a distinctive reference. The “Verrazano” is named after the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River. Iannaccone deliberately uses the colloquial Bay Ridge-Brooklyn misspelling, “Verrazano,” as a nod to his old Brooklyn neighborhood. Here a merger of assertive and buoyant music illuminates, reflects, and celebrates the daring marvel and expanse of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which many of us have experienced. The composer relates his personal fondness for this bridge: “As a young man, I loved to gaze up at the nearly 700-foot towers and the massive pairs of cables that swung up to and swooped down from those sky-scraping towers, reflecting afternoon sun or glistening with lights at night.” How interesting it would be to listen to this movement while making that crossing!

©2023 Lucy Murray