Christopher Theofanidis: Rainbow Body
American composer Christopher Theofanidis was born on December 18, 1967 in Dallas, Texas and currently serves on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He holds degrees from Yale, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Houston. Theofanidis has received several distinguished prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, the International Masterprize (Barbican Centre, London) and has had fellowships at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts and from the Fulbright Foundation. His orchestral works have been performed by major orchestras around the world. From 1994-96 he was composer-in-residence with the California Symphony. According to the composer, Rainbow Body, a twelve-minute work for orchestra was composed in 2000 to fulfill a commission from the Houston Symphony and was inspired by the music of the medieval mystic, Hildegard on Bingen. It takes its title from the “Tibetan Buddhist idea of ‘Rainbow Body,’ which is that when an enlightened being dies physically, his or her body is absorbed directly back into the universe as energy, as light.” It is scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubles on piccolo), 3 oboes, 3 clarinets (2nd doubles on E-flat and 3rd doubles on bass), 3 bassoons (3rd doubles on contra), 4 horns, 3 C trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, piano, harp, timpani, percussion, and strings.
The composer has provided the following program notes for Rainbow Body:
In the past few years I have been listening to the music of medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen a great deal, and as simple and direct as this music is, I am constantly amazed by its staying power. Hildegard’s melodies have very memorable contours which set them apart from other chants of the period. They are wonderfully sensual and set up a very intimate communication with the divine. This work is based on one of her chants, ‘Ave Maria, o auctrix vite’ (Hail Mary, source of life).
Rainbow Body begins in an understated, mysterious manner, calling attention to some of the key intervals and motives of the piece. When the primary melody enters for the first time about a minute into the work, I present it very directly in the strings without accompaniment. In the orchestration, I try to capture a halo around this melody, creating a wet acoustic by emphasizing the lingering reverberations one might hear in an old cathedral.
Although the piece is built essentially around fragments of the melody, I also return to the tune in its entirety several times throughout the work, as a kind of plateau of stability and peace within an otherwise turbulent environment. Rainbow Body has a very different sensibility from the Hildegard chant, with a structure that is dramatic and developmental, but I hope that it conveys at least a little of my love for the beauty and grace of her work.
Rainbow Body is dedicated to Glen Rosenbaum, without whose support and encouragement I would not be composing.
Notes by David B. Levy/Christopher Theofanidis © 2009/2026
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in Eb Major, op. 55 (“Eroica”)
One of history’s pivotal composers, Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 15 or 16, 1770 in Bonn, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. His epic and groundbreaking Symphony no. 3 (“Eroica”) was composed in 1804 and received its firstpublic performance at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien on April 7, 1805. The “Eroica” is dedicated to Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz, in whose palace it received its first private reading in front of a select audience. The Symphony is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Beethoven had what might be characterized as a love-hate relationship with the dominant political figure of his day—Napoleon Bonaparte. The violent erasure of the French leader’s name from the title page of the Eroica Symphony stands as silent witness to the composer’s reaction to Napoleon having crowned himself Emperor in 1804. Scholars such as Frida Knight and Maynard Solomon have observed that Beethoven’s public rejection of Napoleon signified more than a tempestuous artist’s reaction to a tyrant. It represented his psychological alignment with Austrian nationalism and Enlightenment humanism. Beethoven’s plan, in short, was to match political power with artistic power. The Eroica Symphony, therefore, was the first shot to be fired in this battle.
These political issues, however, came later. Many of the musical influences that shaped the Eroica Symphony were undeniably French in origin. Post-1789 France cultivated an impressive repertoire of “heroic” music, much of which was composed to honor the memory of the Revolution’s fallen heroes and martyrs. The composers of these pieces–Gossec, Grétry, Méhul, and Cherubini—were well-known figures to Beethoven. Important features of their works were muffled funeral drums and hymn-like melodies, elements that Beethoven freely incorporated in the Eroica’s second movement; the Marcia funèbre (the same influence may also be seen in the slow movement of his Piano Sonata in A-flat, op. 26). The chief glory of the Eroica Symphony lies in its synthesis of the spirit of the French revolutionary style with the formalities of the four-movement symphony to create a work of unparalleled and unprecedented scope and power.
The sheer length of the Eroica—nearly twice that of Beethoven’s first two symphonies—is only the outward manifestation of its immense scope. Beethoven was well aware that such expansion entailed a certain degree of risk taking. This is why the first edition of the score and parts for the Eroica included a recommendation to place the piece “nearer the beginning than the end” of a concert, lest the audience become “fatigued by the previous pieces.”
The scenario that is played out in the opening movement, Allegro con brio, is akin to a French “rescue drama”: a kind of Fidelio without words in which we sense both peril and exultation to the fullest extent. Similarly, the Marcia funèbre is written on a huge scale. This movement is filled with dramatic gestures, none more explosive than the suspense-filled moment whereby a single note in the violins hangs quietly in the air, only to be severed by a fortissimo guillotine blow of cellos and basses. The last two movements also live up to the Eroica’s grand scale. No classical minuet will suffice here. Instead, Beethoven substitutes a truly explosive scherzo, a movement that lives up to its name (“joke”) through audacious rhythmic and metric trickery. Even the humble trio section is raised to a higher level of drama by means of a stirring trio of horns. The finale, Allegro molto, is based on a tune that Beethoven had used in three previous works—the seventh of twelve Contradanses, WoO 14; the finale of the ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus op. 49; and the Variations for Piano, op. 35. A feature of the latter work—variations on the tune’s bass line before the entry of the tune itself—is retained in the Eroica’s finale. Beethoven, in this final movement, took a giant stride toward redefining the significance of the last movement of a symphony, a part of the sonata cycle that heretofore (except, perhaps, in Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony) had been given far less weight than the first or second movement.
Notes by David B. Levy, © 2007/2026
