This fall the students in our Instrumental Music Ensemble had the unique opportunity to correspond with the composer of one of the songs they performed at the Parents’ Weekend Concert, “The Great Waltz of China” by Mark Simos. This contact was initiated by one of the students, who was curious about the origins of the song. We found an address for Mark Simos on the Web and asked him if he could give us more information on his song. Mr. Simos responded with a fascinating description of how this song came to be written and his thoughts on the unique value of music to provide understanding and harmony among different cultures. Parts of his message are paraphrased below:

In 1985, I was on staff at a summer music camp, Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp’s Celtic Week. That year, camp director Jay Ungar, himself one of our great contemporary ‘tunesmiths’, initiated a “Fiddle Tune Name Competition,” and “The Great Waltz of China” was the winning entry. It was sort of assumed by all that the “prize” for the winning entry would be that someone would write a tune for the name, and I found the title intriguing enough that I took up the challenge. Late one night during Celtic Week I sat alone in the main dance hall at the old upright piano and plunked out the tune. I was in a melancholy mood and something of that mood found its way into the tune.

To me, the fact that a pentatonic melody can be harmonized with warm, lush, “Western” chords is emblematic of the possibility of unity among different cultures. Our lovely planet has become so small and is now so imperiled… I believe our best hope lies, not just in finding common ground as human beings, but also in celebrating and harmonizing our unique qualities. Our problems are so complex and daunting: yet I believe each culture brings a special intelligence, not available anywhere else on the earth, that will prove essential to our collective capacity to weather the storm and persevere as a world civilization. Music does not just suggest or illustrate, but activates and deepens, our capacity to hear and savor both the common and varying ground of connection with our neighbors.

Having a connection with the composer and understanding his aspirations for this song added much more depth to both our rehearsals and performance of his music.  We sent Mr. Simos the recording and slide show of our performance and received the following response:

"Great job! Loved hearing the section with the brass players - we never had that in Childsplay! Thanks for playing my tune... Mark"