Classical music is a capacious topic and one about which I have no expertise. On the contrary, I am a real dilettante, and I guess this is my saving grace—I know that I don’t know much. I took a relevant course in college some 4 ½ decades ago, I listened to it on radio stations KUT and KMFA when I was living in Austin, and biographies of Bach (two, in fact), Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin can be found in my library.
The television set in my Seoul officetel is only used for an all-classical music channel. This, I must emphasize, is background music to me. I enjoy classical music, especially that of the four above-cited worthies, but I am clueless about the parlance, the concepts, the historical background and so forth. I could not tell you the difference between B sharp minor and A flat major to save my life.
OK, enough self-deprecation! I want to travel back in time to September 1968. A pep rally was being held in the auditorium of Bryan Adams High School, as our football team’s first game of the season—against Hillcrest—would be played that night. Toward the end, with the players, the green-and-white-clad Belles, the Spirits in the balcony, the cheerleaders and the rest of us on our feet, the BA Band played the alma mater. (This term has two meanings, related but different. The first denotes a school, college or university that a person once attended. The other is the musical anthem of such an educational institution. I refer here to the latter.) It was a nice, lilting tune, and the words have never left me:
On our city’s eastern border
’Neath the Texas sky
Proudly stands our alma mater
As the years go by.
Forward ever be our watchword,
Conquer and prevail,
Hail to thee, our alma mater,
Bryan Adams, hail!
I have the good fortune to work with a man, Dr. Kim Moon-kyoung, who is adept in two fields, intellectual property and classical music. IP pays the bills, but his passion is classical—baroque, in particular. He knows it, studies it and gives presentations to rapt audiences about it. Dr. Kim does not just listen to this music, he appreciates and understands it in far greater depth than yours truly.
With his help, I was able to identify the source of the BA alma mater. It is Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in C major, Opus 76, No. 62, Hoboken III: 77. Not the whole thing, however, just the second movement popularly known as “Emperor.” Here I summarize this splendid piece of music which Haydn crafted in 1797.
“Emperor” was not among Haydn’s greatest hits when he was composing and serving as kapellmeister at the court of Esterhazy. It got the informal name because Haydn wanted to write an anthem for Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor. His music was set to Lorenz Leopold Haschka’s poem “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” (“God Save Emperor Francis”), and in 1922 the second movement became the German national anthem “Deutschlandlied.” Haydn, who came from a poor family (unusual for such a successful composer), had strong connections to folk music. Some scholars say he borrowed melodies from humble Austrians, Gypsies and Croatians, and that parts of this string quartet can be traced to an old folk song popular in northern Croatia named “Stal se jesem.” Maybe, but there is no evidence of Haydn ever visiting Croatia. Furthermore, we have to remember that such borrowings were not at all uncommon among classical composers of that era.
Let us bring our attention back to Bryan Adams High School. Its doors first opened in September 1957, exactly 11 years before the Cougars’ pep rally in the auditorium which I mentioned earlier. By the way, the song we sang and which is still sung is a truncated and simplified version of the second movement of that string quartet. Just as the music was not composed strictly for BA, the same is true for the lyrics. Vanderbilt University also uses Haydn’s song and those lyrics—with slight variations. And so does Kansas University, and for that matter Cornell University. And how could we forget Illinois State University? To compound matters, my friend Bo Carter is a graduate of Sheffield (Alabama) High School, and he informs me that it is sung and played there as well. There must be many more.
I felt rather deflated upon realizing that the music and lyrics of the BA alma mater are anything but original. Nevertheless, prior to the 1957-58 school year somebody—maybe the band director and/or music teacher—chose Haydn’s piece and played with the lyrics (“’Neath the Texas sky” is a very nice touch) based on Haschka’s poem. It might also have been a person in the DISD headquarters on Ross Avenue whose duties included assigning alma maters whenever new high schools opened.
In just over three months, I will attend the 50-year reunion of the BA class of 1971. Whether it is planned as part of the program or done spontaneously, I hope we will sing our alma mater that night at the Beeman Hotel in Dallas.
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