Zwilich is one of today’s most popular and listenable composers. She initially studied at Florida State University and then went on to Juilliard, where she worked with luminaries, Roger Sessions and Elliot Carter. She was the first to receive the DMA degree in composition there, and her early works quickly garnered critical acclaim. Eight years after she was graduated, her Symphony No. 1 was a signal success, and she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in music. Her compositions have gone on to receive widespread recognition and have brought her many honors—the latest, an honorary doctorate from the Juilliard School in May 2025. In addition to symphonies and other works for orchestra, she has composed a large variety of chamber works. Noteworthy is her impressive series of concertos for various wind instruments. While her earlier style was, shall we say, “difficult,” with its emphasis upon dense motivic textures, angular melodies, and atonal harmonies—all typical of “academic” composers of that time—she moved on to a much more accessible style. Her mature style—while definitely contemporary in technique and expression—is nevertheless direct, appealing, and infused with many elements that are associated with the musical past: classicism and romanticism.
A vivacious, sparkling curtain raiser, Celebration was commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony in 1984 for the inaugural concert in its new performance hall. And to suit its purpose admirably, the work was conceived in clear, transparent textures that brilliantly showcase the palette of distinctive orchestra colors that are one of the modern symphony orchestra’s most attractive virtues. The composer has characterized the work as a “mini-concerto for orchestra,” and that it manifestly is. Celebration’sother goal was equally to challenge and explore the new hall—or any hall’s—acoustics. Dedicated to the music director of the Indianapolis Symphony at the time, John Nelson, Celebration does all of that, a musical celebration whose sparkling mood skips brightly from beginning to end.
Zwilich describes the work as a “toccata,” which is a centuries old genre, originally for pipe organs. Its free and rhapsodic nature was a perfect vehicle for organists to “test” all of the tonal resources of new organs, while simultaneous allowing them to highlight the imagination of their virtuosity as performers. And this Celebration amply does for the modern symphonic orchestra.
Celebration is altogether representative of this important American composer’s style, and is exemplary of her important contribution to the nation’s musical art. Clarity of motives and themes, formal discipline, and consummate orchestration are melded to support a most attractive artistic vision. Like the fictional French chef who could whip up a feast out of some string beans and an eggshell, Zwilich is a master of unifying her compositions with a few striking ideas that undergo remarkable, imaginative transformations. Outstanding composers have always demonstrated this, and so does Zwilich.
The work is shaped roughly in an arc, opening with dramatic, imposing stentorian unisons vaguely reminiscent of Beethoven. The stern, dark unisons quickly yield to the two chief elements she employs. The first is a jolly, loping, rhythmic, ostinato figure that pervades the whole throughout. The other is a leaping, widely spaced arpeggio that bounds up through the octaves. She deftly puts both ideas through creative transformations in changing guises of color stemming from her mastery of orchestration. An ethereal, soft lyrical section near the middle provides an ingratiating contrast, and equally showcases the solo colors of members of the orchestra. A brisk, gradual return to the stark unisons of the beginning bookends the conclusion. An early reviewer of Celebration effusively compared it to “ . . . a sip of water from a mountain stream, clear and refreshing . . . .” That it is.
–Wm. E. Runyan
©William E. Runyan 2026