Ulysses Kay

Ancient Saga: A Design for Modern Dance

Mentored by the likes of William Grant Still, Paul Hindemith, and Howard Hanson, Kay was an impressive composer by any metric, winning a Fulbright Scholarship, the prestigious Rome Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship and a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship. Kay favored neoclassical tendencies in his works, featuring lyricism, contrapuntal textures, clear formal designs and a tonal, yet chromatic harmonic vocabulary, all of which are evident in his Ancient Saga from 1947. The piece was originally composed for a solo dancer and piano in 1946 to fulfill a commission by Eleanor Goff, a longtime member of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Kay expanded the piece in the following year for piano and string orchestra. With Kay's fine ear for string sonorities and his characteristically sophisticated and elegant neoclassical harmonic and melodic sensibilities, Ancient Saga is a worthy entry to the string orchestra repertoire.