Hello, I have been busy practicing practicing practicing for a recital which I just finished. I had very little time to even take care of basic issues with this website, including what seems to be configuration issues and what I assume are attempts to hijack the site. I’ll have to figure out how this is happening. In the mean time, here is an update on an upcoming project some of my compositions are appearing in. The concert is on April 15th at 8:00 PM and the lovely Peiharn Chen and Kate Maroney will be performing my song cycle “Love Songs“. Here is some fantastic poster art for you:
One of the ways Stockhausen put this piece together with the huge crescendos that go to a climax and then suddenly disappear was to record an attack with a synthesizer & reverb running. He would then record the sample of the attack + reverb playing backwards to get the desired effect.
In October, Björk released Biophilia, and the iPad/iPhone applications that allowed her listeners to interact with the album. The creative power in these apps lies in both their simplicity, and just how much they allow the user to do with the music Björk has composed.
Biophilia’s first application, “Cosmogony”, functions as a menu screen and, less importantly, as a traditional music video. The video orbits around a beautiful celestial design that acts as a portal to the rest of the album, but ultimately, it’s a passive experience.
Earlier this fall I had the chance to go and listen to Gunther Schuller speak about his ideas regarding the Third Stream, in a gross simplification it is simply Schuller’s idea of what to call some sort of fusion between jazz and classical music. Schuller explains it more deeply in his book Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller:
THIRD STREAM is a way of composing, improvising, and performing that brings musics together rather than segregating them. It is a way of making music which holds that all musics are created equal, coexisting in a beautiful brotherhood/sisterhood of musics that complement and fructify each other. It is a global concept which allows the world’s musics-written, improvised, handed-down, traditional, experimental-to come together, to learn from one another, to reflect human diversity and pluralism. It is the music of rapprochement of entent–not of competition and confrontation. And it is the logical outcome of the American melting pot: E pluribus unum.
Setting Schuller aside for a moment, I also heard later on in the semester that Mark O’Connor had spoken a bit on his idea of where music in the world was headed. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the lecture where O’Connor made these statements, so they might just be hearsay and should be taken with a grain of salt. But via my friend Joy Adams, O’Connor seemed to feel strongly that American music was going to play a very strong role in influencing the music of the world in the future. (As an aside: it hasn’t already??) Joy insisted O’Connor meant American music in general but I thought that O’Connor probably meant American folk music specifically, because that’s O’Connor’s thing. Much like Schuller writes that Third Stream is a philosophy of inclusiveness and any combination of cultural styles should be considered as such, Third Stream is widely held to represent the fusion of Avant Classical and Jazz.
What interests me about these two musician’s ideas is that they may be on to something but I believe they are a little off in which direction the fusion between contemporary classical and a “popular form” is occurring. To be clear, Third Stream (Jazz + Classical) did happen, you can hear it ranging from Schuller himself to Milhaud, but as far as the future goes, I believe that indie music and bands like Radio Head and the singer Björk are going to have a much greater impact on classical’s”fused” form rather than Jazz or folk music. Just listen to young composers of the likes of Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, Corey Dargel who’s sounds cross over heavily into indie-pop pop territory. Granted much of what they do is an extension along the minimalist-post-minimalist-(whatever the hell we should call this movement) axis, but in our current version of the Third Stream, what’s wrong with a lot of cross-pollination?
I recently attended New World Symphony’s season opening concert. On the program were Smetana, Schumann, Janáček and a new work by James Lee III. This concert was also reviewed in the Miami herald, so if you would like a second opinion you can head over there. This is the first time I have been in New World Symphony’s brand new hall designed by Frank Gehry. I remember the symphony’s old hall and there are a few noticeable differences to the atmosphere and sound. The new hall has a much more open quality to it and seats are positioned around a terrace above the orchestra in addition to the standard orchestra seating in front. The sound seems fairly clear, but I find it lacks the vibrancy of the old hall. For this concert I was seated in one of the terraces behind the orchestra, right behind the basses and cellos.
Before the actual program began, Michael Tilson Thomas led the orchestra in the Star Spangled Banner, which I found to be superfluous. Mr. Thomas seems to enjoy beginning pieces without drawing the audience in through poise and focus. Sometimes this is a very effective way to begin a piece, as with the exciting Smetana, but in the case of the Schumann, maybe a little more silence before the sound of the work begins could be afforded. Mr. Thomas is what I would call a “musician’s conductor” (if there even is such a thing), as his ictus is sharp and clear. Mr. Thomas led the orchestra through the Smetana with great precision, and I must take my hats off to the violins for playing with fantastic clarity through the very exposed opening passages. When the violas, cellos and basses finally enter with the same material it was a little muddy, but I do believe that my seats were not helping me hear the sections directly in front of me, as their f-holes were all pointed away from me. Again, I wish the hall had more of a ‘shimmering vibrancy’ that these players deserve.
In the Schumann Piano concerto, the New World Symphony was joined by Javier Perianes. Mr. Perianes’ pedal control is lovely and his playing is very graceful. I do agree with The Herald’s review that his playing lacks the muscle one would expect to be needed in a Romantic piano concerto. Throughout the work, the orchestra sometimes overpowered the piano (especially when the pianist was nestled in the middle range of the instrument) and sometimes it marginally lagged behind the soloist as well. Throughout the work, the orchestra performed the pianissimo dynamics stunningly, but consistently overpowered the piano in tutti sections. Mr. Perianes also brought the melodies in the piano texture of the recap of the 1st movement out nicely and the massive swells to forte immediately followed by subito pianos in the 3rd movement were performed magnificently.
The third piece on the program was a new work by James Lee III called Sukkot through Orion’s Nebula. The piece is overtly religious in both title and elements of the piece. The work is based off of a mesh of Judeo and Christian mythology about the return of the messiah. In the Old Testament, the messiah was to return by descending through Orion’s nebula and the piece is a description of this process, ultimately ending in a more joyous version of rapture from revelations. One cute little insertion of numerology into the music was that Mr. Lee had divided the piece into seven structural sections. This is references the number of eyes and horns Jesus has in his ‘lamb’ form from Revelations. The work begins with a massive percussion and horn announcement. Immediately apparent is that Mr. Lee is a fantastic orchestrator. A large, heavy brass sound and furious strings are used throughout the opening section which then develops into a slower section with threadlike, atmospherically high violin parts placed over a harmonically whole tone-y bed in the winds and pitched percussion. The work eventually returns to the large brass and string sounds of the beginning but more energetically transformed. The piece sounds very “American” (whatever that means to you) and it seemed to have the large fingerprint of John Adams on it.
Finally we had the Janáček Sinfonietta. New World was joined by members of University of Miami’s Brass department to fill the required needs of the expanded orchestration, and many of the extra players were positioned around the terraces of the hall. The piece begins with heavy, folksy brass calls, much like the opening of L’Orpheo by Monteverdi, but bigger. As the section develops, the harmonies created against the timpani become something much more meaningful than the pesante & simple tune that began the work. In the ‘B’ section of the movement, the strings take over for an extended, playful dance section with some goofy interjections from the trombones.
The 2nd movement starts off with a homophonic string intro that transitions into some beautiful wind solos, all of which were played quite well. This movement also featured one of the harder French horn solos I’ve heard. I can imagine the horn player sweating that one a little. The 3rd movement was also very folksy, and at this point I was starting to wonder what was going on in the piece. I usually associate Janáček with music a little less obtuse. To see what I mean, I recommend taking a listen to the first movement of this piece and comparing the harmonic language of the beginning of that movement to the end of the same brass section that I admired earlier. The later part of this section’s language is what I usually think of when I think ‘Janáček,’ not the very opening.
Overall the performance was very well done. In the beginning, the over sized brass section was having a little bit of trouble staying together because they were so distended throughout the concert hall, but they adjusted and were spot on together by the end of the piece when the more interesting language of the beginning of the work returned.
Vaudeville Park hosts two unique nights of chamber music by the composer collective “Circles and Lines” as part of an innovative classical crossover into the 2011 College Music Journal Festival. Come to ONE or come to BOTH!
Vaudeville Park
25 Bushwick Avenue
New York, NY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20th 2011, 7:30PM:
The first concert features premieres of new works by Circles and Lines composers Angelica Negron, Noam Faingold, Conrad Winslow, Eric Lemmon and Dylan Glatthorn. The program features experimental ensemble Project 60/40, up-and-coming new music pianist David Friend, and Boston-based double bassist Peter Ferretti, among others.
-Program-
Angélica Negrón – The Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak
Conrad Winslow – All Rise
Dylan Glatthorn – Broken Ships on Empty Seas
Eric Lemmon – Prelude No. 26
Eric Lemmon – The Mass of St. Sécaire
Eric Lemmon – Closer for Solo Viola
Noam Faingold – Facebook Opera Scenes
Noam Faingold – Hymn to Romance
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23rd 2011, 6:30PM:
The second program, features a collaborative concert with PUBLIQuartet, who will perform pieces for string quartet by Circles and Lines composers. Also on the program are works by PUBLIQuartet violinist Jessie Montgomery, and three NYU composers who will be joining the program, which was curated by members of Circles and Lines as a result of a call for scores in August 2011. The concert will present an opportunity to hear from the composer of each piece and to ask questions pertaining to their work. Following the concert on October 23rd, there will be a cocktail party in celebration of Vaudeville Park’s CMJ “Music as Art” series with free champagne.
-Program-
Angélica Negrón – Bubblegum Grass Peppermint Field
Dylan Glatthorn – Stars Falling Like Raindrops
Elias Constantopedos – Mirologia
Eric Lemmon – Piece for String Quartet
Jessie Montgomery – Standing/Forward
Joshua Green – Con Fuoco
Noam Faingold – “Sunrise” for String Quartet
Ryan Homsey – Rounding the Apse
“…But he has nothing to worry about, that chap in Tempo. He’s going to have it all. Pitch relationships, plus sound and chance thrown in. Total consolidation. Those two words define the new academy. You can tie it all up in the well-known formula, “You made a small circle and excluded me; I made a bigger circle and included you.” A kind of Jonah-and-the-whale syndrome is taking place. Everything is being chewed up en masse and for the mass. Until recently, unless you worked in the avant-garde mainstream (Which is to say, in the Schoenberg/Webern orientation), nobody knew what you were doing. Then, as serial music began to utilize and incorporate chance techniques, they became acceptable, too.
It may seem strange to call Boulez and Stockhausen popularizers, but that’s what they are. They glamorized Schoenberg and Webern, now they’re glamorizing something else. But chance to them is just another procedure, another vehicle for new aspects of structure or of sonority independent of pitch organization. They could have gotten these things from Ives or Varèse, but the went to these men with too deep a prejudice, the prejudice of the equal, the colleague.”
Pg. 56 Feldman, Morton, and B. H. Friedman. Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2000.
I recently went to a fellow UMiami student, Corey Klein’s Masters Recital. The recital featured more contemporary works for horn than one would expect (three by living composers), and two were of particular interest to me as they were written by young composers. The third contemporary work was by UM composition department head Dennis Kam. As a student at UM I’ll refrain from reviewing both Corey’s performance and Kam’s work thoroughly for some silly sense of journalistic integrity. I will say this about Corey’s performance, his sound is very mellow and lush, and moving through the range & tessitura of the instrument seems effortless for him. If you were to think of the word brass as an onomatopoeia, there was very little ‘brassiness’ to the playing.
Distance in The Eyes of Stars – Natalie Moller
The first piece by a young composer on the program was by Natalie Moller. I am not sure if she was at the recital because she was not acknowledged after her piece was performed. The piece begins with glistening clusters that seem to be condensed chords constructed out of upper partials or 7th, 9th, 11th… extensions. The horn enters with muted glisses and some chromatic inflections that sound a bit like a lamentation. As the music accelerated, the piano became percussive until arriving at some large cluster blows at the bottom of the range of the piano. These attacks reminded me of Mahler’s Hammer Strikes of Fate.
After these crushing blows, a macabre dirge begins as the horn trills above the march like material. As the piece begins to conclude, the piece returns to a heroic character that was glimpsed at earlier in the piece. Finally the work climbs in range on the horn to the end.
My Beloved – Riho Esko Maimets
The second work by a young composer was from Estonian, Riho Esko Maimets. The topic of the piece, while not specifically programmatic was heavily tilted towards a religious context. The piece is based partly on a poem by an eighth century Sufi mystic, Rabi’a al-Basri. The text is here:
My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my
solitude,
And my Beloved is with me always,
For His love I can find no substitute,
And His love is the test for me among mortal
beings,
Whenever His Beauty I may contemplate,
He is my “mihrab”, towards Him is my “qiblah”
If I die of love, before completing satisfaction,
Alas, for my anxiety in the world, alas for my
distress,
O Healer (of souls) the heard feeds upon its
desire,
The striving after union with Thee has healed my
soul,
O my Joy and my Life abidingly,
You were the source of my life and from Thee
also came my ecstasy.
I have separated myself from all created beings,
My hope is for union with Thee, for that is the
goal of my desire.
The piece starts out with a simple line in the piano that is directly evocative of chant. As a listener, I believe I heard the outlining of the pitches of both the Kyrie and the Credo from the Christmas Day Mass. There are three reasons that I could be hearing this:
I think it would be hard for someone to avoid indirectly transcribing these two chants when trying to be evokative since they seem to be one of those bits of music that is out there in “the ether“.
The composer is intentionally quoting and reducing.
I just finished working with these materials myself in a composition, so I am just hearing what I want to hear.
Once the monody ran its course and other voices were added in, Maimets did a good job of maintaining the “Renaissance” sound he had created by focusing heavily on drones and perfect intervals. Maimets’ timing was also very good, because just as a listener were to tire of the chant effect, he expanded on the idea of the chant line and changed the texture by adding in walking thirds, “modernizing” the sound. Writing chant in a specifically religious piece is a cheap trick (one I have exploited for sure), but it is also effective. If a composer wants to evoke reverence and awe, slap in some simple renaissance-like lines á la Arvo Pärt and the audience will respond accordingly.
The introduction to this piece was quite long and Maimet withheld the horn from the entirety of it. The horn’s entrance is a single stark pitch that stands out from the piano’s harmony. The horn then develops into a flowing melody that is supported by wind chime tinkling at the top of the piano. Some of the interesting ways that Maimets created harmonic tension was by moving from a monotonal system to a polytonal set of chords and then back again.
One of the more dramatic moments of the piece was when a large aria sequence developed out of chordal trills in the piano and a fantastic horn line, which soared to the denouement of the piece. The conclusion features the music slowing back down and returns to the chiming texture in the piano but this time with the horn blowing wind through the pipes of the instrument.
“Recently I heard news from Europe that Bouez is adopting the chance techniques of John Cage and perhaps myself. Like Mathieu, he is going to show us Katzenjammer Kids how an ambitious Frenchman can really do it. It was easy for Napoleon to reach Mosow. And it will be curious to observe Boulez straggling home to Darmstadt.
Boulez has neither elegance nor physicality. His sound consists of a million gestures, all going upward (ertainly not to heaven) – an étude, a caricature of our times, a homage to Artaud and Franz Liszt.
Nevertheless, he is a magnificent academician, and it will be thanks to his sucess that we will be able to hear more of Varèse, John Cage, Christian Wolff and myself.”
Fightin’ words.
“He alone has given us this elegance, this physical reality, this impression that the music is writing about mankind rather than being composed”
Referring to Varèse, some beautiful words. I feel they can be extended to most any music written at a time. In some ways music is a reflection of the mood and psyche of a composer, all of which is impacted by the society a composer is living in. Art as a reflection -kind of a modernist idea, huh?
Edit: For citation purposes; Feldman, Morton. Give my regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman. B.H. Friedman, ed. Cambridge, MA: Exact Change, 2000.
