1/1/2012 – Despite my stepping back, editing, and taking stock, I still managed to finish one more piece in 2011: a short unaccompanied SATB setting of “My Kiss is a Journey…”, a poem by Stephen John Kalinich. Stevie is an accomplished poet, songwriter, and lyricist. He’s probably best known for his poems “If You Knew…” and “A World of Peace Must Come,” as well as for supplying lyrics for several songs by the Beach Boys. But these works just scratch the surface of his varied and prolific career.
I began corresponding with Stevie a few years ago, after writing about his CD A World of Peace Must Come. He was kind enough to allow Kay and I to read one of his poems as part of our wedding ceremony in 2009. I’m delighted that Stevie allowed me to set some of his poetry to music.
My kiss is a journey
From Gods lips
Who blew me into being
You can hear a faint echo
If you listen intently
Beyond the silence is the Hmmm
Of Creation continuing
-Stephen John Kalinich
I posted a MIDI demo of the piece over at Soundcloud (embed below). Instead of vocal “oo’s” and “ah’s,” the “out-of-the-box” software synth solution, I opted to substitute clarinets for the voices. If any choirs are interested in the piece, please be in touch.
Yesterday’s post on File Under ? previewed Saturday evening’s concert by the Talea Ensemble at Merkin Hall (details here). Talea’s Artistic Director Anthony Cheung, a composer and pianist, was kind enough to answer some questions about the show and tell us about the ensemble’s upcoming activities.
- For those who aren’t up on the lingo, how would you describe Inharmonic and (X)enharmonic music? Do you think of them as different varieties of microtonal music?
Inharmonicity simply means a sound/timbre whose overtone frequencies aren’t pure whole number multiples of a fundamental, i.e. not a perfectly consonant spectrum. Inharmonicity is a common preoccupation with composers associated with spectral music, as it’s a way to measure degrees of dissonance; if one takes purely harmonic spectra to be consonance, stretching (contracting or expanding) the spectrum can lead towards greater perceived dissonance, eventually crossing the threshold to “noise.”
Xenharmonic music was a term invented by microtonal pioneer Ivor Darreg – a contemporary of Partch – to describe any harmonic system that doesn’t fit the 12-note equal tempered system of tuning that has dominated western music of the last two centuries or so. So it basically applies to everything on the program. And my not-terribly-clever play on the word, putting the parenthesis around the letter “X”, points to the word “enharmonic” embedded within. Enharmonic equivalents (i.e. B# and C ) can be radically different in a non equal-tempered scale, resulting in startling microtonal intervals. These differences were once the subject of much debate, e.g. between theorist-composers such as Rousseau and Rameau.
-How many different tuning systems are represented on the show?
It’s hard to pin down exactly, because there is certainly just intonation within various limits, as well as the more “approximate” use of micro-intervals in classic spectral music (a term which cannot be pinned down by any particular system), and then there are many hybrid systems, like in my piece and Enno Poppe’s. Wyschnegradsky, for instance, uses quarter-tones in his second string quartet, but really views his language not as microtonal, but “ultra-chromatic.”
-Which pieces are premieres?
No world premieres, but two US, my Discrete Infinity (written for the Ensemble Modern earlier this year) and Enno Poppe’s Holz(written for the Klangforum Wien in 2000).
-Does Dean Drummond use the Partch tunings (with non-Partch instruments) for his piece?
He uses various just tunings. He programmed several presets for the Yamaha DX7 synth, and the violin part is also written with mostly pure ratios. It’s interesting to be presenting a piece of Dean’s without Partch instruments or the 31-tone zoomoozophone, which he invented, since they are so associated with his music and the hand he’s had with maintaining Partch’s legacy. But in terms of tuning accuracy, the synthesizer cannot fail, and the sounds themselves are quite otherworldly.
-Are there ways that you can get microtones out of Talea’s pitched percussion instruments?
In terms of the retuned percussion, this really is Dean’s domain. A number of composers are writing now for specially tuned instruments. Earlier this year Rand Steiger wrote us a piece with custom-made vibraphone bars tuned to specific just intervals. Certain pitched percussion instruments have inherently complex, inharmonic timbres, such as almglocken and gongs, and these always blend nicely in the context of microtonal harmonies.
-Is the piano being retuned/detuned at all for the show?
No, unfortunately not. One of the earliest ideas I had was to do either the Ives quartertone pieces for two pianos, or a selection of Wyschnegradsky’s quartertone preludes, also for two pianos. Then logistics and costs got in the way; you wouldn’t imagine how expensive it is to retune a piano. My dream is to one day hear Wyschnegradsky’s Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra for four quarter-tuned pianos, or his works for 3 pianos in sixth-tones. But other instruments will be retuned, such as in my piece.
-What’s coming up for Talea? Any plans to get into the recording studio in 2012?
Lots coming up in the spring. We have a recording project at EMPAC of Romitelli’s music, which will be presented along with a portrait concert. Also, concerts of recent Austrian music, a trio of new string quartets from Japan, residencies planned at Stanford, Cornell, Ithaca College, and a trip to Darmstadt in the summer, where we’ll present two concerts. And we’re in the process of recording some chamber works of mine, which we’ll finish up later next year. So it’ll be a packed few months ahead!
Alexandre Lunsqui’sFibers, Yarn, and Wire is receives its premiere performances tonight at the Met Museum and tomorrow at Symphony Space as part of the New York Philharmonic’sContact! program. The Brazilian-born composer has been blogging about the preparing the work for Q2: his entries are titled “Contact! High.”
Jeffrey Milarsky’sJuilliard-based ensemble Axiom generally performs “modern classics:” repertoire from the Twentieth century that the school’s other NME, the New Juilliard Ensemble, doesn’t tend to cover as frequently (filling in a hole in the new music curriculum at a conservatory? Excellent idea!).
But they’re making an exception tonight, giving the premiere of Three Explorations, a 2010 work for baritone and ensemble by everyone’s favorite 103 year-old composer Elliott Carter. It’s a setting of poems from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Also on the program: Babbitt’sAll Set and Boulez’sSur Incises. And the show’s the best price in town: free.
Elliott Carter (lower left corner) takes a bow after 92nd Street Y’s 103rd Birthday Tribute Concert to Mr. Carter on December 8, 2011, which ended with the world premiere of his A Sunbeam’s Architecture, conducted by Ryan McAdams and performed by tenor Nicholas Phan and chamber orchestra. (Photo: Cory Weaver)
Elliott Carter is 103. The only composer who lived longer: Leo Ornstein. But Ornstein stopped composing at 97: Carter is still going.
On Thursday evening, in a concert at the 92nd Street Y organized by cellist Fred Sherry, seven works written since Carter’s 100th birthday were given their world or US premieres. Astounding.
Fred, I’m thinking of setting E.E. Cummings for tenor and chamber orchestra… That’s a wonderful idea, it goes along with your other settings of important American poets; which poems will you use? Perhaps some of the early poems having to do with WWI.
Can you play these multi-stops: C, G, C#, G#, E and C, G, E#, D#, B, F#? I’ll try them out when I get home. [Later, on the telephone] Yes, they work. Good, I’m putting them in my new Double Trio.
I’m working on a String Trio, do you think the viola can hold a high F-sharp for almost two bars? What is the tempo? Oh…it is half note = 60. (Knowing it will work, I answer) Let me try it out. Yes, the viola will be able to hold it. Good, that’s the end of the piece!
Then the idea of the 103rd birthday concert for Elliott Carter came about. Last year, for his 102nd birthday, Charlie Neidich and the Camerata Notturna did a beautiful concert which included the Clarinet Concerto, Wind Rose and the slow movement of Carter’s Symphony No. 1. This year, I thought, let’s do all of Carter’s new music, most of which has not been heard in New York or anywhere. This concert is fated to succeed because of the music, and the people: Carol Archer, Nicholas Phan, Virgil Blackwell, Rolf Schulte, Gordon Gottlieb, and many more.
Elliott will be hearing five of his pieces for the first time. THIS IS GOING TO BE AN INCREDIBLE PARTY!
Elliott Carter’s 103rd Birthday Concert will be at the 92nd Street Y (Uptown; Kaufman Concert Hall) on December 8 at 8 PM (three days early, but we’ll give ‘em that!)
Better yet, courtesy of 92nd Street Y and Boosey & Hawkes, Sequenza 21 is offering two pairs of tickets to the concert.
Here’s how to enter: send a short missive about Elliott Carter – your favorite piece, something about his music that interests you, etc. – to my email address: s21managingeditor@gmail.com
I will use a Cageian, rather than Carterian, method of selecting the winners (hint: put names in hat: draw out two).
Contest is open until Sunday at noon. I will announce the winners on Monday morning. Those entries that are particularly eloquent and non-trollish will be published on the site.
Those Carterians outside of New York or unable to make the show – take heart. We will also be having a second giveaway – signed Carter memorabilia! Check back here later this week for details.
On the blog tomorrow, we’ll be discussing Landscapes, Toshio Hosokawa’s first portrait CD for the ECM imprint. The new recording features an orchestral arrangement of this 1993 work, originally scored for shô and string quartet.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be compelled to prefer one to the other: Landscape V is a haunting tone poem in both its intimate and fuller incarnations.
A collective of choral composers and conductors who sing too? Right up my alley!
Join C4 tonight or on Saturday for a program of ‘ecstatic’ music, featuring several new works, including a premiere by Sequenza 21 friend and collaborator Hayes Biggs(program notes below).
Notes on The Caged Skylark by Hayes Biggs
My setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s The Caged Skylark was begun in the spring of 2011 and completed in August of the same year. The piece is dedicated to Gregg Smith, in honor of his eightieth birthday and with deepest thanks for his unflagging commitment to and support of American composers over the past several decades.
Hopkins (1844-1889), besides being possessed of a vision that made much of twentieth-century English poetry possible, was a convert to Roman Catholicism and a Jesuit priest. The Caged Skylark begins darkly, its first two stanzas juxtaposing the image of the brave, “dare-gale” skylark chafing against the confines of his “dull cage,” with the workaday drudgery of humans, imprisoned in their own earthly bodies. My setting begins with a duet for the sopranos and altos that seems to suggest the aimlessness of the bird in his futile struggle against his incarceration, culminating in chordal “bursts of fear or rage” in the full choir, with the altos hanging on stubbornly after the other voices have abruptly been cut o
Hopkins changes the affect completely for the last two stanzas. The skylark, even when flying free and high, still needs a resting place, a “wild nest” to which he can rapidly descend at will from the heights. Likewise, humans freed—in Hopkins’s view—by the fact of Christ’s resurrection still require their own dwellings, but their bodies are now transformed into something much lighter, no more an encumbrance than would be a rainbow alighting upon a meadow. Musically, my interpretation of the oem takes on a decidedly more tonal cast, but it is a tonality hard won and not without ambivalence.
If you’re in New York on Thursday and happen to be free, come hear my first composition written in 72 EDO tuning: that’s equal temperament with 72 notes per octave!
loadbang
Notes in the Cracks: loadbang performs a concert of microtonal music, featuring 3 new premieres, a trio for the horns, and a solo turn for baritone Jeff Gavett. Music by Aaron Cassidy, Christian Carey, Heather Frasch, Tim McCormack, & Julia Werntz
Greenwich House - November 10th, 2011 8PM
46 Barrow Street, Manhattan Admission: $15 general; $10 students and seniors’;
tickets at the door; no advance sales
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