Jacob David Sudol(b. Des Moines, Iowa 1980) writes intimate compositions that explore enigmatic phenomena and the inner nature of how we perceive sound. He recently finished his M.Mus. at McGill University and currently resides in La Jolla, CA where he is working towards a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California at San Diego with Roger Reynolds, Chinary Ung, Philippe Manoury, and Rand Steiger.
Over the last five years some of Jacob's mentors in composition have included John Rea, Denys Bouliane, Philippe Leroux, Sean Ferguson, Dan Asia, and Craig Walsh. He has also participated in master classes with Danish composer Bent Sørensen and German composer Manfred Stahnke.
During 2005-2006, Jacob was the first-ever composer-in-residence for the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Denys Bouliane, in collaboration with the McGill Digital Composition Studio. He has also written music for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Contemporary Keyboard Society, percussionist Fernando Rocha, saxophonist Elizabeth Bunt, and clarinetist Krista Martynes. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, he composed the music for a collaborative dance project with choreographer Hillary Peterson, and he was the principal composer and pianist for El Proyecto de Santa Barbara, a chamber Latin jazz ensemble.
During the 2005 and 2007 Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques and 2006 MusiMars festivals Jacob was an electronic assistant for performances with Court-Circuit, Matt Haimovitz, Sara Laimon, Martin Matalon, Moritz Eggert, Manfred Stahnke, the Caput Ensemble, and the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble. These concerts were broadcast by the CBC and the European Broadcasting Union in over fifty countries throughout the world. He is currently a studio research assistant for Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds.
During his free time Jacob takes an active interest in religious phenomenology, cinema, acoustics, literature, poetry, and visual art. As a composer and performer, he always attempts to bring insights from these other fields into his work.
Disclaimer:
All music posted on this blog is posted out of love and the idea that for the truly great music of our time(s) to be known it must first and foremost be heard. If you like what you hear please support the artist by buying the recordings, scores, and/or encouraging the performances of the music in every way possible.
If you are the composer, performer, performing organization, artist or directly represent the composer, performer, performing organization, or artist of anything posted on this website and would like your material removed please contact me and I will happily oblige.
“...I pursued my work with a kind of marvellous serenity. I compose more slowly as I have more and more notes of my music to write! I have just completed the first six minutes of Croix-tu en l’immortalité de l’âme? I am almost doing ‘Dripping’! The whole piece uses two poles: mobility and immobility! Here is a text which I sue in an immobile part: I was cold, it was winter well I thought I was cold maybe I was cold. God had told me that I would be cold. Maybe I was dead.
I was not afraid of being dead as much as I was afraid of dying. Suddenly I got cold very cold - or I was cold. It was night and I was afraid. I believe that it is a beautiful text for the work I am now composing...”
Excerpt from a letter to Thérèse Desjardins by Claude Vivier, Paris, January 7th, 1983
In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori baskets of olives and lemons, cobbles spattered with wine and the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles with rose-pink fish; armfuls of dark grapes heaped on peach-down.
On this same square they burned Giordano Bruno. henchmen kindled the pyre close-pressed by the mob. Before the flames had died the taverns were full again, baskets of olives and lemons again on the vendors’ shoulders.
I thought of Campo dei Fiori in Warsaw by the sky-carousel one clear spring evening to the strains of a carnival tune. The bright melody drowned the salvos from the ghetto wall, and couples were flying high in the cloudless sky.
At times wind from the burning would drift dark kites along and riders on the carousel caught petals in midair. That same hot wind blew open the skirts of the girls and the crowds were laughing on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.
Someone will read as moral that the people of Rome or Warsaw haddle, laugh, make love hs they pass by matyrs’ pyres. Someone else will read of the passing of things human, of the oblivion born before the flames have died.
But that day I thought only of the loneliness of the dying, of how, when Giordano climbed to his burning he could not find in any human tongue words for mankind, mankind who live on.
Already they were back at their wine or peddled their white starfish, baskets of olives and lemons they had shouldered to the fair, and he already distanced as if centuries had passed while they paused just a moment for his flying in the fire.
Those dying here, the lonely forgotten by the world, our tongue becomes for them the language of an ancient planet. until, when all is legend and many years have passed, on a new Campo dei Fiori rage will kindle at a poet’s word.
Before I post a few more contemporary two-movement works I wanted to post a few older two-part and two-movement compositions.
The first two works not technically two-movement compositions. That said I feel that both are good examples of a work constructed in two parts. For example, the prelude and fugue is arguably one of the archetypal pairs that comprise a whole. I’ve chosen J. S. Bach’s b flat minor prelude and five-voice fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 because it is possibly my favorite prelude and fugue.
Most of Chopin’s nocturnes were published in pairs and to this day are often performed in recitals that way. Opus 55 is probably my favorite of these pairs.
Beethoven struggled with the two-movement form periodically throughout all of his piano sonatas and arguably it wasn’t until the last try that he really got it right. While looking for two-movement compositions I noticed that the form is used far less regularly than three or four-movements. This might be because it is harder to balance multiple movements when there are only two of them. In my opinion it is this attempt at literal balance that makes most of Beethoven’s other two-movement sonatas less remarkable. On the other hand, it seems to be the misbalance between the normal-length tempestuous first movement and extended and almost transcendental second movement that makes Opus 111 so moving and unforgettable.
Performed by the Danish Notional Radio Symphony Orchestra
Available along with many of Nørgård's works on emusic
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In the last three years I've been rather preoccupied with the idea of writing two movement compositions. In reflection, I think this preoccupation started after I heard Denys Bouliane present an analysis of his work "Rumore Sui." What struck me the most about this piece at the time was the two-sidedness of the two movements -- how, although the two movements are constructed in a very simple near perfect symmetry, one perceives something much more complex in their relationships.
This preoccupation has led me to work on two compositions that each have two movements -- a work for clarinet or saxophone and electronics and a violin and cello duo. To date, I have only finished the first movement of each work. (The violin and cello duo was premiered at a jury recently at the University of California in San Diego and the clarinet/electronic piece will be premiered in a rough form on Tuesday.) Not finishing either of these works has bothered me quite a bit and in attempting finally finish the second movement of the clarinet or saxophone and electronics works I've begun to listen to a lot of my favorite two movement compositions.
One of my favorite two movement compositions is Per Nørgård's Symphony #4. Lately I have been listening to a lot of music Per Nørgård. This is in part because he has written a number of successful two movement piece such as the Third Symphony, "Voyage into the Golden Screen," "Remembering Child," and his Fourth Symphony.
Nørgård composed his Fourth Symphony soon after he became obsessed with the work of outsider artist Adolf Wölfli (1864 - 1930). As a result of this obsession Nørgård dedicates this work to Adolf Wölfli. This obsession with Wölfli is also seen in the compositional style of this symphony which includes an extreme drama not found in any of Nørgård's previous work. In fact, I often hear this symphony as a parody of the monumental high structuralism that is so present in his previous Symphony #3. That aside, this symphony also includes a personal emotionalism drawn from Nørgård's reflections on some of Wölfli's imagination. In my opinion this emotionalism is largely what imbues Nørgård's compositions written since the 80's with an expressiveness that I am greatly drawn towards.
"Rumore sui” is the second in Denys Bouliane’s new trilogy of chamber works (the first being the previously posted ”Qualia sui" (2001-02) for piano trio and the final being “Tremore sui” for violin and piano (2004-)). The thematic linking in these works derives itself from the Latin word “sui” which means “of oneself." As the trilogy progresses a there is a progression towards a deeper level of introspective probing.
The two movements in "Rumore sui" are essentially two views on the same musical material -- the first movement an extroverted view and the second an introverted view. The second movement of this work with its early culminating vortex and the following hypnotic shattered modal faux-music-box is quite possibly my favorite of all of Denys's works.
In my last post I failed to mention that in late Summer I moved from Montréal to San Diego where I just started studies towards a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California at San Diego. Unfortunately this move, and the subsequent challenges of getting my feet on the ground again, kept me from updating this blog with my previous regularity. That said, now that I have a little more free time I wanted to share some of my recent experiences.
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As part of my stipend at UCSD I was assigned to be one of Roger Reynolds’s two studio Research Assistants. This quarter this meant that I got to help work on Roger Reynold’s most recent large work Sanctuary, for percussion ensemble and live electronics. My main tasks included consulting with Roger and Ian Saxton (Roger’s other Research Assistant) on the PD patch Ian programmed to run the live electronics in Sanctuary, helping with the technological set-up, as well as triggering the piece’s 180+ electronic cues during rehearsals and performance.
In mid and late October Steve Schick, red fish blue fish, Roger Reynolds, Ian Saxton and myself spent a little a more than two weeks at UCSD working in the Multipurpose Space at CalIt 2. We spent this time experimenting with and refining technology for the world premiere of Sanctuary that occurred on November 18th.
Below are two photos taken while we worked in the Multipurpose Space
Left to Right: Greg Stuart and Roger Reynolds
Left to Right: Ian Saxton (at computer), Greg Stuart, Justin DeHart, Roger Reynolds, Fabio Olivera, Ross Karre
For a week in mid-November, Steve Schick, red fish blue fish, Roger Reynolds, Ian Saxton, Josef Kucera, and me headed to Washington D.C. to prepare for and give the world premiere of Sanctuary in the atrium of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. Every night before the performance we had to set up everything for Sanctuary after the gallery closed, rehearse, and then breakdown everything by 11 P.M. This was particularly stressful because not only did the the set-up include five percussion stations, two remote almglocken stations, but one to three microphones for every station, twelve speakers distributed across three levels of the gallery, recording equipment, and multiple computers and audio mixers. That said it was remarkable to rehearse in the National Gallery after it closed every night and the performance went off with virtually no technical problems.
Below are some photos I took while we worked at the National Gallery of Art. (There are also photos of the premiere available here.)
Steve Schick rehearsing Chatter/Clatter during a dinner break
Fabio Olivera watching Steve Schick rehearse
Roger Reynolds, Lina Bahn, and members of red fish blue fish relaxing before rehearsal
Ian Saxton frenetically programming behind the empty chair where I sat with the score and triggered cues
Jacob David Sudol: “Sing/Lose” (2007) For chamber ensemble (15 players) Performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne conducted by Lorraine Vaillancourt Not available commercially
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First off I have to apologize for my long lack of posts. With this post I plan to return to my previous regular rate of postings.
This is the recording of the piece I wrote over the summer that was magnificently premiered by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne at the 2007 Domaine Forget New Music Sessions in northern Québec earlier this summer. The rehearsal process was pretty painless and with each subsequent reading I became more and more pleasantly surprised. I’ve included the program note below.
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The title "Sing/Lose" refers to the two primary preoccupations in my music, and in this piece – as in all my music – I approach these preoccupations abstractly. For example, "Sing" does not refer literally to singing but to a lyricism in the phrases and timbres, as well as to an almost breath-like musical flow. Likewise, "Lose" does not refer to any specific loss but to Andrei Tarkovsky's assertion that "the life force of music is materialized on the brink of its own total disappearance." In this piece "Lose" refers to the eventual disintegration, decay, even death of the work's organic material and form.
“Sing/Lose” was written for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and the New Music Sessions at the 2007 Domaine Forget international music festival in northeastern Québec. I composed the piece during the summer of 2007, at the end of a three-year stay in Montréal. The piece is dedicated to all those who have been close to me during my sojourn in Montréal.
I apologize for my recent absense. I'm currently enjoying new music, discussion, the Canadian wilderness, and the wide Saint Lawrence river at Domaine Forget. Regular posts will resume in September.
posted by Jacob Sudol
