Crossroads of Traditions Concert
| Hymn and Fuging Tune No. 16 | Henry Cowell (1987- 1965) |
| Suite for solo violin | Manuel Enríquez (1926-1994) |
| Vertical thoughts II | Morton Feldman |
| Xagna | Hiroyuki Itoh |
| "... un ser con unas alas enormes" (1996) | Ileana Pérez-Velázquez (born 1964, Cuba) |
| On fire | Stefan Freund (born 1974, USA) |
Presented by The Latin American Music Center with the support of the School of Music and the Office of Creative Arts Exchange Program of the United States Information Agency. | |
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| Auer Hall Wednesday Evening July 3 Eight O'clock | |
Program Notes
. . . un ser con unas alas enormes (1996)
Ileana Pérez
un ser con unas alas enormes which translates as a being with enormous wings, was inspired by the 17th Freeman Etude for solo violin by John Cage. Within the hectic gestures that are a big part of this etude, are passages that are reminiscent of ryhthms from Cuban music. An important idea for John Cage is that human beings can become better by overcoming their limitations - this piece translates that spirit: humans improve through the use of their imagination. (Almost immediately, the musical form 'takes off', as in a flight of imagination). The tape part, as a departure of style for Ileana, is fragmentary, and is processed excerpts from the Freeman Etude. At the time of composition, Ileana was studying Eastern music, and from that study, the use of silence as a conscious part of the piece yet again reflects back to Cage
Reflexiones (1964)
Manuel Enríquez
Reflexiones is a serial piece for solo violin. As such, much of the manner of construction, and many surface aspects of the piece make the composition part of an (unfashionable) near-old style. Refreshingly, this four-movement work show how flexible and expressive this mode of composition can be - in gifted hands.
Reflexiones uses extended techniques wonderfully, as an integral part of the piece; the range of sonorities from the single violin betray Enriquez's background as a violinist (living in New York during the 1930's, he studied the violin with Galamian - while also taking composition lessons with Stefan Wolpe).
When Enriquez died in 1994, Mexico lost one of its foremost composers, who's exploration of a personal style of aleatoric music has become internationally known. However, his imagination and craft in the formal world of 12-tone music is formidable - in Reflexiones, note how the vertical and horizontal ramifications of the opening gesture, itself presenting a 12-tone gesture in combination of chord and flourish, are relevant to the unfolding of the whole composition.
On Fire (1995)
Stefan Freund
Stefan writes - On Fire was inspired by the many vituosic violinists who study at Indiana University and perform such works as the last movements of the Sinding Suite, the Chaikovsky and Barber concertos. I realized I wanted to write a work that would showcase their talents and display my influences, such as the Stravinsky and Britten concertos, and the Lutoslawski Partita. On Fire experiments with melodic modulation which involves morphing the original theme to create a new melody. I expanded this idea by changing the tonality, texture, and overall mood of the resulting variations, to present them in different atmospheres.
The title is Marv Albert's favorite reference to a basketball player who gets hot and can't miss a shot. The same phenomenon appears to occur when string players perform a piece of perpetual motion and can't miss a note; they're On Fire.
Epitaph (1993)
Teresa LeVelle
Dr. Richard James was chairperson of graduate studies for the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University and a recognized teacher, researcher and lecturer of 20th-century music. He was author of numerous articles and scholarly papers and co-authored "International Music Journals" published by Greenwood Press. He has served the National Hemophilia Foundation in numerous leadership position on a regional, national and international level. He was immediate past chairman of the NHF Board of Directors and served as NHF consumer representative to the federal AIDS Clinical Trial Group. As a member of the Northwest AIDS Foundation's speakers bureau, he frequently addressed various groups about living with hemophilia and AIDS. Dr. James was my graduate advisor, teacher and a member of my thesis committee. He was an inspirational musician, teach and friend. Richard James died May 6, 1993 of HIV/AIDS complications, at the age of 42.
This piece is dedicated to him. Silence and long-tones epitomize the emptiness I feel when someone close to me dies. Gradual acceleration of tempo and the expansion of pitch register parallel the anger and pain I experience upon receiving such news. The brevity of the piece reflects the tragic brevity of the life of Richard James.
Angel of Despair (1995)
Hiroyuki Itoh
Hiroyuki Itoh is from Japan, and completed his Doctorate in composition at the University of California, San Diego. One of his principal teachers has been Joji Yuasa. Xagna (1991), a composition for four violins, won a prize sponsored by Riacordi Music Publishers, and has been published by them in a version of the piece for violin and tape.
Angel of Despair (1995) intensifies the musical expression, already extreme, as in pieces Hiroyuki Itoh has written such as Xagna. The solo violin plays with two G-strings, one of them replacing the D; this creates an intensification of the sound as well as opening new avenues of double-stopping resources. While the piece is sectional, the manner of development within each section (and the way in which the relative tension between each sectional idea adjusts) is truly masterly, and has really a personal manner of dealing with this often-used formal idea.
Angel of Despair has an avalanche of ornament, and chromatic inflection with varying motive ideas: this could be seen as a tortuous, despairing narrative of the Angel It is a very hard piece to learn, let alone perform. The complex rhythms of the piece describe, in the end, only finely etched accelerando's and ritard's. Yet within this minutiae of detail, inflection, lies enormous depth of expression. The rage in much of the piece takes on a human aspect - fragile and unstable - however harsh and violent much of the notes are. The question with many of these kind of "new virtuosity" pieces, "new complexity" pieces, is why spend all that time on such an elaborate ornament of a pretty basic expressive idea.
Yet I would argue that Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" sonate is also an essay on some pretty basic human emotions (or you could say a musical construction that speaks clearly about many recognizable human expressions) - and pianists gladly spend months learning this monstrous instrumental challenge.
And maybe Charles Webb is right when he said at the introductory meeting of this workshop, that without contemporary music, with all its reflections and expressions of our (violent and despairing?) contemporary world, maybe we will indeed lose our interest in culture all together. I'm sure Webb did not mean it, but I would say that older music will never speak with the vitality of the new and contemporary and avant-garde - without this new music, and people bothering to learn it, for the sake of it, not because it is convenient - without this spirit, we might as well not have Beethoven around at all
Vertical Thought II (1963)
Morton Feldman
Feldman wrote that his compositions "project sounds into time, free from a compositional rhetoric." Speaking of his music's future (and perhaps its value) Feldman says, "for any music's future, you don't go to the devices, you don't go to the procedures, you go to the attitude. And you don't find your own attitude; that's what you inherit. I'm not my own man. I'm a compilation of all the important people in my life. I once had a seven hour conversation with Boulez; unknown to him, it affected my life. I admire his attitude. Varèse's attitude. Wolpe's attitude [Feldman studied with Stefan Wolpe]. Cage's attitude. I spent one afternoon with Beckett; it will be with me forever. Not his work; not his commitment; not his marvelous face, but his attitude." (from Soundpieces - 1982)
Four Violins (1996)
Jason Stanyek
This piece relates to an idea in ancient Chinese music, where open strings represent earth, the harmonics found on the strings are the music of heaven, and stopped/fingered notes, the music of mortals. On a more down to earth level, this piece uses the microtone resource of tunings of Ben Jonston, with a selection of scordaturas each covering a different tuning arrangement. Originally for four violins, this performance uses a tape of three of the parts I have recorded; the piece is in a state of completion, where each new section creates the piece to another completion. After I have received a new section though, I cannot understand how it was possible to have not had this bit in the first place! Working on this project, particularly recording the other tracks for this concert and others in New Zealand, was a crossroads of sorts for me: much of the performance aspects of the piece is free, and Jason is beautifully untyranical about anything. Exceptas we recorded, for example, I came to discover the presence of his enormous experience in musics from all over the world, and also his phenomenal instinct in what we were striving to achieve with this piece.
Hymn and Fuguing Tune No 16 (1963)
Henry Cowell
Inspired by American traditional music he heard as a boy in Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa, Cowell wrote, in the last part (dare we say 'period'?) of an extraordinary and productive life, 18 Hymn and Fuguing Tunes (1944-64). As well as drawing on distant childhood memories, Cowell's study of William Walker's shape-note collection The Southern Harmony served as a direct and tangible influence on the Hymn and Fuguing Tunes: comparing the two shows the way in which one American traditional style was worked into a contemporary idiom (and the older source was not just poured over a generic music, for flavor!). Another important childhood musical tradition Cowell heard (in San Francisco) was Chinese Classical Opera; this musical background - American traditional music and severely Eastern music - are an unorthodox training for a composer, regardless of the time-period in question! This shaped Cowell's thinking, and later his influence, much beyond the famous innovations often cited in textbooks (such as inside-the-piano techniques, cluster composition, and using eastern concepts as the basis of compositions).
With this in mind, Cowell provides interesting and provocative input into the idea of crossroads within the (American) tradition. He was a very prolific writer of books, articles, reviews of contemporary music and related issues. In one interview he said, "Today every composer is faced with the problem I faced for myself in my youth: how may one learn to live in the whole world of music - to live, and to create? No single technique, no single tradition is any longer enoughWestern and Eastern arts must come together on an equal basis." John Cage once said, "Cowell's ecumenical, uncritical, approach of including just about every idea that interested him, provided an 'open sesame' for new music in America."
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Currently completing a Master's degree in piano at Indiana University, Christopher Jones is a pianist and composer whose appearances as a soloist and chamber musician have taken him from Vancouver, B. C. to Boston. A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mr. Jones completed his undergraduate training at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Solo and chamber performances at NEC's Jordan Hall led to recordings of works by Béla Bartók and Elliott Carter for WGBH radio in Boston.
Mr. Jones has been very active as a performer of contemporary music. As a soloist, he has worked with composers such as John Cage and Bernard Rands, and as a member of IU's New Music Ensemble, has worked with William Bolcom and David Felder. In the Fall of 1996, Mr. Jones will be pursuing studies in composition at the University of Calgary.
Nicholas Roth was honored, 1988, by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana for his "contribution to the performing arts, his accomplishments as a concert pianist, and his inspiration to young musicians." From Elkhart, Indiana, Nicholas Roth has won many prizes, such as the Joseph Battista Memorial Scholarship, and was a 1993 Beethoven Fellow of the American Pianists Association. He has performed with orchestras such as the Indianapolis Philharmonic and Naples Philharmonic, played numerous recitals in the Midwest, and has toured, with chamber music, in Spain. Later this year, Nicholas will take up a DAAD Fellowship to study with Elise Vissaladze at the "Hochschule für Musik," Munich.
Mark Menzies is an aluminas from Indiana University who's concerto and recital invitations range from Great Britain, Japan, USA, to New Zealand, his country of citizenship. Mark Menzies has a large repertoire, that includes a substantial conventional repertoire as well as a continually growing number of contemporary works.
As a soloist and chamber musician, Mark Menzies has been included on five CD recordings - the first was nominated for a Grammy award; Mark is a National Recording Artist of Radio New Zealand. Mark Menzies has worked with internationally renown conductors and composers including Maxim Shostakovich and Luciano Berio.
Currently resident in San Diego, Mark will be touring in New Zealand
and Japan within the next year. In San Diego, Mark is a member of Sirius
and Sonor Ensembles, affiliated with the University of California, San Diego.
Notes by Mark Menzies
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