SKU: BC.67142
SKU: PR.44641192L
UPC: 680160610860. 11 x 14 inches.
One of my greatest pleasures in writing a concerto is exploring the new world that opens for me each time I enter the sometimes alien, but always fascinating, world of a solo instrument or instruments. For me, the challenge is to discover the deepest nature of the solo instrument (its karma, if you will) and to allow that essential character to guide the shape and form of the work and the nature of the interaction between soloists and orchestra. In recent years, many of us have become more aware of the musical world outside the Western tradition of musics that follow different procedures and spring from other aesthetics. And contemporary percussionists have opened many of these worlds to us, as they have ventured around the globe, participating in Brazilian Samba schools, studying Gamelan and African drumming with local experts, collecting instruments from Asia and Africa and South America and the South Pacific, widening our horizons in the process. I will never forget our first meeting in Toronto when Nexus invited me into their world of hundreds of exciting percussion instruments. The vast array of instruments in the collection of the Nexus ensemble is truly global in scope as well as offering a thrilling sound-universe. I was inspired by the incredible range of sound and moved by the fact that so many of these instruments were musical reflections of a spiritual dimension. After long consideration, I decided that it would not only be impossible, but even undesirable for this Western-tradition-steeped composer to attempt to use these instruments in a culturally authentic way. My goal was an existential kind of authenticity: searching instead for universal ideas that would be true to both myself and the performers while acknowledging the traditional uses of the instruments. Since many percussion instruments are associated with various kinds of ritual, I decided that I would allow that concept to shape my piece. Rituals is in four movements, each issuing from a ritual associated with percussion, but with the orchestral interaction providing an essential element in the musical form. I. Invocation alludes to the traditions of invoking the spirit of the instruments, or the gods, or the ancestors before performing. II. Ambulation moves from a processional, through march and dance to fantasy based on all three. III. Remembrances alludes to traditions of memorializing. IV. Contests progresses from friendly competition games, contests to a suggestion of a battle of big band drummers, to warlike exchanges. In the 2nd and 4th movements, another percussion tradition, improvisation, is employed. Written into these movements are a number of seeds for improvisation. Indications in the score call for the soloists to improvise in three different ways, marked A for percussion alone; marked B for percussion with and in response to the orchestra; and C where the percussionists are free to add and embellish the written parts. These improvisations should grow out of and embellish previous motives and gestures in the movement.
SKU: PR.164002390
UPC: 680160038091.
I became interested in the work of Plato through my friend and collaborator, the writer and philosopher Paul Woodruff. Paul's new translation, with Alexander Nehamas, of the Symposium gave me insights into ancient Greek ways of thinking about Love, Beauty, and Wisdom -- and managed to keep the earthy, and often bawdy side of it all in full view. But their new translation of Plato's later dialogue Phaedrus went even further: the beauty of the speeches is breathtaking, and the discourse itself is enough to keep one awake at night. Basically the Great Speech of Socrates in the Phaedrus dialogue has to do with the place of Eros in the world, and with the conflict in the soul between fleshly pleasure and philosophic discovery. I will not attempt to encapsulate this brilliant discourse in a program note: suffice it to say that reading it gave rise to my two-sided work for clarinet, violin, and piano, Phaedrus. The first movement represents the Philosophic life, and is thus subtitled Apollo's Lyre (Invocation and Hymn). It begins with an unaccompanied melody for the clarinet, which (after a pair of harp-like flourishes for the piano, expands into an accompanied canon. The voices in the dialogue (clarinet and violin) follow each other by a prescribed number of beats, but the music is totally devoid of any meter at all. The piano, representing the lyre, accompanies this lyric love-feast with repeated strummed chords. The canon has three large sections, and ends with violin echoing the unaccompanied clarinet invocation as the sound of the lyre fades. The second movement, called Dionysus' Dream-Orgy (Ritual Dance) presents, after a brief introduction, another kind of unmetered music. Rather than long lyric flights of philosophic song, however, this time we hear a unison dance of unbridled energy and sensual transport. The piece soon forms itself into a loose arch form, with contrasting metered dance sections divided by the unison unmetered orgy tune. Midway through the movement, Apollo's melody returns from the first movement, but it is a temporary reminiscence. The orgiastic dance returns, reaches a climax, and ends with a stomping of feet. While Plato asserts that a proper balance between lust and reason is necessary in all men, he (naturally) gives the nod to Philosophy as the better choice in which to live. Not so in my music: the two sides are meant to coexist and to complement each other. No sides are taken. Phaedrus was commissioned of the Verdehr Trio by Michigan State University. It is dedicated to the Vedehr Trio with great affection and admiration.
SKU: BC.67144
SKU: BC.67143
