Bent Frequency presents

Simplicity As Virtuosity

--an exploration of works in which composers use relatively simple means to create polyphony, weave musical lines, and tell stories

 

Sunday, May 1, 3pm

SCAD Ivy Hall

 

Kryl by Robert Erickson

To the Earth by Frederic Rzewski

Lachrymae by Tigran Mansurian

Corrugated Refrains by Neil Thornock

Black by Mark Mellits

Variations 1 by John Cage

 

Kryl by Robert Erickson

___solo trumpet

___written in 1977

_____________________________featuring Amanda Pepping

Notes

Robert Erickson wrote Kryl for friend, colleague at UCSD, and collaborator Ed Harkins. The title pays homage to the famous cornet soloist Bohumir Kryl, known for his charismatic and virtuosic performances, as well as beautiful pedal tones. Before he became a cornet soloist, Kryl was a circus acrobat, and the variety of techniques the trumpeter uses in Erickson's work seem like a musical homage to the multi-talented cornet soloist. In Erickson's Kryl, a solo performer uses a variety of extended techniques including microtonal effects and multiphonics to create a musical story.

 

 

To the Earth by Frederic Rzewski

___solo percussion

___written in1985

_____________________________featuring Stuart Gerber

Although initially conceived of as a piece for large orchestra and recordings of shifting tectonic plates, Frederic Rzewski decided to simplify To the Earth and uses only four basic terra cotta flower pots to accompany the Homeric text. Rzewski decided that he could create a moving piece full of complex emotion using very limited means. Here is a translation of the text by the composer:

To the Earth, Mother of all, I will sing the well-established, the oldest, who nourishes on her surface everything that lives.

Those things that walk upon the holy ground, and those that swim in the sea and those that fly, all these are nourished by your abundance.

It is thanks to you if we humans have healthy children and rich harvests.

Great Earth, you have the power to give life to and to take it away from creatures that must die.

Happy are the ones, whom you honor with your kindness and gifts; what they have built will not vanish.

Their fields are fertile, their herds prosper, and their houses are full of good things.

Their cities are governed with just laws, their women are beautiful; good fortune and wealth follow them.

Their children are radiant with the joy of youth, the young women play in the flowery meadows, dancing with happiness in their hearts.

Holy Earth, undying spirit, so it is, with those whom you honor.

Hail to you, Mother of life, you who are loved by the starry sky; be generous and give me a happy life in return for my song so that I can continue to praise you with my music.

 

 

Lachrymae by Tigran Mansurian

__ __ featuring Jan Baker (soprano saxophone)

__ ___ ___ __ & Tania Maxwell Clements (viola)

 

Lachrymae was written in 1999 for Kim Kashkashian and Jan Garabek. As described on the liner notes on Kashkashian’s CD “Monodia,” Lachrymae, is divided between the two instruments in such a way that they share each other's pitches, often playing in unison, only to emerge thereafter in a contrapuntal duet. The resultant impression is one of strict linearity, as in a Bach Two-Part Invention, while the saxophone and viola preserve the idiomatic flavor of their respective instruments in a freely expanding flow of melody. The listener hears two sound-sources of complementary rather than contrasting timbre. Their vibrations relate so strictly to each other that the lamentation seems to issue from a single source, imparting a fulfilled simplicity to Mansurian's music."

 

Corrugated Refrains by Neil Thornock

commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music for Ken Long (bass clarinet) in 2009

Notes from the composer:

The impetus for the piece is best captured in the first word of the title, both as imagery (I'm thinking of corrugated tin rooftops) and as concept (a structural folding of materials). Throughout the work I explore several methods of folding the musical fabric as a means of strengthening the relationships between otherwise disparate types of material. The folding happens both on the large scale (the work is roughly a rondo in structure) and on several smaller structural levels. Even the oscillation between two pitches - whether rapid or slow - arise out of a highly localized concept of folding.

And then the imagery. I remember the corrugated tin roofs in my neighborhood as a child. They bring to mind something strong and protective on the one hand, rough-hewn and dirty on the other. The sound of something hitting such a roof is crisp, clanky, sometimes with slappy reverberation, depending on the neighborhood.

Black by Mark Mellits

__performed on bari saxophone and bass clarinet

__written in 2009

_featuring Jan Baker (baritone saxophone) & Ken Long (bass clarinet)

Notes from the composer:

Black, [originally] for two amplified bass clarinets, was written for the virtuoso duo, "Sqwonk." The two musicians weave tightly woven patterns together, creating a fabric of music that has complete integration. In this "integrated" world, the musicians are equals and complete each other's every move. As the musical patterns develop, they also move and change, allowing fractions to spin off and push the momentum forward. It is five minutes of rapid firing notes combining and merging into one, black (w)hole."

 

Variations 1 by John Cage

__for any number of players on any instruments

____featuring clarinet, saxophone, viola, trumpet, percussion

___written in 1958

_________

John Cage's Variations 1 is a hallmark of indeterminacy in music. The entire score is one page of written instructions and six transparencies. Cage specifies that the piece is for any instrument and any number of players, so each performer creates his or her own interpretation of the transparencies.

One of the transparencies has 27 dots of 4 different sizes on it. The five remaining transparencies each have 5 intersecting lines on them. According to Cage's directions, the dots represent sound events of complexity that correspond to the size of the dot: the smallest dots are single sounds, and the largest points correspond to 4 or more sounds. The lines on the transparencies represent sound perameters which include lowest frequency, simplest overtone structure, greatest amplitude, least duration, and earliest occurance within a pre-determined time.

The performer must determine which lines and transparencies represent which parameter. Then the performer draws perpendiculars to the lines from the transparencies, and the longer perpendiculars correspond to higher frequencies/amplitude/durations, etc.

Variations 1 is a virtuosic tour de force of indeterminacy. The exact material is unknown to the composer (and performer as well) yet the viruosity/complexity/artistry comes from the away-from-the-instrument working out of the score juxtaposed with how the perfomer relates his/her score, which is totally separate from all of the other performers' scores, to the others. The process is transparent but the music is complex and dependent on the musical relationships created by the performers in the moment.