Jonathon Kirk – Spirits and Elements

In 1849 Thoreau published his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers–a profound and poetic memorial to his brother John who died in 1842. The book contains poetry, philosophy, musings on nature and the universal, and most importantly a detailed and beautiful account of their river trip to New Hampshire in 1838–it is a masterpiece.

I had always been struck by the calm mixture of prose and lyrical poetry in the book and I felt that I could set a small fragment of text to music when I was asked by Fonema to create a piece for them. It seemed that the poetry in this book was right for this–I always thought I could hear Thoreau singing certain moments in the book, where he dramatically stops his prose and lets the tranquility of the verse glow on the page:

All things are current found
On earthly ground
Spirits and elements
Have their descents

Night and day, year on year
High and low, far and near
These are own aspects
These are our own regrets

Ye gods of the shore
Who abide evermore
I see your far headland
Stretching on either hand

I hear the sweet evening sounds
From your undecaying grounds
Cheat me now more with time
Take me to your clime

More than just the poetry, Thoreau presents musical ideas in his writings–he had “a susceptibility to natural sounds” as Charles Ives would point out in his essay on the Concord Sonata. (Ives’ meaningful relationship to the writings of Thoreau proved as a great inspiration for my composition). Thoreau’s visual images and sonic representations are, to me, some of the most moving and mysterious and plainly spoken that I have ever read. To me, they read like sonic sketches, in need of a composition:

“At a distance over the woods the sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept” (from Walden)

I approached this compositional project much unlike the ones I have before–trying to bridge natural observation (a la Thoreau) to rhythm. When I began writing Spirits and Elements, my wife and I were preparing for a four month residency in Costa Rica where I was going to teach and research aspects of bioacoustics in the soundscapes of the rainforest. The bioacoustical patterns that interested me at the time were the ones that are described having invisible structures, while producing audible results. These Hidden Markov models have been proposed to study the speech of bird song and the repetitions (redundancies) audible in insect choruses. I was able to loosely generate various biacoustic structures algorithmically (through the aid of a computer) while at the same time freely work with the rhythm of Thoreau’s verse–for me it created colorful shifting moods (Ives describes Thoreau's "elusive moods”). It created wonderfully unpredictable and placid rhythmic energy. In the end I hope I was able to use these “hidden processes” to generate short musical stanzas–sort of like John Cage’s chance procedures, which are hidden behind those sound layers we experience in the forest or along a rural river.

While the instrumental (flute, soprano saxophone, and cello) and electronic layers of the composition reflect these “natural” layers of sound, I yearned to put my energy and focus on the soprano’s foreground melody. All the while I obsessively listened to Thoreau’s words read out loud and to Ives’ works (Thoreau, the Housatonic at Stockbridge and the Concord Sonata) and even David Karsten Daniels' exhilarating setting of the same poem (there are mangled quotations of all these things scattered throughout the piece). It came together in some unusual way.

It was reassuring to compose Thoreau’s simple and drawn out melody over the pulsing and tactile sound layers of an imagined river. Nina Dante’s voice is perfect for this–hearing Thoreau’s poetry sung in any manner pays homage to his undeniable musical spirit.

Etha Williams – Saariaho's "Mirrors"

Saariaho's Mirrors consists of a series of fragmentary melodies in both the cello and the flute parts; in keeping with the work's title, these fragments at all times mirror one another in various musical domains – pitch, rhythm, timbre, and gesture –, giving the overall work a sense of constant reflexivity. Moreover, even as the flautist participates in the creation of these musical mirrors – present both within her material and in her interactions with the cellist –, she simultaneously comments on them verbally: throughout the piece the flautist intermittently recites a text drawn from the Roman da la Dame à la lycorne et du biau chevalier au lion, a 14th-century poem that inspired the famous Lady and the Unicorn tapestry (text below, image at right):

Miroir clair - Clear mirror –
brillant sans souillure - brilliant, unblemished –
dans lequel il peut se voir lui même - in which he can see himself
et voir l’amour de sa Dame. - and see the love of his Lady.

The mirror constructions in this work, then, are not mere abstract musical devices, but means of revelatory reflection – the reflection of the self through the transformative gaze of the Other, who is the object of the self's desire.

Mirrors's fragmentary construction reflects its origins as part of a CD-ROM, Prisma, dedicated to Saariaho's work. On this CD-ROM, Mirrors appears not as a fixed composition but as a “game of musical creation” in which the user is permitted to create his or her own version of the piece by dragging and dropping the flute and cello's pre-composed musical fragments as he or she wishes, combining the fragments either freely or in accordance with Saariaho's mirror-based compositional constraints. The version heard tonight is Saariaho's own realization of the piece.

Scott Scharf – Drifting the upper layers

While perusing the photographs now on display in the "Luminous Garden" exhibit at The Project Room gallery, I could not help but think what an auspicious setting in which to hear my flute and bass flute duo drifting the upper layers. For me, each of Paul den Hollander's photographs creates a surrealistic micro-world of biodiversity—an unseen ever-present image, or as Hollander describes, "the usually invisible electromagnetical fields that surround and penetrate plants in relation to a known physical reality."

It is with a degree of humility that I, too, am enamored with Nature and her processes. A curiosity with deep sea explorations and the intangible characteristics of the ocean seem, only in retrospect, to be the kernel of my composition. Many explorers write about their slow descent and mention the marine snow: both organic and inorganic particles that fall from the upper layers of the sea to the bottom. Over the course of writing, this piece began to take on the movement of layered, seemingly free-floating, material that makes up this underwater haze. Though it was not my intention to wholly mimic the unsettled vestige, it has inspired me nonetheless.

I am excited to have Fonema Consort take on this challenging piece—challenging because of the constant state of motion. All of the piece has an underlying percussive element played by both performers. This is overlaid with each playing multiphonics (with increasingly fewer rests the performers struggle for breath). The piece is essentially a temporally stretched harmonic progression where the focus narrows on the density and register irregularly interweaving between the parts.

Miranda Cuckson – New music, new musicians, new entrepreneurs

Last season, Fonema Consort came to New York to perform and I was asked to play as their NY-based guest artist. It was a delight to meet these young musicians, so gifted and thrilled about the music they were playing, the excitement of putting on their own shows, sharing their discoveries with new listeners and friends. It has been terrific lately to see so many musicians around the country and the world throwing themselves into new-music composition and performance, and to witness and take part in the entrepreneurial spirit that has become a necessity but also a positive expression of our modern era. Chicago has been very fertile ground for ensembles and composers, and Fonema Consort seems to have quickly made itself known amid that lively scene.

I'm interested in the group's focus on the voice along with instruments. Co-founder Nina Dante has a remarkably flexible voice and a passion for new works that was evident as soon as I met her. I've always been drawn to the basic song/spoken nature of music, that primal utterance from the throat, whether blossomed into pitch and melody, or closer to speaking voice or other vocal noise. Also, always, I love the combination and balance of words and music, the great question that Strauss so memorably put forth in Capriccio. It's wonderful to see a group explicitly focus on this fundamental aspect.

I am looking forward to play works by two great American artists with Nina. One is Charles Wuorinen's Visible, which sets text by Paul Auster. The lines are stated three times, each time with more urgency and wildness. The twisting together of voice and violin is so effective in this piece- the lines swoop and turn and keep meeting at common notes, only to swerve away again.

We'll also be playing Morton Feldman's Voice, Violin and Piano. Feldman's distinct language of quiet tones, floating sonorities and unpredictable silences sets such an example of exquisite craft, attention to beauty of sound and passing time, and brilliant thinking realized with simple materials. This piece will put the voice and the violin, which is often likened to a soprano voice, in duet along with the piano's particular resonance.
I'll also be playing two solos, by Oscar Bianchi and Kaija Saariaho. Bianchi's Semplice is a solo that I recently recorded. Its title is rather tongue-in-cheek, for it is actually a very ornate piece full of curlicues and light, fanciful passages. He told me that it should sound "semplice" (Italian for "simple"), though the music is actually not. I think this means conveying a certain ease in executing it, and also having a large sense of the trajectory. Though much of the piece has a bright, radiant quality and wonderfully utilizes the sparkling, pretty high register of the violin, it gradually introduces a more edgy microtonal language, with ponticello adding a layer of grit. Oscar, an Italian-Swiss citizen, is very active, with performances lately with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Aix-en-Provence festival and Ensemble Modern, but his music may not be familiar in Chicago, so I am pleased to perform it there.

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's Nocturne is a memorial piece that she wrote for Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. Compared to her many lush and sweeping large-scale pieces - operas, symphonic works - this is a small sample of her music, but it draws the listener immediately into an amazingly vivid atmosphere and sound world. Moving in sensuous waves and rounded gestures, it is elegiac yet warm and enveloping. Like many composers of the last few decades, she explores some non-pitched sounds - here, crunching noise caused by pressure on the strings. Though this is often an aggressive-sounding noise, Saariaho applies it here subtly, using it to add a poignant twinge to the sighing lines.

I'm looking forward to join Fonema Consort for these works, to share them with listeners and to see and meet people in Chicago in early March!

Shawn Lucas – Rhinoceros

For one reason or another, the title my my new work (The Rhinoceros) reminds me of a movement from the Bartók Sonatina called “Bear Dance”. It comes from a reoccurring dream I had around four years ago, which was marked by the sudden emergence of a giant rhinoceros. In my piece, the rhinoceros is not transmitted by any vivid sonic representation, but exists more as a psychological realization which fueled a desire to compose. It lives as a shadow, existing but never tangible.

Initially I wrote very freely with a lot of improvisation and experimenting with extreme guitar scordaturas. I was completely liberated from any structural or “pre-composed” restraints. For me, the most arduous task of creating a piece of music is coming to terms with a structural hierarchy. My initial stages of writing do move toward certain goals, such as achieving specific timbral effects or defining a system of pitches for a scordatura, but these are nonetheless short term ideas and not yet integrated in a larger vision. The incredible volume of sounds and ideas at my disposal can make me feel like a kid exploring an endless jungle gym filled with any variation of structures in which to climb, which, at certain times, threaten to become a field littered with traps and landmines, leaving me with only instinctual methods to detect the danger ahead.

Understanding why I make certain creative choices has become just as important to my compositional abilities as analyzing The Well Tempered Clavier for my early studies of counterpoint. My frustration, in hindsight, has provided magnificent perspective and cleared a path which may have been otherwise impossible to navigate.

David Kalhous – Sciarrino and Piano

For many years, I have been drawn to Sciarrino’s music for strings, winds and voice. I’ve felt that the mercurial, unstable, and perpetually fragile nature of Sciarrino’s musical aesthetics is best expressed by instruments whose pitches are less fixed and easier to manipulate than those of the piano. There is much beauty in his De la nuit (1971), Anamorfosi (1980), and 1st Sonata (1976), where rapid piano figurations both hide and expose direct quotations from Liszt, Ravel, and Debussy. The brilliant piano writing, undoubtedly a result of Sciarrino’s extensive and longstanding collaboration with the pianist Massimiliano Damerini, was not lost on me. But these pieces always felt emotionally withdrawn, almost indifferent, their message hidden behind the veil of the sonic haze of the ever-present impressionistic coloration.

Sciarrino once described his own music “like the eruption of a volcano viewed from afar.” Sciarrino’s scores from the 1980s on are imbued with a searing intensity in which no musical phrase is purely ornamental. Every gesture—be it a rapid figuration or a series of violent chromatic clusters, a sudden extreme change of dynamics or a shift between registers—is of paramount musical importance.

This is why Sciarrino’s later piano sonatas interest me more. Starting with the 2nd Sonata (1983), Sciarrino’s approach to piano texture becomes less linear than in his earlier works. The uses of extreme registers and dynamics, as well as silences which structure and illuminate the instrument’s sonic outburst have a direct visceral impact on the listener.

The 4th Sonata (1992) might be Sciarrino’s most radical piano composition so far. The familiar quasi-impressionistic figuration is dispensed. Instead we are immediately overwhelmed by violent, obsessive, almost manic reiteration of chromatic and diatonic clusters played by both hands in extreme registers of the instrument. The physical tension the pianist experiences during the performance (the piece is technically very demanding) translates into a psychological uneasiness that the listener will undoubtedly feel while listening to this piece.

This is one of the most remarkable scores I have encountered as a pianist, and I look forward (with some trepidation) to the concert with EVL at the University of Chicago next week, where Sciarrino’s 4th Sonata will be followed by chamber works by Donatoni, Scelsi and Gervasoni.