Chamber Concerto/Ringing Changes

Charles Wuorinen - Chamber Concerto/Ringing Changes

released on LP in 1971

I'm glad that I am able to have a new post in what has been a few months.

Chamber Concerto

composed in 1963 for cello and 10 players

Fred Sherry - cello

The Group for Contemporary Music:

Harvey Sollberger - flute
Josef Marx - oboe and English horn
Jack Kreiselman - clarinet and bass clarinet
Donald MacCourt - bassoon
Jeanne Benjamin - violin
John Graham - viola
Alvin Brehm - double-bass
Robert Miller - piano
Raymond DesRoches, Richard Fitz, Claire Heldrich - percussion

Charles Wuorinen - conductor

The Cello Concerto was composed over the first six months of 1963 for the Group for Contemporary Music, which Harvey Sollberger and I had founded the previous spring. It was premiered in January of 1964 by the Group at Columbia University, with Robert Martin as soloist and Arthur Bloom conducting.
The external design of the work divides it into five connected movements, each of which casts the soloist in a different light. In the first, his role is conventionally bravura, and this is what separates him from his accompaniment. In the second (barring short interludes in which he does not participate), he plays the lead voice in a four-part canon; the other three voices are divided between the two groups of accompanying instruments, so that each group has only six pitch-classes in its vocabulary. The cello here is unique in its ability to utter all twelve. In the third movement, the soloist asserts himself by initiating events, which are then reflected elsewhere in the ensemble ... The fourth movement sees the cello as leader of a concertante group drawn from the larger ensemble, which varies in instrumentation at each appearance. Behind the relatively fast music of the soloist and his immediate friends is a slow-moving background ... The final movement offers a summary of all these solo-ensemble relations, for along with other transformations, it is a retrograde of the entire work, first at four times the original speed, then twice, then undiminished, and finally, for the very last notes, augmented.
The cello is accompanied by a divided ensemble, and occasionally you can hear the music localized in one group or the other; there is, however, no overt or consistent antiphony between the two. To the right as we face the cello are flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, violin, and viola; to the left are piano, contrabass, and percussion (in this recording divided among three players, rather than the two called for in the score). (Charles Wuorinen)

Ringing Changes

composed in 1969-1970 for percussion ensemble

The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble:

Raymond Des Roches - director

Joseph Passaro - vibraphone and timpani
Marty Martini, Louis Oddo - vibraphone
Dean Poulsen, Eugene McBride - piano
Ken Hosley, Donald Mari - drums
Matthew Patuto - brakedrums
Doreen Holmes - almglocken
Michael Moscariello - cymbals
Vincent Potuto, Jr. - tamtams
James Pugliese - string drum and chimes

Charles Wuorinen - conductor

Ringing Changes was composed in 1969 and '70 for the excellent ensemble of student percussionists founded and directed by Raymond DesRoches, the group that performs it here. The work is in a single long movement, and is - somewhat like the Concerto - based on a continuous polyphonic skeleton which lies beneath the sonic surface of the work, and which generates the moment-to-moment continuity. Here the music is divided between pitched and non-pitched voices, and a basic four-voice polyphony is disposed with two voices given to pitched instruments - mainly piano four-hands and vibraphones - and two ("noise" or relative-pitch) given with various alternations and duplications to sets of 12 metal instruments, 12 drums, 6 cymbals, and 4 tamtams. An occasional inflectional role is performed by a string drum, and at the end chimes and timpani appear.  (Charles Wuorinen)

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Chamber Concerto  {18:05}

Side Two

1. Ringing Changes  {16:50}

(1)

Lukas Foss-TWO RECORD PREMIERES 1964 (?) Epic Monaural LC 3886

Lukas Foss-TWO RECORD PREMIERES commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation.

ECHOI (FOR FOUR SOLOISTS)
TIME CYCLE (CHAMBER VERSION)

Today is the third anniversary of the passing away of Lukas Foss at the age of 86.
He was born on August 15th, 1922.

Notes from the cover (enclosed):

The title ECHOI (echo in plural) has several connotations: Echoi were ancient Arabian modes, but it is obvious that the title is also reflected quite literally in the many echo sounds, imitations, instruments shadowing one another canonically, as in ECHOI II, or echoes from the distance as in ECHOI III, where a children's tune (vibraphone) is heard in the background (the past), then distorted, violated in the foreground (the present), faintly emerging again in the distance (triangle beaters inside the piano strings a la mandolin)., only to be annihilated, cancelled out by the menacing activity in the foreground. Finally, echoes result from "hearing double and triple" at the end of ECHOI IV. Here the clarinet and cello imitate their own performance as it emerges from two loudspeakers (two pre-recorded tape tracks). It could be argued here that the echoes do not follow, but precede, anticipate.
Throughout ECHOI the four musicians play from the score. Where bar lines are absent, the rhythmic notation is proportional. They stay together by following the score and by listening to one another. Considering the high speed of ECHOI I and the complex simultaneities of ECHOI III and IV, a special skill is demanded here.
Another difficult performance task occurs in ACHOI IV when the players jump back and forth between different pages in the music (much like a phonograph needle on a defective record). This is done on cue from the percussionist, who strikes an anvil at random moments within a given stretch. This is the signal for the players to skip from the moment of interruption to an earlier place in the music (idee fixe) and back, invalidating the carefully organized macro-structure. From the start of the obsessional piano monologue to the moment (climax) the percussion resorts to what is a literal invasion of the piano strings (the only way to bring the piano to a stop), ECHOI IV is a commentary on total organization with the piano acting as protagonist. Though the aleatoric notion and the "musical happening" are easily detected here, no share of the composition per se is ever relinquished to the performer- or to chance. Even the improvisatory moments toward the end are limited, directed, texturally controlled via footnotes or inserted symbols.

TIME CYCLE is a group of four songs, two English and two German, each referring to time, clocks or bells.The piece was originally composed for piano and orchestra. At the premiere given in 1960 by Adele Addison with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic , as well as in the first recording by the same artists, on Co;lumbia Records, improvised interludes were introduced between the orchestra songs by the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, a group of four virtuosi (clarinet, cello , piano, percussion) I founded in 1957.In the present chamber version of TIME CYCLE the the orchestration is rewritten for clarinet,cello,piano and percussion. Interludes are not included. The Improvisation Chamber Ensemble accompanies the soprano in the four songs. These are composed; notated in every detail. There is no improvisation.
The orchestra songs and the chamber version are too different in their dynamic range to be compared. The latter has the advantage of greater precision. But it neither supersedes the orchestra version nor is it an arrangement of an original. The occasion, and the size of the hall call for one or the other.Lukas Foss-TWO RECORD PREMIERES

Side One:

ECHOI (FOR FOUR SOLOISTS)

Echoi I (3:52)
Echoi II (4:25)
Echoi III (8:23)
Echoi Iv (11:52)
Group For Contemporary Music At Columbia University:
Charles Wuorinen, Piano
Raymond Desroches. Percussion
Arthur Bloom, Clarinet
Robert Martin, Cello
Side Two:

TIME CYCLE (CHAMBER VERSION)

1- We're Late (Auden) (4:16)
2- When The Bells Jostle (Housman) (4:50)
3- From Franz Kafka's "Diaries" (Sechzehente Jauar) (5:41)
4- "Oh Man, Take Heed! O Mensch, Gib Acht!" (F. Nietzsche) (5:47)Improvisation Chamber Ensemble:
Lukas Foss, Piano, Celeste
Richard Duffalo, Clarinet
Charles De Lancy, Percussion
Howard Coll, Cello
Grace-Lynne Martin, Soprano





















(1)

David Burge Plays New Piano Music

David Burge - David Burge Plays New Piano Music

LP released in 1966

For this recording, Mr. Burge has selected four works by younger American composers and a piece of his own composition. The resulting program is a combination of fearsome technical difficulty and interpretational range, boldly setting forth the gamut of piano writing by some of the country's most significant new composers. We at ADVANCE feel this recording to be, in its combination of important premieres and superb musicianship, a major contribution to recorded piano literature. (from the liner notes)

Eclipse II (1966) composed by David Burge

Eclipse II was written as a recital piece and as a part of my most recent work for musical theatre (unnamed at this writing) in which it serves as an Interval between two of the fourteen scenes while three or four members of the cast and audience take a quick cigarette break around the footlights.
The title may derive from the fact that the work makes a complete cycle, as is true of the celestial phenomenon; the material (the set) heard at the beginning is gradually but regularly shifted until it is completely transformed (obscured?) after which continued shifting leads it back to the original at the close of the composition. (That this analogy did not occur to me until several weeks after the piece was completed does not severely detract from its merits, but may give some indication to the listener as to the advisability of following a precise astronomical program.) (David Burge)

Five Pieces for Piano (1962) composed by George Crumb

The Five Pieces for Piano were composed in 1962 at the request of David Burge. The work requires a considerably enlarged technique of tone production, for in addition to conventional keyboard sounds, the composer has exploited various sounds produced immediately on contact with the string - e.g., pizzicato, martellato, glissando, etc. The integration of all these resources points toward a broader concept of piano idiom. Structurally speaking, the Five Pieces derive from a single 3-note cell, first presented as a chord.
Rhythm, dynamics, and timbre are all freely organized. The work as a whole is in the form of an arch, of which the third piece (Notturno) forms the centerpiece.
I. Quasi improvvisato
II. Ruvido, con molto energia; Prestissimo; Ruvido
III. Nocturno (sempre pizzicato)
IV. Ruvido, con molto energia; Prestissimo; Ruvido
V. Senza misura; Solenne; Tempo del primo pezzo

Cocktail Music (1962) composed by Salvatore Martirano

Notes by Ed London: It would be out of place in so short a space to divulge the recipe of the virtuoistic Cocktail Music for Piano. If perhaps it might whet the imagination to contemplate the intricacy of said concoction, let it here suffice to wit: the imagination of the composer worked overtime to coordinate the multitudinous cerebrative constructs - all the while a baser metabolic process demanded a slaking of its thirst (a thirst moreover that decries symmetry and arid regularity).
What are the "external" influences on the work - Crystal Gazing, Art Tatum, Domenico Scarlatti, The Joy of Cooking? Preposterous??? Read Rose Rombauer's written direction therein:

The cocktail is probably an American invention and most certainly a typically American kind of drink. Whatever mixtures you put together - and part of the fascination of cocktail mixing is the degree of inventiveness it seems to encourage - hold fast to a few general principles.

Piano Variations (1963) composed by Charles Wuorinen

I finished my Piano Variations on 25 November 1963. They were originally part of a larger cycle of pieces - other two surviving instances of which are my Flute Variations and Flute Concerto, both written for Harvey Sollberger - which were to be united by common set material and related procedures. It soon became apparent both that the individual works were totally self-sufficient and that the contemplated project was too large. I therefore abandoned it; the Piano Variations have enjoyed an independent life since then.
Regarding the relevant structural characteristics of the Variations; the work cannot be considered 'twelve-tone' in spite of the fact that the dozen-odd self-contained and fully composed fragments which provide the 'subject' for variation-operations are strictly so (but only in the conventional pitch-sense). Rather, each variation consists of a re-ordering of them as well. Beyond this simple procedure, there are other controlling influences: for example the fact that as the piece progresses, criteria of differentiation among (but not necessarily within) the fragments are gradually minimized, until near the end they form a homogenous larger structure. (Charles Wuorinen)

Twelve Bagatelles (1952) composed by George Rochberg

The Bagatelles were my first 12-tone music, composed between June and August 1952. The first eight came in one burst - within the space of a week. I broke off work to take a trip to Tanglewood, where I played what I had just written for Luigi Dallapiccola, teaching there that summer. Dallapiccola's enthusiastic response confirmed my own feelings about what I was doing, so much so that when I returned home I was able to complete the remaining four pieces in fairly short order. In January 1953 I gave the Bagatelles their first public performance at the MacMillan Theater, Columbia University.
The pieces seem to have survived both changes in my own way of working over the years as well as changes in the musical atmosphere of the '50s and '60s. This being the case, the fact of their survival could hardly be attributed, it seems to me, to their being 12-tone per se. While it is surely not a composer's business to concern himself with such matters, I can only guess that whatever value the Bagatelles have is a purely musical one, perhaps most of all because the spontaneity of their emergence gave them a sense of entirety - depsite their individual brevity. (George Rochberg)
Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Eclipse II {2:55}

2. Five Pieces for Piano {7:57}

3. Cocktail Music {4:44}

Side 2

1. Piano Variations {7:52}

2. Twelve Bagatelles {12:12}

(1)

Time's Encomium

Charles Wuorinen - Time's Encomium

Charles Wuorinen won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for this piece of electronic music and Wuorinen still has the distinction of being the youngest Pulitzer Prize winner in the music category at age 31.

realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York

"Time's Encomium" is the title because in this work everything depends on the absolute, not the seeming, length of events and sections. Being electronic, "Time's Encomium" has no inflective dimension. Its rhythm is always quantitative, never qualitative. Because I need time, I praise it; hence the title. Because it doesn't need me, I approach it respectfully; hence the word "encomium."...
Side One is generative, but not completely. It exposes and develops basic pitch and time relations. Therefore it may be called fundamental.
Side Two is developmental, but not completely. It mainly varies pre-existing material. Therefore it may be called ornamental. Those who like relatively severe and slowly-unfolding music should listen first to Side One. Those who like complex and rapidly unfolding music should listen first to Side Two. Eventually, both parts should be listened to in succession, with a break between.

"Time's Encomium" was composed and realized between January 1968 and January 1969, at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. I employed primarily the RCA Synthesizer, and therefore (because of that device's characteristics) the basic materials are the twelve tempered pitch classes, and pitch-derived time relations. The RCA Synthesizer - familiar through several works of Milton Babbitt - is prejudiced by its design toward 12-tone equal temperament. This may be a disadvantage if one is attempting non-tempered pitch relations; but if one accepts the limitation as a boundary condition of one's work from the start, it ceases to be a problem. In the near future, however, when computer synthesis becomes widespread, the issue will disappear.
Afterwards, I made the large-scale structure by processing the synthesized material in one of the Center's analog studios. Thus the work consists of a core of synthesized music, most of which appears in Part I, surrounded and interlarded with analog-studio transformations of that music. The synthesized can always be identified by its clarity of pitch, and the familiar, almost "instrumental" sound of its constituent events. The processed almost always contains reverberation. Thus, metaphorically, the listener stands in the midst of the synthesized music, which presents itself to him with maximal clarity; and stretching away from him, becoming more and more blurred in detail, the various transformations - from the slightly altered to the unrecognizable. (Charles Wuorinen)

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Time's Encomium Part I {14:28}

Side Two

1. Time's Encomium Part II {16:18}

(1)