Posts Tagged ‘Ravel’

Summer?

Thursday, August 24th, 2017

All summer, I kept meaning to post something–I was somewhat lazy, but a few things happened, so here is an update.

I’ve started and finished two pieces since May.  My new work for Galo Arboledo is On a Clear Night You Can See Forever for violin and piano, and is an ode to the Shafran Planetarium at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  We are hoping to premiere the piece in the Museum on a Cleveland Composers Guild concert on November 26, but we’re still awaiting the decision of the program committee on that.  The piece is a fantasy that explores the wonders of the Universe, starting close to home with the aurora, and zooming out to the ultimate panorama.  More updates on this piece in the near future!

I’m also ready to send copies of my first big band piece to Ed Michaels, who will premiere it with Lakeland Jazz Impact this year.  Appropriately, the title is Maximum Impact.  I’m always pleased when my work can intersect with my job in some way.  Jazz Impact has a storied history, and is the only high school honors jazz band in Northeast Ohio.

A big first for me was conducting the Resonanz production of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortileges.  I can now call myself an opera conductor.  Even just conducting a piano-vocal arrangement was an amazing challenge, and while I felt some trepidation, I’m glad that I took it on.  I’m also pleased to be working with a group that is bringing serious music to Lake County, where, outside the schools, there isn’t enough.

The Lakeland Civic Orchestra will start up on Monday.  I’m excited to see our group again, and it looks like a good season ahead.  We are starting our season with a concert on November 5 that includes Massenet’s Ballet Music from Le Cid, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, and Alice Mary Smith’s The Masque of Pandora.  It is always hard to choose music for the orchestra–nothing too easy, nothing too hard, and always the knowledge that whatever I pick we have to live with for a few months while we prepare it.  Sam Rotburg, violin faculty at Baldwin Wallace University, approached me with the idea of the Beethoven Triple a couple of years ago, and that is now coming to fruition.  His wife and colleague Sungyeun Kim will play piano, and Chauncey Arecet will play cello.  The Massenet is a piece I first encountered in college in a band transcription, and when I was playing the CD in the car recently, Noah reminded me that he had heard it in a cartoon, as well.  The odd duck, then, is the Smith.  A composer who deserves to be better known, certainly.  I resolved this season to begin to make more of an effort to include music by under-represented voices in our concerts, after I realized that Jennifer Jolley’s Ferry Crossing was the first piece by a female composer that we had played in the five years that I have conducted the group.  The challenge, then, is that we are not a new music ensemble, so I need to educate myself and find repertoire by female composers and composers of color of the past.  Hence, Alice Mary Smith.  Since her style is close to Mendelssohn, she will fit nicely into what we do, and I’m excited to give the local premiere of this piece.  If the Cleveland Orchestra won’t do any better than it has in programming diversely, the Lakeland Civic Orchestra can lead the way.

We had a wonderful trip in June to Dearborn, Michigan to see the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.  It was great family time, as we stayed at “the pink hotel” and absorbed some of the history of our nation.  The Henry Ford is really a Smithsonian West in many ways, and Noah was especially excited about seeing the chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated.  I’m moved that my kids were able to sit in the same bus that Rosa Parks was arrested in, and a little stunned that the exhibit on consumer technology now includes things I had in my house as a high schooler.  We also lived more history at Hale Farm and Village here in Cleveland, when we attended their Civil War reenactment earlier this month.  Noah has developed in interest in this, and he was fascinated by it, of course.  My first orchestra conducting gig was conducting artillery reenactors for the 1812 Overture, but I had never been to an encampment like this.  The tough part of it all, is trying to explain why people do this–not only to my son, but also to my sister-in-law Connie and her two nieces, who were visiting from Germany.

I also took Becky to see Billy Joel perform at Progressive Field in July.  I’m glad we went, but the musician in me found it too loud.  I can’t imagine a concert by a group meant to be loud.  He only sings hits now, of course, since he hasn’t had a new album in 15 years.  He threw in a couple of deep cuts, but mostly, everyone got to hear what they came to hear.  One of my favorite sights of the evening was a man wearing a Fantasies and Delusions t-shirt.  That is a true Billy Joel fan, and having had my music on the same program as some of those pieces (thanks, Avguste Antonov), it’s fun to know that I’m artistically connected to such a big name.  I’ve always loved his music, even before I realized it was his music, and I’m glad I had a chance to see him while he is still performing.  Not bad for my first stadium concert.

Now fall semester looms.  Noah is back in school, everyone who has visited has visited, and it’s time to open the folder called Compositions Fall 2017.  Ahead of me are a trio for piano, violin, and trumpet for Troika Melange; a piece for soprano and jazz trio for Carrie Hennessey; and possibly some songs for a connection from Resonanz.  Dianna Anderson has agreed to premiere Sisters in Stone, but we haven’t figured out when; I would like to do it at the High Museum of Art, since the statues that inspired it come from there.  I would like to get Twenty Views of the Trombone out there as well.  I hope to present it at Lakeland and in some other college venues this year.  I’m also hoping to return to the CMS circuit, since their Great Lakes Regional conference is in Columbus, and I wouldn’t have to spend my entire travel budget on one trip.  I had a great opportunity to reconnect with Nancy Joy, who commissioned South Africa, my horn and marimba piece which is just about my greatest hit.  She is planning to record the work sometime this year, which will be another boost for that surprise success.

Where did the summer go?

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Mahler, Symphony No. 7, movement 2

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Once again, I find myself with less time than I would like to write.  Hopefully, brevity will make me make each word count.

This movement has some fascinating aspects.  I begin with Mahler’s use of texture, which is more intricate and highly developed here than in much of his previous music.  Immediately following the horn solo that opens the movement, the woodwinds begin to build a complex sonic scrim more akin to Ravel or Stravinsky than to Mahler (mm. 10-27).  While motives from the horn solo appear throughout this passage, it is really an orchestral crescendo that leads to a climax in m. 28.  In mm. 28-9, the major-minor motive from the Sixth Symphony reappears, here in the home key of C (I should note that this motive doesn’t really “belong” to the Sixth Symphony, as it appears frequently throughout Mahler’s work).

There follows a harmonized repetition of the theme introduced by the horns, with an immediate variation, beginning in m. 37.   In m. 44, there is an example of Mahler’s interesting use of color in the solo oboe and horn.  The oboe colors the repeated horn notes, lending body and renewed interest to the opening theme.

Measure 62 presents the main theme yet again–this is a highly thematic movement.  It is now coupled with a figural countermelody in the woodwinds, a running triplet idea that will reappear frequently in this movment.  In m. 69, Mahler uses a cadential pattern that is somewhat quirky.  Having arrived on a half-cadence, a subdominant chord is inserted before the return of the tonic in m. 70.  The iv chord is highlighted with a dynamic accent, and is somewhat reminiscent of Robert Schumann’s tendency to begin phrases with a subdominant harmony, as though we were joining the music already in progress.

At m. 83, the first significant change in mood appears, with a change in both tempo and key (to Ab major).  The melody here is linked to the main theme by its opening motive, a rising interval from the triad in question, beginning on the anacrusis.  An extension of this initial phrase leads to a half-cadence in m. 81.  Mahler’s frequent use of the half-cadence in this movement suggests a more open, fantasia-like conception.  This dance-like music continues until an authentic cadence in Ab minor in m. 121, followed immediately by a reprise of the opening horn solo, leading into a modulatory passage that brings back the main theme in C major in m. 141.

In m. 144ff, the horn and oboe are again paired, a favorite color choice for Mahler in this movement.  This section is very much a restatement of the first section (up to the key change to Ab).  In m. 161, the fascinating texture from the opening is revisited, culminating with the same CM-Cm chord (more lushly scored this time) in mm. 187-188.

Measure 190 marks the beginning of new material in C minor, roughly based on the inversion of the main theme.  Mahler’s color choice is again interesting–oboe and English horn each doubled by a solo cello and then, when the range becomes excessive, byh solo violas (m. 198ff).  In m. 211ff, there is an interesting diversion to the key of B minor, strikingly remote from each harmonic destination thus far, with a swing back to C major for the return of the main theme in m. 223, now stated by the full orchestra.

The A-flat major theme reappears in m. 262, now with a countermelody in the woodwinds (two flutes, two oboes and two clarinets in unison).  The amount of thematic repetition in this movement is impressive–and highly suggestive of seven-part rondo form, although Mahler chooses not to state this explicity.  This places the A-sections in C major-minor, the B-sections in A-flat major and the C-section in C-minor.

At m. 317, the typical Mahlerian approach to coda begins–the opening theme begins to unravel, with reminders of earlier textures and ideas intertwining.  By the end, all that is left is the triplet accompanimental idea, which dissolves into not the tonic pitch, but rather the dominant of hte movement, G, leaving a sense of incompleteness that the beginning of the next movement fails to resolve.

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