Secret Geometry is about the play of forms, and forms of play: composing, performing, listening, music making, reading, and again, composing. There’s news here about the music I write, as well as comments about concerts, recordings, books, and a few other things you might find of interest. For more information about my compositions, including a work list, score samples, and audio clips, visit jamesprimosch.com

Voices from the Heartland

George Crumb says he has now finished his American Songbook project, with the final installment premiered last night in Philadelphia by Orchestra 2001 with James Freeman conducting. This has been a huge undertaking: seven big cycles of folk song settings, all for solo voice or two singers, accompanied by percussion quartet plus amplified piano. This last set, called Voices from the Heartland, includes settings of “Softly and Tenderly” “Lord, Let Me Fly!”, and “Beulah Land”, among others, as well as a couple of American Indian chants. There is a delightfully Ivesian treatment of “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens” combined with “On Top Of Old Smokey” – the two songs are sung simultaneously in different keys. In a sense, the pieces break no new ground for Crumb – he has his language  – but within that language they are unfailingly imaginative, varied, and beautiful. The performance was very fine, with George’s daughter Ann and baritone Patrick Mason as soloists. These singers, along with the instrumentalists of Orchestra 2001, are so experienced in performing Crumb’s music that the special demands he places on them – whispered vocal effects, or myriad non-Western percussion instruments – pose no problems. It is uncommon to hear players, for example, consistently command the extremely soft dynamics that George often requests.

I do wish the voices had been amplified more subtly – not just more softly, but not as closely miked. I feel there must be a way to use the amplification to support the voices and help them compete with the loudest percussion passages while still making it feel like the voices and the percussion are in the same acoustical space. In contrast, the amplification of the piano made some of its more delicate effects audible while keeping the instrument integrated with the non-amplified percussion. You were constantly aware of the voices being amplified – it shouldn’t draw attention to itself in this way.

The amplification was also a bit too loud for the Boulez Anthèmes 2 on the first half of the concert, in a virtuosic performance by Gloria Justen, with Peter Price assisting at the laptop.  As for the piece itself, it is a pleasant 8 minute demonstration of how a computer can process live violin sound. Unfortunately, the piece went on for 3 times that length. While the sounds were attractive, Boulez just presents them, never shaping them into a narrative. Not that every piece has to have a linear narrative; a succession (rather than a progression) of contrasting gestures can work, but if you are going to have a piece that long, you would need less repetition of gestures, or at least some genuinely extended phrases, rather than short phrases going on at length. A comparison with the Crumb is instructive: both pieces rely on an unusual sound palette, but the carefully shaped forms and the sensitive attention to timing in George’s music makes for a vastly more successful piece.

The concert began with a short piece by Louis Andriessen, a setting of a letter he received from mezzo Cathy Berberian, the spouse of composer Luciano Berio. In the letter she speaks of how Stravinsky re-shaped what became his Elegy for J. F. K. for her. The piece is straightforward, light in manner, with a hint of elegiaic tone, for it memorializes an artist who died too young. Ann Crumb served the piece well with her charismatic theatrical flair.

Here I am with George after the performance:

 

More about George and the Songbooks, here, here, and here.

Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

Elliott Eisner proposes ten lessons the arts teach. (Hat tip to Society for New Music newsletter.)

Tuesday Night Miscellany

- Stephen Hough has a remarkably poetic post on Anglican Evensong.

- Matthew Guerrieri on the Harbison 6th.

- George Crumb premiere coming up this weekend in Philly with Orchestra 2001. David Patrick Stearns has a preview.

- Prism collaborates with Music from China in NYC February 3 and in Philly Feb. 4. Details here.

Here’s a video prepared by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with Gil Kalish on Crumb:

St. Paul’s uptown

Mention “St. Paul’s Chapel” to most New Yorkers and they will think you are referring to the downtown church associated with Trinity Church, near the site of 9/11. There is another St. Paul’s Chapel, and this is uptown on the Columbia campus. Organist Gail Archer will play a fine program of contemporary American music there at 7:30 this coming Wednesday, Jan. 25: Tower, Persichetti, Barber, David Noon, and a Hayes Biggs premiere. (This is the first in a series of American music concerts by Archer at several locations – more info at her website.) There is a wonderful Aeolian Skinner organ in the Columbia chapel. I know it first hand from my days as a music minister for the Catholic Campus Ministry at Columbia. Here is a shot of the current console, a 1997 installation, but looking similar to the console I experienced about a decade earlier.

 

Among the delights of the  instrument is a dome division, with a very powerful reed stop as well as speakers for an electronic 32′ pedal stop. I would reserve the use of that reed (what is called the “crown trumpet” in the stop list – see the link above) for special occasions. I remember using it to intone the last hymn of a big Easter Vigil service, and hearing somebody at the back of the chapel cry out in shock, pinned to the wall by the sound – although a joyous delirium brought on by beauty and length of the service as well as the strict Paschal fast may have also been factors in that reaction. More about my Columbia classmate Hayes Biggs here and here; my experience with organs here. Paul Dinter, Catholic chaplain at Columbia during my time there, has a memoir worth reading.

Fact-like statements

The next time you are without Wikipedia, try this.

 

 

Song of America

Sometimes Google Alerts is good for something (instead of just letting me know about my own posts), as I recently found out about the existence of my page at the Song of America website. This is part of a project sponsored by Thomas Hampson’s Hampsong Foundation, with information about composers and the poets they have set, audio and video resources, and more. There’s also a Song of America radio series.

Upcoming in New York and Philly

- Sunday, January 29th, the League of Composers/ISCM celebrates the Cage centennial by presenting Eliza Garth playing the complete Sonatas and Interludes; Merkin Hall at 8:00.

- Dolce Suono offers a Shulamit Ran premiere and Pierrot Lunaire*, with guest Lucy Shelton on February 3 at Haverford College, February 5 at Trinity Center in Center City, Philadelphia, and February 6 at Symphony Space in NYC. Lucy’s Pierrot is the most spirited and colorful interpretation I have ever heard, and I have heard many great ones.

*) It’s also the centennial of Pierrot.

(Photo: Cage at work.)

Stephen Hough and the piano quintet

Stephen Hough writes here about some interesting programs he has devised for a Wigmore Hall series – the pattern of piano solo, string quartet, piano quintet is simple and brilliant, and I was pleased to see the diversity of the American program he has planned – Feldman, Carter, Lieberman. I tried and failed to comment on the post, but couldn’t get it to work, despite registering a Telegraph account. So I will say here what I planned to say there – that Americans have served the genre of the piano quintet well, with significant pieces by Wuorinen, Rochberg and Harbison, in addition to pieces by two of the composers already on Hough’s program – Carter and Feldman. (It’s a crime that the recording of the Rochberg by the Concord and Alan Marks is out of print.) It’s a genre dear to my heart, having had a wonderful time playing the Brahms with the Cassatt Quartet a few years ago, as well as playing and recording my own quintet with the Cavani and later, at Alice Tully, with the Miami.

Hayes Biggs at Manhattan School

I was in NYC last night for a program at Manhattan school featuring two impressive pieces by my Columbia classmate Hayes Biggs – the premiere of a song cycle called Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, with Susan Narucki, soprano, and Christopher Oldfather, piano, and a string quartet subtitled O Sapientia/Steal Away. I previously wrote about the quartet here, so in this brief post let me just say the cycle was terrific, sustaining interest over six substantial songs that set a wonderful variety of texts. These included a Psalm excerpt as well as a 17th century metrical version of another Psalm and poems by George Herbert, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Jane Kenyon and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hayes has succeeded in doing something many composers of our generation attempt (but don’t always achieve): to truly integrate tonal materials into a broadly based language that can be dissonant or consonant, triadic or not, as the expressive needs of the moment dictate. This doesn’t involve any lack of rigor – Hayes’s contrapuntal instincts ensure that. There may be some traces of Britten or Ives in the musical language, but the songs struck me as very fresh and personal. The performance was superb, with Susan not just offering a lovely, clear, and true sound, but putting that sound at the service of varied expression and strong emotional impact. I hardly had to refer to the printed program, given the fineness of her diction. Christopher dependably does several impossible things on every page he plays – rhythmic subtleties, perfectly balanced chords, wide-ranging colors, sensitive coordination with his soloist – and all with a minimum of fuss. I want to write more about the songs, but for now here is a snapshot from after the concert, with (L to R) the members of the Avalon String Quartet, Susan Narucki, Hayes Biggs, and Christopher Oldfather.

Amphibian and more

- Go to Matthew Greenbaum‘s website for information on the Amphibian performance series: music and video from Maurice Wright, Dalit Warshaw, Beth Wiemann, Steve Jaffe, Wuorinen, Scelsi, Davidovsky, Wolpe, Rakowski, Nancarrow and many others, plus Matthew himself. Performers include the Momenta Quartet, Cygnus, and Mari Kimura.

- Looking forward to reading some things Santa brought me: the 2nd volume of the Sondheim lyrics with commentary and Gunther Schuller’s autobiography; also, some items from the new acquisitions shelf at Penn: At the Piano: Interviews with 21st Century Pianists by Caroline Benser (the pianists are Leif Ove Andnes, Jonathan Biss, Simone Dinerstein, Marc-André Hamelin, Stephen Hough, Steven Osborne, Yevgeny Sudbin, and Yuja Wang); and Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narrative, Dialogues, edited by Tim Howell, with Jon Hargreaves, and Michael Rofe.

- I’ve recently been listening to The Bad Plus album For All I Care. This is the one with the brilliant Ligeti, Stravinsky, and Babbitt covers, and with Wendy Lewis on vocals. She’s awfully good – she’s not so much a “jazz” singer, more of a singer/songwriter sound, but better in tune, with clearer diction and not whiny. Her natural register seems to be a rather low contralto, but she can get into a plaintive head voice as well as a Broadway-ish belt. The reading of Roger Miller’s Lock, Stock and Teardrops is heartbreaking. But if she is so good, why are there times that I am dismayed when the voice enters? On the track Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, the trio builds to an ecstatic texture focused on a little scale segment, with some chimes layered in – it’s a wonderfully joyous moment. But then the voice comes back in, and suddenly the track becomes ordinary – very good, but mundane. It’s a figure/ground problem – I was happy to be digging the wonderful instrumental texture; that was the “figure” to which I attended. But when the voice entered, the instruments became “ground”, they seemed to recede, almost as though the level had been reduced on their channels in the mix.

The modern musicologist likes to snigger at the notion of the transcendent purity and independence of instrumental music. But that quality of going beyond the everyday is exactly what enthralled me about instrumental music when I was starting out. As a kid I remember having that feeling that I think C. S. Lewis describes somewhere – of finding oneself at home in a land you never knew existed before – when the turntable stylus hit the first groove of Kind of Blue or the Mahler 7th when I brought them home from the library. I remember my brother complaining about the lack of vocals in the jazz records I played – he felt unmoored – exactly what I loved. This special quality of music that is freed of the human voice may be a cultural construct and an illusion to be deconstructed, but that doesn’t make it invalid. I say this as a composer of plenty of vocal music. Notes and rhythms create their own world, their own voice – it’s one of the worlds I seek to live in as a musician.