FELICE & BOUDLEAUX BRYANT MEDLEY
BY ALEXANDRA DU BOIS

Bryant Medley was commissioned by Del Bryant in honor of the 50th anniversary of the hit songs co-written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. This arrangement, a medley of Felice and Boudleaux's songs, was premiered at Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee on 28 September 2007.

SHAKER LOOPS BY JOHN ADAMS

Shaker Loops began as a string quartet with the title Wavemaker. At the time, like many a young composer, I was essentially unaware of the nature of those musical materials I had chosen for my tools. Having experienced a few of the seminal pieces of American Minimalism during the early 1970's, I thought their combination of stripped-down harmonic and rhythmic discourse might be just the ticket for my own unformed yearnings. I gradually developed a scheme for composing that was partly indebted to the repetitive procedures of Minimalism and partly an outgrowth of my interest in waveforms. The "waves" of Wavemaker were to be long sequences of oscillating melodic cells that created a rippling, shimmering complex of patterns like the surface of a slightly agitated pond or lake. But my technique lagged behind my inspiration, and this rippling pond very quickly went dry. Wavemaker crashed and burned at its first performance. The need for a larger, thicker ensemble and for a more flexible, less theory-bound means of composing became very apparent.

Fortunately I had in my students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music an ensemble willing to tryout new ideas, and with the original Wavemaker scrapped I worked over the next four months to pick up the pieces and start over. I held on to the idea of the oscillating patterns and made an overall structure that could embrace much more variety and emotional range. Most importantly the quartet became a septet, thereby adding a sonic mass and the potential for more acoustical power. The "loops" idea was a technique from the era of tape music where small lengths of prerecorded tape attached end to end could repeat melodic or rhythmic figures ad infinitum. (Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain is the paradigm of this technique.) The Shakers got into the act partly as a pun on the musical term "to shake ", meaning either to make a tremolo with the bow across the string or else to trill rapidly from one note to another. The flip side of the pun was suggested by my own childhood memories of growing up not far from a defunct Shaker colony near Canterbury, New Hampshire. Although, as has since been pointed out to me, the term "Shaker" itself is derogatory, it nevertheless summons up the vision of these otherwise pious and industrious souls caught up in the ecstatic frenzy of a dance that culminated in an epiphany of physical and spiritual transcendence. This dynamic, almost electrically charged element, so out of place in the orderly mechanistic universe of Minimalism, gave the music its raison d'etre and ultimately led to the full realization of the piece. Shaker Loops continues to be one of my most performed pieces. There are partisans who favor the clarity and individualism of the solo septet version, and there are those who prefer the orchestral version for its added density and power. The piece has several times been choreographed and even enjoyed a moment of cult status in the movie Barfly, an autobiographical account of the poet Charles Bukowsky's down and out days on LA's Skid Row. In a famous scene Bukowsky (Mickey Rourke), having been battered and bloodied by his drunken girlfriend (Faye Dunaway) holes up in a flophouse room, writing poems in a fit of inspiration to the accompaniment of the insistent buzz of "Shaking and Trembling".

-John Adams

CUATRO MELODIAS TRADICIONALES INDIAS
DEL ECUADOR BY CARLOS CHAVEZ

Composed immediately after the Toccata, the Cuatro Melodias Traadicionales Indías del Ecuador deserves recognition as one of the great melodic achievements of the entire 20th century. Considered together, the two works form a yin-yang of Latin America's position as a place far removed from the theatres of world war raging in both Asian and Europe in the 1940's.

There is a simple harmonic strategy that makes this music so immediately memorable. The harmonies are consistently built around the neutral interval of the major second, with the keys of the last three songs centering on B natural or its dominant E (minor, major or modal forms). This allows the first song, placed in the key of F major, to appear as if from a high mountaintop (for the technically inclined reader, the cycle begins on the Neapolitan key of the dominant tonality of the piece). The high altitude of the Andes is perfectly evoked as the songs descend from this fresh first movement to the lower elevation of the remaining songs.

The third song, Tristezas me depara, is the emotional center of these four perfect melodies. Opening with veiled references to the Quaker melody Simple Gifts (Copland was at work on Appalachian Spring at roughly the same time). Chávez creates one of the great melodies of the entire 20th century, as the poet grieves for the funeral of an Indian spouse, an apt metaphor for the devastation of the Spanish conquest throughout the New World. The Mexican legend of La Llorona, the crying and invisible nocturnal woman searching for her dead family though the night air, is impossible to avoid, and here find expression that carries her cries to the whole world.

APPALACHIAN SPRING BY AARON COPLAND

Appalachian Spring was composed in 1943-44 as a ballet for Miss Martha Graham on a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation. It was first performed by Miss Graham and her company at the Coolidge Festival in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., on October 30th, 1944.

The present version is scored for the original chamber ensemble of thirteen instruments. It is a condensed version of the ballet (identical with the original suite derived from the ballet for symphony orchestra), which retains all essential features but omits those sections in which the interest is primarily choreographic.

The action of the ballet concerns “a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly-built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbour suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet in their new house.”

In 1945 Appalachian Spring received the Pulitzer Prize for music as well as the award of the Music Critics Circle of New York for the outstanding theatrical work of the season 1944-1945.

— Aaron Copland

Child of Tree for Amplified Cactus

Being on a tour in Arizona with the Cunningham Dance Company in 1975, one of the dancers (Charles Moulton) brought a dried cactus to Cage, placed it near his ear and plucked the spines of it. This inspired Cage to use cacti as musical instruments in pieces like Child of Tree and Branches. The score consists solely of performance instructions on how to select 10 instruments, using I-Ching chance operations. All instruments should be made of plant materials, or be just the plant materials themselves (e.g. leaves from trees, branches etc.). One of the instruments should be a pod (rattle) from a poinciana tree, which grow in Mexico. "Using a stopwatch, the soloist improvises clarifying the time structure by means of the instruments. This improvisation is the performance". (From performance instructions).

Four for String Quartet

The players sit in the conventional relation to each other.

There are three five-minute sections, A-C each having flexible time brackets and one which is fixed; these are notated from 0’00” to 5’00”. There are four parts (1-4) each of which can be played by any of the players.

If the performance is to last ten minutes, all players play section B (parts 1-4). The two violinists then exchange their parts with the other two players either as 1 with 3 and 2 with 4 or 1 with 4 and 2 with 3. After resetting their chronometers they play section B again.

If the performance is to last twenty minutes, all players play sections A and C without pause between. Players 1 and 2 then exchange their parts with players 3 and 4 in either way and play A and C again.

If the performance is complete, ABC, with the repetition it will last thirty minutes.

-From performance instructions

27' 10.554" For a Percussionist & String Player with
45’ for a Speaker—
“The Ten Thousand Things”

45’ For a Speaker

“Lo and behold the horse turns into a prince, who, except for the acquiescence of the hero would have had to remain a shaggy nag.”

Thus begins John Cage’s 45’ for a Speaker. 45’ for a Speaker was written for the Composers’ Concourse in London in 1954 and is comprised of several previous lectures that were fractured and rearranged by the composer using i-Ching chance operations. It is part of his Time series which includes 34’ 46.776" for Two Pianists, 27’ 10.554” for a Percussionist, and 26’ 1.1499” for a String Player. According to Cage, any or all pieces may be played separately or in any combination by matching durations. The text of 45’ for a Speaker addresses the music being played in 26’ 1.1499" for a String Player, and also contains such extraneous noises as coughs, gargling, and a lighted match. A stopwatch governs the tempo of the reading.

26’ 1.1499” For a String Player

John Cage’s 26’ 1.149” for a String Player was written in 1954, though it contains five pieces that began the whole Time cycle in 1953. The work can be played on any 4-stringed, bowed instrument-in this case a double bass-and uses a stopwatch that governs events written in graphic notation. Sound events are marked very precisely in terms of what is to be played, how it is to be played, where it is to be played, the duration, and the dynamics. Each performance of 26’ 1.1499” for a String Player is different due to the constantly changing tuning of the instrument, and the fact that Cage intentionally made the work unplayable. The tension in the work arises from the performer’s frantic attempts to play every note.

Litany for a Whale

Litany for the whale recitation and thirty-two responses for two voices without vibrato W=WOU as in would H=HU as in hut A=AH L=LL as in will E=E as in under A “word” is sung in one breath but pronouncing each letter separately and giving more or less equal time (.=72) to each letter except the last (or only letter of a word which is to be held longer than the others let there be a short silence after each response The first singer singst the recitation The singer follows with the first response (The second singer that is) A short silence and the recitation The first singer then sings the second response waits and then sings the recitation etcetera quietly without dynamic changes

-From performance instructions


Postcard from Heaven

Three double ragas, double because either part may be used for ascending or descending. One may move from one side to another of a single raga at "transfer points," closed noteheads. Where no such noteheads exist, separate the use of one side of the raga from the other by silence. The associated numbers are talas on the basis of which phrasing or durations of sounds or silences may be improvised.

Improvisation may be "melodic" and/or "percussive." "Melodic" means proceeding stepwise, leaping only in the opposite direction, following a leap by a step or steps in the opposite direction, continually establishing, that is, the character of the raga. Ornaments are welcome. "Percussive" means single events preceded and followed by silence, or several events performed repetitively. These may be glissandi (the ragas permitting them); chords and/or single tones; the single tones may be produced conventionally, or with an E Bow (electronic means of setting a metallic string into continuous vibration), or with a superball (used fricatively, lengthwise on the string, or on the sounding board). Dynamics are free.

The improvisation may be continuous or interrupted by silences, its total length to be determined by the players. It should begin and end with use on the part of all harpists of the E Bow, for a period of time between one-tenth and one-sixth of the total time length. Any unintended sounds (clicking of the push button, etc.) are acceptable though not to be sought. Ossia: Hum ppp any one tone of the raga as long as the breath holds continuing after a new breath with the same or another tone of the raga.

Five pedal arrangements are given. Changes from one to another must be complete, but may take place at any time (during a passage, or between passages).

-From performance instructions