CHRISTIAN WOLFF APRIL 22, :30 PM. presented by REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater California Institute of the Arts

Transcription

1 CHRISTIAN WOLFF APRIL 22, :30 PM presented by REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater California Institute of the Arts

2 CHRISTIAN WOLFF Monday, April 22, 2013, 8:30pm PROGRAM For E.C. (2003) for string quartet Summer (1961) for string quartet For 2 violinists, violist and cellist (2008) Intermission Lines (1972) version for string quartet and cello Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, cello Lullaby 3 (2013, world premiere) for string quintet Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, cello Nicholas Deyoe Formalist Quartet: Andrew Tholl, violin; Mark Menzies, violin/viola; Andrew McIntosh, violin/viola; Ashley Walters, cello ABOUT THE WORKS The Formalist Quartet, of which I am glad to be a member is, later this week, commencing a recording project of all of s music for string quartet, in the presence of the composer. The repertoire presented this evening is a fair chunk of the forthcoming sessions. The quartet has, over the years, performed a large repertoire of challenging recent music I m thinking of the Luigi Nono fragmente-stille that we played in spring 2007 at REDCAT, and some of the recent hotbed of complexist composers to graduate from Stanford University of whose music we presented a program in 2010: in a conversation at one of our recent rehearsals, we realized for all the involved preparations such music demands none has generated the quantity of discussion and contemplation as have these quartets of, particularly the earlier-composed Summer and Lines, which we are presenting this evening. This is not because the music is all that difficult to play or understand even though the lists of instructions for these pieces are extensive: in the case of for example, Summer, almost dwarfing the playing score. Preparing this music generates so much discussion because of the way it challenges the very basis of the relationships among the performers: often, and in varying ways, orienting the notation and interpretation so as to destabilize conventions of conventional chamber music interaction. All this may sound like the music this evening is somehow anarchically destructive of the quartet tradition (or quintet in the case of the version of Lines we have chosen to present), but that s not been our experience. Seen from a certain perspective, innovations in the quartet genre historically have been made by letting in elements that are dangerous, destabilizing, challenging and that thereby re-articulate the way the people of the quartet interact how they find a (new) strategy to cohere as an ensemble. If you ve ever

3 tried to play a late Beethoven quartet for the first time, or one of the ferocious Bartók quartets, let alone any of the Carter et al, you know what I mean. Above all, you do get the impression writes for people to play his music; compellingly, the perpetual reminders in his performance notes to his compositions that elements of the composition (sometimes dynamics, sometimes its notes, sometimes its timbres, etc.) are changeable/creatable/ adjustable by the performers own tastes, attitudes, ideas. However much of the overarching interpretive guidance may make the possibility of performance go wrong or in other words fail in some way, the underlying principle of compositions always seems to allow for the performer to take ownership of the resulting musical flow and non-flow, thereby allowing for a commitment to shaping something one can believe in from out of the fraught remnants of the apparent(-ly fading, fragile) score. As a naïve student of history, it had appeared when we planned to commence our program with For E. C. (for Elliott Carter a tribute at his 95th birthday) we had begun with an irony: after all, I had learned that the New York School, which came across as the multi-headed god Cage-Feldman-Wolff, was part of a kind of proto-downtown scene in and around New York City; their compositions appeared to be the antithesis of the academically motivistic output of the uptown composers, for whom Carter was one important emblem, if not member. No doubt the Cold War era imperatives, internal as well as external, political as well as artistic, must have generated much positing of aesthetic invective or so I ve heard. Of course, it is easy to say that things have improved with such an era behind us, and certainly For E. C. revels in a playful and oh-so-effortlessly skilled animation of the principals of musical layerings and characterization that was the hallmark of Carter s output. It would appear the laughter does not truly arrive until the end section of Mr. Wolff s brief composition: and here is a prime example of the perilous experience his compositions invariably provide. The end: it is often the hardest section of music to write any composer can tell you that. Christian provides the quartet with lines of material one chooses to play or not one line is mandatory, but it could be two, or more. The clef is not given so the notes affixed to the staff can be read a startlingly large number of ways; the tempo and pulse is free and uncoordinated between the players... in short, the quartet largely in the moment is expected to improvise (given certain stimuli) the crucial end game of what is an intricately and subtly constructed miniature, perfectly balanced in so many ways. Fun and exciting, for sure, but an enterprise that requires a lot of discussion, experimentation, negotiation and unexpected evolution as a quartet. Example 1 of music below is an excerpt of that final section of the score. Summer, a composition from 1961, is a very strictly notated score (an excerpt is given in example 2) just one with an almost infinite number of possible realizations; the length of the piece could theoretically be endless, so the quartet s sensibility for form and possibility are challenged into intuiting an appropriate trajectory.

4 The architecture of all the plausible trajectories is deliberately set out (in the performance instructions) to be as fragile as it mostly feels performing the composition: with some frequency, the correspondences of the parts will reach an impasse; this means one part of the quartet (which is organized as two varying duos) can only go on when another sound ends whilst the other half of the quartet can proceed also when another sound has also ended, or vice versa. When the quartet realizes this has occurred, someone may lead the group to another section, or the piece may end. To not treat these breakdowns as failures is a challenging concept when one s notion of professionalism is predicated on performing any given music correctly and accurately. The rewarding beauty, for us performing this music and the source, perhaps of its expressive opportunity is precisely this challenge to our otherwise much-rehearsed ensemble technique of performing notated music as well as we can. In other ways the score to Summer challenges the notion of fidelity to its score: some gestures are to be played precisely together with someone in the quartet, but only when they play something, and you don t necessarily know when that may be (because of the almost infinite possibilities of realization of the given material, there can be no cues created, except those that commence each of the five sections of the composition). In performing much of conventional chamber music, one relies upon an array of almost imperceptible visual and auditory cues in order for the music to stay together: in common-practice music, or for that matter any kind of music that relies on a harmonic-melodic grid of fairly predictable patterns to maintain structural motion, such cueing facilitates the ensemble s understanding of the composition s flow. With the challenges just described in the score of Summer of playing together without this fairly predictable fabric of harmonic-melodic rhythm is probably the most effective foil to pulse-based music one could ever encounter. Much of the rhythms around us spring from pulse-based sources (heartbeats for example) that combine to create a tapestry of experiences in a far more fascinating rhythm. In an attitude of summer relax, you may just be ready to hear the magic of such experience, just as in the world around you: not as chaos, but as the most engaging of nuance. A veritable encyclopedia of possible quartet ensemble relationships is explored in the much more recent For 2 violinists, violist and cellist. Moments of palpable ensemble unity are somewhat economically situated throughout the epic structure of this piece: very beautiful, to me, is the ending sequence, where a brief waltz-like ensemble moment gives way to a cadence of (uncoordinated) sounds; then a metrically precise set of two duos, where the two duos do not coordinate their respective pulses which then gives way to all four

5 players playing metrically precise music but uncoordinated with each other: a subtle shift but a powerful experience. The piece ends with beautiful long tones similarly metric but uncoordinated. But I get ahead of myself. Since it is an epic structure, perhaps the most helpful guide is not poetic, but a road map to the structure: what is so inherently poetic about the music is the way the delineated structure sets out varying musical gestures and compositional approaches to the players playing relationships doing this in a way that blurs that very same structural conceit. It begins with a long duo for violin 1 and cello; with no immediately noticeable shift in musical material, the other duo of violin 2 and viola continues the musical fabric at a certain point: one could write books on the beauty and skill of this non-transition. A very brief cadence for all four players, exploring Wolff s eccentric microtonality (it s an imprecise notation that leaves the exact realization up to the players), segues into a trio for 1st violin, viola and cello. A fairly extended solo for violin 2 with a miniscule viola solo-transition leads to the first of two completely unique notational sequences in the piece: this first one is reproduced below as example 3). The texture is now pretty much the quartet, though vestiges of the previous subdivisions continue: after the page just mentioned, a metrically coordinated trio of the 2 violins and cello coexists with a completely independent viola line; this is followed soon after by a trio of rhythmic music for violin 2, viola and cello with the 1st violin proceeding independently; then a section where the cello proceeds with material very different from the other three, this time with the other three musical lines traded in a non-pulsed manner, with the cello in a rhythmic line; a brief transition where those attitudes are flip-flopped, leads to a very arresting texture in harmonics for the quartet this probably is the most dramatic and obvious happening in this composition. Unity in a dis-unified texture follows for the quartet, as a does a very conventionally composed section next, which sounds completely and delightfully bizarre in the context of the structure up to this moment. Another dis-unified texture follows, ppp this time; then again something quite conventionally rhythmic we re now at the waltz-like bit I was previously describing. At this point with another of the uniquely notated pages presented as a kind of symmetry to the one printed as example 3, the quartet comes to rest in an extended cadence (coda?!) of a gentle undoing of the rhythmic unity of the group: who knew such a nuanced evolution to a gently disunity could be so harmonious?

6 Perhaps you will be grateful that I won t write much about Lines. A page of the score is printed as example 4, below: it should give you an idea that, once again, Wolff is finding a (different) way to challenge the notion of how to play together; how to correspond one s gestures within the whole depicted as the score. Interpreting the score not forgetting the astonishing scordaturas! is as epic a journey as the sound world of the composition surely is, whatever choices you make (the notation does, once again, leave open the possibility of many differing interpretations). Though presented primarily as a quartet, there are aspects to the extraordinarily conceived score that are explicitly open to inclusion of more players, or interpreted as a solo, duo, trio for string players. Our version this evening is for string quintet of 2 violins, viola, 2 cellos. This concert, and the one tomorrow evening, are devoted to exploring the colossal, but insufficiently explored (in the concert arena), contribution of one of the most individual current living composers:. It is thus with some of our own odd individuality that we conclude this program with the quintet by Nicholas Deyoe. As his program note (below) insinuates by not mentioning anything about Wolff and his music at all, Lullaby 3, or indeed Deyoe s already impressive output of music generally, does not really deal in the same language and compositional imperatives as Wolff. However, the way in which Deyoe explores the connection between the players, as he articulates so clearly in his program note, is such a potent parallel to the Wolff repertoire, that the inclusion was irresistible. Of course, we are also inordinately proud to offer the premiere of Lullaby 3 on a concert that is a very important moment for the Formalist Quartet and our undying love and admiration for our mentor, Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick. Nicholas Deyoe writes: The Lullabies that I have composed over the last few years are very personal pieces for me. They are all written for musicians with whom I feel particularly close. In 2011, when I composed Lullaby (No. 1, for percussion solo) for Brian Archinal, it was not intended to begin a series. In fact, it was actually written to be the final piece in an evening-length cycle for Brian. It is an ending, an acceptance of both positive and negative. It is about the peace that can be found in an ending, no matter how troubled. I discovered that I had more to explore on this topic when Brendan Nguyen asked for a piano solo that resulted in Lullaby 2. These pieces are meant simultaneously as meditation and journey. Each has a final destination that is prepared throughout, but much of that preparation dwells in slowly developing textures, or seemingly frozen gestures. These Lullabies are not simply a way of working through musical/compositional issues of my own. It was also my desire to highlight the aspects that I find so compelling in Brian and Brendan s individual styles. Both have an extraordinary sensitivity of touch, an inherent ability to pace unnatural music in the most natural

7 ways, a fierceness and aggression that can explode out of nowhere, and beautiful ability to transcend time in performance. All of the above characteristics exist in the Formalist Quartet. Each member possesses all of these qualities individually, but as a group they are simply astonishing. My relationship with the Formalists (both individually and as a unit) over the years has been incredibly rewarding. It is very exciting for me to have this opportunity to work on a new piece together with them. Mark Menzies, 2013 ABOUT THE ARTISTS was born in 1934 in Nice, France, but has lived mostly in the U.S. since He studied piano with Grete Sultan and, briefly, composition with John Cage. Though mostly self-taught as a composer, association with John Cage, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, Earle Brown, Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew have been important for him. A particular feature of his music has been to allow performers various degrees of freedom and interaction at the actual time of performance. The music is published by C.F. Peters, New York, and a good portion of it has been recorded. A number of pieces were used by Merce Cunningham and the Cunningham Dance Company, starting in Wolff has also been active as a performer and as an improviser with, among others, Takehisa Kosugi, Steve Lacey, Keith Rowe, William Winant, Kui Dong, Larry Polansky and the group AMM. His writings on music, up to 1998, are collected in the book Cues: Writings and Conversations, published by MusikTexte, Cologne. He has received awards and grants from the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters, DAAD Berlin, the Asian Cultural Council, the Fromm Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (the John Cage award for music) and the Mellon Foundation. He is a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and has received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts. Academically trained at Harvard as a classicist, Wolff has taught classics at Harvard and from 1971 to 1999 was professor of Classics and Music at Dartmouth College. Nicholas Deyoe is a composer, conductor, and guitarist born in Colorado and currently living in Southern California. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from UC San Diego where he studied with Roger Reynolds. Compositionally, Nicholas explores what it means for music to be physical. Drawing on noise, delicacy, drama, fantasy, brutality, and lyricism, his music attempts to connect to audiences both intellectually and emotionally. As a guitarist/improviser, Nicholas strives to further the already vast sound world of the electric guitar by experimenting with microtonal tunings, bows, and beer cans. Nicholas has conducted The La Jolla Symphony Orchestra, Red Fish Blue Fish, Ensemble Ascolta, The Darmstadt Preisträgerensemble, Noise, The University of Northern Colorado Symphony, Chamber, and Sinfonietta Orchestras, and several ad hoc ensembles in Colorado, California, and Germany. His music has been performed in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, France, Iceland, and Japan. His debut album with throbbing eyes is available from Populist Records and a duo album Chimney Liquor with Jeff Kaiser will be released on Eh? in October. The Formalist Quartet (Ashley Walters, cello; Andrew Tholl, violin; Mark Menzies, violin and viola; and Andrew McIntosh, violin and viola) is an ensemble dedicated to the performance of adventurous repertoire focusing on contemporary pieces and world premieres as well as exploring a diverse spectrum of early music and the standard repertoire. The quartet was born on the 100th birthday of Dmitri Shostakovich (September 25th, 2006) and since then has played frequently across the United States in concert halls,

8 festivals, art galleries, cafes, and homes, including the Roy O. Disney Hall at CalArts; REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; the wulf., Los Angeles; University of California, San Diego; Stanford University; University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; the Flatfile Galleries, Chicago; University of Nevada, Reno; Cornelia Street Cafe, New York; MOSA Concert Series, New York; Princeton University; the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts; the Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; LISTEN/SPACE, New York; Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington DC; ArtSpace Herndon, Virginia; Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades; and the Et Cetera New Music Festival. In 2010 the quartet appeared at the Reykjavic Arts Festival, Iceland. The quartet s recordings include the epic 100 Cadences by Arthur Jarvinen, music for several small films and pop records, and Nicholas Deyoe s string quartets, released on populist records last year. The quartet is currently engaged in recording all the music for string quartet by. Formalist Quartet comprises. Cellist Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick is an active soloist, chamber musician and specialist in contemporary music. She has performed world and local premieres of solo and chamber works throughout the U.S. and Europe including at REDCAT (most notably as curator and principal performer of the Cellos! of a few years ago) the Los Angeles Olympic Festival, the Computer Music Festival in Zurich, the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz and the San Francisco Symphony New and Unusual Music series. Most notably among a plethora of recordings, she has recorded Elliott Carter s Enchanted Preludes, a work written for her and flutist Dorothy Stone. Renowned for her early career touring with Joan LaBarbara and Morton Subotnick since 1981 (Jacob s Room is her fourth recording from this collaboration) she was also a founding member of the California E.A.R. Unit, that in its heyday toured throughout the U.S. and Europe. She has also given master classes and recitals under the auspices of the U.S.I.A. Arts America Program in Central and South America. A native of Los Angeles, her principal studies were with Cesare Pascarella, with further studies with Mischa Schneider, William Pleeth and Pierre Fournier. UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AT REDCAT April 23 April Guillermo Calderón: Villa + Discurso April 29 Cabinets Of Wonder: Films and a Performance by Charlotte Pryce May 1 Claude Lefort, Thinker of the Political May 4 - May 19 REDCAT International Children s Film Festival For more information visit redcat.org WE WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR REDCAT EXPERIENCE! Post a comment on our wall at facebook.com/calartsredcat Tweet us at twitter.com/calartsredcat info.redcat@calarts.edu