Thursday
March 10, 2011, 8:00 pm
Warner Concert Hall
Concert No. 195 / Oberlin Wind Ensemble
Timothy Weiss, conductor
Yün Chou Wen Chung
(b. 1923)
Bal Eum Lee, flute Theo Chandler, clarinet Shelly Li, bassoon
Andrew Pratt, horn Raymond Bazz, trumpet Katrina Lettang, trombone
Andrew Allen-Parrot, piano Brandon Hall, Sean Dowgray, percussion
Concerto for nine instruments, Op. 24 Anton Webern
I. Etwas lebhaft (1883–1945)
II. Sehr langsam
III. Sehr rasch
Bal Eum Lee, flute Megan Kyle, oboe Theo Chandler, clarinet
Andrew Pratt, horn Raymond Bazz, trumpet Katrina Lettang, trombone
Andrew Allen-Parrot, piano Maya Bennardo, violin
Batmyagmar Erdenebat, viola
Serenata No. 2 for eleven instruments Bruno Maderna
(1920–1973)
Bal Eum Lee, flute Theo Chandler, clarinet Zachary Good, bass clarinet
Andrew Pratt, horn Raymond Bazz, trumpet Andrew Allen-Parrot, piano
Brandon Hall, Sean Dowgray, percussion Caroline Nelson, harp
Maya Bennardo, violin Batmyagmar Erdenebat, viola Zachary Hobin, bass
Intermission
Octandre Edgard Varèse
I. Assez lent (1885–1965)
II. Très vif et nerveux
III. Grave-Animé et jubilatoire
Laura Cocks, flute Megan Kyle, oboe Zachary Good, clarinet
Jake Purcell, bassoon Anna Shelow, horn Raymond Bazz, trumpet
Katrina Lettang, trombone Zachary Hobin, bass
Never thoughts for us to forget (2011) Aaron Helgeson
(b. 1982)
Laura Cocks, flute Megan Kyle, oboe Zachary Good, clarinet
Jake Purcell, bassoon Anna Shelow, horn Raymond Bazz, trumpet
Katrina Lettang, trombone Zachary Hobin, bass
Homage to Varèse’s “Octandre” Chris Watson
(b. 1976)
Laura Cocks, flute Megan Kyle, oboe Zachary Good, clarinet
Jake Purcell, bassoon Anna Shelow, horn Raymond Bazz, trumpet
Katrina Lettang, trombone Zachary Hobin, bass
Novae Dominique Lemaître
(b. 1953)
Laura Cocks, flute Megan Kyle, english horn Zachary Good, clarinet
Jake Purcell, bassoon Anna Shelow, horn Raymond Bazz, trumpet
Katrina Lettang, trombone Zachary Hobin, bass
Katrina Lettang, student ensemble manager
Michael Roest, Jessica Downs, ensemble manager & librarian
Please silence all cell phones and refrain from the use of video cameras
unless prior arrangements have been made with the performers.
The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you.
Program Notes
Yün (1969)
by Chou Wen-chung (b. Yantai, China, 1923)
Instrumentation: flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion (2 players: low and high wood blocks, lowest to highest temple blocks, low and medium tam-tams, low and high claves, small sizzle cymbal, low and high bongos, low and medium timbales, very low and low tomtoms, low, medium, and high anvils, low, medium, and high cow bells, low, medium, and high suspended cymbals, small Chinese cymbal, large sizzle cymbal, gong, low and high snare drums, low and high field drums, low bass drum), piano.
Chou Wen-Chung’s arrival from China in the United States in 1946 marked the beginning of a whole new era in the history of music, although no one at the time (not even Chou) realized that. Yet Chou became the first Asian composer to establish himself in the West, and this had momentous consequences for the future of composition. The ‟meeting” or the ‟synthesis” of East and West was no longer a theoretical concept or a Westerner’s exercise in exoticism, but rather the actual expression of a truly bicultural musician’s individual life experience.
Chou became the disciple, friend and later the literary executor of Edgard Varèse (1883-1965), perhaps the most radical among the composers of his generation. Varèse opened Chou’s mind in many new directions. As a longtime professor at Columbia University, Chou in turn taught a whole generation of composers, including several from China who are carrying his legacy into the 21st century.
The woodwind-brass-percussion scoring of Yün recalls Varèse’s Intégrales, but musically there is no resemblance whatsoever between the two works. Whereas the Varèse is full of sharp accents, abrupt tempo changes and large fortissimos, Chou’s music is slow throughout, mostly soft, and contemplative. One of its ‟main themes” is a single, long-held note played by different instruments in turn, but always with an extremely slow vibrato, so that one can clearly hear the alternation of pitches.
There are no traditional Chinese musical elements in Yün. The work’s Chinese character lies instead in the way it projects a great inner calm, free from all Western ‟angst.”
Chou explains the title as part of the expression ch’i yün, ‟reverberation (yün) of the vitalizing force in nature (ch’i). He calls ch’i yün ‟the foremost principle in Chinese art,” and relates it to the ‟moment when the universe and the individual merge as one.”
Concerto for nine instruments, Op. 24 (1934)
by Anton Webern (Vienna, 1883 - Mittersill, Austria, 1945)
Instrumentation: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, and piano.
Webern’s Op. 24 is one of the great classics of twelve-tone music. The tone rows and their manipulations have been analyzed endlessly; both Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt found that the work contained even the origins of total serialism. Yet no matter how rigorous the structure, there are always compositional decisions to be made that are not pre-determined by the system.
Webern made no attempt to hide or disguise the twelve-tone structure. The work opens with a group of three notes played by the oboe, immediately followed by other groups of three in the flute, the trumpet, and the clarinet, respectively. The four groups of three notes immediately present the twelve tones of the row, and much of the piece is articulated in similar alternations of three (sometimes two or four) notes that make the dodecaphonic structure almost didactically audible. Yet our attention is immediately drawn to the fact that in each of the first four sets of three notes, the durations are different: sixteenths, eighth-notes, eighth-note triplets, quarter-note triplets... The idea that Webern may have begun to ‟serialize” rhythm rests on the perception that he is extremely economical in his vocabulary of durations and makes do with a rather reduced number of rhythmic options. Within the group of three notes, each note has the same length; there are no changes of time signatures; polyrhythms and complicated rhythmic divisions are avoided. Yet Webern achieves considerable rhythmic variety in spite of these constraints. Regarding timbre, the strings frequently alternate between pizzicato (plucked) and arco (bowed) strings; the tempo fluctuates somewhat as certain three-note figures are given additional emphasis by slight ritardandos; in dynamics, fortissimos may be followed by subito pianos and vice versa. Analysts have described the three brief movements of the Concerto as, in turn, sonata, rondo and variation, but as with the use of serial procedures, the point is not how Webern followed pre-established rules (although his transformation procedures are certainly fascinating), but rather how he escaped traditional implications of classical form which always suggest a form of journeying from point A to point B, whereas Webern achieves a remarkable stasis despite all the rapid textural changes.
The Concerto was written as a 60th birthday present for Arnold Schoenberg, Webern’s friend and former teacher. It was first performed in Prague on September 4, 1935.
Serenata No. 2 for eleven instruments (1954, rev. 1957)
by Bruno Maderna (Venice, 1920 - Darmstadt, 1973)
Bruno Maderna, in whose memory Pierre Boulez wrote his epochal Rituel, was one of the leading figures of the Darmstadt avant-garde in the 1950s and ‛60s. An early pioneer of serialism, the Italian composer-conductor also wrote electronic music and experimented with aleatory technique as well.
Maderna used the word Serenata in a good half-dozen compositions, as if to insist on using serial technique, which many regarded as austere and cerebral, in a lyrical and expressive way. In this, he followed the example of the twelve-tone works of Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975), now in the context of total serialism. Maderna exerted a strong influence on his slightly younger Italian colleagues and friends, Luigi Nono (1924-1990) and Luciano Berio (1925-2003).
Maderna first wrote a Serenata for 11 instruments in 1946, which is one of his earliest extant works. The present work is a different composition, written after Maderna went to Darmstadt. Its construction is extremely rigorous: the Maderna Archives in Bologna contain 140 pages of sketches and diagrams pertaining to this work. Yet the Serenata wears its structure lightly: the opening flute solo has an almost impressionistic aura to it, and the entire work has a certain languido character to it. Webernesque fragmentation goes hand in hand with a vivid sense of color, as well as with an overall form in which the musical activity gradually intensifies, including even a powerful, Romantic climax about seven minutes into the twelve-minute composition. After that memorable moment, the motion calms down, and the textures become fragmented again as the piece reaches its ethereal conclusion.
Octandre (1923)
by Edgard Varèse (Paris, 1883 - New York, 1965)
Instrumentation: flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, clarinet (doubling small clarinet in E flat), bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, and double bass.
A great deal happens in the seven short minutes—divided into three short movements—of Varèse’s Octandre. One can say without exaggeration that the work introduced a whole new genre of chamber music (a previously unseen combination of eight instruments) and a whole new kind of spatial relationship among the instruments involved (with a constantly changing hierarchy among the players).
Having arrived in the United States in 1915, the French-born Varèse was ready to make a clean break with the past. His own past as a composer had been obliterated as all his works written in Europe had been destroyed in a warehouse fire. His new style was based on the discovery of new musical processes, derived not from music history but rather from a direct observation of natural phenomena. To Varèse, the eruption of a volcano, the sound of a rapid stream, the ocean waves, the wind, were all music. But instead of imitating those sounds programmatically in his work, he strove to write with the spontaneity of nature, and to devise structures that grew like crystals, behaved analogously to the way light was refracted in a prism, or emulated the complicated trajectories of atoms and molecules. This meant that ‟absolute music” to him had nothing to do with respecting the traditional forms and genres of the 19th century, but instead had everything to do with the composer discovering and implementing his own absolutes.
This ‟liberation” of music from the past begins with Varèse’s first American works (which is to say, his first surviving works): Amériques, Offrandes, Hyperprism, Octandre, and Intégrales. Varèse usually makes as few references to earlier music as possible; yet in Octandre one notices a certain amount of motivic development along traditional lines (varied repetitions of motifs from one instrument to another). The division into movements is also noteworthy; since this is the only time such a division is found in Varèse’s music.
Each of the eight instruments participating in the work has its moment (or moments) of solo where it comes to prominence, creating foreground and background in a spatial sense. The way sounds travel in the air to reach our ears was always a prime consideration for Varèse, carefully planned in his music.
The chromatic opening motif of the oboe and the repeated-note figure of the clarinet soon afterwards are the two mysterious elements that determine much of what follows. The entrance of the trumpet and the flute brings about a sudden expansion in sound and volume, a ‟volcanic eruption” as it were, but one that lasts only a few seconds. Repeated chords from the brass, a return of the earlier clarinet motif in the horn, and a little ostinato theme played by the bassoon are the most important mini-events in the movement. As they unfold, the intensity of the music increases; but the process comes to an abrupt halt and the movement ends with the return of the opening oboe motif.
The second movement begins with a ‟lively and nervous” repeated-note pattern in the piccolo, soon joined by the E-flat clarinet. But the true soloist is the trombone, which (in spite of being largely restricted to repeating the same notes over and over again) manages to create a very special, incantatory atmosphere, thanks to the powerful counter-harmonies in the other instruments. A more insistent passage follows, in which the trumpet and the E-flat clarinet share the clarinet motif from the first movement. The same motif sounds much more excited and intense this time, due to the irregular rhythms (the number of times a note is repeated varies unpredictably each time the motif is heard). The full ensemble continues to play an important reinforcing role, and ends the movement on a shrill chord played in flutter-tongue.
In the third movement, the double bass and the bassoon emerge from the background with their brief solos. Surprisingly, something as traditional as a brief fugato develops with oboe, bassoon, and E-flat clarinet, though after a few measures the fugato dissolves and makes room for a new incarnation of the repeated-note idea in the high woodwinds. Disjointed fragments of fanfares and repeated-note figures fill out the rest of the work.
Innovative and ‟modern-sounding” though it is, Octandre did rather well with its first audiences. The critic Paul Rosenfeld was certain that Varèse was ‟destined to lead the art of music from Stravinsky’s into fresh virgin realms of sound.” Another critic, W. P. Tryon, called Octandre the ‟musical event of the year.” He felt the composition was ‟so personal and so powerful...that it [had] enough in it to provide the foundation of a whole musical school.” And at a 1925 performance in Mexico City under Carlos Chávez, the work was repeatedly ‟acclaimed by hundreds of students and artists...in the amphitheater of the National Preparatory School, beneath Diego Rivera’s frescoes there.” Varèse was enjoying the most prolific and successful years of his career. Less than a decade after arriving in the United States with two words of English and $90 in his pocket (as his biographer Fernand Ouellette claims), he had indeed established himself as one of the leaders of New York’s new-music scene.
Never thoughts for us to forget (2011)
by Aaron Helgeson (b. Eugene, OR, 1982)
There are two silences. One when no word is spoken. The other when perhaps a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its place. When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.