Shostakovich and Mahler Program Notes

PROGRAM NOTES

Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996) :: Requiem

Success may come slowly, but recognition can happen overnight. That was the case for Tōru Takemitsu. He was nearly thirty years old when Igor Stravinsky happened to hear the Requiem. Afterward Stravinsky publicly praised the work, effectively launching the international phase of Takemitsu’s career.  

Takemitsu heard Western music for the first time as a teenager in the aftermath of World War II. A military officer played a recording for him of a French chanson. What he heard captivated his imagination, driving him to pen and paper. He began to teach himself how to compose, receiving only occasional lessons. Debussy was very influential on the young Takemitsu, as was another French composer, Olivier Messiaen. As a result of these inspirations, Takemitsu’s early music expresses a unique blend of chromatics, tonalities, and space. Later he would return to exploring the traditional music of his homeland, revealing music of brilliantly interwoven textures featuring Japanese instruments alongside Western. 

Requiem is Latin for “rest,” and opens the chant Requiem aeternam dona eis (give them eternal rest) intoned at a Catholic mass for the dead. Takemitsu intended it as a more universal plea, perhaps emphasized by the fact that he utilizes no verbal text. In a 1965 letter to the program annotator for the New York Philharmonic, Takemitsu expresses, “I titled [it] ‘requiem’...we are bereaved of our people in the war—not only Japanese, our world. I think, music must be a form of prayer.” More specifically, the work also nods at a specific loss, that of composer Fumio Hayasaka. One of the undisputed masters of Japanese cinematic music, Hayasaka provided the soundtracks to many of Akira Kurosawa’s films. He also served as a mentor for the young Takemitsu. 

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) :: “Adagietto” from Symphony No. 5 

Mahler lived a relatively short life, something that isn’t typically discussed. Within the limit of his fifty-one years he penned dozens of works and nine (or ten, depending on categorization technicalities) symphonies, each one massive in scope (as he said himself, containing an entire world). Perhaps even more astonishing is that he also spent his entire professional career as a composer working on his music almost only in the summers, since he was otherwise occupied with his obligations as director of the Vienna Court Opera. Mahler was in his early twenties when Richard Wagner, and then Franz Liszt, died. Therefore the musical world he inherited was one of grand scale story—both explicitly through the art of opera, and implicitly through the romantic era’s obsession with program music, or music that conveyed a narrative using instruments only (no lyrics, no singers). Symphonic form, proper, had been largely avoided in the later half of the19th century, and replaced with tone poems or other large impressionistic instrumental works. Though Mahler chose to return to the symphony, proper, as his preferred structure for musical expression, he often infused narrative, and Mahler’s symphonies can be grouped, in part, by whether or not they included programmatic elements. 

The Symphony No. 5 is an example of one of the non-programmatic symphonies, and yet it is brimming with deeply felt emotions that were reactions to facing death and love in succession. Having survived a hemorrhage that almost claimed his life, Mahler would have certainly had a profound feeling of gratefulness to meet and marry Alma Schindler one year later. Reflecting this astounding reversal of fortune, the Symphony No. 5 opens with the punctuating brass announcement of a funeral march, and releases into a luxurious declaration of passion in its slow movement, which has become famous on its own as the Adagietto. 

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) :: Symphony No. 14, Op. 135 

Every work of art emerges from its context. In some cases, it’s a reaction against its context. In others, it’s an affirmation. Either way, the product is an extension of the creator’s experience. 

Dmitri Shostakovich’s context was Soviet Russia. In his experience, the government was always watching and listening. At any moment, you could anger the authorities and be punished in a variety of ways: public ridicule in a government sanctioned newspaper, the banning of your music, or in extreme cases simply be taken away in the night, never to return to your life as you knew it. In that environment, secrecy was key. This shroud of mystery provokes Shostakovich’s biographers to argue about his motivations. Did he really believe Soviet policy? Did he just pretend to comply with whatever the government said so that he could live as undisturbed as possible? It’s impossible to know. Shostakovich kept no diary, other than what he revealed emotionally in his music.  Even then, the truth of his music lies far beyond our reach, because as Michael Mishra has wisely cautioned, “any answers, as obvious as some of them may appear to be, remain speculative.” 

As the 1960s began, Shostakovich faced an increase of alarming health crises including diphtheria, a bout with polio, bone fractures, and heart problems. He also faced an emotional crisis when he succumbed to building pressure to join the Communist Party in 1960. Those wrought feelings emerge in what is arguably his most famous, and personal, string quartet: No. 8. Shostakovich wrote to Isaak Glickman:

I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself. The title page could carry the dedication: “To the memory of the composer of this quartet.”  

Shostakovich’s compositions from that point onward were preoccupied with death (physical, and likely emotional/spiritual as well), including his Symphony No. 14, written in 1969 and inspired by Modest Mussorgsky’s The Songs and Dances of Death. Though he deliberately labeled it as a symphony, it’s really more of a large-scale song cycle. A master of orchestration, Shostakovich made the very specific choice to write for extremes, scoring the work for soprano, bass, strings and percussion. The pairings, compliments, and contrasts he found within that ensemble are sharp and arresting to the ear. At just under an hour, the length invites the listener into total absorption. The selection of the poets appears to have layered meaning, reflecting the composer’s own state of being. Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke all died young—the oldest was barely 51—from extreme health failures and/or under political duress. 

Shostakovich observed, “Fear of death may be the most intense emotion of all. I sometimes think that there is no deeper feeling. The irony lies in the fact that under the influence of that fear, people create poetry, prose and music; that is, they try to strengthen their ties with the living and increase their influence on them. How can you not fear death? I wrote a number of works reflecting my understanding of the question. The most important of them is the Fourteenth Symphony.”  

Given the subject matter, the Symphony No. 14 can feel daunting, or overwhelmingly morbid. However, it is vital to remember Shostakovich’s intent: “I want listeners to this symphony to realize that life is truly beautiful. My symphony is an impassioned protest against death, a reminder to the living that they should live honestly, conscientiously, nobly, never committing a base act.” 

-Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot

Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.

Why we are playing Shostakovich 14

A Far Cry’s democratic programming process is a tribal business; like Survivor, but for classical music. Here’s the story of how one of our more improbable programs came to be.

March 1997: Little Mikey Unterman (age 10) goes to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (with parent) perform Shostakovich’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. He is spellbound and flabbergasted.

mid-2010s: Older Michael Unterman (of ages) remembers that performance, makes internet searches, and finds out that the Mussorgsky inspired Shostakovich’s 14th Symphony, also a song cycle. He listens and decides this is a piece A Far Cry must play, he says it’s: one of the most important pieces for strings (plus two vocal soloists and three percussionists) AFC has yet to undertake.

August 2016: At AFC’s summer retreat, Michael unveils his infamous “Shosty Sandwich,” a program proposal in which the Shostakovich Symphony No. 14 is “sandwiched” between two pieces of Mahler, the Adagietto from his 5th Symphony, both to open and close the concert. He argues that the first Adagietto will open the audience up to the emotional intensity of the Shostakovich, then soothe them back to a hopeful place on the other side. Members of AFC raise concerns that Michael may be playing some kind of prank. The program is voted off the island.

2016-2018: “Shosty Sandwich” languishes in AFC’s programming “Vault.” And yet it nags at the Criers. They open the Vault, only to have their eyes accidentally land upon it. There is a rumbling in their gut.

August 2018: The Criers reach for the “Shosty Sandwich,” but they ask, first, for a taste-test. They worry it might not sit well, after all this time. Brave volunteers convene to listen to the program through from start to finish. Michael feels a little queasy. He worries the format might feel like a tease: the promise of a second Mahler bear hug on the other side of the biting and morbid Shostakovich.

He suggests instead opening with Takemitsu’s Requiem for strings; which teases out the darker tones of the Shostakovich, almost a charcoal darkness, while the Mahler accesses a more emotional and vividly colorful landscape, sort of Klimt-like. The Shostakovich is somewhere in the middle; expressionistic, like Edvard Munch or Max Beckmann. 

All three of the pieces orbit the theme of death: the Takemitsu as an elegy to a mentor, the film composer Fumio Hayasaka; and the Mahler, written shortly after a near-death experience that influenced the whole of the 5th Symphony (it opens with an extended funeral march). On the mission of his 14th Symphony, Shostakovich said: “it's useless to protest against death as such, but you can and must protest against violent death,” which his symphony does through poetry by Lorca, Apollinaire, Kuchelbecker, and Rilke.

September 2018: The Criers give the green light.

Virtue and Virtuosity Program Notes

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) :: Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat Major, BWV 1051

The story goes like this: In 1721, Bach sent a manuscript of orchestral works to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, inscribed with an elaborate dedication to the nobleman. These six pieces were pragmatically titled Concerts avec plusieurs instruments (“concertos with several instruments”), which would be christened with the snappier nickname “Brandenburg” over a century later by Philipp Spitta, a Bach biographer. Why did Bach send them? No one knows for certain. Bach was happily employed as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen when he met the Margrave in Berlin. In fact, evidence shows that the reason he was in the city was on business to check on a new harpsichord for Leopold. One thing we do know is that a handful of years lapsed between their meeting and the mailing. During those years, devastating change swept through the composer’s household: out of town on duty with musicians and the Prince, Bach returned to find his wife had died several days before and was already buried. Not only was he heartbroken, but he was left to care for their several children alone. Perhaps Bach remembered meeting the Margrave and saw him as a potential ticket out of town. The concertos may have been intended as a kind of musical CV. Whatever his motivation, they were sent and met with silence. No reply. The Margrave never thanked Bach, nor apparently even had them performed. 

It appears the musical material of the Brandenburg Concertos was not new, but rather re-workings of pre-existing works. For one thing, it was commonplace practice for Bach, and his contemporaries, to recycle old material. Additionally, it would have been bad form for the composer to send brand new music to one nobleman when employed by another. Regardless, Bach—the habitually thorough craftsman—once again took an existing genre and pushed it to its maximum potential. In this case the Brandenburgs are “concerto grossi,” or “big concerts,” an orchestral form popularized by Italian composers where a smaller group (“concertino”) of soloists are in conversation with the whole of the ensemble (“ripieno”). Each of the six concertos are completely unique, differing especially in instrumentation. Brandenburg No. 6 stands out from the pack because of what it lacks—violins! Because of this, No. 6 has a prominent richness of sound that adds its own layer of drama to the performers’ pyrotechnics.  

Luciano Berio: Selections from Duetti per due Violini

Many people have an awareness of the history of music, but Berio was keenly mindful of existing within it. In 1968 he wrote Sinfonia for the New York Philharmonic’s 125th anniversary, which drops musical quotes from compositions by Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Mahler, to name a few. Rendering, written between 1989-90, juxtaposes fragments of an unfinished Schubert orchestral work against Berio’s newly composed music. The primary questions he seems to be ruminating over are about influence, and the artist’s eternal apprenticeship to the past. 

The Duetti per due Violini were written between 1979-1983 and display Berio’s respect for friends and colleagues by acknowledging that artistic creation is a communal undertaking. There are thirty-four of them, each named for a different person, and linked to a personal memory, interaction, or lesson learned. Since they were also meant to function as pedagogical tools, one part is often a bit easier than the other. Berio wrote his own program note for the Duetti. A portion of it follows.

“It can happen that a violinist friend tells a composer, one night, that other than those of Bartók, there are not enough violin duets today. And it can happen that the composer immediately sets himself to writing duets that night until dawn...and then more duets in the moments of leisure, in different cities and hotels, between rehearsals, traveling, thinking of somebody, when looking for a present...this is what happened to me and I am grateful to that nocturnal violinist whose name is given to one of these Duetti. Thus behind every duet there are personal reasons and situations.” He continues, “These Duetti are for me what the vers de circonstance were for Mallarmé: that is, they are not necessarily based on deep musical motivations, but rather connected by the fragile thread of daily occasions.” 

(Reiko Yamada – AFC Commission Premiere)

Dear A Far Cry,

Back in 2007, while still a young, naive, ambitious and optimistic composer, I felt compelled to write a multi-sectional 15-part string orchestral piece for my absolute favorite (and young, and ambitious) ensemble, without even the promise that it would be performed. I was teaching piano and music theory in private music schools at the time, working six and sometimes seven days a week.

It is the existence of the one and only A Far Cry, together with an invitation for a six-week residency from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico that made this piece possible. The title, "New Shadows in the Raw Light of Darkness", was offered by a fellow resident artist at the Wurlitzer foundation, the poet Clark Smith. When the score was complete, I sent it to AFC and, moving on to the next project, tried to forget about it.

I was on the subway in Tokyo when, a while later, I received news that AFC would premiere my piece at Jordan Hall. This was late on a hot, humid summer night and the subway car was filled with tired drunk Japanese working men and women. I started giggling and hopping around and my fellow passengers, irritated by my behavior, made it clear that it was highly unacceptable by Japanese standards. I didn’t care. From that moment until the premiere, with dreamy eyes and dreamy ears, I imagined over and over again the perspective of each Crier as they would play in beautiful Jordan hall. On the day of the premiere, I wore the best dress I owned and, watching the Cries moving together as one on the stage, I could not believe how fortunate I was.

Four weeks ago, which is to say twelve years after that premiere, I received the exciting news that AFC would once again performing the piece. I pulled out the score that was buried deep in my “past projects” folder and took a look at it, measure by measure, part by part, and began to blush. I felt as if I was reading my teenage diary. I spent the next two days in a state of panic and eventually decided I needed to revise the score, despite the limited amount of time at my disposal.

My younger self, in the original score, was proclaiming her love and admiration for AFC in each section, taking every opportunity to showcase the exceptional skills of each player. From chorale-like writing to Grosso Fugue like section to Romantic style Waltz (with an additional twist of irregular meter), my efforts systematically crushed any hint of subtlety or sophistication. While revising the piece, I tried to correct some of those mistakes; yet I continue to my younger self’s boundless admiration for AFC, and therefore retained some of the naive, ambitious and optimistic elements in which I expressed this feeling in the original piece. 

Dear A Far Cry, thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to enter in a dialogue with the young and precious composer that I was. I hope you like this slightly revised score, and that you appreciate the composer I have become after all these years. 

With everlasting admiration,

Reiko Yamada

Hiroshima, September 10, 2019

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) :: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61

Do you know the name Franz Clement? Fashionable 18th century concertgoers did. So did Haydn, and, of course, Beethoven. Clement was the young Viennese violin prodigy they noticed appearing on stages across the European continent at an impressive pace. As an eight year old he gave his first public concert. A year later, he was touring in England. Clement’s father would have clearly remembered Mozart, and likely wanted his son to follow in those footsteps. Incidentally, when he was eighteen he became the assistant of Mozart’s former assistant (who famously completed the unfinished Requiem) Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who had studied with Antonio Salieri. A legitimate talent, Clement was praised for the “clarity, elegance, and tenderness of expression” in his performances. He also had a remarkable ability to commit music to memory. Legend has it that he was able to successfully compose a piano reduction of Haydn’s Creation entirely in his head (and it was so well done that it’s the piano version Haydn published). 

When he was twenty-two years old, he was appointed as the music director of the Theater an der Wien, just one year after it opened, and was eventually promoted to artistic music director. And, like most instrumental soloists of his day, he also composed a number of works, including 6 violin concertos. In 1805 Clement’s own Violin Concerto in D Major was premiered (with Clement as soloist) on the same program as the premiere of Beethoven’s 3rd, Eroica, Symphony. The following year he premiered the violin concerto (also in D Major) that Beethoven had written for him. 

Unfortunately, the premiere was something of a flop. Stories abound that Beethoven finished the work so last-minute that Clement ellentially had to sight-read his part due to lack of rehearsal time. (This is par for the course Beethoven, since he had a pattern of depriving ensembles of precious rehearsal time.) Though Beethoven might not have given Clement proper time, he did write a piece that catered to the violinist’s beautiful style of playing. A publication in Leipzig reported that Clement “...played with his usual elegance and luster.” 

After that evening in 1806, the concerto was effectively shelved until a teenage Joseph Joachim decided to study and perform the piece under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn in London, 1844. From that moment onward, Beethoven’s one and only concerto moved from the sidelines into the spotlight, and has become a standard work in the repertoire. 

Sadly, Franz Clement did not fair so well. The Romantic era blossomed, standards shifted, and his style of performing fell out of fashion. He died in poverty and obscurity. 

-Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot

Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.

Hurry To The Light

Hurry To The Light

for Women's Voices and String Orchestra

A choral cycle of the women in The Odyssey of Homer, as translated by Emily Wilson

Homer's The Odyssey is a tale that I've read some half a dozen times over the years. Recently it provided part of the inspiration for my Clarinet Concerto: Adrift on the Wine-dark Sea (the other source of inspiration was Melissa Fleming's book A Hope More Powerful Than The Sea, which tells the harrowing true story of another Mediterranean odyssey made by Syrian refugee Doaa al-Zamel). So when A Far Cry's Sarah Darling suggested Emily Wilson's new translation of The Odyssey as a text source for our collaboration with the Lorelei Ensemble, I felt both the comfort of familiarity and some anxiety. The latter was caused by the daunting question of which of the twelve thousand lines of The Odyssey to set to music? Of the many characters who appear in The Odyssey, whose story should I tell? After much discussion with Sarah and Lorelei's artistic director Beth Willer, we decided to tell the story of the women in The Odyssey. I am very grateful to my friend and fellow composer, Thomas Stumpf, for his invaluable aid and advice in selecting the right text for this project.

As Emily Wilson tells us in her insightful introduction, "The Odyssey is a poem in which certain females have far more power than real women ever did in the society of archaic Greece. Most obviously, the goddess Athena, guides Odysseus through all his wanderings... only through female divine power can his patriarchal dominance over his household be regained." Odysseus' faithful wife Penelope, though trapped in her home by suitors and her husband's long absence, still has "the power to choose... to marry one of her suitors." Penelope's fidelity is an important point in the narrative, as Wilson points out, "if Penelope remarries, Odysseus will lose not only a person he loves, but also, perhaps more important, all his economic wealth and social status."  Other examples of the power of women in The Odyssey come through, for the first time perhaps, in Wilson's translation. In clearing the misogynistic dust left by previous English translations, primarily made by men, Wilson's careful and accurate word choice transforms the power of the Sirens from that of sexual magnetism to that of keepers of divine knowledge.  Previous translations of The Odyssey interpreted the archaic Greek word for 'mouth' as 'lips', thus giving a sexual connotation to the song that came from 'the lips of the sirens'. Wilson's translation, "All those who pass this way hear honeyed song, poured from our mouths", gives the sense that the Sirens are not tempting sailors with physical pleasures, but with a look behind the veil of the unknown:

The music brings them joy,

and they go on their way with greater knowledge,

since we know everything the Greeks and Trojans

suffered in Troy, by gods' will; and we know

whatever happens anywhere on earth.

It is with these subtleties in mind that I proceeded to set this text to music.  The women whose voices are brought front and center in this work all have influence, or agency, over Odysseus.  Even though we never hear his words in my setting, Odysseus is always there, listening. In movement I we learn about Penelope's deceptive tactics to keep the suitors at bay. Having convinced the suitors that she will choose a husband once she completes weaving a shroud for her father-in-law, she proceeds to unweave it at night thereby prolonging the completion of her weaving. Here I used the ancient Greek text from The Odyssey, much as it may have been heard by listeners hundreds of years ago.  In movement II Circe advises Odysseus as to the best way home and warns him of the many dangers he will face (even brave Odysseus must've thought twice about making the journey after hearing what Circe had to say about it!).  In movement III we return to Penelope's chambers where Athena has sent a Phantom to bring Penelope news of her son, Telemachus. In movement IV the Sirens tempt Odysseus and his crew with knowledge beyond the reach of mortals.  In movement V Odysseus' deceased mother, now a shade in Hades, continues to lovingly council her son on the cruel ways of the world. Movement VI, the only 'dialogue' between Odysseus and Penelope, is an instrumental interlude that emulates the verbal sparring in Book 23 between the long separated couple. Finally, in movement VII, Penelope accepts Odysseus and the two reconcile.  Though The Odyssey does not end here, this felt like a natural ending for my musical work.

In setting this text I sought to bring out as many colors, instrumental and emotional, as possible. The poetic rhythm of both the ancient Greek (the six beat Dactylic Hexameter) and that of Wilson's English translation (the five beat Iambic Pentameter) both supply much of the rhythmic underpinning of this work.  In the end, I strived to keep in mind that this story is an epic tale of adventure, both in its fantastical god like flourishes and its very humbly human emotions, and to imbue my work with these sensibilities.

This work is dedicated to the fabulous musicians of A Far Cry and Lorelei Ensemble to whom I am exceedingly grateful for this opportunity to collaborate.

Kareem Roustom

© Layali Music Publishing, BMI

Lorelei Program Notes

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) :: Wassermusik, VII. The Tempest: The Stormy Aeolus

In 1722, Telemann applied for the newly vacant position of music director at St. Thomas (Thomaskantor) in Leipzig. He had long since established himself as one of the most prolific and talented musicians in the region, so it comes as no surprise that he was easily a top (if not the top) candidate. How much he actually wanted the job is another question. It seems more likely that he used it as leverage when bargaining for a raise (both in finances and respect) at his then current position in Hamburg. Having successfully settled with Hamburg, he declined Leipzig that November. His good friend, Johann Sebastian Bach (the 3rd choice for the job), got St. Thomas.

The following April, with the dust settled, Telemann was tasked with writing music to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Hamburg Admiralty. One piece was an orchestral suite, Wassermusik (or Hamburger Ebb und Fluth), and another was an oratorio, Hamburger Admiralitätsmusik. Following the French suite style that Telemann had perfected earlier in his career, each “movement” is based off a dance (Sarabande, Gavotte, etc.). Interspersed throughout are a handful of programmatically titled movements unconnected to a specific dance form, including The Stormy Aeolus, named for the Greek mythological character.

Kate Soper (b. 1981) :: Here Be Sirens, O Sailor

In 2013 Kate Soper premiered Here Be Sirens, an opera-meets-theater piece based on the ancient mythological figures whose mesmerizing songs lured sailors too close to the rocks, where peril would meet them. Soper’s take on the myth zooms out, focusing not on the part of the story we usually hear from the perspective of the sailors, but imagining the sirens’ quotidian existence as they “...kill time on their island,” awaiting “an endless procession of doomed sailors.” Rounding out the personalities of each siren, the audience learns that “Peitho revels in the luxurious sensuality of their rite; Phaino stonily enacts the ritual with no inner feeling; and Polyxo longs for escape into the world of the real, delving into centuries of scholarship and research on her species in an attempt to untwist their circumstances.”

In addition to her own text, Soper utilized the words of a wide range of authors including Plato, Homer, Dante, and Edna St. Vincent-Millay, amongst others. O Sailor represents an iconic moment of the myth—the sirens’ song, itself.

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) :: Les Sirènes

In Paris, 1913, the Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, shocked audiences with his music for the ballet The Rite of Spring. That same year, over at the Paris Conservatoire, Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger (always known simply as “Lili”) sent out shock waves of her own as the first female winner of the school’s prestigious composition award, the Prix de Rome.

If the name Boulanger sounds familiar to you, it’s most likely due to Lili’s older sister, Nadia, who always failed to win the Prix de Rome, but went on to have a brilliant career as a teacher with a studio list that read like a Who’s Who of 20th century music. Due to tragic circumstance, Lili never had the opportunity to fully build her musical life. She died heartbreakingly young, just shy of her 25th birthday, due to a lifetime battling chronic illness. But, if Lili’s life was brief, it was also brilliant. Her family (all musicians—her father had also won the Prix de Rome) recognized musicianship in Lili at the tender age of two, and by the time she was six, she was sight-reading alongside Gabriel Fauré at the piano.

Lili wrote Les Sirènes when she was eighteen years old, using text by Charles Grandmougin.

I’ll Fly Away/Wayfaring Stranger/Sinner Man

If you drive at dusk along the Blue Ridge Parkway, you can almost hear the mountains giving off the sound of a distinctly American vocal tradition called Sacred Harp, or Shape Note. These were simple gospel tunes and folk hymns sung in a full-throated, straightforward harmonic manner. Collected in various publications utilizing a method of music reading that helped singers learn more quickly through the use of differently shaped notes (hence the name), the tradition spread out from the Shenandoah Valley over to St. Louis, and down into the deep south.

One publisher of these songs was a man called E.M. Bartlett from Waynesville, Missouri. Bartlett went to work for the Central Music Company, a publisher of Shape Note songbooks, and eventually founded his own publishing company. Subsequently, he founded and opened a Shape Note school called the Hartford Music Institute. A graduate of that institute was Albert Brumley who went on to write, I’ll Fly Away in 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression. About eighty years later, composer Caroline Shaw reimagined this song as part of a suite for string quartet and singer. She wrote the following about her arrangement:

“I wrote this set of songs to play with some very good friends of mine one spring. They're settings of lyrics from traditional gospel and bluegrass songs, but with a new melody (except for the occasional hint of the original) that follows conventions of both old time singing and medieval plainchant.” — C.S.

While we can trace the heritage of some songs, perhaps the greatest significance of the most enduring folk songs is in their anonymity. They belong to no one and everyone as part of the true public domain. Wayfaring Stranger and Sinner Man fall into this category. Their origins are unknown (though Les Baxter and Will Holt are credited for cementing a pressing of the latter in a 1956 recording).

-Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot

Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.

Take another look: Imagining a collaboration

Take another look. Zoom in. Zoom out. Reverse the frame. Let it sit. Poke it a little. Reimagine the context. Add a dimension. Ask a question. What am I not seeing yet? What more is there to see? What possibilities are still out there, requiring only our willingness to imagine to bring them into reality? 

A Far Cry exists because of questions like these. So does a whole lot of my favorite art. And the first time I heard the Lorelei Ensemble, I felt that same thrill of recognition. I’d never imagined that sound - both fortunately, others had, and here I was, listening to their work like a kid in a candy store and bearing witness to a wonderful new reality. 

This collaborative program came out of a series of conversations between Beth Willer and myself that kept touching on these thoughts. What does it mean to look at an iconic work or art and then look more deeply and discover something unseen? When Beth and I found our way to Emily Wilson’s magnificent new translation of the Odyssey, we knew that we’d come across an intensely compelling piece that did exactly that. Wilson’s clear-eyed scholarship references dozens of other Odyssey translations, and in the process, tracks conventions that have calcified over time. When those conventions that enable each other stray from the original, Wilson discards them without regret. The results can sound new, but they are ancient; the living story that did not survive our centuries-long translation process, but which can be revived. 

We found a wonderful creative partner in Kareem Roustom, who had already thought deeply about the Odyssey and who approached this project and the translation in a spirit of open-hearted curiosity. The story that he pulled from the pages flips the tradition of focusing on Odysseus and instead allows us to gaze through a variety of other eyes, each of which shows us something new. 

As we thought about how the first half of the concert might support these themes - and lead us to this piece - we found ourselves drawn to two underlying concepts; music that speaks to the Odyssey, and a more timeless search for home. The many different pieces on the first half act as a sort of narrative mosaic to bring us to that spot. 

We begin as sailors often do, with the chaos of a storm at sea, depicted by Telemann. Our ship - I guess that’s Jordan Hall - then finds its way to the Sirens. We present two different takes on these endlessly fascinating musical beings, contrasting the boldness of Kate Soper’s vision with the extreme loveliness of Lili Boulanger’s. Jessica Meyer’s Sappho setting takes one step further into this world, allowing us to see through the eyes of the poet and experience longing in an even purer form. 

With that turn, the program shifts - away from antiquity and towards the same themes in our own American history. The last three works on the first half are still very much about an Odyssean journey, now taking place on our own soil. I’ll Fly Away, gorgeously re-wrought by Caroline Shaw, Wayfaring Stranger, conjured up by Jonathan Woody, and Sinner Man, brought to life by Adam Simon, each struggle with questions of traveling and finding home. What is the place that you dream of flying away from? What does it mean to be a long way from home? Where will you run to now? 

Can a journey show you where home is? 

To me and to Beth, that question is essentially the same as the one we began with: What more is there to see? What is invisible to the eye, until a little unconventional work - a different way of looking - makes it appear? That question always has something new to reveal. We hope it brings you a very interesting evening. 

- Sarah Darling and Beth Willer 

Gravity program notes

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) :: Silouans Song

The Estonian Pärt had compositional beginnings in serialism and atonality, which earned him an official slap on the wrist from the Soviet government. That, however, was not the catalyst for his change of style. After taking time to reevaluate his compositional methods in the late 1970s, along with studying Bach, Gregorian chant, and Russian Orthodox sacred music, Pärt arrived at a new compositional philosophy that he called “tintinnabulation” (“bells”). He explained: “Tintinnabulation is like this. Here, I am alone in silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played...I build with the most primitive materials – with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.”

Tintinnabuli, the ringing/sound of bells, alludes to the mathematical division of a note’s sound wave into the overtone series - the basis of Western music theory and its harmonic progressions - which is heard in the chaotic timbre of a ringing bell. Essentially, if you strike a single note, you are not just hearing that note but an entire sequence working together. Thus, when you hear A-natural you also sympathetically hear other tones from the A scale in a sequence of 5ths, 4ths, 3rds, and so on: A, E, A, C-sharp, E, etc.—a musical universe orbiting a single note.

Silouan’s Song is named for the monk St. Silouan, reflecting Pärt’s personal devotion to the Russian Orthodox Church. In the music, you hear aspects of tintinnabulation, the simple revolution and contemplation of a select sequence of notes, buffered intermittently by silence, and a subtext of yearning for spiritual renewal.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001):: Aroura

Some artists bring to the world a very particular style of creative energy. They are skillful not only in producing works of art, but on a grander scale, fabricating entire parallel, metaphysical universes. Hieronymus Bosch and Franz Kafka are examples. Iannis Xenakis was amongst them.

Xenakis, however, had a unique perspective. He had experience building actual physical structures, too, as he went to work for famed French architect Le Corbusier whilst residing as a Greek refugee in Paris during World War II. The City of Light also gave him Olivier Messiaen as a composition teacher.

Trying to explain Xenakis briefly is difficult. The Readers Digest guide to Xenakis could be titled, Xenakis: Wagnerian Techniques on Steroids. Replace terminology like leitmotif with “set” and sliding chord transitions with “pitch time transformation” and off you go. The result might sound like total chaos on the surface, but the supporting theories on which the entire musical structure is built are exquisitely elegant. A newspaper article once aptly described the music of Xenakis as “craggily, joyously elemental music” that “turned collections of pitches and rhythms and instruments into a force of nature.” Music critic Alex Ross described Xenakis’ process as “looking at the orchestra as a scientist looks at a gas cloud.” In other words, what’s happening is far beyond the outer limits of traditional music theory. Architecture, mathematics, disregard of traditional tonal systems, and a consuming obsession with pitch time dimensions translated into music in the mind of Xenakis. His ideas emerge on paper as excruciatingly complex works, dense with layer after layer of scientific and philosophical properties.

Aroura (sometimes spelled Arura), composed in 1971, is preoccupied with “sonorous textures” of the earth, sound, and other scientific and natural phenomena. Throughout the music, these various textures are expressed through an assortment of traditional and extended instrumental techniques including a wide range of dynamics, pizzicato, ricochet, glissando and harmonic glissando, tremolo, and scratching, to name a few.

Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960) :: Musica Celestis

Medieval music theorists believed the universe, in its mathematical purity, vibrated with a kind of “music.” There were three types, musica universalis, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis. They descended in levels of perfection.

The concept is beautiful. Followed through, its logical conclusion is that everything is music – including you and me. The act of composing music is then something like ripping open the fabric of our universe, grasping the edges with your hands and stepping through to participate in an ongoing concert. Musica Celestis (“heavenly music”) takes that principle as its inspiration, as well as the music of the 10th century German mystic, Hildegard von Bingen.

Kernis says the work “follows a simple, spacious melody and harmonic pattern through a number of variations (like a passacaglia) and modulations, and is framed by an introduction and codas.” Within the overarching harmonic progression of the piece there is tucked inside an implied harmonic progression that traverses the endless interlocking relationships of every key signature by the interval of a 5th. Using that circle, it tosses a lasso out into space, catching the infinite within the small confines of measures dotted with notes.

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) :: Divertimento for Strings (1939)

Bartók was in the twilight of his life when Paul Sacher (1906-1999), founder of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, approached him with the commission for a new work, which emerged in the space of just fifteen days as the Divertimento for Strings. By definition, divertimenti are meant to be somewhat casual in nature. To some degree, that holds true as a description for this piece, but just as the creeping shadow of war continued to haunt Europe, the “night music” (a term apparently approved of by Bartók as a descriptor for his compositions with a shaded quality) of the middle movement seeps under the door frames of the outer movements adding a jolting chill. Germany invaded Poland just after Bartók fulfilled this commission.

Contrasts abound. Dance-like qualities sit next to morose melodies; folk idioms and raw shifting meters are juxtaposed with the polish of a Baroque concerto grosso, pitting a small group (concertino) against the whole (ripieno). Multi-voiced fugues inject order into chaos. It’s music that’s trying to live up to its title, acting as a not-so-serious diversion from a world about to be turned upside down, injecting the hope of first light into threatening darkness. The intense whirling energy of the final movement seems to clench its fists and grit its teeth with determination toward that end.

In a poignant turn of events, the composer who put so much effort into documenting the folk music of his native Hungary and integrating it into his work was forced to leave for New York City, and watch from across the water as his homeland sided with Germany. The Divertimento for Strings was the last piece he wrote in Europe. He would die of leukemia in the United States.

Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960):: Tenebrae

Golijov explains: “I wrote Tenebrae as a consequence of witnessing two contrasting realities in a short period of time in September 2000. I was in Israel at the start of the new wave of violence that is still continuing today, and a week later I took my son to the new planetarium in New York, where we could see the Earth as a beautiful blue dot in space. I wanted to write a piece that could be listened to from different perspectives. That is, if one chooses to listen to it ‘from afar,’ the music would probably offer a ‘beautiful’ surface but, from a metaphorically closer distance, one could hear that, beneath that surface, the music is full of pain. I lifted some of the haunting melismas from Couperin’s Troisieme Leçon de Tenebrae, using them as sources for loops...The compositional challenge was to write music that would sound as an orbiting spaceship that never touches ground.”

Namesake to Golijov’s composition are the three Tenebrae (Latin for “darkness”) services, on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday of Holy Week in the Christian faith. Each night begins in light and ends in shadow as fifteen ceremonial candles are extinguished one by one following the reading of each Psalm. Eventually all candles in the church are put out and the congregation is engulfed in utter darkness – save for the light of one candle representing hope. The people then dismiss into the night.

The tension of the shadows sustain this haunting music in mid-air, caught between darkness and light, their metaphorical doubles of despair and hope in prolonged meditation.

Program Notes by Kathryn J Allwine Bacasmot. Kathryn is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music & cultural critic, and freelance writer. She is a graduate of New England Conservatory, and writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.

Reflections on Legacy

It’s not every day that you meet a new group of people and immediately feel a familial warmth and comfort as they invite you in, all smiles, to their cozy storefront home.

Sure enough, it happened on the first day I walked into rehearsal with A Far Cry for the Legacy program. I was nervous but excited about joining the Criers for this program, especially being invited to join the illustrious Pamela Frank as a soloist in Vivaldi’s concerto for four violins. But as soon as we tuned up and began reading Haydn’s “Trauer” Symphony, I knew it was going to be amazing.

Throughout the week, I got to know the Criers and their stories. Rehearsal breaks were always a lively opportunity to talk to someone new and try a homemade brownie. I observed the Criers seamlessly transition between productive rehearsal mode and relaxed social mode. I had a heartwarming conversation with Karen, who happens to be a Toronto native like myself!

I asked a lot of questions. I got to try some of the Criers’ instruments. I got a 20 minute consultation session with Howard about my posture, and did a spontaneous short video for the concert livestream. I learned how to express a musical idea in the most eloquent and positive tone of voice. I adopted Karl’s catchy way of saying ‘cool’ when the group agreed on something.  

What was perhaps most inspiring was simply hanging out with this dynamic and passionate group, not so much older than I am, doing incredible things in and outside of A Far Cry. Some members are baroque performance practice experts, others maintain active teaching studios, AND they have cool hobbies and beautiful families.

Being on the border of conservatory student and full time professional, I’m asking the ‘big’ questions about my profession and my contribution to the classical music community. (ex. Why did I choose to do this for life, and what unique values am I bringing into this industry? What makes my music worth listening to, and why should people be excited about classical music in 2019?) Getting to talk about the birth of AFC, of what it took to make them such a successful group both on and off-stage, gave me tons of bright ideas. Playing with the group gave me lots of answers.

It was truly a privilege to work with such thoughtful, respectful and uplifting personalities. From the get go, I felt like I could express myself through the music as freely and passionately as possible. The floor was open to individual ideas, which found their way to integrate into one cohesive musical interpretation. A Far Cry is a model of leadership, musical excellence and creativity, and I want to thank them once again for having me!

Sophia Szokolay

Sophia is an NEC Fellow for the 2018-2019 season

Arranging the Goldbergs

There’s a reason why the Goldberg Variations do what they do.

But what – exactly – is it?

I can’t say that that was the specific question on my mind when I first proposed this project to the members of A Far Cry. But it wasn’t far off, either.

The Variations are such an amazing study in creativity; in the power of mathematics, in the use of memory in music. They conjure up worlds, one by one. Big ones, small ones, profound ones, funny ones, cathartic, tragic, egotistical, jazzy, pastoral, you name it, JSB has it warmed up and waiting for you.

That’s why arranging them is such a pleasure. So many different things are possible – and the greater the forces at your disposal, the further down the rabbit hole you can go. The thing is: each variation is perfect for keyboard but also holds little clues within it that open up more possibilities. Is it evoking a trio sonata? A French overture? Or is it channeling a jazz bar with a perfectly swinging bass line? What about that Quodlibet?

But that sense of possibility also opens the door to a danger: in releasing – or evoking - the spirit inhabiting the variation by re-arranging it, you’ve now produced a perfectly nice… arrangement. Well, that’s great. But why not simply stick to the keyboard version and let the listeners create their own evocations for themselves? Why mess with it?

This is exactly why we knew that one of the most important things we’d have to do to make this meaningful would be to partner with an exquisite keyboardist who loved the Goldberg Variations as much as we did. I still can’t believe Simone Dinnerstein said yes to us when we approached her with this idea… but she did. And that made all the difference.

With Simone’s presence in these arrangements, we can actually combine what Bach wrote with what he implied. Sometimes, it’s as simple as having a variation played by the strings repeated by the piano, or vice versa. (Those repeats are really, really necessary – they make the piece three-dimensional! And we exploit most of them; it’s rare that we won’t explore new territory on a repeat.)

But really, that’s just the beginning. It can be just as fun to have the piano and strings intermingle, and there are a million ways to do that, tracing Bach’s different figures and pulling them apart, looking at them from every possible direction.

Fundamentally, what I love about arranging with these forces is that I never feel as though I’m arranging the Goldberg Variations “for” anything. Instead, I simply feel that I’m arranging the Goldberg Variations. It may seem like a small difference, but it puts you in a place defined by possibility and creativity, instead of restriction. If anything, as these variations continue to evolve and to grow, I hope that they move beyond anything I’ve imagined so far… into a new realm of creative purpose.

We’ll see how it goes!

- Sarah Darling

Introducing Zenas Hsu!

A new Crier! This might be our favorite part.

Zenas played with A Far Cry for years as a guest before joining the group in the way that every single new member does - by unanimous vote. And not just that; in the process, we also changed the number of violins in the group from 9 to 10! That’s like a thumbs-up that turns into an ice cream sundae that turns into a rainbow that turns into a Mozart melody.

And the truth of the matter is, Zenas was a Crier way before we ever voted. Last year when we were doing a program at the Gardner museum featuring Crier compositions, we extended an invitation to all the guests playing that set as well. Next thing we knew, we were playing a lovely piece by Zenas called “Books of Isabella.” On our most recent recording, Visions and Variations, Zenas doesn’t just play the violin - he’s also on the editing team. His curiosity, deep thinking, and joie de vivre have been making our rehearsals better since the very first time he played with us.

Also, his beautiful sound has DEFINITELY been making our rehearsals better. Most definitely.

Welcome on board; let’s see what we can create together!