PROGRAM NOTES

Akshaya Avril Tucker (b. 1992)
BREATHING SUNLIGHT

Immersion in Indian culture and the study of Indian Classical music runs in the family for Akshaya Avril Tucker. Both she and her brother, Shankar (a clarinetist) integrate Indian Classical music theory and technique along with Western systems in their works. Breathing Sunlight, as you’ll see in her program note below, was inspired by the raga Bhimpalasi. Ragas are akin to Western scales in the sense that they are a collection of pitches organized in a particular way. That’s where the similarities end. Functionally, they operate with much more complexity than scales. Each raga has a specific formula for how it should be utilized, which means built into each raga is a certain emotional evocation or range of expression. Ragas can also be associated with specific times of day. Bhimpalasi, for example, is evocative of the afternoon.

Tucker describes Breathing Sunlight as “expressive, gestural music” that “remains in one tonal/pitch area for a long time,” and conveys variety through “different colors and timbres assigned to these expressive gestures.” The performers are also instructed to express sections rhythmically free, listen closely to each other, responding naturally, in an almost improvised way.

Dedicating the work to her grandfather with the simple, touching words, “to E.F.A.” at the top of the score, Tucker explains in detail the impetus for writing Breathing Sunlight in her program note:

Breathing Sunlight was inspired by a melody that starting winding into my head in 2015. When I began learning the Hindustani Raga Bhimpalasi a year later, I realized that it virtually matched the contour of this melody, in pitch as well as in mood. In this piece, finally, the melody found its place. However, I do not state the melody outright. Rather, I watch it oscillate somewhere in the background, beyond the conscious mind of the piece. It approaches the surface, and recedes, in one line or through bubbling polyphony.

Breathing Sunlight is about moments spend with those who will leave us soon. Simple things, like lying on the grass, in the sun, breathing—these moments of conscious stillness, within a mind racked by mental and physical discomfort—are as significant as they are fleeing. The love we feel in those moments is strong, transcending our physical boundaries.

Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
LIMESTONE & FELT

Because sound is an invisible phenomenon, music can be seen as a means to escape the trappings of the physical world and explore the realm of pure emotions. But sound is inextricably tied to our embodied experience as humans, as is our joy and pleasure in flavors, scents, textures, and beauty we can behold with our eyes. For Caroline Shaw, a violinist and a vocalist, sensorial connections are reflected in many of her works. It is highlighted in the last line of her website’s bio noting she loves “...the smell of rosemary,” and in a comment from an interview: “When I’m writing music, I’m always thinking of textures and patterns, and sewing things together.” Architecture and surfaces also play a role for this Pulitzer Prize winning North Carolina native, educated at Rice, Yale, and Princeton. When selected as the inaugural music fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., Shaw was inspired by the physical layout of the property’s gardens, writing Plan & Elevation in response. An earlier piece, Limestone & Felt, was similarly focused on the tactile. In her own program note for the piece, Shaw elaborates:

Limestone & Felt presents two kinds of surfaces—essentially hard and soft. These are materials that can suggest place (a cathedral apse, or the inside of a wool hat), stature, function, and—for me—sound (reverberant or muted). In Limestone & Felt the hocketing pizzacato and pealing motivic cannons are part of a whimsical, mystical, generous world of sounds echoing and colliding in the imagined eaves of a gothic chapel. These are contrasted with the delicate, meticulous, and almost reverent placing of chords that, to our ears today, sound ancient and precious, like an antique jewel box. Ultimately, felt and limestone may represent two opposing ways we experience history, and design our own present.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
STRING QUINTET NO. 1 IN B-FLAT MAJOR, K. 174

Mozart was barely a teenager in 1769 when he and his father embarked on the first of three journeys to Italy, the last of which came in the spring of 1773. Mozart’s father, Leopold, ever the shrewd manager/promoter, recognized that court and chapel music all over Europe had been dominated by the Italians for decades. You can imagine his vision that this child-prodigy-turned-teenager from Salzburg could turn the tables, taking the cities of Italy by storm multiple times over. Success there did not come without trials—quite literally. Mozart scholar Maynard Solomon notes the Italians made sure to put him through his paces before applauding his talents. Unsurprisingly, he passed with flying colors, earning their showers of praises. A newspaper report from March 27, 1771 reads:

Young Mozart, a famous keyboard player, 15 years old, excited the attention and admiration of all music lovers when he gave a public performance in Venice recently. An experienced musician gave him a fugue theme, which he worked out for more than an hour with such science, dexterity, harmony and proper attention to rhythm that even the greatest connoisseurs were astounded. He composed an entire opera for Milan, which was given at the last carnival. His good-natured modesty, which enhances still more his precocious knowledge, wins him the greatest praise, and this must give his worthy father, who is travelling [sic] with him, extraordinary pleasure.

After investing so much time and energy, it must have been a particularly cruel twist for the family to return to Salzburg after their third Italian tour in March 1773 only to find the new Archbishop, Colloredo, striving to make the city more culturally relevant by offering the most prized music jobs in town to...Italians. Disappointments aside, the Mozart family were fairing well. They were able to move into a larger apartment, and Wolfgang went about his usual business writing mounds of music. (In addition to various chamber and instrumental works, he wrote no less than 5 symphonies—including the well-loved Symphony No. 25—in the 9 months between their return and the end of the year.) 

Not one to waste an opportunity to network or test the waters for better job opportunities, Leopold arranged for another quick tour with his son, this time to Vienna in July, in order to see if an opportunity might be available for Mozart at the royal court. But there was no such luck (the Empress, Maria Theresa, would later refer to the family as “beggars”).

Back again in Salzburg, the year began to draw to a close. That December, Bostonians heaved 342 chests of tea into the harbor, and Mozart wrote the String Quintet in B-flat major. The piece is pure classical delight, an exercise in luxuriating in beauty for the enjoyment of it. A quintet, of course, includes an extra instrument doubling, and Mozart’s selection of two violas was a unusual choice, though not unique. Michael Haydn, younger brother to Franz Joseph (the so-called “Father of the String Quartet”), had also written a viola quintet that year. No concrete evidence exists to link the two composers’ quintets, other than the fact they were great friends and may have been well acquainted with each other’s works in progress. They were such good friends that when Michael became too sick to fulfill a commission as the deadline approached, Mozart stepped in to ghost write the remaining pieces in the style of his friend so no one would be the wiser.

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.