PROGRAM NOTES
Lei Liang (b. 1972)
GOBI GLORIA FOR STRING QUARTET
Commissioned by the Ying Quartet and premiered in 2006, Liang’s Gobi Gloria for String Quartet was inspired by the composer’s childhood introduction to Mongolian folk music through a family friend, a leading scholar of Mongolian traditional music. It was through this connection that Liang first encountered the Mongolian urtiin duu, or “long song,” a genre that UNESCO designated in 2005 as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. This song style is at least 2,400 years old and singing the verses can last up to 3 hours. They contain the collective memory of a people whose history includes the Mongol Empire, the largest empire in history to stretch uninterrupted across land, and a deep connection to nature through their nomadic lifestyle—one which 30% of the population still practices.
Hearing the melancholic sound of a lone voice through which centuries spoke, Liang was struck by the sound of this music so rooted in nostalgia. He has described the stark contrast between the upbeat “fabricated happy” music he heard on the radio in Beijing, stridently urging citizens to feel pride in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the “very lonely songs” about missing home, friends, and family.
In his program note for the piece, Liang writes:
Gobi Gloria belongs to a series of compositions that grew out of my admiration for Mongolian music. The series include Feng (for cello solo, written for Feng Hew), Gobi Polyphony (for erhu and cello, written for Xu Ke), Gobi Canticle (for violin and cello, written for Masuko Ushioda and Laurence Lesser), and Serashi Fragments (written for the Arditti Quartet).
The melody is played against its own inversion, retrograde and retrograde-inversion in an otherwise mostly heterophonic texture. The piece alludes to various genres of Mongolian music that include the long-chant, as well as the music of dance and shaman rituals. It concludes with a rendering of a folk song that I heard during my visit to Nei Monggol region in 1996.
Gobi Gloria was commissioned by and dedicated to the Ying Quartet who gave its world première at the University Hall at Harvard University on March 15, 2007.
--- Lei Liang
John Luther Adams (b. 1953)
THE WIND IN HIGH PLACES
“In that silent room, I heard two sounds, one high and one low. Afterward I asked the engineer in charge why, if the room was so silent, I had heard two sounds. He said, ‘Describe them.’ I did. He said, ‘The high one was your nervous system in operation. The low one was your blood in circulation.” That was John Cage’s description after experiencing an anechoic chamber (originally engineered by Leo Beranek as part of military research for WWII) at Harvard University in 1951. It inspired him to re-think silence, and consequently sound, culminating in reframing how we should listen to the world around us.
Nearly thirty years later, John Luther Adams moved to Alaska in the late 1970s after growing up in a variety of states (Mississippi, New Jersey, and Georgia) and studying at CalArts. The vast wild of the 49th state spoke to Adams’ soul, and the beauty of the land solidified his dedication to environmental causes. Away from the cities and their cacophonous influences, Adams was able to more fully embrace Cage’s call to listen deeply. In an essay titled, In Search of an Ecology of Music, Adams writes, “Cage’s definition of harmony was ‘sounds heard together,’” and goes on to quote Cage: “The idea that music depends on sound and listening might seems as self-evident as the idea that we are an inseparable part of nature. But both these simple truths challenge us to practice ecological awareness in our individual and our collective lives.”
Following is the composer’s program note for The Wind in High Places:
Gordon Wright was the friend of a lifetime. For 30 years, Gordon and I shared our two greatest passions: music and Alaska. Gordon was my musical collaborator, my next-door neighbor, my fellow environmentalist and my camping buddy. The Wind in High Places is a triptych evoking special moments and places in our friendship. Over the years, I’ve utilized string quartet in several large ensemble works. But, at the age of 59, I finally composed my first string quartet.
I’ve long been enamored with the ethereal tones of Aeolian harps—instruments that draw their music directly from the wind. The Wind in High Places treats the string quartet as a large, 16-stringed harp. All the sounds in the piece are produced as natural harmonics or on open strings. Over the course of almost 20 minutes, the fingers of the musicians never touch the fingerboards of the instruments. If I could’ve found a way to make this music without them touching the instruments at all, I would have.
--- John Luther Adams
Thomas Sleeper (b. 1956)
STRING QUARTET NO. 2, “BERGONZI”
Thomas Sleeper is a composer with a “dual career.” Sleeper started his professional life as a conductor and continues to lead orchestras around the world in a guest capacity. Born in Oklahoma, he is a member of the Cherokee Nation (Blind Savannah Clan). Granted Emeritus status at the University of Miami where he taught for many years, Sleeper also led the training of future classical musicians as Music Director of the Florida Youth Orchestra for almost 30 years.
Following is Thomas Sleepers’ Program note for the String Quartet No. 2:
String Quartet No. 2, the “Bergonzi,” was written for and named after the Bergonzi String Quartet. Structurally, the work is not unlike the mythological creature that consumes its own tail – the uroboros. The quartet begins and ends in the same musical and emotional space - the grand improvisation of our brief lives.
The first movement, Nubia, begins like an improvisation between the members of the quartet. Rapid figures intertwine and echo in the sound space trying to coalesce. Eventually the quartet stabilizes with a pulsing (albeit asymmetrical) background and simple melody that builds in the manner of a popular song. At what would be a climactic moment of resolution, the music suddenly falls into dissolution and returns to its original roots, thrust to its conclusion with a ferocious unison theme.
The second movement, Sacre, finds the violist playing not viola, but a 200 year old Tibetan prayer bowl. Muted violins join in the mysterious atmosphere which surrounds what is essentially a passionate aria for solo cello.
The Intermezzo plays with rhythmic deceptions and is in a simple ABA form. The idea that our perception of place is altered by time and experience is central to this movement. The “B” section is a varied duet from an incomplete opera of mine based on W. H. Auden’s Purgatory. The “A” section returns now slower and with plucked strings. It ends not unlike a music box winding down.
The final Scherzo (actually the first movement of the quartet to be written) is a rollicking frenzy that quotes the other three movements of the work in new contexts. There are also formal allusions to all three of the previous movements creating a sense of déja-vu.
--- Thomas Sleeper
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.
