PROGRAM - Purdue University

16 Pages·2013·0.14 MB·English

PROGRAM
FRAGMENTS: CONNECTING PAST AND PRESENT.
Six unfinished compositions from the past inspire
contemporary composers to create new works.
Marian Tropes (2010) CHARLES WUORINEN (b. 1938)
Quartet in c minor, FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
D703 (unfinished)
Allegro Assai
Andante (fragment)
Fra(nz)g-mentation (2010) BRUCE ADOLPHE (b. 1955)
Contrapunctus XVIII (unfinished) J.S. Bach (1685-1750)
from The Art of Fugue
Reflections on the SOFIA GUBAIDULINA (b. 1931)
Theme B-A-C-H (2002)
-INTERMISSION-
With respect to the musicians and your fellow patrons,
we request your participation in the tradition of withholding
applause between movements of a selection.
BRENTANO STRING QUARTET
Quartet in D Minor, Op. 103 JOSEF HAYDN (1732-1809)
Andante grazioso
Menuet ma non troppo presto
Finale: Presto (2011) FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Quartet Movement BDMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Allegretto
From the Fifth Book (2011) STEPHEN HARTKE (b. 1952)
Quartet Fragment in eminor, W.A. MOZART (1756-1791)
K417d
Mozart Effects (2011) VIJAY IYER (b. 1971)
The Brentano String Quartet appears by arrangement with
David Rowe Artists / www.davidroweartists.com
The Brentano String Quartet record for AEON (distributed by Allegro Media Group)
www.brentanoquartet.com
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THE BRENTANO STRING QUARTET
Since its inception in 1992, the hall’s Quartet-in-residence in the
Brentano String Quartet has 2000-01 season.
appeared throughout the world
to popular and critical acclaim. In recent seasons the Quartet has
“Passionate, uninhibited and traveled widely, appearing all over
spellbinding,” raves the London the United States and Canada, in
Independent; the New York Europe, Japan and Australia. It
Times extols its “luxuriously has performed in the world’s most
warm sound [and] yearning prestigious venues, including
lyricism”; the Philadelphia Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully
Inquirer praises its “seemingly Hall in New York; the Library
infallible instincts for finding of Congress in Washington; the
the center of gravity in every Concertgebouw in Amsterdam;
phrase and musical gesture”; the Konzerthaus in Vienna;
and the Times (London) Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the
opines, “the Brentanos are a Sydney Opera House. The Quartet
magnificent string quartet... has participated in summer
This was wonderful, selfless festivals such as Aspen, the Music
music-making.” Within a few Academy of the West in Santa
years of its formation, the Barbara, the Edinburgh Festival,
Quartet garnered the first the Kuhmo Festival in Finland,
Cleveland Quartet Award and the Taos School of Music and the
the Naumburg Chamber Music Caramoor Festival. Beginning in
Award; and in 1996 the Chamber June 2013 the Quartet will serve
Music Society of Lincoln as the collaborative ensemble for
Center invited them to be the the Van Cliburn International
inaugural members of Chamber Piano Competition, succeeding
Music Society Two, a program the Takacs Quartet.
which has become a coveted
distinction for chamber groups In addition to performing the
and individuals ever since. The entire two-century range of the
Quartet had its first European standard quartet repertoire, the
tour in 1997, and was honored Brentano Quartet has a strong
in the U.K. with the Royal interest in both very old and very
Philharmonic Award for Most new music. It has performed
Outstanding Debut. That debut many musical works pre-dating
recital was at London’s Wigmore the string quartet as a medium,
Hall, and the Quartet has among them Madrigals of
continued its warm relationship Gesualdo, Fantasias of Purcell,
with Wigmore, appearing there and secular vocal works of
regularly and serving as the Josquin. Also, the quartet has
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THE BRENTANO STRING QUARTET
worked closely with some of the The Quartet has recorded the
most important composers of our Opus 71 Quartets of Haydn, and
time, among them Elliot Carter, has also recorded a Mozart disc
Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen- for Aeon Records, consisting of
chung, Steven Mackey, Bruce the K. 464 Quartet and the K. 593
Adolphe, and György Kurtág. Quintet, with violist Hsin-Yun
The Quartet has commissioned Huang. A forthcoming release on
works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Aeon will feature the Beethoven
Mackey, David Horne and Quartets Op. 127 and 131. In the
Gabriela Frank. The Quartet area of newer music, the Quartet
celebrated its tenth anniversary has released a disc of the music
in 2002 by commissioning ten of Steven Mackey on Albany
composers to write companion Records, and has also recorded
pieces for selections from Bach’s the music of Bruce Adolphe,
Art of Fugue, the result of which Chou Wen-chung and Charles
was an electrifying and wide- Wuorinen.
ranging single concert program. A
similar project called “Fragments In 1998, cellist Nina Lee joined
– connecting past and present” the Quartet, succeeding founding
will commemorate their 20th member Michael Kannen. The
anniversary in 2011/12. For this following season the Quartet
program they have commissioned became the first Resident
six composers to write works String Quartet at Princeton
informed by incomplete pieces University. The Quartet’s duties
left behind by previous masters. at the University are wide-
The Quartet has also worked ranging, including performances
with the celebrated poet Mark at least once a semester,
Strand, commissioning poetry as well as workshops with
from him to accompany works of graduate composers, coaching
Haydn and Webern. undergraduates in chamber
music, and assisting in other
The Quartet has been privileged classes at the Music Department.
to collaborate with such artists
as soprano Jessye Norman, The Quartet is named for Antonie
pianist Richard Goode, and Brentano, whom many scholars
pianist Mitsuko Uchida. The consider to be Beethoven’s
Quartet enjoys an especially close “Immortal Beloved”, the intended
relationship with Ms. Uchida, recipient of his famous love
appearing with her on stages in confession.
the United States, Europe,
and Japan.
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Fragments: Connecting Past and Present
A shard of Grecian pottery. An ancient scroll, only a few words visible.
The nascent emergence of a figure from a block of marble. Abandoned
brushstrokes on a canvas.
Unfinished artworks carry within them the energy of creation. They
engage our curiosity, prompt us to imagine ourselves as the artist,
poised in mid-thought. They seduce us into imagining what might have
been. Perhaps, in the right circumstance, we might imagine we can
seduce the fragmentary artwork, start a relationship with it, envisage a
completion. Billy Collins imagined just such a thing:
January in Paris
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
—Paul Valéry
That winter I had nothing to do
but tend the kettle in my shuttered room
on the top floor of a pensione near a cemetery,
but I would sometimes descend the stairs,
unlock my bicycle, and pedal along the cold city streets
often turning from a wide boulevard
down a narrow side street
bearing the name of an obscure patriot.
I followed a few private rules,
never crossing a bridge without stopping
mid-point to lean my bike on the railing
and observe the flow of the river
as I tried to better understand the French.
In my pale coat and my Basque cap
I pedaled past the windows of a patisserie
or sat up tall in the seat, arms folded,
and clicked downhill filling my nose with winter air.
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I would see beggars and street cleaners
in their bright uniforms, and sometimes
I would see the poems of Valéry,
the ones he never finished but abandoned,
wandering the streets of the city half-clothed.
Most of them needed only a final line
or two, a little verbal flourish at the end,
but whenever I approached,
they would retreat from their makeshift fires
into the shadows—thin specters of incompletion,
forsaken for so many long decades
how could they ever trust another man with a pen?
I came across the one I wanted to tell you about
sitting with a glass of rosé at a café table—
beautiful, emaciated, unfinished,
cruelly abandoned with a flick of panache
by Monsieur Paul Valéry himself,
big fish in the school of Symbolism
and for a time, president of the Committee of Arts and Letters
of the League of Nations if you please.
Never mind how I got her out of the café,
past the concierge and up the flights of stairs --
remember that Paris is the capital of public kissing.
And never mind the holding and the pressing.
It is enough to know that I moved my pen
in such a way as to bring her to completion,
a simple, final stanza, which ended,
as this poem will, with the image
of a gorgeous orphan lying on a rumpled bed,
her large eyes closed,
a painting of cows in a valley over her head,
and off to the side, me in a window seat
blowing smoke from a cigarette at dawn.
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It’s not often we have the chance celebration of the quartet’s 20th
to see or hear incomplete anniversary season we have
thoughts of great composers. asked composers whose music
Completed works come down speaks to us, some of whom
to us having been considered, we know well, some of whom
reconsidered, polished and we are working with for the
readied for presentation. But first time, to write pieces to be
how fascinating it can be to get played alongside incomplete
a glimpse into the workshop, works from the past. All have
into the process, into promising responded with vivid works
beginnings that never grew which we are excited to present,
into their full selves. And how new and old music speaking
intriguing it would be to have to each other as if the chasm
composers of our day reach of time were to vanish. For the
back and hold hands with some duration of the program, at
of the great composers of the least, all the works coexist in the
past, entering, after their own present moment.
fashion, thoughts started and
left dangling, suggestive and Below are program notes for
mysterious. most of the music presented.
Each new piece follows the
For this “Fragments” project fragment on which it reflects,
we are exploring the idea with the exception of Charles
of this linkage, reentering Wuorinen’s Marian Tropes,
abandoned imagined spaces in which the older music of
to discover what they might Josquin and Dufay is embedded
suggest when examined from a within the new work only.
fresh perspective. Incomplete —Mark Steinberg
works are paired with new
compositions by some of our
most thoughtful and imaginative
composers to form hybrid
creatures. Traditionally mythical
beasts of this persuasion, living
in two worlds at once, have
been believed to have magical
powers. We are hoping for some
magic here as we find out how
today’s composers collaborate
with their predecessors. As a
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Charles Wuorinen Franz Schubert
Marian Tropes Quartettsatz in C Minor
There are no surviving Ushering in the set of three
unfinished works from the great string quartets Schubert
fifteenth century, as there are wrote at the end of his life is a
no scores, only part-books. By torso of a work, the Quartettsatz
the time a composition of this (quartet movement) in c
period is copied or printed into minor, written in 1820. This
a set of parts the original score powerful movement was
(if there ever was one) has been originally intended to be the
discarded; and clearly no one first movement of a full quartet,
bothered to produce a part-book and there exists a sketch for the
for an unfinished work. What opening of a second movement
we do have by way of fragments, as well. It is not known why
however, are orphan movements Schubert never completed the
intended for larger structures, work, but the movement he
most often fragmenta missarum, did write is a masterpiece fully
parts of the Mass Ordinary. Here worthy of being in the company
I have interwoven two such, a of the later, last three quartets.
Gloria of Josquin and a Kyrie The conflict between desire
of Dufay. The Josquin contains and reality is very often at the
interpolated passages with texts heart of Schubert’s music, a
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, conflict at the root of what it is
and these Marian Tropes I have to be human. For we are rarely
decorated with glissandi, which masters of Fate, and mortal
subsequently spread into other longing defines the painful
parts of the composition. Much space between possibility and
else is added to and changed imagined fulfillment. By way
from the sources, and I have of exploration one can look
not hesitated to emulate the at the myth of Pyramus and
indifference of the period to Thisbe, as related by Ovid in
the casual interpenetration of the Metamorphosis. Pyramus
sacred and secular. and Thisbe, two of the most
beautiful people in the land,
Marian Tropes is dedicated to are desperately in love, yet
the Brentano Quartet with deep forbidden by their fathers to
affection and gratitude for their wed. Their sole communication
many fine performances of my is through a small hole in a
work.—Charles Wuorinen wall, large enough to transmit
PROGRAM nOteS
a whisper, small enough that In the Quartettsatz such elements
lips that offer a kiss will never exist in close juxtaposition. The
know a response. They decide piece begins with a tremulous
to steal away in the darkness figure reminiscent of the
of night and meet. On her opening of that other great
way to meet her lover Thisbe uncompleted Schubert work,
espies a lion who has recently the Unfinished Symphony; there
feasted on prey, his mouth still is a sense of instability created
awash in blood, and she runs which permeates much of the
off, inadvertently dropping her work, even in anxious figures
cloak. The hungry lion chews on accompanying otherwise lyrical
the cloak, drops it, and leaves. themes. It is a precarious and
Pyramus, looking for his love, poignant ambiguity which is
stumbles first upon the bloody quintessentially Schubertian, the
cloak and, thinking Thisbe eaten song that is even more beautiful
by a monstrous creature, uses because it exists only in memory
his sword to join her in death. or in imagination. Yearning and
Then, upon her return, Thisbe desire are even more moving
finds Pyramus dead and leans on when one dares to hope despite
the sword herself. being confronted over and over
by unforgiving realities. In
Terrible, incomprehensible Notebook/To Lucien Freud/On
forces coexist here with the the Veil from School of the Arts
beauty of tender vulnerability. poet Mark Doty speaks of “no
The stranglehold of authority, hope/ without the possibility of
the physical presence of the a wound.” Schubert shows us
wall, the violence of nature, the the forces that wound, and the
impossibility of omniscience: immense sensitivity of the soul
all these are external obstacles that hopes. In this piece, Fate
interfering with the purity of deals the final blow.
love. But still the shadows they —Mark Steinberg
cast upon that love, spawning
yearning and hope, introduce a Bruce Adolphe
fragility and an aching quality Fra(nz)g-mentation
to that love that we recognize as
deeply human. The renunciation In celebration of their 20th
of life as a reaction to thwarted anniversary, the Brentano String
love also exalts this love. Quartet commissioned a group
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of composers to complement What finally worked was for
incomplete works by Dufay, me to liberate the tune from its
Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, 19th-century German rhythmic
and Shostakovich. Each (living) uniform and to allow it to
composer was given a fragment dance naked in patterns of 11
to contemplate, and I was notes grouped as four, three,
delighted to be given the task and two plus two. For some
of working with Schubert’s reason, I have always enjoyed
unfinished Andante from D. rhythmic groupings of 11. In
703, composed in the year 1820. fact, my piece And All is Always
This movement was to be the Now, which I composed for the
second (he completed the first) Brentano’s first violinist Mark
of Schubert’s 12th string quartet. Steinberg and my wife, pianist
I chose to use the lovely theme Marija Stroke, back in 1992
Schubert wrote for this Andante features some music in 11/16.
as the basis of my piece, and When I set poems by Bronzino
I also incorporated the more and Petrarch to music for the
urgent, dramatic configuration Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in
Schubert wrote as the beginning 2010, I learned that Petrarch’s
of a second section that he never poetry scans in 11 pulses per
completed. line, as opposed to the iambic
pentameter in Shakespeare’s
I must confess that I started poetry. This was a wonderful
three versions of this discovery for me, and I again
composition based on the used a meter of 11/16 for an
Schubert before arriving at the entire movement, setting one
approach that I finally used and line of Petrarch’s. Another
completed. Schubert’s graceful recent work of mine, Drumming
tune did not immediately a Dream, with choreography
suggest rhythmic variants to by Preeti Vasudevan, is based
me, and my first attempts were on Indian rhythms, including a
to place the tune in a variety of culminating dance in patterns of
surprising harmonic contexts, 11 (Takadimi, Takita, Takadimi),
as if the tune, an intact 19th which is closely related to the
century creature, were visiting music in Fra(nz)g-mentation.
distant harmonic worlds.
These ideas did not work for me, Back to Schubert: once I set
as they were too deliberate, too Schubert’s tune spinning in 11, I
self-conscious, and not became inspired and the music
truly inspired. flowed. Then, at a crucial point