PART TWO : STEPHEN WHITTINGTON
with Kylie Davidson, associate pianist.
Solo piano. 75 minutes, plus Intermission
Lois V.VIERK Spin 2 [1992] **for two pianos
John CAGE In a Landscape [1948] and Ophelia
[1946]
Philip CORNER C Major Chord [1965]
Peter GARLAND Walk in Beauty [1988] **
During intermission, we will hear the following in the Theatre :
Kyle GANN Tuning Studies for Synthesizer #4 How Miraculous Things
Happen [1997] eleven minutes
#3 Fractured Paradise [1995] four minutes
Stephen WHITTINGTON Custom-Made Valses [2002] *
William DUCKWORTH Imaginary Dances [2000] **
Terry JENNINGS Piano Piece [1964]
Erik SATIE Entr’acte [1925] with the film by
Rene Clair
Following Stephen’s recital, we will hear the Disklavier play
the following in the Turbine Hall:
Kyle GANN Pieces for Keyboard Sampler
So Many Little Dyings [1994], seven minutes
Ghost Town [1994], eleven minutes
PART THREE : DONNA COLEMAN
Solo piano. One hour, without break.
William DUCKWORTH (b 1943)
The Time Curve Preludes (1979) **
Twenty-four short pieces for solo piano
When The Time Curve Preludes appeared in 1979, it was only natural
to hear them as an outgrowth of Minimalism, then in its heyday. After
all, they were tonal, meditative and well received in downtown New
York. And yet, as a Minimalist work, they didn’t fit; they were
brief, 24 pieces in an hour (early Minimalist works were dogmatically
continuous and evening-length), and they flouted the expectations
stirred by the excitement of a new, popular movement.
Now that two decades have passed, one can hear them with fresh ears.
While they do call to mind the milieu that surrounded their creation,
they also stand out from it due to some profound divergences.
On the Minimalist side, they are spare and meditative, each pursuing
a single rhythmic figure to the end. With the exception of moody #6,
none are literally repetitive. Each is ground by drones, a device
Minimalism picked up from Indian music. Rather than hum consistently,
though, the drones appear and disappear, shift delicately from pitch
to pitch, and define the rhythmic backbone of each.
Like Terry Riley’s music and the Indian ragas that inspired
it, Duckworth’s Preludes are modal, although they tend less
towards Eastern cultures (except in the raga-like #15) than toward
medieval melodic turns. #13, for example, switches between major and
minor on alternate beats, like some convoluted case of Renaissance
musica ficta. No Minimalist piece had sounded like that before.
If 1970s New York aesthetics can’t account for the behaviour
of these Preludes, a neo-Renaissance approach does them more justice,
for quotation and number proportion are central concerns. Their melodies
borrow from two sources; the plainchant Dies irae from Latin Requiem
Mass and Erik Satie’s Vexations, heard at the outset of this
festival.
Still, as the title hints, the Preludes depart most from Minimalism
in their intriguing sense of time.
By contrast to works like Philip Glass’s operas and the ensemble
pieces of Steve Reich, the Preludes imply a converging sense of time,
curving toward their logical endpoints with built-in closure. The
‘time curve’ feeling, a sense of rhythmic proportions
slowing down and speeding up, results from the expanding and contracting
deployment of a numerical grid, derived from the Fibonacci series
-
1,2,3,5,8,13,21, and so on [each number being the sum of the preceding
two- found as a formal principle in much ancient art and architecture.
As in so much medieval and Renaissance music, quotations and number
games constitute a subtle background, hidden by swirling melodies
which follow not-quite-audible levels. Minimalism wore its structure
on the surface; its most essential feature was its lack of background.
The Time Curve Preludes imitated the surface but moved structure back
into a more mysterious position. In fact, they express an air of disciplined
devotion, often evoking the ‘grand silence through serious immobility’
Satie used to characterize Vexations. Perhaps a more appropriate context
is less the jaunty, hard-edged world of New York Minimalism, but a
broader tradition. This stretches back through Messiaen’s piano
cycles, the Preludes of Debussy and Chopin to Bach’s Well-Tempered
Clavier.
Given the tiny quantity of material they use, the diversity of The
Time Curve Preludes is virtuosic: #2,6 and 13 are gently lyrical,
#4 and 14 storm in perpetual motion. #1 and 24 hint at banjo picking,
and #5,10 and 22 offer what Satie complimented as “the ironically
glacial bite” in the American sensibility. (Duckworth also cites
the influence of Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano style, though so smoothly
integrated that few can pinpoint it.)
What unites these 24 meditations on finitude are the recurring curved
lines, temporal and melodic, which give each prelude its compelling
miniature logic. What makes the cycle one of the major works of the
1970s is not only the unusual rules they follow, but a beauty and
delicacy equalled by few pieces of that era.
Adapted from liner notes by Kyle Gann
Silver [1978]
For solo piano.
Warren BURT [born 1949].
This piece is made of three fragments “appropriated” (the
polite academic term - a more honest term would be “stolen”)
from the works of composer/pianist Horace Silver [see Biography, below].
The fragments are 2, 3 and 5 bars long. They are treated as loops,
and played 2, 3 or 5 times each before proceeding to the next fragment.
The order of fragments is chosen improvisationally in performance.
In the late 1970s, Silver was used in collaboration with post-modern
choreographer Eva Karczag’s dance composition of the same name,
and during that period was performed in duo form in Australia, England
and the USA.
Warren Burt
Spin 2 [1995]
For two pianos.
Lois V.VIERK [b.1951, Hammond, Indiana].
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking describes a "spin 2" subatomic
particle as one which has the same orientation in space after it has
spun through 180 degrees, half a rotation. An arrow with an arrowhead
at each end illustrates this idea, as does the visual image of two
grand pianos facing each other, with a pianist at each keyboard. As
far as this piece is concerned, the middle section contains phrases
made up of many single, fast, high-pitched and high-energy notes.
The sounds are reiterated into symmetrical musical phrases. I hear
these tiny segments of sound as spinning through space, flying from
one instrument to the other, combining and recombining with each other
to gain new shape and direction.
Spin 2 begins almost as a piece for two percussion instruments.
It is first played completely inside the pianos, hitting and strumming
the strings, and then moving to the lowest pitches of the keyboards,
playing them loudly and broadly. Gradually, pitch content and harmonic
movement become apparent as the interlocking piano phrases sweep upward
to the highest keys, and towards a lyric middle section. The work
ends with dynamic trills and tremolos, expanding the instrumental
register.
Spin 2 was commissioned by the duo-pianists Ursula Oppens
and Frederic Rzewsk, made possible by a grant from Meet the Composer
- Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, in partnership with the Lila
Wallace - Reader's Digest Fund and the National Endowment for the
Arts.
Lois V Vierk
In a Landscape [1948] and Ophelia [1946]
John CAGE [1912 – 1992]. For solo piano.
These works for 'unprepared' piano were both written to be danced
to by Merce Cunningham. In a Landscape is a quiet meditation in the
Dorian mode using what Cage called 'square-root form' - in this case
a structure of 15 x 15 bars. Ophelia is a more expressionistic work,
with obsessive repetitions of small figures, along with accelerating
and decelerating rhythmic structures, suggesting a descent into madness.
C Major Chord [1965]
For solo piano.
Philip CORNER [born 1933].
After a stint in the US Army and studies with Olivier Messiaen, Philip
Corner was closely associated with John Cage in the late 1950s. During
the 1960s he was a prominent member of the Fluxus movement, and founded
the Tone Roads Ensemble, dedicated to new music performance, with
James Tenney and Malcolm Goldstein. He has been deeply inspired by
non-Western cultures, has written many works for gamelan, and is a
specialist in calligraphy. The score of C Major Triad says "You
can do anything provided it is a C Major chord."
Walk in Beauty [1988]
For solo piano.
Peter GARLAND [born 1952].
| Movement 1 : |
Walk in Beauty [opening song]
Turquoise Trail [sunset song]
Peyote Fan [night song] |
| Movement 2 : |
A Pine-Pitch Basket [midnight song]
Lightning Flash [night song]
Walk in Beauty – Calling Home My Shadow [sunrise song] |
Peter Garland studied with James Tenney and Harold Budd at California
Institute of the Arts. He was the publisher of Soundings (1971-1991),
an influential journal which included scores and articles by and about
Harrison, Nancarrow, Partch, and many composers of his own generation.
He has mostly lived outside of academia and mainstream musical institutions,
other than a stint as composer-in-residence at Adelaide University.
He now lives in Mexico. His music is notable for its lyrical beauty
and dramatic power, both qualities to be found in Walk in Beauty,
written for pianist Aki Takahashi.
The concept of the piece is based on all-night peyote ceremonies
of the Native American Church and the curing ceremonies of the Navaho.
In the fast, nervous repetition of single notes can be heard the influence
of Peyote drumming and musical style. Turquoise Trail is
dedicated to Louise Varèse , with an evocation of Satie in
the middle - an allusion to the occasion when Louise Varèse
had Satie to tea in 1921. A Peyote Fan is dedicated to Lou
Harrison and William Colvig, and bears the subtitle "It is passed
on…" Lightning Flash is dedicated to Conlon Nancarrow
and is "a rumba (not really)".
Custom-Made Valses [2002]
World premiere performance.
Stephen WHITTINGTON [born 1953, Adelaide, SA]. Three dances in three-quarter
time for three keyboards.
All three dances take as their point of departure, Clemence,
a valse for solo violin by the painter Henri (le Douanier) Rousseau
[1844-1910]. The most famous of all ‘naïve’ artists,
Rousseau was a “Sunday painter’, working during the week
as a Customs Officer, hence the nickname “le douanier”.
He constructed an elaborate fantasy around his mundane life, including
a fictitious sojourn in Mexico, which he depicted in numerous “exotic”
paintings, including the famous Snake Charmer.
In his forties, he resigned his customs post to become a professional
artist. But his inability to sell any paintings forced him to turn
to violin teaching as a source of income. His career parallels that
of his younger contemporary,Erik Satie. After enduring years of scorn
and ridicule, he found himself, quite late in life, the darling of
the avant garde, his work championed by Braque, Picasso and Apollinaire.
Clemence is one of his very few surviving compositions: a valse
in the salon style, but curiously [naively?] notated [in 6/8 time,
though it is obviously in 3/4] and strangely structured. Rousseau
performed it himself at the famous banquet given in his honour at
Picasso’s studio in Bateau Lavoir in 1908. The guest list was
a roll call of the leading artists of the day. Rousseau accpeted his
later fame with the same equanimity that he had accepted the ridicule
levelled at him earlier in life.
Written at the suggestion of Vincent Plush for this Mini[]Max festival,
these new pieces explore the musical possibilities of three quite
different keyboard instruments – the concert grand piano, the
electronic piano and the toy piano.
Piano Piece [1964]
Terry JENNINGS [1940-1981]
An extraordinarily gifted saxophone and keyboard player, Terry Jennings
met La Monte Young in Los Angeles in 1953 when they began playing
jazz together. Later, in New York City, Jennings was the featured
composer in the first two loft concerts organised by Young in Yoko
Ono's apartment. Jennings explored long durations, and was the originator
of a lyrical, non-virtuosic keyboard style which became a prominent
feature of Minimalism. He returned to LA to study at California Institute
of the Arts in 1969, where his music influenced Harold Budd, Peter
Garland, and many others. He was murdered behind a supermarket in
1981, apparently during a drug deal gone wrong.
Imaginary Dances [1985-88]
First Performance in Australia
For solo piano.
William DUCKWORTH [born 1943].
The first version of these Dances, commissioned by the Pennsylvania
Music Teachers Association, was completed in 1985 and premiered that
same year in Pittsburgh by Jack Little. It consisted of four dances.
After performing this version several times, my teaching colleague
at Bucknell University, Lois Svard, asked me to expand the collection.
This new version, consisting now of nine pieces grouped into three
movements, was completed in 1988, and premiered by Lois Svard at New
York's downtown club Roulette in 1990. She also gave the European
premiere in Copenhagen in 1992, and recorded the work for Lovely Music
in 1993. As a group, these dances reflect my long-term interest in
the rhythms and gestures of popular music and jazz, combined with
my use of rhythmic systems to generate musical forms.
William Duckworth
Entr’acte [1925]
For solo piano.
Erik SATIE [1866-1925]. With the film by Rene Clair.
Entr'acte -('Intermission') was conceived as an intermission in the
'instantaneist' ballet Relâche. The
scenario for the ballet was devised by Francis Picabia with choreography
by Jean Borlin for the Ballets Suédois. In the spirit
of Dada, the opening night of Relâche (the name means 'No performance
tonight') had to be cancelled due to the (possibly alcohol-induced)
indisposition of the lead dancer. Satie worked closely with director
René Clair, ensuring a unique blending of music and image.
The score is conceived in the spirit of 'Furniture Music' (a repetitive
style which could be considered an 'industrialised' version of Vexations).
Its musical inventiveness complements the extraordinary visual inventiveness
of the film. The cast includes Satie himself, Picabia, Marcel Duchamp,
Man Ray, and members of the Ballets Suédois. Accompanied
by a parody of Chopin's Funeral March, the film concludes with a bizarre
funeral procession which turns into a D.H. Griffith-style chase. Again,
in the spirit of Dada, it seems appropriate to end this concert with
an 'Intermission'.
Annotations by Stephen Whittington
The Time Curve Preludes [1979]
Twenty-four short pieces for solo piano.
William DUCKWORTH [born 1943]. First performance in Australia.
When The Time Curve Preludes appeared in 1979, it was only
natural to hear them as an outgrowth of Minimalism, then in its heyday.
After all, they were tonal, meditative and well received in downtown
New York. And yet, as a Minimalist work, they didn’t fit; they
were brief, 24 pieces in an hour [early Minimalist works were dogmatically
continuous and evening-length], and they flouted the expectations
stirred by the excitement of a new, popular movement.
Now that two decades have passed, one can hear them with fresh ears.
While they do call to mind the milieu that surrounded their creation,
they also stand out from it due to some profound divergences.
On the Minimalist side, they are spare and meditative, each pursuing
a single rhythmic figure to the end. With the exception of moody #6,
none are literally repetitive. Each is ground by drones, a device
Minimalism picked up from Indian music. Rather than hum consistently,
though, the drones appear and disappear, shift delicately from pitch
to pitch, and define the rhythmic backbone of each.
Like Terry Riley’s music and the Indian ragas that inspired
it, Duckworth’s Preludes are modal, although they tend
less towards Eastern cultures [except in the raga-like #15] than toward
medieval melodic turns. #13, for example, switches between major and
minor on alternate beats, like some convoluted case of Renaissance
musica ficta. No Minimalist piece had sounded like that before.
If 1970s New York aesthetics can’t account for the behaviour
of these Preludes, a neo-Renaissance approach does them more
justice, for quotation and number proportion are central concerns.
Their melodies borrow from two sources; the plainchant Dies irae
from Latin Requiem Mass and Erik Satie’s Vexations, heard
at the outset of this festival.
Still, as the title hints, the Preludes depart most from Minimalism
in their intriguing sense of time.
By contrast to works like Philip Glass’s operas and the ensemble
pieces of Steve Reich, the Preludes imply a converging sense
of time, curving toward their logical endpoints with built-in closure.
The ‘time curve’ feeling, a sense of rhythmic proportions
slowing down and speeding up, results from the expanding and contracting
deployment of a numerical grid, derived from the Fibonacci series
- 1,2,3,5,8,13,21, and so on [each number being the sum of the preceding
two- found as a formal principle in much ancient art and architecture.
As in so much medieval and Renaissance music, quotations and number
games constitute a subtle background, hidden by swirling melodies
which follow not-quite-audible levels. Minimalism wore its structure
on the surface; its most essential feature was its lack of background.
The Time Curve Preludes imitated the surface but moved structure
back into a more mysterious position. In fact, they express an air
of disciplined devotion, often evoking the ‘grand silence through
serious immobility’ Satie used to characterize Vexations.
Perhaps a more appropriate context is less the jaunty, hard-edged
world of New York Minimalism, but a broader tradition. This stretches
back through Messiaen’s piano cycles, the Preludes of
Debussy and Chopin to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.
Given the tiny quantity of material they use, the diversity of The
Time Curve Preludes is virtuosic: #2,6 and 13 are gently lyrical,
#4 and 14 storm in perpetual motion. #1 and 24 hint at banjo picking,
and #5,10 and 22 offer what Satie complimented as “the ironically
glacial bite” in the American sensibility. [Duckworth also cites
the influence of Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano style, though so smoothly
integrated that few can pinpoint it]
What unites these 24 meditations on finitude are the recurring curved
lines, temporal and melodic, which give each prelude its compelling
miniature logic. What makes the cycle one of the major works of the
1970s is not only the unusual rules they follow, but a beauty and
delicacy equalled by few pieces of that era.
Adapted from liner notes by Kyle Gann
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