Seven Friendly Fugues on SoundCloud

I have just uploaded seven of my Friendly Fugues to SoundCloud: the ones for Katchen Coley, Carl Viggiani, Clem W. Hitchcock, Blake Reynolds, Louise Faircloth, Lorry Yelding and Dr. Hoggard (the late great choral conductor Lara Hoggard, whom I could never address by his first name — he was always "Dr. Hoggard" to me and all the boys at Indian Springs School). Elsewhere on this blog I discuss these pieces. Scroll down to June 5 of this year for brief bios of the dedicatees and other information, and to August of last year for a description of the compositional process. Enjoy!

A Partita for Wilhelm Gertz

A few days ago I uploaded one of my biggest piano works to SoundCloud — A Partita for Wilhelm Gertz. Gertz was, for about a decade, Wesleyan's eccentric piano tuner/technician. He had a piano business in New Haven, and had rebuilt the Wesleyan Dowd harpsichord back in the day. When the opportunity arose, we hired him to work on the pianos as well as the Dowd. His work was controversial. Some of us thought he kept the pianos in fine shape, and the harpsichord in superb shape. He brokered the deal with the Godowsky family that got Wesleyan Leopold Godowsky's Bechstein piano. He also helped us with the gift of two other pianos, and sold us the August Foerster piano that is now in Wesleyan Memorial Chapel (one of our best instruments).

When I get to that point in my memoirs I will write more about Wilhelm. He was a complex man, and he rubbed some of my colleagues the wrong way. Not all of them, of course. Some of them really liked him. He was a crusty old German, and very opinionated. His work was not consistent, and that created problems sometimes. But he did a lot of work for us at a minimal price, he got us some of our best pianos, and his tunings were gorgeous. Actually, I cannot remember any more beautiful tunings, especially when he tuned the harpsichord. He used a quasi-Pythagorean tuning that would last for about three months. In my experience, this was unique. Harpsichords are notorious for going out of tune, and tunings that last for three months are virtually unheard of.

Over the years we became good friends. When he died I was very distressed. I had written the Fugue first, when he was still alive, and began to compose the rest of the Partita shortly after his passing. When I played the premiere in the fall of 2013 I took the occasion to make some serious edits and even a few significant changes.

If you would like to get a feel for his personality, and a few nuggets of information about his colorful life, check out this little interview:

http://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/wilhelm-gertz

Today is Bill of Rights Day!

What better way to celebrate BILL OF RIGHTS DAY (December 15) than by listening to my setting? Check out The Bill of Rights: Ten Amendments in Eight Motets it the following link on SoundCloud.

https://soundcloud.com/neelybrucemusic/sets/the-bill-of-rights-ten

This is the performance that we did when Justice Scalia was on the Wesleyan campus in March of 2012. Actually, it's edited from the best bits of both of the performances we did that afternoon. Even though we did it in honor of Justice Scalia's visit, and cleared it with his people so that he would be in attendance, he did not, in fact, attend. Rather, he went to his hotel room and rested for his lecture that evening. Or so I am told, unofficially. Officially we were informed by an official of the university, as we were waiting in the wings to go on stage (or, rather, the Memorial Chapel equivalent of "wings" and "on stage") that "Justice Scalia is unable to attend." No further explanation.

No matter. Between the two performances we had about 500 in the audience, and the whole experience was a resounding success, notwithstanding the no-show of the guest of honor!

Here is a list of all the performances of this piece. We're up to 23 now. Suggestions are in the air for a repeat performance in New Haven in 2015 and our first performance(s) in Virginia. It even looks like we are going to have a performance in Athens, Greece in 2015, and also one in Taiwan in 2016. Not to mention a performance by an excellent women's chorus (much closer to home), if I can finish up the SSAA version...

Public reading, South Congregational Church (July of 2005)
Wesleyan University, Memorial Chapel and the lobby of Olin Library (two performances,
     September 2005)

The Unitarian Meeting House, Hamden CT (2008)

Mitchell College, New London CT (2009)

The First Congregational Church of Lebanon CT (2009)

St Katharine Drexel Church, Alton NH, under the auspices of Arts on the Edge,

     Wolfeboro NH (2010)

Co-op High School, New Haven CT (2010), under the auspices of IRIS (Integrated

     Refugee and Immigrant Services), as a benefit for area refugees and immigrants

Sandisfield Arts Center, Sandisfield MA, September 17, 2011 (Constitution Day)

The Newseum, Washington DC, under the auspices of the Knight Foundation,

     December 16, 2011 (the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights)

Wesleyan University, two more performances, in conjunction with the 21st Annual

     Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression, given in 2012 by Justice

     Antonin Scalia

Monday 25 June 2012: A reading as a part of the series of SummerSings at St. Paul

     Evangelical Lutheran Church, 56 Great Hammock Road in Old Saybrook CT

Sunday 16 September 2012 at Faneuil Hall, Boston, two performances on the eve of

     Constitution Day

Wednesday 19 September at Trinity Chapel, Trinity College in Hartford

November 15, the Tenth Amendment performed at Brown University

November 24, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, as part of the concert series at

     Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in The Bronx

Friday 6 September 2013 at Madry Temple Church, New London CT

Sunday 15 September 2013, two more performances at Faneuil Hall

Wednesday 17 September 2014 (Constitution Day) at Middlesex Community

     College in Middletown, CT

Sunday 30 November 2014, two more performances at Faneuil Hall

Twenty-three performances of a 38-minute new choral work — not bad, I think, even if it is in the style of William Billings. Now to get more conductors involved. All but three of these performances have been conducted by the composer. Thank you Suzanne Bartells and Jeff Douma — and a special shout-out to Ioanna-Vasiliki Koraki, who is seriously contemplating The Bill of Rights in Athens!

If any of you who read this know any good choral conductors, pass on the information! I think this work has a real future, but in order for that future to become present reality there have to be more conductors who do perform the piece — LOTS more of them.

Announcement about SoundCloud

I just bit the bullet and began uploading my complete piano works to SoundCloud. The recordings from the first four of the "This Is It!" series have been edited. These are performances, not studio recordings (that will come later). You can now hear the first four pieces from the first recital, presented in Crowell Concert Hall at Wesleyan on Sunday 29 September 2013, viz:

Tuckaway in Early Summer
Forty Times Forty
A Fugue for Sophia
A Fugue for Maeny

I've been blogging about these pieces for some time — now you can hear them!

To hear these pieces just go to SoundCloud.com and search for "NeelyBruceMusic." (Not case sensitive.)

This is about 28 minutes out of four-plus hours I will be uploading soon. And the whole series will be at least 12 recitals, finishing up in the summer of 2017. Maybe more than 12 recitals, at the rate I'm writing new piano music...

Enjoy!

This Is It! No. 4

Last Sunday I performed the most recent in the series "This Is It!" — the complete piano music of NB, recital number 4. I will be playing these pieces again in a few days for friends in New Haven who could not attend the performance in Middletown. Here's the program, with a few general notes at the end:

This Is It! Part 4

Piano music of Neely Bruce

performed by the composer

Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University

Sunday 12 October 2014 at 3:00 p.m.

prelude à l’improvisto, in free chromatic style

Serial Invention No. 1 (2006)

Modal Study No. 4 (2013)

Serial Invention No. 2 (2010)

Two-part Invention and Chorale (2007)

Pandiatonic Study No. 2 (2014)

Modal Study No. 1 (2006)

Pandiatonic Study No. 1 (2011)

Serial Invention No. 3 (2006)

Modal Study No. 2 (2011)

Algorithmic Gymnopédie No. 1 (2004)

[algorithim by NB; realized by Dave Ruder]

Andante variée (1969)

The Two-Twin Tango (2010)

For Kai and Micah Klaaren London

Three Lullabies (2001)

A Lullaby for Alex / A Lullaby for Max

A Lullaby for the parents  (the twins are asleep)

OVER

Variations on a Polonaise (1968)

Tema

Allegro

Calm and spacious

Lento ma con moto

Arioso

Presto non troppo

Adagio molto

Fast and crowded

Allegro con brio

Tema, da capo

* * * * *

Marcia da Ballo. Rondo Fanfare

by Anthony Philip Heinrich (1780-1860)

* * * * * * * * *

Today’s recital is the fourth in the series “This Is It!” It is my intention to play in public and record my complete works for solo piano, with the works for harpsichord and my one piece for solo celeste thrown in for good measure. (I will leave the organ works to other performers.) If I am successful in this, I will be the first pianist/com-poser to record  my complete piano music.

There are twelve projected works in the series — fall, spring and summer through the summer of 2017. However, there will almost certainly be a thirteenth recital, and perhaps a fourteenth. So much immersion in my piano music, and the ideas and techniques behind it, is generating new works, some modest in scope, some more ambitious. We’ll see how it pans out. Perhaps I am involved in a situation like the race between Achilles and the tortoise…

In any event, the next recital in the series, “This Is It!” No 5, will be Sunday 22 February 2015 at 3:00 p.m. in Crowell Concert Hall. Hope to see you there. The program will include “Homage to Charlie” (in honor of C. E. Ives), more Friendly Fugues, my celeste piece, and various pieces for two pianos (the second pianist TBA).

—Neely Bruce

October 2014

Sound Cloud account getting set up

Dear Friends in Cyberspace — I have promised so many blogs in the last six weeks or so, but nothing has been forthcoming. Mea maxima culpa. I've been astonishingly busy, mostly because of composing my oratorio about Aristides de Sousa Mendes. (More on that subject soon.) But also because of preparing to perform all of my Geographical Preludes, and preparing to finish my Ives recordings with baritone David Barron. But the recordings are done, the performance has occurred, and the composition is not complete but certainly under control. So — a brief blog.

I have been talking about setting up a Sound Cloud account, and I have finally done it. With the help of Mike Arafeh, we are almost ready to unveil the first tracks. The first Jukebox will be excerpts from the WesWinds concert on May 10, specifically:

Circus Galop (Sousa)
Valdres March (Hanssen)
Shenandoah (Ticheli)
Four Chopin Preludes, arranged for woodwinds by my orchestration students
Colonial Song (Grainger)

And a slam-bang concert version of my magnum opus, CONVERGENCE, for WesWinds live and pre-recorded, three percussionists playing bell parts, and Matt Welch as our spectacular bagpipe soloist.

Stay tuned for details! Now to write some more music...

Practice, practice, practice

In the wonderful way things often fall together at the last minute, last night's performance by Village Harmony was a great success, and all of the performers were well fed and properly housed. In fact we ended up with more beds than the 18 we needed!

Larry Gordon's intrepid group of 17 VH alumni performed music from the the USA, renaissance Western Europe, South Africa, Bulgaria and the Republic of Georgia. Rarely does one hear an ensemble of singers in such a variety of music, but to hear different musical styles sung in different vocal styles is almost unheard of. No one would mistake Village Harmony for Ladysmith Black Mambazo, or a convention of traditional Sacred Harp singers, or Les Mystères des Voix Bulgares. But one can say, quite rightly, that Larry's singers know that you just don't sing Byrd like Billings and you don't sing Georgian liturgical chant like a hymn from South Africa. And the programming — mixing and matching pieces from all over the place, producing a timbre appropriate for each part of the world — is eye-opening for those who are not aware of these things, and delightful for those who are.

I also had the singular pleasure of introducing four of the group to the Michael Pestel Musical Menagerie. Every time I am at Michael's house there seems to be a new instrument of two. He makes a lot of them himself, and what he doesn't make he modifies. The prepared piano always has some new refinement... But that's another blog for another time.

My agenda now is — practice, practice, practice! Davd and I are recording "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" on Friday, and that alone is reason to be hitting the ivories several hours a day.

Ives recordings: UPDATE

Believe it or not, the recordings of the Ives songs continue. This month we'll be wrapping up the songs that David Barron and I did on the Ives Vocal Marathon. And just for kicks we're going to do a few more — songs that we did back in the day at the University of Illinois and in the early 1970s ("In the Alley" for example).

We have three sessions scheduled at Systems Two later this month. Very exciting. When we're done I'll start figuring out how to finish the rest of the job, with the other singers. At the rate we're going, I figure it will take fourteen more years to complete this project! Obviously none of us has that kind of time, so we have to speed up.

The order of events will be to finish up with Elizabeth Saunders (mezzo), then Johana Arnold (soprano), and finally Gary Harger (tenor). When we're done with all the voice and piano stuff we'll get cracking on the pieces with other instrumental combinations.

In some ways it is frustrating to have this project drag out. In other ways, however, it is very satisfying. I'm never far from the Ives songs, and that is a great thing. Since I am convinced that Ives is at least as good as any other song composer who ever lived, returning to these pieces is like returning to an ever-renewing spring of clear, refreshing water. One always gets ideas from Mr. Ives, and one always finds something new to admire in his music.

Earlier this year I met Stephen Budiansky, the author of Mad Music: Charles Ives, the Nostalgic Rebel. The book is out now, and I've ordered a copy. We'll see what Steve has to say about the songs! There are so many Ives books coming out now I've fallen behind in my reading...

Duckworth weights, continued; with more about "This Is It! Part Two"

My last blog was an introduction to the subject of Duckworth weights. They are mentioned again in the program notes to This Is It! Part Two, an all-NB piano recital presented last fall at Wesleyan. Here is the program from that event, which has one-paragraph descriptions of each piece on the program. There is more to be said about these works, but I have to move ahead and start writing about the recital on July 20.

This Is It! Part Two

The complete piano works of Neely  Bruce, performed by the composer

Sunday 16 February  2014

Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University

An improvised prelude, using seven Duckworth weights

Prelude in A major, Op. 28, No. 7, by F. F. Chopin

A Prelude for Sam

Three Friendly Fugues

Katchen Coley

Carl Viggiani

Clem W. Hitchcock

Crackin’ Lobsters: A New Culinary Rag

Four Friendly Fugues

Blake Reynolds

Louise Faircloth

Lorry Yelding

Dr. Hoggard

Memories of You 2012

(William Duckworth memorial version, w/Duckworth weights)

A Partita for Virginia Ellen

Prelude

Fugue

Chaconne

Reel

Introduction and Variations

The theme of this afternoon’s recital is memory. Each of these pieces is closely associated with a departed friend or relative. It is important to remember those who have left this world, sometimes with sorrow, but more often with joy and pleasure.

What I call “Duckworth weights” were used by the composer William Duckworth in his landmark set of pieces entitled The Time Curve Preludes (see below). They consist of five lead weights, taped together, so that they hold down a specific key of the piano. The resulting resonance becomes a part of the composition, or, in this case, the improvisation. Resonances differ from piano to piano, of course, and vary with the acoustic of the performing space. Each performance with Duckworth weights will be somewhat different.

The Chopin A major prelude was the favorite composition of my grandmother, Lela Mae Hemphill Neely. She was a schoolteacher, a businesswoman, and an aspiring pianist in her youth. For many years she was the pianist at the First Baptist Church in Mendenhall, Mississippi, where she also gave piano lessons. My first experience at the keyboard, as a small boy, was standing on her piano bench and banging on the keys of her piano. She asked me to play this prelude at her funeral, but for various reasons that did not happen. To make amends, I play it from time to time at memorial events (for Ron McCutcheon, for example).

Sam Lowe was a Wesleyan alumnus who died suddenly two years ago in Birmingham, Alabama (his home town and mine). Sam made a name for himself as an excellent free-lance jazz musician in New York and New Jersey, and went home to Birmingham to pursue a second career as a church musician in one of Birmingham’s biggest black churches. A concert in his memory was held in the Wesleyan Chapel in May of 2012, during alumni weekend, when this piece was premiered. This prelude is based on the letters of his name — Samuel Hayes Lowe — in the manner of the Friendly Fugues.

The first of my Friendly Fugues was written as an eightieth-birthday present for Katchen Coley. Katchen was a founding director of The Connection in Middletown, an outspoken advocate for environmental issues, and one of the most outrageous, lively people I have ever known. Shortly before she died in 2013, at the age of 89, she was honored by the City of Middletown for her ceaseless efforts to conserve the Maromas area of our town.

Carl Viggiani was Professor of French at Wesleyan, a World War Two veteran, and for several years the personal secretary of Albert Camus. His favorite composer was Chopin. This fugue was composed shortly after his death. The subject utilizes his full name — Carl Albert Viggiani, Senior — a name he never used in life.

Clem W. Hitchcock was a retired employee of the State of Connecticut (he worked in the statistics office), a life master bridge player, and an amateur vocalist with an insatiable appetite for singing. He was a member of Wesleyan Singers for many years, and sang in many, if not most, of the community choruses in Central Connecticut at one time or another. He took great pride in the fact that he often performed “The Star Spangled Banner” at the beginning of Rock Cats games. This fugue was a present for his seventieth birthday.

“Crackin’ Lobsters,” like the following fugue, is dedicated to Blake Reynolds. Blake was a loyal Wesleyan alum who lived in Cos Cob when I met him. He subsequently moved to Maine. He was a great fan of my ragtime playing, and established three scholarships at Wesleyan, named in my honor. The fugue was a present for his ninetieth birthday. The rag was inspired by a dinner he gave for friends and family at an excellent lobster restaurant near Damariscotta. At a certain point in the evening all conversation ceased throughout the entire room. All one could hear was the sound of lobsters being cracked. Later I remarked to Blake that “Crackin’ Lobsters” would be a great name for a rag. He was delighted with the suggestion.

Louise Faircloth was the mother of my good friend and roommate at Indian Springs School, Jim Mustin. She was widowed twice — first, when her three children were small. She raised them while teaching in the English Department of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa (my alma mater as an undergraduate). Her specialty was English romantic poetry, especially Wordsworth. When all of the children were out of the nest she married James Faircloth, professor of engineering. After a few wonderful years together, he died suddenly. In her second widowhood, when she was retired from the university, she became an expert in the art and craft of needlepoint, and had a second career as a needlepoint designer. Her full name was Louise Tyson Goodwin Mustin Faircloth. All of these names are carved on her tombstone.  The fugue uses all of the names, cumulatively, to form six different subjects. (The sixth subject is a lively variation on the rather somber fifth.) The longest of my Friendly Fugues, it was a present for her 100th birthday.

My sister-in-law Joan married Lorry Yelding, an Englishman whose given name was Lorimer. (No one ever called him Lorimer.) He was a witty, charming man, who loved to play golf, eat well, drink good wine, and take Joan on trips all over the world. He owned a printing company in Roxbury, Connecticut, and had been retired for several years when he married into our family. We would congratulate ourselves on our good fortune in marrying two of the legendary Behuniak sisters. The fugue was a present for his ninetieth birthday.

Dr. Hoggard was my high school glee club conductor, my first composition teacher, conducting mentor, and altogether the single most important musical influence in my life. His full name, which I use in the subject, along with his ubiquitous title, was Doctor Lara Guldmar Hoggard. He was principle staff conductor for Fred Waring, director of music at Indian Springs School (my alma mater, fifteen miles south of Birmingham), conductor of the Midland-Odessa Symphony Orchestra in Texas, and William Rand Keenan Professor of Music at UNC Chapel Hill. He was in every way a larger-than-life character — poverty-stricken as a boy in Oklahoma, a national choral conducting sensation when he was barely out of his teens, a notable career in the US Navy in World War Two, etc. Robert Phillips is writing his biography. Like the fugues for Blake and Lorry, the fugue for Dr. Hoggard was a ninetieth-birthday present. (Even though I knew him from when I was twelve years old until his death over fifty years later, I could never address him by his first name. He was always Dr. Hoggard.)

I met William Duckworth in the group composition class we took with Ben Johnston at the University of Illinois. Our children played together in the bathtub when they were toddlers. I played the premiere of his best-known work, The Time Curve Preludes, at Wesleyan in 1978 and recorded it soon thereafter. His principal choral work, Southern Harmony, was commissioned by Wesleyan Singers in 1980. We wrote “Memories of You” collaboratively in the late 1960s. It is for any four musicians, voices and/or instruments, and can be performed in an indefinite number of ways. When the piece was performed in 1975 in Town Hall Bernard Holland, writing for The New York Times, dismissed it as “a bit of Cagean irrelevance.” This version for solo piano was incorporated in a performance by seven all-star musicians at Bill’s memorial concert at Le Poisson Rouge in the fall of 2012.

Virginia Ellen was the wife of Jim Mustin and the daughter-in-law of Louise Faircloth. She was a successful lawyer and a total charmer. She took a remarkable set of photographs of my piece CONVERGENCE at Lincoln Center in 2002. Her death was sudden and unexpected. The partita was written at the request of her husband. Her name is incorporated in each of the four movements, not just the fugue.

To satisfy part of her requirements for the Yale Doctor of Musical Arts, Teresa Escandon asked me to compose the “Introduction and Variations.” She played the piece several times, as have I. When I first came to Middletown, Teresa was a local celebrity who played major concerts in Crowell Concert Hall. She was married to Dr. Speight, a retired local physician. Upon his death she moved to Florida to become professor of piano at the University of Miami. An enthusiast for the music of Liszt and a protégée of famed Liszt interpreter Jorges Bolet, she was in the process of editing the complete works of Liszt, as played by Bolet, at the time of her death.

* * * * * * *

Art is long, life is short. Since the passing of my wife Phyllis I have thought a great deal about life, death, and art. Many of you will know that I have produced three concerts in Phyllis’s memory, and will continue to do so, on or around December 8 of whatever year it is. Today’s recital is a way to remember other friends, relatives and colleagues who are no longer with us, whose lives were and are inexorably intertwined with my life, and with my piano music.

Duckworth weights

In a recent blog I mentioned what I call "Duckworth weights" — I opened the recital with "An improvised prelude, using seven Duckworth weights."   These are small lead bars, used by piano technicians, to counterbalance the weight of the hammers. They are properly called "keyleads" or "key leads," one word or two. Their conventional use is discussed in detail in the following article:

http://www.pianofinders.com/educational/touchweight.htm

Scroll down to "Some Historical Background."

When Bill Duckworth composed The Time Curve Preludes he specified that certain keys were to be held down for the duration of each prelude. These pitches would never be struck, but would vibrate in sympathy with the other strings, accumulating resonance as each piece progressed. Each of the twenty-four preludes had its own specified drone pitch (1) or pitches (as many as 7). Bill originally intended the keys to be secured by rubber wedges, the sort that piano tuners use to separate and dampen strings while they are being tuned. George Krippenstapl, who was the Wesleyan piano technician at the time, persuaded him that the wedges, inserted between the key and the fallboard, carried the risk of damaging the keys, and that he should use keyweights, stacked and secured by masking tape. Originally I used stacks of four, now I use stacks of five — heavier and more stable.

The penultimate composition on "This Is It! TWO" was "Memories of You, 2012," the memorial version of an earlier work that I prepared for the concert in Bill's memory at Le Poisson Rouge. (We co-composed it in the late '60s.) I'll write about that on Wednesday. Today I just want to talk about the weights.

I have discovered that these small stacks of keyleads, to be known henceforth as Duckworth weights, are a great compositional resource. When you improvise with them you can use them as a manually controlled sostenuto pedal; you can use them in conjunction with the sostenuto pedal; you can use them to create floating drones that migrate from register to register on the keyboard. They are altogether cool and I hope other composers and improvising pianists will decide to use them. Any piano technician can get you a bag of keyleads. Be sure and get the ovaloid ones, and not the small round ones, which will not stack properly. Wrap some masking tape neatly around a stack of five and you are ready to go. They come in small batches, or bargain bags of various numbers (I have well over a 100, can't remember the precise amount). Enjoy, and help spread the word!

About Chris McDonald and Bilbao

On Monday's blog I said I would follow up about Chris McDonald's installation in Bilbao. I looked online for details, but could find nothing. So I wrote to Chris and asked him for more information. His reply follows.

Thanks Chris for writing my blog for me today! I spent most of the day organizing CDs, the first step to reclaiming my beautiful studio, which has become cluttered beyond belief. (With the help of Elena I think we can actually get the job done.)

* * * * *
It was so great to see you and I found the concert (and followup dinner) to be a wonderfully stimulating Saturday evening.

  Really weird about the Guggenheim, isn't it?? I remember trying to find a link a while back and realizing Guggenheim Bilbao doesn't seem to have an upcoming events section. 

  The piece opens on Thursday so I imagine they will get its own section on this page: http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/exposiciones/. 

  The piece is Ragnar Kjartansson's "The Visitors" and it is a nine channel video installation. I've been working with him as director of sound/music producer on his video projects for about five years now. We shot "The Visitors" in 2012 and I recorded the music and mixed it. We had about 2000ft of cable snaking through the mansion at Rokeby, the old Astor estate on the Hudson. All nine videos, each featuring a musician (almost all of them Icelandic) in a different room of the house, were shot simultaneously and they are synchronized for the exhibition. It's like being able to see into these rooms of the house at once and inhabit them all at the same time.

  They play an hour-long song that is wistful and occasionally brooding--and sometimes explosive, quite literally since Ricky Aldrich (the descendent who currently owns and runs the estate) occasionally sets off a Chinese cannon that his family plundered from the Forbidden City long ago in some awful mini war, I'm not sure which one. 

  It'll probably be at the NYC Guggenheim at some point or MoMA since both institutions own an edition. 

  But I'm here now in Bilbao! What a beautiful place. And my hotel is on Salazar Street! But it's named after a fifteenth century Spaniard and obviously not the Portuguese dictator.

Aurora Borealis meets Hiatus Pitch meets "'orgueilleux — in the Garden

The long-awaited concert of works by Wesleyan alumni composers took place over the weekend. Attendance was good, and the performers outdid themselves. I heard the first version of this concert last October. On Saturday, I was delighted how well the pieces hold up seven months later, and how much the performances had matured. I could write a substantial article about this concert, of course, but this is a blog. So I will limit myself to brief comments about each piece.

"Gathering Light" by Benjamin Broening — This piece exists in two versions, for violin solo and for violin with live electronics. The constraints of the concert were: no electronics. Sarah Washburn played the piece beautifully. It is a very strong work indeed, and got the concert off to a great start.

"Companion" by Ed Jessen (two speaking/singing pianists at two toy pianos, violin and cello) made a much stronger impression in Crowell Concert Hall than it did in the Trinity Chapel. It was possible to separate the two toy pianos quite a bit more. One was on each of the downstage corners, on a sculpture stand; violin and cello were upstage center, next to each other. The spatial separation liberated the drama of the piece. It starts as a quiet, if perplexing dialogue, but works itself into something of a miniature fury. Just as you think you may have figured it out, the piece is over...

Theme and Mutations for oboe and piano, by Brett Terry, benefited from having a better piano, and from the clearer acoustics of Crowell Concert Hall. Ling-Fei Kang (who is a superb oboist with the sweetest tone imaginable) and Elisabeth Tomczyk (a superb pianist who seems capable of playing just about anything, so long as it is new) played with clarity and elegance. I appreciated the spacing between the movements, which was longer and more pronounced than at Trinity.

Speaking of Brett, he kindly videoed the entire concert. I'll keep you posted as we get the various pieces uploaded to YouTube.

mensural canon for tri-partitioned body by Brian Parks is indeed a mensural canon, but with a twist. The three male voices sing a rising major scale, followed by a descending octave, in different rhythms. Janet Simone Parks, a beautiful dancer with technique to burn, dances the three parts as they are sung. One part goes with the legs, one with the arms, and one with the head. It is a tour-de-force. I thought it was just about perfect. I checked with the composer, and he informed me that more than "just about perfect," it was exactly correct. A sort piece, but a brilliant one.

Every time I hear "The Lonely Chant" by Walter Frank the stronger the impression it makes on me. It is exactly postminimalist, that is, it uses minimalist techniques in ways that minimalist composers would not use them. It is repetitive, but not systematically so. It is modal but ends ambiguously. It has clearly delineated sections, but they are unpredictable in their proportion. It uses the minimalist apparatus for an emotional end. Most importantly, it's not long! It also had the great virtue of being controversial. I spoke to people who enthusiastically said it was the best piece on the program, and to people who thought it was the worst. (No names, of course.) That's hard to do these days —write a piece of music that stirs up real contention.

"hiatus pitch" is a virtuoso piece for solo saxophone by Keith Moore. In this case "virtuoso" means "brutally difficult." Alto saxophonist Geoffrey Landman was more than up to the task. Extremes of register, extremes of speed, and above all, extreme dynamics — nothing seemed to phase him. I had heard this piece before, played by Taimur Sullivan. Geoff did it just as well! And Keith's elusive sense of rhetoric was well-communicated. A strong performance of a strong piece. (This work replaced Keith's organ piece, "Diary of an Organaut," which Brian Parks performed at Trinity. Crowell no longer has an organ, alas.)

"Aurora Borealis" by Liang Liang is a sumptuous work for violin, viola, cello and piano. It is the only work on the program that I felt did not benefit from the acoustics of Crowell, as opposed to the acoustics of Trinity Chapel. It was still a gorgeous, expressive work, and it was played with great authority and a sure sense of color. But the dryer, clearer hall worked to the disadvantage of some of the more complex sonorities.

I am a great fan of the work of Judy Dunaway, and the performance of "The Sound of Skin" only increased my admiration for her originality. Making music for balloons is no easy task. At Trinity the performance was a duo plus: Janet Simone Parks and Anne Rhodes getting wet in a kiddy pool and Orion Parks helping deliver balloons. (Orion is Janet and Brian's first child. She is four years old and growing up surrounded by avant garde art. Not a bad life.) The stone floor of the Trinity Chapel and all the beautiful dark wood was a great frame for what Janet and Anne did. But Anne, who now has her own first child, was not available, so the Crowell performance became a solo. At Trinity the balloons were in a large basket. In Crowell they were placed inside our beautiful Dowd harpsichord. A stunning visual effect, and a nod to early music that subtly reinforced some of the other pieces on the program.

"Frolic" by Anne Lemos Edgerton was the oldest and newest piece of the program, simultaneously. The oldest because it was originally written when Anne was in the GLSP program at Wesleyan, back in the 1970s. The newest because the revival of the piece last October inspired her to write an introduction, which was completed only two weeks before the concert! A lively and engaging work from start to finish, "Frolic," like other pieces on this program, has the great virtue of not being too long. A note to composers everywhere — oboe and cello together might not sound like an ideal combination, but believe me it is a great sound. Especially if you handle it as well as Anne does!

"L'orgueilleux" by Chris McDonald is a tour-de-force of wit and complexity for flute, viola and piano. Chris's career after Wesleyan has taken him more and more in the direction of pop music, mixed media and video art. (He left the day after the concert to supervise the installation of one of his most recent works in Bilbao — details to follow.) But he started off as a hard-core Tanglewood composer of twelve-tone music, and this example of him writing in that style (completed when he was an undergraduate student, not that long ago) holds up very well with the passage of time. I asked him if he was interested in writing more music in this style, and he replied "I'm thinking about it."

Last but not least, a chunk of Chris Jonas's monumental "Garden" for string quartet concluded the program. It's a sprawling, compelling work. You can hear the whole thing on the internet, and see the gorgeous video that accompanies it. "Garden" is a strong piece of music as well as a strong piece of mixed media, and it holds its own on the concert stage. The West End Quartet shone in this performance as well as the others on the program (Frank, Liang). I hope they keep all of these excellent pieces in their repertory!

After the concert Elena and I had dinner at Haveli India with Judy, Sarah and her family, Brett, Chris, Max and Gabriel. Conversation was lively and far-reaching. A high point was Chris's contention that all of the composers, and all of their pieces on this concert, were to some extent exemplars of modernism. That sparked a discussion that is another topic, for another time...

Wesleyan Alumni Concert tomorrow

Last fall I was invited by the Hartford New Music Festival to be one of two composers-in-residence, along with Michael Schelle. It was a blast getting to know Michael, and the festival was in all other ways a success as well.

There were two enormous perks of this festival. One was a commission to write a new orchestra piece, for the combined forces of the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra and The Generous Ensemble. (I write about this piece in one of my blog posts last October.) The other was to curate a concert of chamber works by Wesleyan alumni who had worked with me in one way or another — most of them were my composition students at one time, but I advised or read the masters theses of others, and we all made music together back in the day.

The concert was a terrific success, and I resolved to repeat the event at Wesleyan when Alumni Weekend rolled around this year. The time has come, and tomorrow, Saturday 24 May at 4:00 in Crowell Concert Hall at Wesleyan, the concert will be repeated. For the most part it is the same program, performed by the same musicians.

Wesleyan is well-known for having produced some important composers who work in electric media and computer music. But because of logistical considerations, it was decided that the concert last fall, in the Chapel at Trinity College, would be an all-acoustic event, no electronics. And that's the way the concert is tomorrow.

The result is an amazing variety of sounds and shapes. Virtually all of the composers involved also write for electronic resources as well as acoustic ones, so it offers a glimpse into another aspect of his or her work. The concert has a whimsical title, derived from the names of pieces on the program. Here's a list of performers, followed by the pieces and their composers. I'll write more after the event. If you're in the area, just slip into Crowell on Saturday afternoon and pretend you're a Wesleyan alum!

Aurora Borealis meets Hiatus Pitch meets 

L’orgueilleux — In the Garden

compositions by Wesleyan alumni

Crowell Concert Hall at Wesleyan University

Saturday 24 May at 4:00 p.m.

Performed by Megan Natoli, flute; Ling-Fei Kang, oboe;

Geoffrey Landman, saxophone; 

Elisabeth Tomczyk and Brian Parks, piano;

Janet Simone Parks, dancer; and the West End String Quartet

“Gathering Light” for violin solo

Benjamin Broening 

“Companion” for two speaking pianists at two toy pianos, 

violin and cello

Edward Jessen 

Theme and Mutations for oboe and piano

Brett Terry 

“The Lonely Chant,” for string quartet

Walter Frank 

“hiatus pitch” for saxophone solo

Keith Moore

“Aurora Borealis” for violin, viola, cello and piano

Liang Liang

“The Sound of Skin,” for any number of performers, 

balloons and water

Judy Dunaway

"mensural canon for tri-partitioned body" 

for solo dancer and three singers

Brian Parks

“Frolic,” for oboe and cello

Anne Lemos Edgerton

“L’orgueilleux,” for flute, viola and piano

Chris McDonald

Two movements from “Garden” — a string quartet

Chris Jonas

School is almost over!

I am shocked to realize that I have not written anything on this blog since last October. A semester of being the chair of the Music Department (last fall) and a semester of heavy teaching and lots of outside activity (this spring) has cut into my writing time. As a result, the second of the This Is It! series of my piano works, the third memorial concert for Phyllis, and an all-NB vocal music event earlier this month have come and gone, without a word on these pages in cyberspace! Not to mention the indoor version of CONVERGENCE that I conducted with WesWinds. Some exciting music making that should have been noted and discussed.

It's well beyond the time for making New Year's resolutions, but I'll make one anyway. More regular blogging! Last year I figured out I could write something three times a week, and I'm going to do just that. Starting Friday. Stay tuned for specifics...

For now, I'll list the programs.

The Third Annual Phyllis Bruce Memorial concert, with Kalia Kellogg and Stan Scott, consisted of my Chinese Love Poems, Stan singing Hindustani settings by Tagore, and Gitanjali by John Alden Carpenter. December 8, 2013 at South Congregational Church.

The second This Is It! concert (12 recitals comprising my complete piano works) consisted of an improvised prelude using Duckworth weights; the Chopin A major prelude; "A Prelude for Sam"; seven Friendly Fugues; "Memories of You" (version with Duckworth weights); A Partita for Virginia Ellen; and Introduction and "Variations." At Hubbard House and at Crowell Concert Hall, February 2014.

WesWinds, the Wesleyan Wind Ensemble, conducted by NB (my debut as a band director, loved it!). Works by Sousa, Hansson, Ticheli, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Chopin (!!!), Grainger and Bruce — a version of CONVERGENCE for band, prerecorded band, bagpipe solo, and lots of bells. May 6, 2014 in Crowell Concert Hall.

Vocal Music of Neely Bruce, with Kalia Kellogg, Christopher Grundy, and bassoonist Gary Bennett. Miscellaneous Songs for Low Voice; Chinese Love Poems (again). May 10, 2014 in Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University.

This is a lot of performing, and a lot of my music to digest. I hope my friends and fans are not in overload about my compositions, because there are lots more coming through the pipeline. 

Some information/thoughts about Antiphonies for Charlie

THE HARTFORD NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL CONTINUES with the premiere of my Antiphonies for Charlie. The combined forces of the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra and The Generous Ensemble perform Saturday 19 October at 7:30, Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford; and Sunday 20 October at 2:30, CT Historical Society, also in Hartford. Come and enjoy! Both performances are FREE and open to the public.

Antiphonies for Charlie is my biggest piece for orchestra alone — if you allow that the combined forces of The Generous Ensemble and HICO constitute an orchestra. 35 minutes long. It is also my very individual response to a unique combination of instruments, and the possibility of arranging them antiphonally.  

Those instruments are: flute (piccolo), oboe (English horn), alto sax, tenor sax (bari), electric guitar, electric bass, two percussion (mostly traps and marimba), two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, strings (44432).

“Charlie” is of course Charles Edward Ives. I had already written a short piano piece “Homage to Charlie,” and his imprint is all over my music for solo voice. In 1913 he was at the height of his compositional powers, right in the middle of producing the Concord Sonata and the Fourth Symphony. 1913 is also the year when Henry Brant was born. Henry was, in the words of Virgil Thomson, the greatest American orchestrator, and the composer who, more than any other, awakened my interest in the orchestra.

So AFC is, among other things, my tribute to these two geniuses. One of them died when I was ten years old, the other was a close personal friend. Each has had a profound impact on me, both as a composer and as a performer. I don’t think AFC sounds particularly like either Ives or Brant, but certain Ivesian procedures, which Henry adopted and freely acknowledged, permeate the work. These include:

The spatial separation of instrumental forces

Overlapping rhythmic cycles (as in the Universe Symphony)

Stacking blocks of sound on top of each other (as in the Fourth Symphony)

Extreme stylistic eclecticism

To these I might add whimsical titles (more like Henry than Charlie) and whimsical instructions to some members of the orchestra (more like the Charlie of the Second String Quartet).

“Clumps,” the first movement, is just that. Sonorous blocks, clusters, what my orchestration teacher Steve Sample used to call “fat melodies” — these combine and recombine and even, to some small degree, develop. There are some interruptions, to thicken the plot, including a really second-rate parlor tune, ineptly harmonized, and some rather more elegant three-part counterpoint.

“Solos” are just that. Each of the 32 instruments has its own part with its own integrity. Four of the solos are melodic, the other 28 are pointillistic. “Duets” are similarly literal. Not all of the possible pairs are used, but 23 are (if I have counted correctly), including some bizarre ones. The duets are also carefully positioned within the ensemble, and if you listen closely you can hear them coming from different directions.

“Something Different” is just that, at least from the point of view of the materials it uses. The techniques of collage and overlapping rhythmic cycles (9 beats + 11 beats + 15 beats, etc.) are the same. To these Ivesian/Brantian procedures is added the Lisztian one of thematic transformation, although my use of it is extreme and is almost like serialism.

These notes make my music appear to be quite intellectual, and my modus operandi is certainly self-conscious. But one aims for a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. You, the audience, should have a good time listing to this piece. I’m not so concerned that you be able to follow the intellectual apparatus behind AFC, though it is fun to know it is there. Rather, I hope you find sections of it beautiful, exciting, amusing, or even moving.

Three Chamber Works

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Hartford New Music Festival OPENING CONCERT

Sacre d’Automne: 016 New Music Ensemble

Charter Oak Cultural Center, Hartford

Friday 11 October 2013 at 8:00 FREE

featuring three chamber works of Neely Bruce,

two of them world premieres 

So much for blogging three or four times a week. There has been an explosion of activity around various performances of my compositions, and I've had increased duties at Wesleyan as well. My concert on September 29 has come and gone. The performance of "Flight Over a Global Map" by Henry Brant has also come and gone. And tomorrow begins the Hartford New Music Festival. I'm one of two featured composers. But I've had to write program notes for the first concert and I realized that I should post them on this blog! So here they are.
(I’ll get back to the piano music soon. Promise! Cross my heart and hope to die…)

Neely Bruce writes of the pieces on tonight’s concert:

The Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano was composed over a period of three years. It is in two large sections, each almost exactly six minutes long. The first of these is a long quasi-palindrome that is repeated. It was composed in small bits and pieces over a considerable period of time. If I may indulge in an organic metaphor, I wanted to see what kind of sub-microscopic bacterial stew I could suggest with three instruments very close together, churning about, evolving a bit, sticking out a tiny antenna from time to time. In addition to being palindromic, and repeated verbatim, the pitches are the result of additive processes. All of this suggests a strict approach to composing that is more apparent than real.

The second large section is a reaction to, or even a rejection of the first. Rather than amorphous primordial soup, one hears clearly delineated melodies and the sonorities of individual instruments. Instead of quasi-rational process one hears counterpoint and balanced, almost neo-classical phrases. Instead of activated static sonorities, full of activity but with little direction, one hears large-scale harmonic progressions. The first section was written with enormous attention to detail, and took two and a half years to write. The second section was written spontaneously, in a matter of days.

This piece has grown out of several artistic considerations and one deeply personal one. Over the years I have written a great deal of music for flute, violin and piano, in specific theatrical contexts. I wanted to produce an abstract work for the medium that would revisit some of the abstract techniques I had used in the past. I wanted to achieve maximum contrast between the two sections.  Like many of my pieces, this Trio was written for me to play with two of my friends. But the speed and intensity with which the second part of the work was produced are the direct result of the passing of my wife Phyllis from this world to the next on November 8, 2010.

Meditation for Solo Cello. In 1968 I set the 23rd Psalm to music for unaccompanied voice. I have a dim memory that the original version was for soprano, but I cannot confirm this. If this is true, I probably intended the piece for Jean Geil, a remarkable soprano at the University of Illinois. She had perfect pitch and was much in demand as a performer of new music, and I had written other pieces for her. In any case, the piece was difficult to sing and difficult to program and

was never performed. In 1984 I took it out and recast it as a piece for baritone voice without accompaniment. It was no easier to perform and still hard to program.

The piece has stuck in my craw, so to speak, for 45 years. It is wide-ranging and chromatic in the extreme. When Jordan Jacobson and I were discussing what music of mine would be appropriate for the 016 New Music Ensemble he was particularly interested in a piece that would feature the cello. Our conversation was a lightbulb moment. Perhaps the difficulty with “Psalm 23” was that it was not a vocal melody but an instrumental one. So I have recast it for solo cello. This involved minimal rewriting of the pitches and a lot of editing. I am delighted that after all these years this not-so-hummable but memorable melody will see the light of day.

I met the great trombonist Stuart Dempster in the mid-1960s — not too long before writing the psalm setting that turned into the Meditation for Solo Cello. I was asked to play the piano parts in a recital he gave as part of the Festival of Contemporary Arts at the University of Illinois on March 10, 1965. We became friends for life, performing again as a duo several times at the U of IL, and on tour in the Northeast in the late 1970s, after I had come to Wesleyan. In 1971 I got up the nerve to write a piece for the two of us to play together. It was performed twice at Illinois, shortly after I wrote it, and again as part of our tour.

The Grand Duo for Trombone and Piano is the first of several grand duos for various solo instruments and piano: soprano sax and piano, percussion and piano, trumpet, viola, flute and cello. Others were projected, and I actually began to work on GDs for double bass, euphonium and Eb alto clarinet — however, none of these have been forthcoming.

Ideas that relate music to information theory have had a deep and lasting impact on me. One of my principal professors in graduate school was Lejaren Hiller, whose pioneering work in computer music is well known and invaluable. He introduced us to Abraham Moles, whose Information Theory and Aesthetic Perception remains a classic in the field. Between classes with Jerry and classes with Herbert Brün I developed a fine appreciation of statistical probability as a compositional tool. I also learned from Jerry how one can use stylistic juxtaposition as a way to increase the information content of just about anything.

The main event in the GDTP — the first and longest section of the piece — is the gradual transformation of the probabilities of the penultimate A major section into the probabilities of the final G major part. The former has literally hundreds of As and Es, with other pitches in lesser number; the latter has only a few Gs and Ds. Neither section contains all twelve chromatic pitches. The section is divided into twelve “variations.” Scores of As and Es gradually give way to considerably fewer Gs and Ds. The transition from an implied A major to an implied E major is concurrent with a gentle thinning of the texture. All is sweetness and light, and one hopes that the audience is sufficiently surprised by what happens next.

Thus the main body of this piece is based on what follows it, rather than what proceeds it. The composition manipulates basic notions of cause and effect, as well as statistical frequency. It is the converse, so to speak, of musical development in the Beethovenian sense. All of this would not mean a thing, of course, if the piece were ugly or boring. But it is neither, though one could certainly discuss wherein lies its particular beauty and fascination.

News from Neely

Of course when I announced I would be blogging three or four times a week, because I had hit my stride, I entered a complete creative fit. Said fit, which involves finishing my orchestra piece Antiphonies for Charlie (more about that very soon), and my duties as the current chair of the Music Department at Wesleyan, plus getting ready to conduct Henry Brant’s Flight Over a Global Map — all of these things conspire to put a damper on my blogging. However, I should write something, if for not other reason than my Blogger account was evidently hacked (one hopes by mistake) and I had to reset my password!

There is no end of stuff to write about, of course. But I have just read an article entitled “America’s orchestras are in crisis” by Philip Kennicott, in the New Republic, August 25, 2013. Here’s what I just wrote on Facebook:

“As usual, this latest jeremiad about the crisis of the orchestra (or the opera house or chamber music, etc.) is all about the symptoms and says nothing about the cause. When what I'll call ‘serious music’ was taken out of the curriculum of most public schools in the 1950s the stage was set for one crisis or another. Imagine the state of mathematics if our schools took math out of the curriculum, or made it an after-school elective! We would be desperately trying all sorts of stopgaps to 'interest the young,' 'interest the person on the street,' 'make math fun,' etc. And of course all of this would fail, because the real problem is — we have created, systematically, over the last 60 years, a less-educated public. And anyone who doubts that we have a less-educated public isn't paying attention.”

There! I’ve gotten that off my chest. Back to work on Antiphonies for Charlie.

Two Friendly Fugues

 

The Complete Piano Music of Neely Bruce: THIS IS IT!

The first of twelve recitals will take place on Sunday 29 September, 2013 at 3:00 p.m. in Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut

In the fall of 2006 I programmed two of my Friendly Fugues on a recital I played on the beautiful August Foerster piano in the Wesleyan Chapel. These fugues were written in honor of Katchen Coley (a local conservation leader) and Billy Weitzer (at that time a member of the Wesleyan administration.) On September 20, 2006, I wrote in this blog as follows:

For the past two and a half years I have been composing a series of “Friendly Fugues,” based on the names of some of my friends. Some of them, including the first one, have been composed at the request of the person whose name becomes the subject (see below). Katchen Coley approached me at a Christmas party in 2003 and asked, “Neely, will you write a piece for my eightieth birthday?” Of course I agreed, and this piece was the result. I turned her name into a fugue subject by writing down the letters of the alphabet in seven columns, thus:

            a     b     c    d     e     f     g

            h     i      j     k     l     m    n

            o     p     q     r     s     t     u

            v     w    x     y     z

then I mapped any letters in the various columns—below the first row—onto the letters in the first row, i.e. the letters of the musical alphabet. (For example, the letter R, which is not used in musical nomenclature, becomes the note D.) In this process I also allow the German alphabetic equivalents of certain letters, so B can be B flat, H can be B natural, and S can be E flat (my choice). Incidentally, I didn’t invent this method of transforming words into notes, and there are other ways of doing it.

Katchen’s name becomes “D A F C B E G C A E E D,” with an appropriate rhythm of course, and Billy Weitzer (a member of the Wesleyan administration who has been quite supportive of the Music Department and helped us purchase the August Förster) turns out to be “Bb B E E D B E B F E E D,” something of a challenge as a fugue subject because of the repeated cell (EED EED), but challenges are what makes composition fun.

Other Friendly Fugues were written as birthday presents (Eric Gordon, Clem W. Hitchcock, Lara Hoggard, Louise Faircloth, a fugue for piano four-hands for Bitsy Clark) or surprises (Blake Reynolds, Janet Gross) or just to demonstrate how I make fugue subjects out of names (Peter Alan Hoyt, Henry Dreyfus Brant—though Henry’s fugue is only begun, since he insists I write it for brass ensemble and not piano).

BACK TO THE PRESENT: At this point there are 22 of these friendly fugues. Two more fugues, composed in the same manner, are part of the partitas in memory of Virginia Ellen and Wilhelm Gertz. There are 19 others, in various states of completion.

The fugues I have chosen to play in this first concert are the two most recent ones. Sophia Rosoff has been my piano teacher since 1998. This fugue was written as a birthday present, earlier this year. Sophia was born on January 27 — as she likes to say, she was born between Virginia Wolfe and Mozart.

Urip Sri Maeny is the wife of my colleague Sumarsam. She taught Indonesian dance at Wesleyan for decades and retired this spring. This fugue is a present on the occasion of her retirement. It is also a surprise! Maeny and Sumarsam are in Indonesia visiting friends and family. Just before I posted this blog I sent them an Email telling them of the existence of this little piece of music (PDF attached).

More thoughts on the Ives songs

 

I am writing this blog in the sky. I am on a small plane bound for Nashville, where I will meet my daughter Meriwether Brown and her family and spend the night. Tomorrow we will begin an adventure. We will journey to Wisconsin by car and see whooping cranes. That will be the subject of another blog or two, I’m sure. But for now I want to return to the subject of the Ives songs, albeit briefly.

Sometimes I think I am foolish to continue to record these songs. As of now, we have about 50 of them in the can, about 35 of which are edited. Counting all of the alternate versions, Ives wrote a total of 201 pieces for solo voice. At this rate I figure it will take fourteen years to complete the project. Since it is unlikely that any of us involved have fourteen years to devote to this, even intermittently, and I am committed to doing it, the only alternative is to speed up. To do that in a significant way would require the time and money to isolate ourselves for an agreed-upon period of time and simply do it. While I ponder this, let me say a few more things about this music.

Peter Dickinson said, back in 2009 at the Ives Vocal Marathon, that he didn’t really enjoy hearing all of the unknown early songs of Ives. (They are published as Forty Early Songs, edited by John Kirkpatrick and James Sinclair.) He was familiar with them, of course. He found too many of them trivial or boring or both. Peter felt that Ives himself had already gone through the material, picked the best of the lot, spiffed them up and included them in 114 Songs. He has a point. Some of these pieces drive me crazy, actually.

But most of the early, non-114 songs are quirky and interesting — even lovely. At least that’s the way I hear them. A case in point is “In Autumn,” which David and I recorded on Thursday. This song is not to be confused with “Autumn,” which most who know it would agree is an uncontested masterpiece. To begin with, literally, “In Autumn” has an odd introduction. Kirkpatrick/Sinclair suggest that the first verse be introduced the same way the second verse is, with a pretty routine four-measure phrase. But Ives actually wrote a truncated version. Who knows if it was shorthand for the complete phrase, but K/S (who are very good about truth in packaging) clearly indicate, with smaller notes, that the first two measures or so are an editorial suggestion. The brief, asymmetrical introduction (what Ives wrote and what I play) throws the whole thing delightfully off-kilter.

The first verse is a stereotypical sentiment, stereotypically expressed:

The skies seemed true above thee,

   The rose true on the tree,

The bird seemed true the summer through

   But all proved false to me.

But the second line of the second verse ends with a clunk, revealing that the song is almost a joke:

World, is there one good thing in you,

   Life, love, or death, or what?

Since lips that sang “I love thee”

   Now say “I love thee not.”

In retrospect the three “true”s in the first verse are a tipoff that we shouldn’t take this young man’s plight too seriously. If, when it’s over, it’s not entirely a joke — after all, he has been jilted — at least one can chuckle a bit and walks away with a smile.

Ives is the master of this kind of gentle irony. It’s almost as if “In Autumn” were a study for “In the Alley.” Needless to say, the music underlines the gentle irony of the text from start to finish, once one is clued in. Who wrote this text, pray tell? K/S say “author unknown,” but I suspect it was Ives himself. And there is no doubt that he wrote “In the Alley,” a far greater song, if greatness is what counts with this material.

Concerning other songs — David and I have produced what is surely the most successful recording to date of “Naught that country needeth,” a problematical song if there ever was one. After almost ten years of fooling with the thing we have it flowing along, reaching a viable climax, and generally making sense of what might appear to be a rambling mess. Beth and I have done “Grantchester” better than we’ve ever heard it done (if we do say so ourselves). Flush with enthusiasm, we exclaimed, almost at the same time, “We have to do this again!” And if someone gives $50,000 (more or less) we can do just that!

CODA: Rereading these comments, I realize that many of my readers may not be familiar with the Ives songs, or the Ives Vocal Marathon, and in any case this doesn’t have much to do with my piano music — except that the way I write for the piano can be heavily influenced by Ives, but that’s a topic for another day. If you are reading this blog and are curious about my involvement with the Ives songs, I suggest you check out the website of the Ives Vocal Marathon:

www.ivesvocalmaration.com

This was a five-year project that culminated in a complete, contiguous performance of all 201 Ives songs in three days. The four principal singers were Johana Arnold, Elizabeth Saunders, Gary Harger and David Barron. The entire series can be heard on iTunesU. We decided to go in the studio and record the whole shooting match — but it’s taking a long time!

CODA SECUNDA: I’m actually posting this a day late. (Internet access problems.) So the aforementioned adventure with the Brown family has begun. I write most of this in the air, but I am posting it on the ground in Wisconsin.