Chamber Music
Two Japanese Children’s Songs (alto flute, harp and viola) (2001) / [13’]
Lullaby (flute, harp and viola) (2000) / [16’]
Eternal Lullaby (violin, clarinet, and piano) (2001) / [ 5’]
Air (for flute, string quartet, and piano) (2001) / [ 5’]
Air (solo piano version) (2001) / [ 3’]
Piano Murmurs (violin, clarinet, cello, and piano) (2000) / [23’]
Elegy (violin and piano) (1999) / [19’]
Río de llantos (flute, violin, viola, cello, and piano) (1998) / [22’]
Tri Chairde (Three Friends) (flute, harp and viola)(1994) / [ 5’]
Thamár y Amnón (flute, viola, and harp or piano) (1991) / [10’]
Tientos (flute and string trio) (1991) / [23']
Chiacona (for guitar and organ) 2002 X / [10’] / Link to Guitar music
Fanfare (for 8 trumpets) 1989 / [ 4’] / Link to Wind Ensemble music
XXMusic in Four Sharps (guitar and string quartet) (2004)
Commissioned and premiered by Pacific Serenades (Scott Sanders, guitar, Roger Wilkie, violin, Brendan Speltz, violin, Simon Oswell, viola, David Speltz, cello),
Home of Alice and Joe Coulombe, Pasadena February 12, 2005
Neighborhood Church, Pasadena February 13, 2005
UCLA Faculty Center, Los Angeles February 15, 2005
Score and parts available from the composer. Published by Ian Krouse Music
Score $12.00
Parts $40.00
Score and parts rental$250.00
Program notes and performance history:
Music In Four Sharps, a reworking of a piece written in the early 90’s for two guitars, entitled ‘Portrait of A Young Woman,’ was commissioned by Pacific Serenades. It begins as a deconstruction of a song by John Dowland, “Now oh now I needs must part.” I used the version familiar to guitarists called the Frog Galliard. Several minutes into its composition I noticed that I had not used any accidentals, a characteristic of the Dowland original. Had I needed any I surely would have used some, but as it turned out I finished the piece without straying from the seven notes of the E-major scale, hence the title of the new version. As the piece starts, the Renaissance original provides a solid chaconne like bass, with bits of free counterpoint wafting over increasingly more complete quotations. Soon enough the galliard, fully assembled, takes its place on the sonic stage, rather like a late arrival of the ‘theme’ in a theme and variations composition. After this opening structural crescendo, the piece drifts off into a hymn-like musing in smooth, unbroken sixteenth notes before building to a passionate climax. The work ends quietly, with yet another deconstruction of the Dowland and fades away as peacefully as it began.
In the original version for two guitars, both players had nearly identical parts, most of which could be practiced (hypothetically) in unison. In performance, however, the two are separated by such a large temporal distance that even an experiences listener is not likely to hear the canonic relationship between the two, nor was I counting on this! I decided to preserve this relationship in the present version, except now that the canon occurs between the solo guitar and the string quartet, with its vastly expanded sonic potential, the canonic relationship is obscured even further. Still, bits and pieces of this process might bubble to the surface from time to time and might be fun to listen out for.
xxxTwo Japanese Children’s Songs (alto flute, harp and viola) (2001)
Commissioned and premiered by the Debussy Trio (Angela Weigand, alto flute, Marcia Dickstein, harp and David Walther, viola), Cal State Chico, March 7, 2002
Published by Fatrock, Ink
Program notes and performance history: Two Japanese Children’s Songs (originally entitled At the edge of firelight) was commissioned by the superb Debussy Trio – for whom it has been my pleasure to write often – and completed in 2001. As with many of my works, it is inspired by my wife and children.
(Two Japanese Children’s Songs)
I. Hora nero, nen nero
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Hora Nero, Nen Nero is a komori uta (charming song) from the town of Aizu Takadamachi in Fukushima Prefecture.
“Hora nero nen nero
hora nero nen nero ya ya.”
Literal translation:
“Sleep, baby, sleep.”
II. Hitori de sabishii
Alone and Sad
This hauntingly beautiful melody comes from the Sendai area in Tohoko district and can be classified as a tedama (ball juggling) and counting song.
“Hitori de sabishii,
futari de mairi ma sho.
Miwatasu kagiri,
yomena ni tanpo.
Imōto no sukina
murasaki sumire.
Nanohana saita
yasashii chōchō.
Kokonotsu komeya
tō made maneku.”
Literal translation:
“I feel lonely all by myself.
Shall we two go together?
As far as the eye can see there is grass and dandelion.
We can also see the violets my younger sister loves.
The flowers bloom and beautiful butterflies flutter about.
The rice shop welcomes us.”
From “Folk Songs of Japanese Children”, compiled and annotated by Donald Paul Berger, Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan, 1969.
Xx
Lullaby (flute, harp and viola) (2000)
Program notes and performance history:
The Lullaby has a curious history. In the winter of 2000, I was working on a commission for Pacific Serenades for a new work for violin, clarinet, cello, and piano, which was premiered under the title Hommage à Messiaen. (This work was later revised and published as Piano Murmurs.) At about the mid-point of its composition, as I was driving home late at night in a rainstorm, I began humming a melancholy Irish sounding tune. By the time I arrived home, it was finished. At the time, it didn’t seem to have any connection to the quartet, but later the next day, when I resumed work on it, I couldn’t put the Irish tune away, and subsequently, it became a crucial aspect of Piano Murmurs. In fact, in the end, it actually takes over! When the Debussy Trio asked me for Irish music, it seemed natural to reconstitute the Irish lullaby in its original form, and flute, viola and harp was the perfect vehicle. It is dedicated to my children.
Published by Fatrock, Ink
xxxEternal Lullaby (violin, clarinet, and piano) (2001)
Commissioned by Michigan State University for the Verdehr Trio, who gave the first performances at the “#34º Festival Internacional “Encuentros 2002,”Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 15, 2002, and at the Sala Alberto Ginastera, La Plata, Argentina, September 14, 2002.
Score and parts available from the composer. Published by Ian Krouse Music
Score $12.00
Parts $40.00
Score and parts rental$250.00
Program notes and performance history:
The opening of Eternal Lullaby, a languidclarinet solo, came to me during the summer of 2001 while watching my three small children at play in the surf at Malibu Beach. Perhaps it was the peaceful, idyllic mood and the setting that produced it that caused the melody to drift away into silence with each strophe, but whatever the cause, this gesture and the simple lullaby-like motto which set it into motion (d - f - d - c) became the basis for the entire composition. In fact, one could view the whole piece as a single drawn out expression of the opening phrase. I have always been drawn to simple, elegant motives of this sort, and have consciously sought after melodies that embodied a natural, folk-like quality of expression. I hardly think of these as something original, or unique to me, but as something universal, something found. In this spirit I have returned again and again to the lullaby – the most primal and comforting of first musics – as a fundamental source for my compositions. The alternately elegiac and passionate moods of the work evolved after I was well into the piece, and the periodic lapses into ethereality and stillness are undoubtedly a hearkening back to the strange pianissimo arabesques of the opening clarinet solo. The final pages of the work were written on Sept. 11, 2001.
XXAir (for flute, string quartet, and piano) (2001)
Air (solo piano version) (2001)
Commissioned by Santa Susana School, Chatsworth, California, 2001.
Program notes and performance history:
From time to time I enjoy writing an ‘air’ in the Irish style. Though no one would mistake this one for an authentic folk composition (as well they might in the case of my earlier ‘Air’ for guitar (with or without flute), or the airs from ‘Da Chara’), it is clearly influenced by the modality and earnestness of many true Irish airs. It exists in three versions: one for solo piano, one for flute, string quartet and piano, and one suitable for singing with strummed acoustic guitar. All three versions were written for various uses as the school song for the Santa Susana School in Chatsworth, California, where my two oldest children attended pre-school through first grade. Though the school no longer exists music does. The chamber version has an optional extended coda, a quodlibet on some of the favorite pieces from Book One of the Suzuki violin method.
Published by Ian Krouse Music
Piano version $6.00
Chamber version with parts $35.00
XXPiano Murmurs (violin, clarinet, cello, and piano) (2000) [23’]
Commissioned and premiered by Pacific Serenades, Martin Chalifour, violin, Gary Gray, flute, Cécilia Tsan, cello, Joanne Pearce Martin, piano, UCLA Faculty Center, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, March 21, 2000.
Score and parts available from the composer. Published by Ian Krouse Music
Score $12.00
Parts $40.00
Score and parts rental$250.00
Program notes and performance history:
Piano Murmurs (premiered as ‘Hommage à Messiaen’) was begun on January 12, 2000 and completed in about four weeks. In 2006, I decided to rework it a bit. Material was cut, other spots expanded, textures thinned and so on. As with all revisions, an attempt was made to save the best bits, while attenuating the weaknesses. Though I still detect the spirit of Messiaen hovering about in places, especially in the long perpetuum mobile sections which are based freely upon some of his "modes of limited transposition,"I decided to withdraw the orginal title, not out of disrespect for Messiaen, but because I thought it misleading, and because the newer version is a quite different piece from the original. In the fall of 2007, at UCLA, I conducted the revised version with Neal Stulberg, pianist, Movses Pogossian, violin, Gary Gray, clarinet, and Isaac Melemed, cellist. As with most of my works Piano Murmurs takes the shape of a continuous long movement, though it falls into readily discernible sections. Unusual aspects of the work would have to includethe very late entrance of the violin;the prolonged extreme altitude of much of the cello writing (it wanders up to a B-flat above the staff);the split personality of the clarinet, which at times consorts with one string instrument before moving on to the other;the gradual encroachment of a Celtic tinged lullaby; and, of course, the obsessive, perpetuum mobile of the rather difficult piano part, which clearly inspired the new title.
XXElegy (violin and piano) (1999)
Requested and premiered by Searmi Park with Dennis Doubin pianist, Jan Popper Theater, UCLA, Los Angeles, June 8, 1999 and Schoenberg Recital Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, May 5, 1999.
Published by Peer-Music International
Program notes and performance history:
The Elegy waswritten for violinist Searmi Park, who premiered and recorded the work at UCLA in 1999 with pianist Dennis Doubin. Since that time it has also been performed by violinists Mark Kaplan and Lindsay Deutsch, and pianist Gloria Cheng. The extended single movement is a musical reflection upon the intense emotions attendant to the lead up to and aftermath of the death of my father in 1997. It veers wildly and unpredictably between violent spikes of anger, obsession and passion, and moments of profound resignation, calmness and innocence. The Japanese inflections are undoubtedly attributable to musings on my children, two of whom were babies when my father died. It was difficult going at first, but the final eight minutes or so were written in a single day.
Río de llantos (flute, violin, viola, cello, and piano) (1998) [22’]
Premiered by Sheridon Stokes, flute, Mark Kaplan, violin, Evan Wilson, viola, Barry Gold, cello, Walter Ponce, piano, Schoenberg Auditorium, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, January 20, 1999.
Published by Peer-Southern Music.
Program notes and performance history:
Río de llantos (River of Laments) began as an elaborate fantasy for flute and guitar. Unfortunately, and despite the greatest sincerity on my part, I produced a work that, while theoretically possible, is all but unplayable by mortal musicians! (Not the first time this has happened.) This was greatly troubling to me as I believed in the work and thought that it should be heard. So began a search to recast the idea in a more practical form. Essentially, the new version is a trope of the original work (in the medieval sense), in that I added new lines, enlarged the textures, redistributed parts, lengthened some sections, and completely recomposed the ending. The greatest challenge was to find ways to translate the highly idiomatic guitar techniques to the related but very different world of the bowed string instruments. In the main the guitar material has been spread between the piano and the three strings. Obviously, I took full advantage of the additional possibilities provided by the enlarged color palette! As with many of my works from this period, I was highly influenced by the supercharged melismatic style of flamenco singing called ‘cante jondo’ or deep song (heard mainly in the flute part), as well as the violent, earthy style of guitar playing that accompanies it. In this respect, the work has much in common with my earlier works Tientos, for flute and string trio, and Bulerías, for guitar quartet. All of the essential materials of Río de llantos are derived from Federico García Lorca’s arrangement of De los cuatro muleros, a traditional Spanish song, which, in its cameo appearance towards the end, provides, I would think, a welcome oasis in an otherwise brooding landscape.
xxxTri Chairde (Three Friends) (flute, viola, and harp) (1994) [6’]
Written for the Debussy Trio. Premiered by the Debussy Trio, Healdsburg, California, January 28, 1995.
Score and parts available from the composer. Published by Fatrock, Inc.