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11-7-2007 Eighth Blackbird: The uM sic of Stephen Hartke Department of Music, University of Richmond
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Recommended Citation Department of Music, University of Richmond, "Eighth Blackbird: The usicM of Stephen Hartke" (2007). Music Department Concert Programs. 436. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/all-music-programs/436
This Program is brought to you for free and open access by the Music at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Music Department Concert Programs by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Modlin Center for the Arts
Wednesday • November 7, 2007 7:30pm Camp Concert Hall, Booker Hall of Music
eighth blackbird: The Music of Stephen Hartke Tim Munro, flutes Nicholas Photinos, cello Michael J. Maccaferri. clarinets Matthew Duvall, percussion+ Matt Albert. violin & viola Lisa Kaplan, piano
The Horse with the Lavender Eye, Episodes for violin, clarinet and piano (1997) I. Music of the Left II. The Servant of Two Masters Ill. Waltzing at the Abyss IV. Cancel My Rumba Lesson
Meanwhile, Incidental music to imaginary plays (2007, world premiere) Procession-Fanfares-Narrative-Spikefiddlers-cradle-songs-Celebration
intermission Titu/ifor five solo male voices, violin and two percussionists (1999) Jeffrey Riehl, countertenor Mike Kotrady, tenor Geoffrey Williams, tenor Jim Weaver, baritone Olinda Marseglia, tenor I. Lapis niger {The Black Stone) II. Dedicatio (Offering) Ill. Columna rostrata {Triumphal Monument) IV. Bogium parvuli (Epitaph for a Small Boy) V. Tabula Panormi(Shop-sign from Palermo) VI. Sortes (Oracles) Vll.lnstrumenta {Inscriptions on Portable Objects)
This concert is sponsored, in part, by the Department of Music. * The artists will participate in a Talk Back Session after the show. Join us in the concert hall! +Matthew Duvall endorses Pearl Drums and Adams Musical Instruments. Visit the ensemble's official Web site at www.eighthblackbird.com.
M Please silence cell phones, digital watches and paging deuices before the performance. The use of any rerording ~ deuice, either audio or video, and the taldng of photographs, either with or without flash, are strictly prohibited. The Modlin Center for the Arts thanks Style Weekly and Richmond. com for media sponsorship of the 2007-2008 season. r
I About the Artists: eighth blackbird
escribed by The New Yorker as Gordon and Julia Wolfe. TI1e group is D "friendly; unpretentious, idealistic also premiering Mirrors, a ground-break and highly skilled," eighth blackbird ing new multimedia work by composer promises its ever-increasing audiences Tamar Muskal and interactive digital provocative and engaging performances. artist Danny Rozin, as well as a new work It is widely lauded for its performing by Stephen Hartke as part of the group's style-often playing from memory with "Sound Mirror" program. llis season, virtuosic and theatrical flair-and its ef eighth blackbird makes their debut at forts to make new music accessible to wide Carnegie's Zankel Hall and the Pittsburgh audiences. A New York Times reviewer Chamber Music Society, returns to the wrote, "eighth blackbird's performances Kennedy Center and is in residence at are the picture of polish and precision and DePauw University and the University of they seem to be thoroughly engaged ...by Michigan at Ann Arbor. eighth blackbird music in a broad range of contemporary also inaugurates its hometown series at styles." The sextet has been the subject the Harris Theater at Millennium Park. of profiles in The New York Times and on In previous seasons the sextet has ap NPR's it has also All Things Considered; peared in South Korea, Mexico, Canada, been featured on Bloomberg TV's Muse, Amsterdam and throughout North CBS's Sunday Morning, St. Paul Sunday, America, including performances at Weekend America and The Next Big Thing, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice among others. The ensemble is in resi Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, the dence at the University of Richmond in Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Virginia and at the University of Chicago. the Cleveland Museum of Art and the The centerpiece of eighth blackbird's La Jolla Chamber Music Society and 2007-2008 season is its kinetic program has performed as soloist with the Utah "The Only Moving Thing," featuring Symphony and the American Composers new commissions by Steve Reich and Orchestra. The group has appeared maverick composers David Lang, Michael several times at Cincinnati's Music X, the About the Artists: eighth blackbird
Great Lakes Music Festival, Caramoor dreamy surrealism to caffeinated unison International Music Festival and Norfolk melodies and the members of eighth Chamber Music Festival. T11ey have also blackbird deliver it all with their trade appeared at the Tanglewood Music Center, mark panache." Their fourth CD, titled tl1e Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and strange imaginary animals, was released in 2006 made their debut at the Ojai Music in 2006. That same year, the group Festival, where the group was named debuted on the Naxos label in a perform music director for the 2009 season. ance of The Time Gallery, commissioned by eighth blackbird from 2004 Pulitzer Since its founding in 1996, eighth Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec. blackbird has been active in commission ing new works from eminent composers T11e members of eighth blackbird such as George Perle, Frederic Rzewski, hold degrees in music performance Joseph Schwantner, Paul Moravec and from Oberlin Conservatory, among Stephen Hartke, as well as ground other institutions. T11e group derives breaking works from Jennifer Higdon, its name from the Wallace Stevens Derek Bermel, David Schober, Daniel poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Kellogg, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Blackbird." T11e eighth stanza reads: tl1e Minimum Security Composers I know noble accents Collective. The group received the first And lucid, inescapable rhythms; BMI/Boudleaux-Bryant Fund Commission But I know, too, and the 2007 American Music Center That the blackbird is involved Trailblazer Award and has received In what I know grants from BMI, Meet the Composer, the Greenwall Foundation and Chamber Music America, among others. The ensemble is enjoying acclaim for its four CDs released to date on Cedille Records. The first, thirteen ways, was selected as a Top 10 CD of 2003 by Billboard magazine. Their second disc, beginnings, was summed up by The New York Times: "T11e performances have all the sparkle, energy and precision of the earlier out ings .. .It is their superb musicality and interpretive vigor that bring these pieces to life." About fred, featuring the music of Frederic Rzewski, the San Francisco Chronicle reported: "The music covers all kinds of moods and approaches, from Notes on the Program by Stephen Hartke
Stephen Hartke (b. 1952) has been hailed by as well as 19th-century Brazilian novelist The New York Times as one of America's Machado de Assis and Looney Tunes; a "Young Lions." His music reflects the diversity bewildering array of references, to be sure, of his musical background, fr?m medieval and but one that somehow whets my musical renaissance polyphony, of which he was once appetite. Here are examples of just how: quite an active performer, to very personal the ancient Japanese court, borrowing from syntheses of diverse elements from non-Western the Chinese, was divided into left and right and popular music. He has enjoyed commis sides with ministries and music specific to sions and perfonnances from numerous groups each. The image of this official Music of the throughout the world, including the New Left, suggested, first, the rather ceremonial York Philhannonic, the National Symphony character of my trio's first movement and Orchestra, the BBC Philhannonic and the also its technical quirk: all three instmments Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra, among are to be played by the left hand alone. many others. He recently completed a full-length ln the second movement, the title of opera, The Greater Good, or the Passion Carlo Goldoni's play, The Servant of Two of Boule de Sui£, for Glimmerglass Opera. Masters, seemed to me an apt description In 2004, he was awarded the Charles Ives of the performance dynamic involved Living Composers Award from the American in this particular combination of instm Academy of Arts and Letters, the purpose of ments where the piano, in somewhat of which is to free him from the need to devote a frenzy, serves alternately as the accom his time to any employment other than music paniment to the clarinet while the violin composition. Hartke's music is available on clamors for attention and vice versa. CD on CRI, ECM New Series, EMI Classics, The Hurd movement was suggested Naxos American Classics and New World by a very short chapter in Machado de Records. Stephen Hartke lives in Glendale, Assis' novel Dam Casmurro wherein California and is professor of composition the narrator, observing that his story at the University of Southern California. seems to be waltzing at the abyss of The Horse with the Lavender Eye final catastrophe, seeks to reassure his Episodes for violin, clarinet and piano reader (falsely, as it turns out) by saying: "Don't worry, dear, I'll wheel about." I've always been fascinated by non sequiturs and the way that sense can For the finale, I had in mind a panel from suddenly appear out of nonsense. I also one of R. Crumb's underground comics of find imagery derived from words and the late '60s showing a character dashing pictures to be a great stimulus to my about in an apocalyptic frenzy, shouting, musical tltinking, even if the relationships among other things, "Cancel my rumba between the images I seize upon are not lesson!" The connective thread of all these necessarily obvious or logical. The sources images began to dawn on me only in the for the titles of this trio are quite disparate, midst of composing the work: all the move ranging from Carlo Goldoni to Japanese ments have to do in one way or another court music to the cartoonist R. Crumb, with a sense of being off-balance-playing Notes on the Program by Stephen Hartke music with only one side of the body; being water gong and a set of bongos. Finally, caught between insistent and conflicting there is a set of three flexatones, whose demands; dancing dangerously close to tone is rather like that of small Javanese a precipice and only narrow;!y avoiding gongs and so I have given this new instru tumbling in; and, finally, not really being ment the name of "flexatone gamelan." able to dance the rumba at all. Nonetheless, Meanwhile is played as a single movement, in the very end (the rumba lesson hav- with 6 distinct sections: Procession- which ing been canceled, I suppose), a sense of features the flexatone gamelan; Fanfares calm and equilibrium comes to prevail. with the piccolo and bass clarinet linked Meanwhile together much as a puppeteer and his Incidental music to imaginary plays marionette; Narrative-in which the bass Meanwhile was composed by a commis clarinet recites the "story" of the scene in an sion from eighth blackbird and the Barlow extravagant and flamboyant solo remi Foundation. It is one of several works of niscent of the reciter in Japanese Bunraku; mine that has grown from a long-standing Spikefiddlers- which requires a playing fascination I have had for various forms tedmique for the viola and later the cello of Asian court and theater music and in that sterns from Central Asian classical mu preparing to write this piece, I studied sic; Cradle-songs-the outer parts of which video clips of quite a number of puppet feature natural harmonics in the viola and theater forms, ranging from the elegant cello combined with bell-like ninth-partial and elaborate, nearly-life-sized puppets harmonics from the piano; and Celebration of Japanese Bunraku to Vietnamese water where the flutist and clarinetist take up puppets, both Indonesian and Turkish flexatones to play the closing melody. shadow puppets and to classic Burmese Tituli court theater that mixes marionettes with Titulus- tituli in the plural-is the Latin dancers who look and act like marionettes. word for an inscription or a notice. All the This piece is a set of incidental pieces to no texts set in this work are inscriptions, either puppet plays in particular but one in whicl1 carved in stone or scratched on metal, from the ensemble has been reinvented along pre-Imperial Roman times. T11us they are lines that clearly have roots in these diverse not literary texts but rather represent differ Asian models. The piano, for instance, is ent facets of daily life in ancient Italy in the prepared for much of the piece with large period between 600 and 100 BCE. The first soft mutes to resemble a Vietnamese ham .two movements set the two oldest known mered dulcimer. The viola is tuned a half Latin texts, first the Lapis niger, a fragment step lower in order to both change its timbre of sacred law, followed by an offering and to open the way for a new set of natural inscribed on the bottom of a three-legged harmonics to interact, sometimes even pot. Both these texts are in fact so ancient microtonally, with those of the cello. The that they cannot be translated with any percussion array includes 18 wood smmds, accuracy. The third and fourth texts are plus four cowbells, two small cymbals, a more formal: the Columna rostrata, taken Notes on the Program by Stephen Hartke
texts, most of them scratched on metal from a triumphal monument celebrating foil or on rods that were used for forttme the first major Roman victory in the First telling. The last movement, Instrumenta, Punic War and an epitaph from the grave sets inscriptions from personal belong of a small boy named Optatus (meaning ings. The first three texts are in Etruscan "the desired one"). A bilingual shop-sign with the remainder in Latin and each has from Palermo in slightly garbled Latin and either the name of the owner or of the Greek provides the text for the fifth move person who presented the object as a gift. ment: "Inscriptions arranged and engraved here for holy temples by public labors through we (sic)." The final two move ments involve compilations of many quite short texts. Sortes is a collection of oracular
Text and Translation
1. T11e Black Stone (c. 500 BCE) I. Lapis niger ho ... [Inscribed on four faces of a six-sided sakros es block of tufa, this is apparently a sacred ed sor... law text. It was found quite deliberately ... a .. .is buried under a black marble pavement in recei ... io ... the Roman Forum. The text is inscribed in ... devam 'boustrephedon 'fashion, that is, alternating quos re ... lines written left to right, right-side up, and ... mkalato right to left, up-side down. As it stands, remhab ... although the text is really not decipherable ... tod iouxmen to any appreciable extent, certain words ta kapia duo tau ... such as 'salcros' (sacred), 'recei' (Icing's), and m iteri ... possibly 'devam' (goddess) confirm the ... mquoiha serious religious nature of the inscription.] velod neque ...... od iovestod loiu quiod qo ...
II. Offering (c. 500 BCE) II. Dedicatio [Three sentences inscribed up-side down on love sat deivos qoi me mitat nei ted a three-legged lamp, clearly intended as an endo cosmis virgo sied. offering of some sort, but so archaic as to defy Asted noisi ope toitesiai pakari vois. any secure decipherment.] Duenos med feked en manom ei nom duenoi ne med malo statod. Text and Translation
III. Columna rostrata III. Triumphal Monument (c. 250 BCE) ... Consol Segestanos socios populi ... as Consul [Duilius] delivered the Romani Cartaginiensiom opsidioned Segestani from a Carthaginian blockade; exemet; legionesque Cartaginiensis and all the Carthaginian host and their omnis maximosque magistratos luci most mighty chief after nine days fled palam post dies novem castreis their camp in broad daylight; exfociont Macelamque opidom and he [Duilius] took their town pugnandod cepet. Macela by storm. Enque eodem magistratud bene rem And in the same command he as consu navebos marid consol primos ceset; performed an exploit in ships at sea, the copiasque clasesque navales primos first Roman to do so; the first was he to ornavet paravetque; cumque eis equip and train crews and fleets of fighting navebos claseis Poenicas ships; and with these ships he defeated in omnes item maxumas copias battle on the high seas the Punic fleets and Cartaginiensis praesented likewise all the most mighty troops of the Hanibaled dictatored olorom in altod Carthaginians in the presence of Hannibal marid pugnandod vicet. their commander-in-chief And by main Vique naveis cepet cum socieis: force he captured ships with their crews: septeresmom unom, quinqueresmosque one septreme, thirty quinqueremes and triresmosque naveis triginta, merset tredicim .. triremes; thirteen were sunk. Aurom captom: numei tria milia septinentei. Gold taken: 3600 pieces. Argentom captom, praeda: numei centum Silver taken, including booty: 100,000 milia pieces. Omne captom: aes undetricies quater Total sum taken, in Roman money: centena milia. 2,100,000
Triumpoque navaled praedad And in triumph he bestowed on the poplom donavet multosque people a gift of booty from the sea-battle, Cartaginiensis ingenuos duxit and led many native free-born ante curum ... Carthaginians before the curia ...
'Clark(! B~t~~d~OV(!!S the cla,ssics, no'W"c:mlijte ·· .·~< "< LETTERV THE VIRGINIA CLASSICAL MUSIC BLOG http://lett~rv~btogspot.com Reviews, news and comment, plus Virginia's most comprehensiv~ ' calendar ofclassical events Text and Translation
IV. Elogium parvuli IY. Epitaph for a small boy (c. 130 BCE) Ubents Optahts vixit annos VI menses VI1I The freedman Optatus, 6 years, 8 months old Hie me florentem mei combussere parentes. Here my parents burnt my body in the flower of my youth. Vixi dum licuit superis acceptior unus, I lived more acceptable to the gods above than any other, Quoi nemo potuit verbo maledicere acerbo of whom none could speak ill in bitter words ... ad superos quos pietas cogi ...... to the gods above whom loyalty compels ...... modeste nunc vos quon...... now modestly you ...... dicite: Optate sit tibi terra levis ... say you: Oh Optatus, lightly rest the earth upon you ...... o annontm nondum. ... without your share of years ...... cum ad mortem matris de gremio rapior ... when I am torn from my mother's bosom to death ... manibtts cants fui vivos carissimus illi ... in life I was dear to departed souls and adverseis quae me sushllit ominibus. to the goddess who made away with me under unlucky omens. Desine iam frustra, mea mater, desine flehl Cease now, my mother, to torment yourself te miseram totos exagitare dies, in vain sobs of wretchedness all the day, namque dolor talis non nunc tib~ contingit uni for such grief has not befallen you alone: haec eadem et magneis regibus accidenmt. the same has befallen mighty kings as well.
Optate sit tibi terra levis Oh Optatus, lightly rest the earth upon you.
V. Tabula Panormi V. Shopsign from Palermo (c. 200 BCE) Tituli heic ordinantur et sculpuntur [a bilingual inscription that was evidently aidibus sacreis cum operum written by someone who was not a native publicorum. speaker of Latin or Greek, perhaps a Carthaginian living in Palermo] ~t£AA [transliteration of the Greek text:] Stellai enthade tiipountai kai kharassontai naois ierois siin energeiais demosiais. Text and Translation VI. Sorles VI. Oracles (mostly 1st c. BCE) Nunc me rogitas? Nunc consulis? Now you ask me? Now you seek advice? Tempus abit iam. It's too late. Mendaces multi homines sunt~ credere noli. Many men are liars: don't believe them. Qur petis postempus consilium? Why do you seek my advice after the fact? Quod rogas non est. What you ask doesn't exist. Credis quod deicunt? Non sunt it You believe what they say? Things are not so. Ne fore stultu. Don't be stupid. Permultis prosum: ubei profui, gratia nemo. very many I have helped, yet no one thanks me. Non sum rnendacis quas dixti We are not the liars you said. consulis stulte. You ask advice like a fool. Conrigi vix tandem quod Do you believe that what has once been curvorn est factum crede. made crooked can now be made straight? Est via per clivom qua vis sequi non datur ista. The hill is steep, but you haven't the strength to climb it. Est equos perpulcer, sed tu vehi non potes istoc. That is a fine horse, but you can't ride it. Quod fugis, quod iactas, tibei quod What you flee, what you throw away, what datur spernere noli. is given you: spurn it not. Quid nunc consoltas? Why do you seek my advice? Quiescas ac vita fruaris. Relax and enjoy life. (i_rea~ ~~~Chorus ruohmood, v;,gin;, ~ sweet AdeJu, •• foternatlona\ 1 presents its 30 h Anniversary Show Sound Celebration! Sat., Nov. 17, 2007 Featuring special guest quartet Capri, currently 1 2:30 pm and 7:30 pm ranked 5 h in the world! Scottish Rite Auditorium 4202 Hermitage Road For tickets, call: $15 adults; $12 seniors & students 804-282-SING (7464) Don't miss this award-winning chorus as they prepare to For info: www.grcsings.com compete in Hawaii 2008! Sponsored in part by STill& Text and Translation VII. Instrumenta VIII. Inscriptions on Portable Objects (c. 600-100 BCE) (Etruscan:] tite cale atial turce malstria''cver Titus Calus gave (this) mirror to his mother as a gift ,, ceithumeal suthina Grave offering ofCeithurna !j mini mulvanice mamarce velchanas Mamarce Velchana dedicated me (Latin:] Amor med Flacca dedet. Love gave me to Flacca. Med Loucilios feced. Lucilius made me. Noli me tollere. Helveiti sum. Don't take me. I'm Helveitius'. Ne atigas. Non sum tua, Marci sum. Don't touch. I'm not yours. I am Marcus'. Claudio. Non sum tua. For Claudius. I am not yours. Pilotimei, Lucretei Lucii servus. For Pilotimus, slave of Lucius Lucretius. Novios Plautus med Romai fecid. Novius Plautus made me at Rome. Rustiae rustiu iousit caper. Rustius asked Rustia to take this. Stephanus scripsit. Hilliardi canerunt. Stephen wrote this. The Hilliards sang it. Makarska sociique modulati sunt. Makarski and companions played it. Salve. Farewell.