Kafka Fragments 50 on Kurtág & Kafka 58 Fragments Across Distances (4) 64

ACME AJCW Alarm Will Sound Alice Tully American Composers Orchestra American Modern Ensemble American Opera Projects American Symphony Orchestra Argento Asphalt Orchestra BAM Bang On A Can Allstars Bargemusic Bohemian National Hall Brooklyn Lyceum Brooklyn Philharmonic Brooklyn Rider C4 Canticum Novum Singers Cantori Carnegie Hall Center for Contemporary Opera Chamber Music Society Columbia Composers Composers Concordance Continuum counter)induction Cygnus Da Capo Chamber Players Darmstadt Essential Repertoire Series dell’Arte Opera The Dessoff Choirs The DiMenna Center Dither Ear Heart Music East Coast Chamber Orchestra Ekmeles Either/Or Encompass New Opera Theatre Ensemble Moto Perpetuo Ensemble Sans Maître Ensemble Sospeso Florilegium Chamber Choir Gershwin Hotel The Guidonian Hand Harmonie Ensemble Hutchins East Iktus International Contemporary Ensemble IO Quartet Issue Project Room Italian Academy JACK Quartet Janus Trio Jazz at Lincoln Center Joe’s Pub The Kitchen The Knights Knitting Factory League of American Orchestras Le Poisson Rouge Lincoln Center Lincoln Center Festival Little Orchestra Society Littlefield Loadbang Look and Listen Festival Mantra Merkin Metropolis Ensemble Metropolitan Opera Miller Theatre Mimesis Ensemble MIVOS Quartet The Morgan Library New Music USA New York Choral Society New York City Opera New York New Music Ensemble New York Philharmonic New York Polyphony New York Virtuoso Singers New York Youth Symphony Newspeak Opera Company of Brooklyn Opera Omnia Orchestra of St.Luke’s Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Park Avenue Armory Park Avenue Chamber Symphony Pete’s Candy Store Pocket Opera New York Queens Symphony Red Light Riverside Choral Society Riverside Symphony Roulette Sequitur Sinopia So Percussion Sonos Chamber Orchestra St. Ann’s Warehouse The Stone Symphony Space The Sweatlodge Talea The Tank Tenri Cultural Institute Time Table Percussion Trinity Wall Street Choir Trio KAVAK Victoire Wet Ink The Winter Garden Wordless Music Series Wild Project Yarn/Wire Young People’s Chorus of New York Zankel Hall 92nd St. Y etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.

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The Renaissance is Now shen nu film society of brand upon the brain! with guest artist An abbreviated history quatre lincoln center chienswalter reade isabella rossellini of ensemble sospeso music & film theatrewalter reade theater sospeso walter reade oct. 2005 may 9-15, 2007 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 awarded theater a r t s lincoln center american voices: new chamber international music festival argentina dna grant crossthroughts tenri jul. 2004 americas society 2003 cultural feb. 2006 poetry & Music with institute john ashbery elliott carter & may 2002 sospeso sospeso brand upon the brain! florence goulD hall bernard rands xponential xponential boulez at 80 new york film festival sound on film vol.1vol . 1I oct. 2006 May 1999 weill recital hall herzog & music & film music & film zankel hall dec. 2000 stockhausen music all over miller theatre angel angel may 2005 orensanz orensanz orcas island, WA louis andriessen & mar. 2002 center center aug. 1999 hal hartley voices of light: the music of nov. 2003 jan. 2004 young composers miller theatre julia wolfe sospeso the passion of workshop Seattle sep. 2000 miller theatre cabaret joan of arc the music of dec. 1998 feb. 2002 studioseven wfc winter Music from IRCAM: G é rard apr. 2005 garden Dissonant murail & lindberg grisey M i n i m a l i s m the music of the music of feb.2006 miller theatre Broadcast on sospeso ltd. forms esa-pekka salonen miller theatre alvin lucier nov. 1999 sospeso KCMU seattle as an independent with guest mar. 2003 mar. 2004 Sep. 1998 not-for-profit conductor springtime arts organization esa-pekka salonen the music of the music of with dj spooky jan. 1999 morton subotnik the loft, tribeca Kirk noreen & the music of weill recital hall György kurtág empacjun. 2006 györgy ligeti dec. 2000 weill recital hall joshua cody Ensemble oct. 2004 miller theatre sept. 2002 american voices: form ensemble Sospeso the music of mar. 2000 elliott carter uruguay sospeso debuts in NYC helmut lachenmann the music of at95americas society s e a t t l e new music & luigi nono ferneyhough nov. 2005 the music of tenri with guest artists 1995 from france with guest artist c o n t e m wolfgang rihm cultural arditti quartet porary miller Theatre helmut lachenmann institute miller theatre angel asia dec.3, 1998 miller theatre dec. 2002 Seattle feb. 2000 orensanz apr. 2001 Oct. 1998 Amerarcana the music of center cage cody reich music for theremin john the music of recorded on mode rogers noreen lincoln center cage tone whole Iannis xenakis records festival weill recital festival miller theatre halljan. 2004 Seattle recorded oct. 2001 sep. 2002 Mar. 1999 on mode records the music of jul. 2000 the music of olga neuwirth G h e o r g h e mantovani & miller theatre The inaugural costinescu dwan feb. 2004 composer miller theatre walter reade portrait apr. 2002 theater at Miller theatre the music of mar. 2003 The music of pierre boulez sospeso sospeso harrison alice tully hall wins wins mar. 2001 Förderpreis F örderpreis birtwistle 2002 2003 miller theatre sep. 18, 1999 architectural music: 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 cage, rihm, xenakis, adams The Renaissance the whitney museum jul. 2001

2 shen nu film society of brand upon the brain! with guest artist An abbreviated history quatre lincoln center chienswalter reade isabella rossellini of ensemble sospeso music & film theatrewalter reade theater sospeso walter reade oct. 2005 may 9-15, 2007 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 awarded theater a r t s lincoln center american voices: new chamber international music festival argentina dna grant crossthroughts tenri jul. 2004 americas society 2003 cultural feb. 2006 poetry & Music with institute john ashbery elliott carter & may 2002 sospeso sospeso brand upon the brain! florence goulD hall bernard rands xponential xponential boulez at 80 new york film festival sound on film vol.1vol . 1I oct. 2006 May 1999 weill recital hall herzog & music & film music & film zankel hall dec. 2000 stockhausen music all over miller theatre angel angel may 2005 orensanz orensanz orcas island, WA louis andriessen & mar. 2002 center center aug. 1999 hal hartley voices of light: the music of nov. 2003 jan. 2004 young composers miller theatre julia wolfe sospeso the passion of workshop Seattle sep. 2000 miller theatre cabaret joan of arc the music of dec. 1998 feb. 2002 studioseven wfc winter Music from IRCAM: G é rard apr. 2005 garden Dissonant murail & lindberg grisey M i n i m a l i s m the music of the music of feb.2006 miller theatre Broadcast on sospeso ltd. forms esa-pekka salonen miller theatre alvin lucier nov. 1999 sospeso KCMU seattle as an independent with guest mar. 2003 mar. 2004 Sep. 1998 not-for-profit conductor springtime arts organization esa-pekka salonen the music of the music of with dj spooky jan. 1999 morton subotnik the loft, tribeca Kirk noreen & the music of weill recital hall György kurtág empacjun. 2006 györgy ligeti dec. 2000 weill recital hall joshua cody Ensemble oct. 2004 miller theatre sept. 2002 american voices: form ensemble Sospeso the music of mar. 2000 elliott carter uruguay sospeso debuts in NYC helmut lachenmann the music of at95americas society s e a t t l e new music & luigi nono ferneyhough nov. 2005 the music of tenri with guest artists 1995 from france with guest artist c o n t e m wolfgang rihm cultural arditti quartet porary miller Theatre helmut lachenmann institute miller theatre angel asia dec.3, 1998 miller theatre dec. 2002 Seattle feb. 2000 orensanz apr. 2001 Oct. 1998 Amerarcana the music of center cage cody reich music for theremin john the music of recorded on mode rogers noreen lincoln center cage tone whole Iannis xenakis records festival weill recital festival miller theatre halljan. 2004 Seattle recorded oct. 2001 sep. 2002 Mar. 1999 on mode records the music of jul. 2000 the music of olga neuwirth G h e o r g h e mantovani & miller theatre The inaugural costinescu dwan feb. 2004 composer miller theatre walter reade portrait apr. 2002 theater at Miller theatre the music of mar. 2003 The music of pierre boulez sospeso sospeso harrison alice tully hall wins wins mar. 2001 Förderpreis F örderpreis birtwistle 2002 2003 miller theatre sep. 18, 1999 architectural music: 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 cage, rihm, xenakis, adams The Renaissance the whitney museum jul. 2001

On the allure of the unexpected bruce hodges

ecently I heard Gérard Grisey’s magnificent spectral sextet, Vortex Temporum (1994-1996) and realized that the last (and only other) time I heard it was when Ensemble Sospeso unfurled it for American listeners R in 2001, scarcely five years after its premiere.

In the last four decades or so, New York has had a surfeit of contemporary music groups – and good ones. (The city’s dense scene sets the pace for the rest of the world, and is unrivaled except perhaps by London, Paris or Berlin.) But in 1999, Joshua Cody and Kirk Noreen, Sospeso’s founders, upped the ante when they moved the group to New York City from Seattle. It is worth noting that one of their favorite rock groups was the Japanese punk band, Melt-Banana - pioneering and irascible in their use of noise.

Many of the composers Sospeso championed – Grisey, Kaija Saariaho, Helmut Lachenmann, Luigi Nono were, if at all, infrequently played in New York. I still recall that night at Miller Theatre when I first heard Lachenmann’s Gran Torso – a gritty, elegant array of rustling, scratching and scraping – with Mark Menzies and Calvin Weirsma (violins), Lois Martin (viola) and Chris Finckel (cello). I had never heard anything re- motely like it, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in the audience who left a bit dazed. In The New York Times, Paul Griffiths wrote, “This is music that, refreshingly, is not trying to persuade us of anything. It is just there, an invitation to sharpen our perceptions.”

Risk is inherent in contemporary music; you never know whether what you are hearing will have staying power or any lasting impact over generations. A certain percentage of premieres, like those of any era, simply won’t make

5 it. But Cody and Noreen – both composers – seemed to have a sixth sense in identifying works just over the horizon: scores that they not only loved, but felt compelled to bring to New York audiences in revelatory concerts.

Sospeso’s influence began to be felt in some of the other new music groups that bloomed during the past decade. Although economics and illness (Cody grappled with cancer) temporarily halted Sospeso’s innovative streak, the time is right for a bold new leader, Nicholas De Maison. This season, Nick has enlisted Eliot Gattegno, the great Tony Arnold and Movses Pogossian, Sospeso’s original Concertmaster, Mark Menzies and the young new voice of Alicia Lee for a series of programs that explore the beauty and depth of both Ensemble Sospeso’s and, by extension, our recent musical heritage.

In a changed landscape, Ensemble Sospeso returns, yet still committed to reawakening and astounding listeners – even those who may have thought they had heard everything. It won’t be dull.

es On The Idea of This Thing We Call Sospeso nicholas De maison

he performance of Morton Feldman’s For Christian Wolff on December 8, 2011 will be the first concert presented by Ensemble Sospeso since May 15, 2007, when the group gave the last in a short run of performances at the Village East Cinemas of “Brand Upon the Brain!” a film by Guy Maddin with a score by T Jason Staczek and live narration by Isabella Rossellini and Lou Reed.

Thereupon followed four and a half years of silence. Sospeso floated – literally – in suspension for a period half as long as its first life. Did anyone see this coming from an organization that played such a fundamental role in ushering in the musical Renaissance we now enjoy in

6 New York City? Does one ever see such a thing coming? On December 8, 2011, Sospeso’s silence will be shattered. (Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Sospeso’s silence will be gently nudged, since we are starting with Feldman, after all.) But, as Bruce Hodges points out, the landscape to which Sospeso wakes barely resembles the landscape Sospeso helped to create. (Alas, the Cambrian Explosion went on without us!) To compound the situation, the players (the real substance of any ensemble) that constituted the “old roster” have largely scattered across the country; some have even left this life. Upon joining the group in early 2010, my immediate impression was of walking into one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s slowly decaying houses, about to be lost forever to the tidal vagaries of the Caribbean (or perhaps, in this case, the East River). What was this thing I was taking up? What would it mean for Sospeso to perform again? And above all, who cares whether or not it does? Even as an undergraduate in the far flung soy fields of Ohio I had heard quiet whisperings of the Sospeso legend during its halcyon days, but as I sifted through a stack of Fresh Direct boxes heaped with old programs, old rental agreements, old contracts and rehearsal schedules, old letters (yes! letters!), a credit-card processing machine, and a slag heap of DAT tapes, I could not begin to understand how this thing might live again, and what it might look like if it did. Eventually, it was the infectious enthusiasm and vivid recollections, brought out over bottles of wine and cups of coffee, from people like Mark Menzies and Rand Steiger, from the group’s founder, Kirk Noreen, and its quietly determined Board of Directors that led me to understand that Sospeso really was simply in a state of suspension, waiting, dormant perhaps, but far from vanished, and surrounded by people to whom it mattered deeply and profoundly whether or not it may live again. It seems to me now that Sospeso has always been about the people who made it, about their engagement with its idea, and formidably, about the repertoire these people presented under its banner. The only way forward, then, was to create a season that reflected these personalities, these enthusiasms, these ideas, this repertoire: a season of concerts that would above all be deeply and profoundly personal. I have been honored to be charged with the task of waking Sospeso from its long sleep and to see it through its Renaissance. And we, the Ensemble Sospeso, could not be more delighted that you chose to join us for it.

7 able of contents T introductions On the Allure of the Unexpected 5 On This Thing We Call Sospeso 6

The blank canvas 11 On Feldman 14 fragments across distances (1) 18 the machine breathes 21 On Boulez & Hakola 24 On Traveling with Nono 28 fragments across distances (2) 32 the empire falls off a cliff 35 On the Empire and the Cliff 38 fragments across distances (3) 44 picking up the pieces 47 Texts to Kafka Fragments 50 On Kurtág & Kafka 58 fragments across distances (4) 64

On the Artists 66

On Sospeso 77

On the Images 80

Credits 81

8 nsemble

E ospeso The Renaissance is Now S the 2011 - 2012 season

The blank canvas Morton Feldman’s FOr christian wolff Issue Project Room December 8, 2011

the machine breathes Nono & boulez The dimenna center for classical music March 2, 2012

the empire falls off a cliff Janácek,ˇ prokofiev, berio bohemian national hall April 4, 2012

Picking up the pieces györgy kurtág’s kafka fragments bohemian national hall May 10, 2012 the blank canvas

nsemble

E ospeso SThe Renaissance is Now

The blank canvas Morton Feldman’s FOr christian wolff (1986)

______

Amelia Lukas flute

Nicholas De Maison keyboards

approx. 180 minutes without intermission

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM BROOKLYN, NY December 8, 2011

Presented by Ensemble Sospeso The Darmstadt Essential Repertoire Series Issue Project Room On Feldman Nicholas DeMaison

Morton Feldman Dec. 01, 1926—March 09,1987 New York City

f there is magic in Feldman, I think it is hiding somewhere in his peculiar, instantly recognizable notation, and in the decoding process this notation forces the performers to undertake. Learning the three-hour monolith is as much a learning of the sounds and gestures as it is learning to Imanage his notation. This management process continues throughout the three-hour performance. And while the experience of the piece may be similarly transcendental for performers and audience, their mutual experiences are ultimately separated by the chasm of his notation and the simple – yet for me sometimes hard to understand – fact that the audience has no interaction whatsoever with this notation...

…because for the performer…

His enormous late works were never type set; the performer has to cope with Feldman’s consistently erratic notational practices; measures that are evenly spaced on the page but may represent three-quarters of a beat of music or nine beats of music; rhythms that are not-aligned vertically; thick clusters of notes that resemble fountain pen explosions or squashed bugs and are virtually impossible to actually read, as well as wildly irregular and non-intuitive rhythmic divisions, etc.

And it is in the engagement with the notation that Amelia and I have found profoundly different understandings of this music. Whereas I see crystalline precision peeking out from beneath Feldman’s sloppy handwriting, bizarrely perfect little syncopations and hockets sitting in patterns of nearly endless variation, that is invisible to the eye but revealed to the ear, Amelia takes the long view, contemplates the long walk, does not lose the forest for the trees, dallies amidst monumental proportions.

Monumental is the wrong word. Despite being more than twice as long as anything Mahler or Bruckner or Beethoven wrote, it is never monumental.

Our roles in the piece are naturally of opposite natures. I engage in the act

14 of continuous striking: tricking the audience into believing in the sustained tone. Amelia engages in three hours of focused breathing, exhaling nothing but sustained tones; there is no artifice in her part, just melodic artistry. In Christian Wolff, she is the song, and I am the silly little dance.

Let me take this opportunity to provoke in your mind the image of the hulking, horn-rimmed bespectacled New York Jew that was Morton Feldman, taking a long meandrous walk – a three hour walk – through Manhattan’s East Side, whistling a single note as he goes, and suddenly breaking into a dainty little two-step. This, for me, is somehow key to the essence of Christian Wolff.

For all of the solemnity with which his performances can be imbued, his actual music still sometimes makes me giggle.

I think the phenomenon of the divided experience between audience and performer may be more peculiar to Feldman’s music than to the music of any other composer.

…this is what a Feldman performance amounts to: …

Further, I know of no other composer who can say so little over such enormous lengths of time and have it mean so much. And don’t get me wrong, I am sure that he spent years perfecting the craft (the notation) that allowed him to do this.

I first performed For Christian Wolff in 2007 with flutist Kathleen Gallagher. It was a major piece in the first festival I ever produced, at the Zhou B Art Center in Chicago, and despite (or because of) the six truly intrepid audience members (eight if you count my parents) it remains the most indescribable performing experience I have ever had. I felt that I had gained, while we performed, a new long-view understanding of the piece that I had never had while we rehearsed.

It is next to impossible to talk about Feldman. Even Feldman could not talk about Feldman. In one of his pre-concert talks before his four-hour For Philip Guston he said something to the effect that, “In order to give you a sense of this piece I would need to talk about it for four hours.” And I think he may have been on to something. I once tried to write an in-depth analysis of his one-act opera, Neither. After months of study all that I could figure out to say was that Feldman had a very classically “literal” (and un- abashed) notion of text painting, which is either sincere (and perhaps even a touch naïve) or overtly tongue-in-cheek, as though he was mocking his own Schubertian inclinations.

15 As it turns out, the performance with Kathleen, some seven hundred ninety miles away as the Google flies, was almost exactly one month before the last concert of Sospeso’s first life, which was a month before Amelia Lukas and I first began to blossom a friendship. There is nothing meaningful in these chronological relationships except for my singular perspective of them, but I could not help but think that there was some kind of very Feldman-esque unfolding of long-time and repetition of pointillistic elements going on here, and that the re-birth of Ensemble Sospeso was the perfect opportunity to once again haul out Feldman’s massive score and squint at his scraggly handwriting for three hours.

For further evidence of the difficulty of talking about Feldman, try reading his essays. They are little more than a string of pithy remarks and quirky observations of the artists around him (in a way, not unlike his music?). These are not the polemics of Boulez (“Schoenberg is dead! Burn down the opera houses!”) or theories of Stockhausen (Feldman was fond of referring to himself as a kind of anti-Stockhausen).

I have heard other late Feldman pieces performed (notably the infamous six-hour Second String Quartet at the inauguration of Issue Project Room’s 110 Livingston Street space), but I have never heard Christian Wolff as an audience member. My understanding is that even Christian Wolff has not heard Christian Wolff more than twice. It is not played very often.

And I’m not entirely sure why that is. Is it simply because it is three hours long? The four-hour For Philip Guston sees the light of day much more often. Is it because of the relative simplicity of instrumentation (which is not to imply that the orchestration is somehow simple) and austerity of sound? No Crippled Symmetry this Christian Wolff.

I imagine the space for hearing this piece to be quite beautiful, or at least, I hope the space is quite beautiful – certainly unique in the way that it is (might be?) fragmented and disorienting despite involving a continuous act of sitting in the same place for three hours.

And for that matter, Feldman is never monumental (even when he writes opera).

Feldman whispers in your ear while tossing a blade of grass onto the surface of a still pond. He is elegant, contemplative, precise, crafty, and even sometimes… dare I say…jocular.

16 A large man with large glasses doing a dainty two-step, whistling as he goes.

Feldman is a master of crafting time. Because every measure occupies the same quantity of real estate on the page, but the quantity of notes within the bounding box of the measure can take less than a second or more than nine seconds, (and involve rhythms that are not vertically aligned, thick chunks of notes that look like squashed bugs or fountain pen explosions, as well as irregular and non-intuitive rhythmic divisions etc.), and not forgetting his flagrantly whimsical use of repetition, an entire page can last anywhere from two to seven minutes. (Or more? I have never actually timed out any individual pages.) I have always had the sense that the last ten pages of this piece take as long as the previous fifty, although I know this cannot be true. The score is like a map that is not drawn to scale…which, frankly, is utterly mystifying to me considering that scale was exactly what Morty was about. And for me that is one of his brilliant exercisings of raw craft: he manages to make the last sixth of a quiet three-hour duo feel as significant as the first five-sixths without bombastic gesture, without major demarcating points, without shifts in instrumentation, without narrative beats, and even without a relatively scaled visual representation. This is truly remarkable. This is what leads the performers to imbue the performance with a sense of solemnity. If you just play the notes, Feldman’s proportions will be there; his notation will work its mercurial magic. But of course, the notes of the last ten pages must be rendered as precisely and quietly as the notes of the first ten pages.

…a very long time to sit and contemplate Feldman’s notation and to allow that notation to provoke you into making a very long series of very quiet sounds.

Word on the street is that nothing was ever quiet enough for Morty. We will do our best to be very...

As the concert approaches, it seems an imperative: Feldman. All artistic undertakings are fragile, and to release Sospeso from its state of suspension remains a particularly delicate operation.

We cannot answer the glorious noise of the New York Renaissance with the trumpets of Stockhausen.

We need instead a blade of grass and a still pond, and a chance to whisper in an ear.

…very quiet. es 17 fragments across distances stills of ensemble poetry... mark menzies (1)

take Nono’s string quartet as the title of my reminiscences of Ensemble Sospeso’s past: Ilike my relationship with that fascinating composition, and its equally ‘sensational’ composer, I view the last 12 years of on-and- off playing with Ensemble Sospeso as the source of a rare, nourishing spiritual poetry, made with friends... playing Nono’s La Lontananza... with the tape segments orchestrated - live of course, as they have to be - by Helmut Lachenmann, as part of his Sospeso portrait concert: Mr. Lachenmann grumbling about trying to figure out Luigi’s intentions with these fragmented diasporas of sound.

18 Lachenmann - laughing man? - full of good spirits, unique personality, tending to his uniquely constructed sound pal- lets like a fanatic gardener of fussy exotic plants. What these sounds expressed - despite the endless stream of turgid prose to describe them and their execution - was never in doubt, and really felt like an organic flowing of ‘happy with what it is;’ surprisingly unpretentious, given all the insufferable knock-off Lachenmann around these days...

19 the machine breathes

nsemble

E ospeso SThe Renaissance is Now

the machine breathes Nono & boulez Pierre Boulez Dialogue de l’ombre Double (1985)

Kimmo Hakola Capriole (1991)

Mark Menzies Swongering Butterfly (2012)

Intermission

Luigi Nono La LontanANZA nostalgica utopica futura (1988-1989)

______

Alicia Lee Mark Menzies Jason Ponce Clarinet Violin Electronics

Mary Flagler Cary Hall Space concept & design The dimenna center by Lisa Marks New York, NY the art of tension march 2, 2012 on boulez & Hakola alicia lee

Pierre Boulez b. March 26,1925 Montbrison, France

Kimmo Hakola b.1958 Jyväskylä, Finland

s an identical twin, I’ve always hesitated when it comes to exploiting that aspect of myself. Growing up, both training as classical musicians, my sister and I worked very hard to distinguish ourselves, trying not A to be identified as one of a pair. But as I’ve grown older, I have realized that it simply does not make sense to ignore something that is such an important and defining part of my life. My intention when selecting pieces for this program was to use both my external and internal twin natures as a guide. Pierre Boulez’s Dialogue de l’ombre double, which translates to “dialogue of the double shadow,” was inspired by a scene from The Satin Slipper, a play by French author Paul Claudel. In the scene, a double shadow of a man and woman embracing is projected on the stage and treated as a single character. I would like to take this provocative image as the jumping-off point for a much more involved endeavor. Throughout the 1970s, as electronic music was growing in popularity, Boulez devoted a large portion of his compositional energy towards understanding how to combine new technological elements with acoustic music. He created IRCAM (The Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics/Music) during this period, as a direct response to his dissatisfied feeling that technology had not caught up to his vision for new sonic possibilities. Dialogue came to fruition in 1985 and was presented as a gift to Luciano Berio for his 60th birthday. The work is for clarinet and taped clarinet. It is a continuous dialogue between the live version of the musician and the recorded version of the same musician. The second piece I chose for this program is the duo for bass clarinet and cello Capriole, by the Finnish composer, Kimmo Hakola. I first came across this piece four years ago and learned it with a cellist colleague at the Yellow Barn Music Festival. The piece immediately resonated with me for several reasons. Bass clarinet and cello happen to be

24 the instruments that my sister and I play, and they create a wonderful and unique sonority together. I was also struck at how Hakola “twinned” these two similarly ranged, yet very different instruments in this piece. In some sense he investigates the same ideas of one versus two and vice versa as does Boulez, but by way of only acoustic means. He explores how they can blend together, move in tandem, move in opposi- tion, support each other, and follow each other. The piece begins and ends brilliantly and fleetingly. Hakola pushes the limits of both players to real extremes, always with an ear toward the unexpected.

excerpt from The Satin Slipper paul claudel (1924)

THE SECOND DAY | SCENE XIII THE DOUBLE SHADOW

THE DOUBLE SHADOW of a man with a woman, standing, is seen cast upon a screen at the back of the stage.

THE DOUBLE SHADOW: I charge this man and this woman with leaving me a masterless shadow in the land of shadows.

For of all these images which pass upon the wall, lit by the sun of day or the sun of night, there is not one but knows his author and faithfully reproduces his outline.

But I, whose shadow can they say I am? Not of this man nor of this woman singly,

But of them both at once, who have sunk each other in me.

25 In this new being made of formless blackness.

For as this man upholder and matrix of myself passed along the walk the length of this wall, hard smitten by the moon, going to his appointed home,

The other part of me and its scanty covering,

This woman, suddenly began to go before him without his being aware.

And the mutual recognition of him and her was not prompter than the shock and fusion of body and soul without a word, nor more immediate than my existence on the wall.

Now I charge this man and this woman by whom I have existed a single second never to end again, and by whom I have been stamped on the page of eternity,

For what has once existed is for ever part of the imperishable archives.

Why have they written on the wall, at their risk and peril, this sign which God forbade them?

And why, having created me, have they thus cruelly severed me, me who am but one? Why have they carried off to the far ends of this world my two quivering halves,

As if in me on one side of themselves - they had not ceased to know their limits?

As if it were not I only that exist, that word one instant legible outside the earth amid that whirring of bewildered wings.

26 Swongering Butterfly by mark menzies (2011/12) version for clarinet, violin and electronics

Dreams Butterfly or mind? Seeing the outside Or traversing the swongering map-butterfly Are we all captured in this summer dream breezed this way and that adrift the planet?

Spring is where things begin, but then : the swollen munching, constipated soul is our end with screaming sea-birds the fall

Cry’s alias : magic dawn Like the sunrise in mid-winter beside fair banks The hours are like a river-blush From an essence of time Suspended, dramatic, Quiet, polluted like Wise the widowed stained-glass flowing

27 on Traveling with Nono Mark menzies

Luigi Nono 1924 - 1990 Venice, Italy

ne of my first performances of Luigi Nono’s la lontananza nostalgica utopica futura was at a concert of Ensemble Sospeso, with Helmut Lachenmann as the interpreter/performer of the 8 tape streams. Like all of us that face the existential challenge of the OCageian coexistence of what seems, at first, an array of disruptively unfocused materials, Lachenmann grumbled a little - ‘what on earth does Nono mean’ he said under his breath between rehearsal ses- sions. Subsequent to that performance with Sospeso/Lachenmann, I learned Nono’s string quartet, fragmente-stille, an diotoma (1980) and have had the privilege of performing that work many times with the quartet I belong to, The Formalist Quartet; I have come to believe this composition is where the journey starts, with regard to la lontananza. Like the poetic metaphor of la lontananza itself - wandering without paths (‘caminante, no hay caminos hay que caminar’ - ‘wanderer, there is no way, there is only walking’ said the graffiti in Toledo, a phrase Nono referred to often in his late works) - the journey of the ‘nostalgic, utopian futuristic madrigal’ is not about reaching the destination, but the way of getting there. The quartet fragmente-stille sets up the nature of the terrain: like all journeys, each traversal through it is the revelation of something you have never experienced before, however familiar the route. The fragment was a concept of writing developed as a nineteenth century obsession: an evocation of a moment, an image, a character, a sentiment; Nono’s quartet stitches its fragments together with privately communicated fragments of nineteenth century poetry (by Hölderlin). The miracle of la lontananza is the poetry of its paradoxes: what is the most torn apart, unfocused, undeveloped of material – truly an apotheosis of lyrical, nineteenth century fragment-idea – is the place to find the unhindered stream of flow, grace and sophistication. Flow, as in extraordinary energy of the dialogue between up to seven tape parts and the violin, as well as the extraordinary energy, and sophistication, of the dialogue between the materials of the violin line - quotes of Verdi’s ‘scala enigmatica’, the radical and obsessive abutments of extended techniques, the simplest of formal arrangements (the six ‘stations’ or music stands that delineate the sections of violin music) that contain the most radical of 28 motivic, gestural contrast...... and grace: as in the vulnerable human condition so sensitively expressed in the quasi-theatrical gesture of wandering the space, getting lost, search- ing for the path, though the path is there, always, waiting to sing you its utopian, nostalgic future... es Wanderer, there is no way

there is only walking installation #1 sospeso / Dimenna center / 3.2.12 lisa marks the art of tension l m fragments across distances stills of ensemble poetry... mark menzies (2)

laying Gran Torso was like assembling a secret theater of that Grecian-ruined living room set called a string quartet. Two heavenly weeks spent with colleagues that epitomized the Ensemble’s realistic yet inspired, unreasonable commitment to its output, which, at the time, consisted of repertoire that appeared rarely, if at all, in New York. Is it just my loyalty to this enterprise that sees the work of so many ensembles as imitating our idea over the past ten years, helping to fill out that gap in the offerings to the communities interested in contemporary culture here? the start of my involvement with Sospeso was oddly inauspicious: a rehearsal in a glum school hall in Seattle, Washington, when the group was still based there. Connections and aspirations to be New York-bound were already in motion, but it was unexpected to be invited to remain with the group as first violinist after the list of players were constructed from an elite group of New Yorkers.

32 the first rehearsals in this configuration, held at Julliard, were awkward. I was yet to start my professorship at CalArts, where I base myself to this day, so questions during breaks went somewhat like, “So what is there to do in California?”

I was used to appearing from the margins since my place of origin is even more marginal/falling off the cliff of the world than California: New Zealand. I have learned that to be seen as an exotic country bumpkin is not an unreasonable response to my realities, so the best way forward has always been to play well. This seemed to resolve my appendaging onto the ensemble, and I began to look forward to weeks out of the season that I masqueraded as a New York freelancer. The person this most unnerved, when the fraud would occasionally be revealed to outside collaborators, was a fellow Los Angeleno, Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose latest coterie of neo-neo works we played as part of a Carnegie portrait concert.

33 the empire falls off a cliff

nsemble

E ospeso SThe Renaissance is Now

the empire falls off a cliff Janácek,ˇ prokofiev, berio

LeoŠ Janácekˇ Sonata (1921)

Luciano Berio Sequenza IXb (1981)

Sergei Prokofiev Sonata in D op.94 (1942-43)

______

Eliot Gattegno Saxophone

The Bohemian national hall New York, NY April 3, 2012

Presented by Ensemble Sospeso Czech Center New York on the empire...and the cliff eliot gattegno

his evening’s program consists of three works, originally composed for violin, clarinet, and flute, respectively. As these works are being presented not as transcriptions, but rather as alternative instrumentations, the following program notes will not draw any distinction between T the instrument of the composers’ intentions and the instrument of today’s performance.

The program was inspired by Robert Musil’s novel “The Man Without Qualities.” Set in the chaotic labyrinth that was Viennese society in August of 1913, Musil’s book is a maliciously acute portrayal of an empire marching over a cliff. Each of these works explores conflict and chaos in a variety of ways. As they are both wartime compositions, Janácek’sˇ Sonata and Prokofiev’s Sonata, do so in a literal way; whereas Berio chooses to explore the conflict between harmonic fields, the performer and his instrument, as well as the internal mental conflict of the performer. The following notes about the individual pieces have been drawn from additional authors.

LEOŠ JANÁCEKˇ July 3 1854 – August 12 1928 Hukvaldy, Moravia Sonata for Violin and Piano (1914; revised 1921) 1. Con moto 2. Ballada: con moto 3. Allegretto 4. Adagio Joseph Way Sierra Chamber Society, © 1999 It was not until the last decade of his life that Janácekˇ achieved fame and international recognition as a composer. This was due largely to the performance of his opera, Jenufa, given at the Court Opera in Vienna in 1918. Before this, Janácekˇ had been a music teacher in Brno. “Here in Brno I am a poor man – as though in a desert – where there is no proper music to be heard” he wrote in 1903. Janácekˇ responded to recognition by producing a series of masterpieces, among them the operas Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropoulos Affair, and From the House of the Dead, as well as the Glagolithic Mass, the Sinfonietta, and

38 the two String Quartets, No.1 “The Kreutzer Sonata” and, No.2 “Intimate Letters” as well as the vocal work The Diary of One Who Vanished and the tone poem Taras Bulba. These works won him a place beside Dvorákˇ and Smetana in his homeland, and revealed him to be an original and profound voice in twentieth century music. Musicologist Joseph Machlis writes: “Janácek’sˇ art was nurtured by Slavonic folklore and nature mysticism. In his vocal music, which holds a place of honor in his output, he aspired to a plastic melody molded to the rhythms and natural inflections of speech. Janácek’sˇ musical language is of the post-romantic period. His harmony is extremely mobile and expressive. In the later works he dispensed with key signatures. He had little interest in the traditional forms, preferring a mosaic structure based on the continual variation of a few basic motives. He has been compared to Mus- sorgsky for his unconventionality of thought, his roughhewn and original harmonies, the compassion and love of humble folk that inform his art.” Janácek’sˇ Violin Sonata displays all of the characteristics mentioned in the above quote. The speech-like melodies, the ostinato rhythmic accompani- ments, the unusual harmonies and use of folk-inspired scales and melodies. The sonata underwent a rather long gestation. The first draft was composed in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War, when according to the composer, the people of Moravia were expecting to be invaded by the Russians. Two revisions followed the first draft before the final version was completed in 1921. The first movement opens with a sinuous melody in the violin accompanied by tremolos in the piano evoking the sound of the cimbalom, a hammer dulcimer used in Central European Folk Music. The second movement, Balada, which because of its rich harmonies and wholetone scales sounds for all the world like a song by Debussy, was originally a separate work that Janácekˇ revised slightly to fit into the sonata. The third movement is the most folksong-like of the four movements, with its modal tune thumped out on the piano. The final adagio opens with an atmospheric choral-like passage for piano interrupted by a recurring motif on the violin sounding like a dismissal of what the piano has to say. Eventually the violin takes up the choral melody to tremolos on the piano. The opening chorale and the violin’s interjections return, only to slow down and die away. The Violin Sonata was first performed in Janácek’sˇ hometown Brno on April 24, 1922. However, it was given wider exposure when it was performed as part of the International Society for Contemporary Music Fes- tival held in Salzburg in 1923.

39 LUCIANO BERIO October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003 Sequenza IXb (1981)

Joanna Wyld © 2005 With his series of Sequenzas, Luciano Berio embraced virtuosity. This conception of performance had become laden with pejorative connota- tions, associated with hollow displays of technical prowess in which style triumphed over substance, but Berio exploded this myth. For him, virtuosity encompassed a ‘virtuosity of knowledge’. In addition to technical mastery, therefore, a highly intelligent and historically aware approach is demanded of the performer, who is called upon to display scintillating technique in music that nevertheless consists of clearly delineated and precisely articulated relationships, of which he or she is expected to show a thorough understanding. The eponymous ‘sequences’ are harmonic fields, established at the out- set of most of the Sequenzas and from which the consequent material is generated. Each Sequenza also demonstrates Berio’s thorough understanding of the instrument’s particular technical demands and acoustic qualities. Berio railed against the notion of making an instrument work against itself, insisting that it should be explored within its existing physical parameters rather than squeezed into a different shape; he eschewed, for instance, the prepared piano. However, while refusing to tamper with an instrument’s nature, in the Sequenzas Berio relished expanding and confounding our expectations of what that nature is. In particular, with those Sequenzas written for monodic instruments, Berio desired to cultivate a polyphonic mode of listening. To achieve this he explored the idea of a single instrument producing more than one voice, toying with our aural perception of foreground and background (in the audible, non- Schenkerian sense). In this way a monodic instrument becomes capable of implying not merely a dialogue, but also the sounding together of more than one voice. The inspiration for this stemmed from J.S. Bach’s ‘polyphonic’ melodies, but whereas in Bach’s case the implicit polyphony was bound up with the musical language of his time, and thus more readily discernible to the listener, with the Sequenzas: ‘history provided no protection, and everything had to be planned out explicitly. Sequenza IXb is, essentially, an intricate melody exploring the relationship between two pitch fields. One of these is stable, consisting of seven notes usually fixed in register, while the other is volatile: five notes that traverse the instrument’s range. This contrast permeates the score, the first metronome marking of which is crotchet = 60 ‘ma sempre un poco instabile’.

40 Later, this unpredictability is heightened with the marking: Tempo molto instabile. Precisely notated rhythms (dominated by dotted and double-dotted units and triplets) are interspersed with moments of relative rhythmic freedom (such as the repetition, over ten seconds, of an arch-shaped figure notated without stems). Pitch also veers between the concrete and the in- definite. As well as using multiphonics, Berio specified different fingerings to denote unconventional articulations of particular pitches, resulting in audible shifts in intonation, an instability that reaches its apex with the clarinet’s flamboyant slides.

SERGEi PROKOFIEV 1891 – 1953 Oneglia, Italy Sonata for Flute and Piano in D major, Op.94 (1942)

Nicholas Slonimsky New Book of Modern Composers by David Ewen © Knopf 1961 It sometimes happens that a composer’s personality – his physical appear- ance, his psychological make-up, his social attitudes – corresponds so perfectly to his art that the music and the man become natural counterparts of each other. The music of Sergei Prokofiev was his best portrait. Prokofiev was tall, prematurely balding, with long legs, long arms and long fingers that seemed prehensile at the keyboard. His bodily movements were angu- lar and quick, his gestures abrupt. He had a voice that cut through the air without being loud, and a brusque manner of speech, often laden with sar- casm. He totally ignored social amenities but he had many devoted friends to whom he was loyal. These physical, psychological and social characteristics are reflected in his music with its tremendous kinetic energy, short and almost abrupt thematic statements and a spirit of irreverence toward established traditions, but there is also in Prokofiev’s music a spirit of lyricism, all the more profound because lyric passages occur in contrast to typically boisterous episodes. He regarded this lyric element as very important and resented being classified as a brilliant composer of modernistic works. It was not a mere coincidence that Prokofiev’s favorite recreation was chess. He was in fact the best chess player among composers…and ranked in Russia just below the Grand Master level. The basic qualities of a good chess player – planning, logic, precision – were also qualities that he demanded from himself, and from other composers. He detested musical untidiness, but was full of admiration for technical skill and discipline in performance as in composition.

41 Prokofiev began his career as a rebel against tradition, but he ended by establishing a tradition of his own. There are few Soviet composers who have not experienced Prokofiev’s influence, but the unique combination of kinetic energy, gaiety and lyric poetry that constitute the essence of Prokofiev’s art could not be reproduced by the miracle of Prokofiev’s physical resurrection, for his music was the natural product of his living personality.

Sergei Prokofiev from an interview with Olin Downes in The New York Times 1941 I strive for a greater simplicity and more melody. Of course I have used dissonance in my time, but there has been too much dissonance. Bach used dissonance as good salt for his music. Others applied pepper, seasoned the dishes more and more highly, till all healthy appetites were sick and until the music was nothing but pepper. I think society has had enough of that. We want simpler and more melodic style, and dissonance once again rel- egated to its proper place as one element in music, contingent principally upon meeting of the melodic lines...

Richard E. Rodda © 2007 Prokofiev conceived a special fondness for the flute during his stay in the United States, where he encountered what he called the “heavenly sound” of the French virtuoso, Georges Barrère, solo flutist of the New York Sym- phony Orchestra and teacher at The Juilliard School. Two decades later, during some of the darkest days of World War II in the Soviet Union, Prokofiev turned to the flute as the inspiration for one of his most halcyon compositions. “I had long wished to write music for the flute,” he said, “an instrument which I felt had been undeservedly neglected. I wanted to write a sonata in delicate, fluid Classical style.” The Sonata for Flute and Piano in D major, his only such work for a wind instrument, was begun in September 1942 in Alma-Ata, where he and many other Russian artists had been evacuated as a precaution against the invading German armies. Indeed, the city served as an important movie production site for the country at that time, and Prokofiev worked there with director Sergei Eisenstein on their adaptation of the tale of Ivan the Terrible as a succes- sor to their brilliant Alexander Nevsky of 1938. It was as something of a diversion from the rigors and subject matter of Ivan that Prokofiev un- dertook the Flute Sonata, telling his fellow composer Nikolai Miaskovsky that creating such a cheerful, abstract work during the uncertainties of war was “perhaps inappropriate at the moment, but pleasurable.” Early

42 in 1943, Prokofiev moved to Perm in the Urals, and it was in the relative calm of that city that the Sonata was completed during the summer. When the work was premiered in Moscow on December 7, 1943, by flutist Niko- lai Kharkovsky and pianist Sviatoslav Richter, it drew as much attention from violinists as flutists, and David Oistrakh persuaded the composer to make an adaptation for violin, which that master string player and Lev Oborin introduced on June 17, 1944, as the Violin Sonata No. 2, Op. 94a. (Though Prokofiev’s only other sonata for violin, begun in 1938, was not completed until 1946 he dubbed it No. 1.) The D major Sonata has since come to be regarded equally as the province of wind and string recitalists. Israel Nestyev called this Sonata “the sunniest and most serene of [Prokofiev’s] wartime compositions,” and Dmitri Shostakovich allowed that it was “a perfectly magnificent work.” The piece has frequently been compared in its formal lucidity and immediate appeal to the “Classical” Symphony, though the sly, youthful insouciance of the earlier work is here replaced by a mature, comfortably settled mode of expression. “The character of the Sonata’s principal images,” Nestyev continued, “the quiet, gentle lyricism of the first and third movements, the capricious merriment of the second movement and the playful dance quality of the finale—suit the color of the instruments splendidly.” Each of the four movements is erected upon a Classical formal model. The main theme of the opening sonata-form Andantino is almost wistful in the simplicity with which it outlines the principal tonality of the work. A transition of greater anima- tion leads to the subsidiary subject, whose wide range and dotted rhythms do not inhibit its lyricism. In typical Classical fashion, the exposition is marked to be repeated. The development elaborates both of the themes and adds to them a quick triplet figure played by the violin to begin the section. A full recapitulation, with appropriately adjusted keys, rounds out the movement. The second movement is a brilliantly virtuosic scherzo whose strongly contrasting trio is a lyrical strain in duple meter. The An- dante follows a three-part form (A–B–A), with a skittering central section providing formal balance for the lovely song of the outer paragraphs. The finale is a joyous rondo based on the dancing melody given by the violin in the opening measures.

43 fragments across distances stills of ensemble poetry... mark menzies (3)

istance, and the constipatory routine of travel are the Bachian Chromatic Coun- terpoint to the subject of my Sospeso busyness in the early 2000’s; I stretch D the poetic point to evoke hard-nosed surrealistic overtones - if you’ve ever travelled on Tower Air, Air Tran and the like, you know what I mean. memorable meetings:

Pierre Boulez we encountered a fair bit, and he always left vivid pictures of the occasions in one’s mind’s eye…

“always maintain a presence, however difficult that may become” he advised, his trademark elegance and self-confident opinionatedness softening into a delight in the surrounding youthfulness and genuine supportive warmth. a filmed interview with him at Mary Cronson’s house -it felt such a privilege to converse with so vital an energy that seemed never to tire of inspiring forward the spirit around it.

44 ...stepping out onto Zankel Hall’s stage to dress rehearse oodles of tribute pieces for his 80th birthday - and, unexpectedly (since he was not conducting anything on the concert), Mr. Boulez and his partner waiting patiently in row 11. Unnervingly, he admitted to wanting to enjoy getting to know these new pieces by hearing them twice that day. Later in that rehearsal, and concert, did we not all fall for the suave charms of DJ Spooky and his audacious remixes/collages of some Boulez repertoire? playing for composers:

I have vivid pictures of Elliott Carter listening to a similarly epic stream of tribute pieces on the 95th birthday concert Sospeso presented. He had flown in from London and Paris the day prior, and was unflaggingly attentive through the concert; upon playing his oboe quartet, as that piece descends further and further into a melancholic stillness, he became increasingly grave - it struck me that I’d never thought he, of all people, would be so moved by his own writing; joy fluttered so palpably when the final ‘jig’ section broke out and maybe this all happened because the performance was so transcendent (I had nothing to do with it).

45 picking up the pieces

nsemble

E ospeso SThe Renaissance is Now

picking up the pieces györgy kurtág’s kafka fragments op. 24 (1986)

______tony arnold soprano

movses pogossian violin

bohemian national hall new york, NY may 10, 2012

Presented by Ensemble Sospeso czech center New York PART I 1. The Good March in Step. . . 2. Like a Pathway in Autumn 3. Hiding Places 4. Restless 5. Berceuse I 6. Nevermore (excommunicatio) 7. “But he just won’t stop asking me.” 8. Someone Tugged at my Clothes 9. The Seamstresses 10. Scene at the Station 11. Sunday, 19 July 1910 (Berceuse II) 12. My Ear . . . 13. Once I Broke my Leg (Chassidic Dance) 14. Enarmoured 15. Two Walking Sticks (Authentic-plagal) 16. No Going Back 17. Pride (15th November 1910, 10 o’Clock) 18. The Flower Hung Dreamily (Hommage à Schumann) 19. Nothing of the Kind

PART II The True Path (Hommage-message à Pierre Boulez)

PART III 1. To Have? To Be? 2. Coitus as Punishment (Canticulum Mariae Magdalenae) 3. My Prison-Cell – My Fortress. 4. I am Dirty, Milena. . . 5. Miserable Life (Double) 6. The Closed Circle 7. Destination, Path, Hesitation 8. As Tightly 9. Hiding-Places (Double) 10. Offensively Jewish 11. Amazed, We Saw the Great Horse 12. Scene on a Tram

PART IV 1. Too Late 2. A Long Story 3. In Memoriam Robert Klein 4. From an Old Notebook 5. Leopards 6. In Memoriam Joannis Pilinszky 7. Again, Again 8. The Moonlit Night Dazzled Us 50 texts to kafka fragments Translations by Marc McAneny

PART I 1. THE GOOD MARCH IN STEP… Die Guten gehn im gleichen Schritt. Ohne von ihnen zu wissen, tanzen die andern um sie die Tänze der Zeit.

The good march in step. Unaware of them, the others dance around them the dances of time.

2. LIKE A PATHWAY IN AUTUMN Wie ein Weg im Herbst: Kaum ist er reingekehrt, bedeckt er sich wieder mit den trockenen Blättern. Like a pathway in autumn; hardly has it been swept clean, it is covered again with dry leaves.

3. HIDING-PLACES Verstecke sind unzählige, Rettung nur eine, aber Möglichkeiten der Rettung wieder so viele wie Verstecke. There are countless hiding-places, but only one salvation; but then again, there are as many paths to salvation as there are hiding-places.

4. RESTLESS Ruhelos. Restless.

5. BERCEUSE I Schlage deinen Mantel, hoher Traum, um das Kind. Wrap your overcoat, o lofty dream, around the child.

6. NEVERMORE – Excommunicatio Nimmermehr, nimmermehr kehrst du wieder in die Städte, nimmermehr tönt die große Glocke über dir. Nevermore, nevermore will you return to the cities, nevermore will the great bell resound above you.

7. “BUT HE JUST WON’T STOP ASKING ME.” “Wenn er mich immer frägt.” Das ä losgelöst vom Satz, flog dahin wie ein Ball auf der Wiese. “But he just won’t stop asking me.” That ‘a’, detached from the sentence, flew away like a ball across the meadow.

51 8. SOMEONE TUGGED AT MY CLOTHES Es zupfte mich jemand am Kleid, aber ich schüttelte ihn ab. Someone tugged at my clothes, but I shrugged him off.

9. THE SEAMSTRESSES Die Weißnäherinnen in den Regengüssen. The seamstresses in the downpourings.

10. SCENE AT THE STATION Die Zuschauer erstarren, wenn der Zug vorbeifährt. The onlookers stiffen as the train goes past.

11. SUNDAY, 19 JULY 1910 (Berceuse II) – Hommage à Jeney Geschlafen, aufgewacht, geschlafen, aufgewacht, elendes Leben. Slept, woke, slept, woke, miserable life.

12. MY EAR… Meine Ohrmuschel fühlte sich frisch, rauh, kühl, saftig an wie ein Blatt. My ear felt fresh to the touch, rough, cool, juicy, like a leaf.

13. ONCE I BROKE MY LEG… (Chassidic Dance) Einmal brach ich mir das Bein; es war das schönste Erlebnis meines Lebens. Once I broke my leg; it was the most wonderful experience of my life.

14. ENARMOURED Einen Augenblick lang fühlte ich mich umpanzert. For a moment I felt enarmoured.

15. TWO WALKING-STICKS (Authentic-plagal) Auf Balzacs Spazierstockgriff: Ich breche alle Hindrnisse. Auf meinem: Mich brechen alle Hindernisse. Gemeinsam ist das “alle”. On the stock of Balzac’s walking-stick: “I surmount all obstacles.” On mine: “All obstacles surmount me.” They both have that “all” in common.

52 16. NO GOING BACK Von einem gewissen Punkt an gibt es keine Rückkehr mehr. Dieser Punkt ist zu erreichen. From a certain point on, there is no going back. That is the point to reach.

17. PRIDE (15th November 1910, 10 o’clock) Ich werde mich nicht müde werden lassen. Ich werde in meine Novelle hineinspringen und wenn es mir das Gesicht zerschne- iden sollte. I will not let myself be made tired. I will dive into my story even if that should lacerate my face.

18. THE FLOWER HUNG DREAMILY – Hommage à Schumann Träumend hing die Blume am hohen Stengel. Abenddämmer- ung umzog sie. The flower hung dreamily on its tall stem. Dusk enveloped it.

19. NOTHING OF THE KIND Nein! Nichts dergleichen, nichts dergleichen. No! Nothing of the kind, nothing of the kind.

PART II THE TRUE PATH – Hommage-message à Pierre Boulez Der wahre Weg geht über ein Seil, das nicht in der Höhe gespannt ist, sondern knapp über den Boden. Es scheint mehr bestimmt, stolpern zu machen, als begangen zu werden. The true path goes by way of a rope that is suspended not high up, but rather just above the ground. Its purpose seems to be more to make one stumble than to be walked on.

53 PART III 1. TO HAVE? TO BE? Es gibt kein Haben, nur ein Sein, nur ein nach letztem Atem, nach Ersticken verlangendes Sein. There is no “to have”, only a “to be”, a “to be” longing for the last breath, for suffocation.

2. COITUS AS PUNISHMENT – Canticulum Mariae Magdalenae Der Coitus als Bestrafung des Glückes des Beisammenseins. Coitus as punishment of the happiness of being together.

3. MY FORTRESS Meine Gefängniszelle – meine Festung. My prison-cell – my fortress.

4. I AM DIRTY, MILENA… Schmutzig bin ich, Milena, endlos schmutzig, darum mache ich ein solches Geschrei mit der Reinheit. Niemand singt so rein als die welche in der tiefsten Hölle sind; was wir für den Gesang der Engel halten, ist ihr Gesang. I am Dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest Hell; it is their singing that we take for the singing of angels.

5. MISERABLE LIFE (Double) Geschlafen, aufgewacht, geschlafen, aufgewacht, elendes Leben. Slept, woke, slept, woke, miserable life.

6. THE CLOSED CIRCLE Der begrenzte Kreis ist rein. The closed circle is pure.

54 7. DESTINATION, PATH, HESITATION – for Márta Es gibt ein Ziel, aber keinen Weg; was wir Weg nennen, ist Zögern. There is a destination, but no path to it; what we call a path is hesitation.

8. AS TIGHTLY – for Beatrice und Peter Stein So fest wie die Hand den Stein hält. Sie hält ihn aber fest, nur um ihn desto weiter zu verwerfen. Aber auch in jene Weite führt der Weg. As tightly as the hand holds the stone. It holds it so tight only to cast it as far off as it can. Yet even that distance the path will reach.

9. HIDING-PLACES (Double) Verstecke sind unzählige, Rettung nur eine, aber möglich- keiten der Rettung wieder so viele wie Verstecke. There are countless hiding-places, but only one salvation; but then again, there are as many paths to salvation as there are hiding-places.

10. OFFENSIVELY JEWISH Im Kampf zwischen dir und der Welt sekundiere der Welt. In the struggle between yourself and the world, side with the world.

11. AMAZED, WE SAW THE GREAT HORSE Staunend sahen wir das große Pferd. Es durchbrach das Dach unserer Stube. Der bewölkte Himmel zog sich schwach ent- lang des gewaltigen Umrisses, und rauschend flog die Mähne im Wind. Amazed, we saw the great horse. It broke through the ceiling of our room. The cloudy sky scudded weakly along its mighty silhouette as its mane streamed in the wind.

55 12. SCENE ON A TRAM (1910: “In a dream I asked the dancer Eduardowa if she would kindly dance the csárdás once more…”) Die Tänzerin Eduardowa, eine Liebhaberin der Musik, fährt wie überall so auch in der Elektrischen in Begleitung zweier Violinisten, die sie häufig spielen läßt. Denn es besteht kein Verbot, warum in der Elektrischen nicht gespielt werden dürfte, wenn das Spiel gut, den Mitfahrenden angenehm ist und nichts kostet, das heißt, wenn nachher nicht eingesammelt wird. Es ist allerdings im Anfang ein wenig überraschend, und ein Weilchen lang findet jeder, es sei unpassend. Aber bei vol- ler Fahrt, starkem Luftzug und stiller Gasse klingt es hübsch. The dancer Eduardowa, a music lover, travels everywhere, even on the tram, in the company of two violinists, whom she frequently calls upon to play. For there is no ban on playing on the tram, provided the playing is good, it is pleasing to the other passengers, and it is free of charge, that is to say, the hat is not passed ‘round afterwards. However, it is initially somewhat surprising and for a little while everyone considers it unseemly. But at full-speed, with a powerful current of air, and in a quiet street, it sounds nice.

PART IV 1. TOO LATE (22nd Ocotber 1913) Zu Spät. Die Süßigkeit der Trauer und der Liebe. Von ihr angelächelt werden im Boot. Das war das Allerschönste. Im- mer nur das Verlangen, zu sterben und das Sich-noch-Halten, das allein ist Liebe. Too late. The sweetness of sorrow and of love. To be smiled at by her in a rowing-boat. That was the most wonderful of all. Always just the yearning to die and the surviving, that alone is love. 2. A LONG STORY Ich sehe einem Mädchen in die Augen, und es war eine sehr lange Liebesgeschichte mit Donner und Küssen und Blitz. Ich lebe rasch. I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.

56 3. IN MEMORIAM ROBERT KLEIN Noch spielen die Jagdhunde im Hof, aber das Wild entgeht ihnen nicht, so sehr es jetzt schon durch die Wälder jagt. Though the hounds are still in the courtyard, the game will not escape, no matter how they race through the woods.

4. FROM AN OLD NOTEBOOK Jetzt Abend, nachdem ich von sechs Uhr früh an gelernt habe, bemerkte ich, wie meine linke Hand die Rechte schon ein Weichen lang aus Mitleid bei den Fingern umfaßt hielt. Now, in the evening, having studied since six in the morning, I notice that my left hand has for some time been gripping the fingers of my right in commiseration.

5. LEOPARDS Leoparden brechen in den Tempel ein und saufen die Opfer- krüge leer: das wiederholt sich immer wieder: schließlich kann man es vorausberechnen, und es wird ein Teil der Zeremonie. Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial jugs dry; this is repeated, again and again, until it is possible to calculate in advance when they will come, and it becomes part of the ceremony.

6. IN MEMORIAM JOANNIS PILINSZKY Ich kann… nicht eigentlich erzählen, ja fast nicht einmal reden; wenn ich erzähle, habe ich meistens ein Gefühl, wie es kleine Kinder haben könnten, die die ersten Gehversuche machen. I can’t actually… tell a story, in fact I am almost unable even to speak; when I try to tell it, I usually feel the way small children might when they try to take their first steps.

7. AGAIN, AGAIN Wiederum, wiederum, weit verbannt, weit verbannt. Berge, Wüste, weites Land gilt es zu durchwandern. Again, again, exiled far away, exiled far away. Mountains, desert, a vast country to be wandered through.

8. THE MOONLIT NIGHT DAZZLED US Es blendete uns die Mondnacht. Vögel schrien von Baum zu Baum. In den Feldern sauste es. Wir krochen durch den Staub, ein Schlangenpaar. The moonlit night dazzled us. Birds shrieked in the trees. There was a rush of wind in the fields. We crawled through the dust, a pair of snakes. 57 On kurtág and kafka by Marc McAneny

György Kurtág Feb.19, 1926 Lugoj, Romania

ncountering these songs, we might consider them just as the title indicates: fragments of text by Franz Kafka set to music by György Kurtág. This immediately raises questions: “Where do Kurtág and Kafka meet in these songs?” and “What is the result of this intersection?” E Also we might wonder to what extent the set’s communication is about Kafka or Kurtág personally, if at all. Built on forty excerpts drawn from letters, diary entries, and the Blue Oc- tavo Notebooks, Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments for soprano and violin spin a kaleidoscopic web of musical styles representing extreme and disparate moments within a life. But whose life? Though the texts are Kafka’s, the score is peppered with personal references to Kurtág’s life by way of a series of subtitled dedications, homages, messages, promises, memoriams, and even lullabies for people connected with the composer at various times. References include the dedicatee of the work, Marianne Stein, an art psy- chologist Kurtág worked with while in Paris; Zoltán Jeney, the Hungarian composer and founder of the New Music Studio Budapest, of which Kur- tág was a member; German Romantic composer, Robert Schumann; violinist András Keller and soprano Adrienne Csengery, for whom the work was composed; his erstwhile student, the Hungarian pianist, Zoltán Kocsis; and his wife, Márta, among others. This maze of references and cross-references moves the emphasis from Kafka as sole subject of these songs to some shifting combination of Kurtág and Kafka, or even completely to the side of the composer. The question of which man’s communicative presence pre- dominates is further complicated by the intercession of the female vocalist, who enunciates Kafka’s words while singing Kurtág’s music. Rather than providing a narrative, the Kafka Fragments allow us glimpses into unique moments, as if we were listening through a wall or door to pri- vate conversations in the next room. The non-sequential, fragmentary pre- sentation keeps this set from merely becoming the story of any one character; fleeting moments exist side by side with other discrete instants, none owned individually. At the same time, these brief songs (most are under two minutes) are not merely static snapshots, for they capture a sense of motion and direction while leaving us to guess what lies beyond the frame. We peer into worlds already in motion, in which tiny gestures hint at what has transpired and what might materialize. The infinitesimal is magnified, and what seems unremarkable or unmemorable suddenly becomes our

58 sole focus. The unseen, the unheard somehow fill the field of our vision and hearing. Insignificant details become grand gestures, and what was not worthy of mention or attention becomes the entire field of action, the dramatic stage where we shrink or expand ourselves to fit the frame. Here, events are so slight and rare that even the smallest movements become epic merely by their having occurred. In a creative world of such simplified means, the stark pairing of voice and violin evokes the fullest musical communication in a most direct fashion. This work is undeniably dramatic, but the drama is not external, not rooted in outward action. Here, the force and conflict are internal, as with our own thinking and feeling. In the Kafka Fragments the dramaturgy includes the duo’s playing of now complementary and then competitive roles as well as evoking the specific images and motions birthed in the texts. For example, in the song, “The Good March in Step . . .,” the violin plays the part of “the good” marching mechanically while the voice pirouettes, taking on the character of others (the not-good!) dancing around the unflinch- ing paraders. The violin evokes the sound of whirling wind and leaves in “Like a Pathway in Autumn,” while the voice now takes on dimensions of a deliberate pathway in its carefully aligned melodic symmetries. Eager to embark on the journey, the portrayal of restlessness in the fourth song is shared by both performers, with the voice trying unsuccessfully to keep up with the brief but frantic moto perpetuo of the violin. The prospect is too much for the singer, exhausted and out of breath in the song’s final measure. This frenzy greatly contrasts with the simplicity of “The Seam- stresses”, in which the violin plays the same pitch in four different octaves to represent a steady downpour. Though initially well differentiated from the rainfall, the voice eventually enters the even, rhythmic stream of the violin and is swept away, its relentless arpeggios rising and falling with the ever-growing intensity of the storm. While not narrating a set course from beginning to end, the image of a path recurs throughout the Kafka Fragments. During any trip, the surround- ings, and possibly the traveler as well, will change in transit. But on this particular voyage, the nature of the path itself changes the further we proceed, and no two can traverse exactly the same route. Rather than simply walking in the footsteps of other travelers, we cut a path for ourselves as we go. Our compass is our own internal sense of direction, though at times we are sure to feel lost, unable or unsure how to proceed. And just as we lift our foot to take the next step, the path behind us is immediately covered by leaves as the wind apparently pushes us ahead or back. But even if pushed backward, we continue to carve out a new path, never able to retrace the same steps exactly. In “Two Walking-Sticks,” Kafka contrasts his own

59 itinerant outlook (the metaphorical walking-stick) with the perspective of French author, Honoré de Balzac, on whose stick is engraved the motto, “I surmount all obstacles.” The violin supports this statement with ascending chords moving resolutely toward their goal. Kafka’s view is portrayed by the violin playing the same chords backwards, descending with its own dia- metrically opposed motto, “All obstacles surmount me.” Whereas Balzac professed himself master of his destiny, Kafka (like Kurtág) feels the weight of human and non-human forces shaping even the smallest events on his journey. Rather than collapsing under this weight, the nineteenth song repeatedly shouts back its fierce negation, “Nothing of the kind!” The quadruple-stops of the violin elicit the most strident qualities of the instrument while the singer is required to reach for her highest possible notes with vigorous protests of “Nein!” She eventually seems to lose her voice (once again) but somehow continues even more vociferously, dramatically closing the song and marking the end of Part I of the journey. The nature of this peculiar path of insurmountable obstacles and irreconcilable oppositions is revealed at its midpoint, the pivotal twentieth song comprising the whole of Part II. Along with the set’s closing song, this is the longest (but only 5-6 minutes) of the entire work. Subtitled Hommage- message à Pierre Boulez, this is as close as Kurtág (by way of Kafka) has ever come to voicing a manifesto: “The true path goes by way of a rope that is suspended not high up, rather just above the ground. Its purpose seems to be more to make one stumble than to be walked on.” Not a statement about merely falling on your face, here Kurtág reveals his own creative modus operandi and perhaps a philosophy of living. In contrast to Kafka, Kurtág’s way is admittedly more tentative, as his own words have revealed: “Every composition has its own rules aside from what the composer wants. The more precisely I knew what I was going to write, the less the piece wanted to go. The child decides when it wants to be born, not its mother.” Regarding musical composition, the name of Pierre Boulez invokes ideals of complete creative control through adherence to a carefully considered system. The violin’s careful, stepwise movements in this tongue-in-cheek homage illustrate that Kurtág’s path is simply a matter of placing one foot in front of the other rather than attempting a series of he- roic, teleological leaps. The microtonal intervals of the violin indicate more than a bit of ambivalence surrounding his approach, as elucidated in the seventh song of Part III: “There is a destination, but no path to it; what we call a path is hesitation.”

60 This outlook is further mirrored in the confessional text of the song, “In Memoriam Joannis Pilinszky,” in which Kafka shamefully admits not feeling able to tell a story and the insecurity doing so brings about. Here the simplicity of the violin and voice parts paint a sonic portrait of a child taking its first, guarded steps. Kafka’s admission is not one of personal power- lessness so much as a felt obligation to acknowledge limitations in the face of both the extraordinary and the trivial. While we feel we control events and outcomes, our own dependence and mortality belie the illusion of total control. In these Kafka Fragments, we find our way on the path by bump- ing into walls rather than through sheer force of conscious intention. The unconscious and the unknown, the sub- and super-human which lie beyond our control, creep into these songs through the many images of animals. Filled with archetypal significance, hounds, birds, and snakes enter this landscape by way of a resplendent chorale announcing an awesome equine vision in “Amazed, We Saw the Great Horse.” The surreal horse crashes through the ceiling into our room, while the leopards of Part IV break into the strongroom of the human sanctuary to desecrate the holy urns. These animals are fearsome as they are unexpected, and the breath- less repeated figures in “Leopards” illustrate the fear and exhilaration of coming face-to-face with such wildness. Yet the pace slows as the very predictability of the beasts’ comings and goings becomes part of the sa- cred ritual and of our familiar internal landscape. The only certainty is that these intrusive forms will return again and again, despite our efforts to ward them off. At these points, the path may seem one of ruthless happenstance. But earlier in the joyous Chassidic Dance (both Kurtág and Kafka were born Jew- ish) of Part I, Kafka revealed a strange and surprising memory: “Once I broke my leg; it was the most wonderful experience of my life.” This is not merely tragicomic relief, but a realization that every experience potentially contains its opposite. Having traveled this far on an unpredict- able journey through seemingly irreconcilable oppositions, we find that hope springs from hopelessness; desire emanates from lack; sleep offers comfort from waking travail; life springs from death; and the possibility of great pleasure arises in the midst of pain and discomfort. In the fourth song of Part III, Kafka’s lines resound, “None sing as purely as those in deepest Hell; it is their singing that we take for the singing of angels.” Such intertwined oppositions pervade the fabric of these songs, both the texts as well as their musical settings. Kurtág even considered Kafka’s aph- orism, “My prison cell - my fortress,” as the Janus-faced title for the entire set. 61 Near the start of the journey in “Nevermore (Excommunicatio),” the path seemed one of exile, of losing everything dear. But at the far end of these Kafka Fragments in “Again, Again,” exile has become the hope for new life; possibility draws us onward into a vast, unknown, and unforeseeable future. These forty songs, then, are a personal wandering through the wil- derness for the composer and for us. The number 40 recurs throughout the Bible and often is associated with purification and the fulfillment of a promise. Just as the Jews searched for the Promised Land for forty years, sustained only by grace, these forty songs describe a journey to a very personal salvation. This is how the nature of the path itself changes as we proceed. Our outlook and motives change with each experience, and their cumulative effect defines each present instant, only to be supplanted in the next. The magic moment occurs when the dawn begins to flower in the midst of complete darkness, when grave despair gives way to life-affirming wonder. At the end of Part III, the traveler/listener is whisked along on a tram packed with others on their journeys. In their midst two violinists (represented here by the single violinist playing a second, alternately tuned violin opposite the singer) serenade the passengers with the familiar Waves of the Danube, known popularly as the Anniversary Waltz. The music is provided free of charge and, despite the pressing crowd and the performers’ unseemliness, the sounds from the violins begin to soothe us. A moment of discomfort and annoyance has transmuted into a gentle, sustaining pleasure. We learn to let go as the tram carries us, full of exhilaration, to full speed. Unlike the travelers, the trolley runs its set course: an unexpected destination can never be reached by a machine running on tracks. Those on board, however, alight and debark at various points. They travel in directions off the confined and confining path of the tram tracks, or they might choose to stay on board and be carried along for awhile, enjoying the music and the breeze. Even at the end of the line, seen through the dust of our ultimate demise, the immediacy of a moonlit night is dazzling. In our lives and in these songs, possibility and surprise always await us if only we are willing to risk engaging each moment fully.

fragments across distances stills of ensemble poetry... mark menzies (4)

emorable meetings:

I was serving on Sospeso’s board at the time we had an encounter with the local musicians’ union. I am convinced M of the value of unions, even in artistic businesses, but that does not mitigate the supremely cynical, manipulative and depersonalized surrounds of our encounter: the attempt to brand us a chamber orchestra was swept under a very broad carpet of the virtual orchestra scandals of those days that broke shortly after our meeting with the union. playing for composers distantly: we portrayed two composers in the early 2000s who, in the end, were unable to attend their concert - Ligeti and Andriessen. I was personally terrified of meeting Ligeti and playing for him since his quixotic and sometimes witheringly caustic relationship with performers was legendary, yet I was fascinated - goodness, what music!

64 I did converse with Andriessen since one of the pieces we programmed for his concert was the ineffably artful bon- bon ‘after Wieniawski’ for singing violinist and pianist. Speaking of nerves, there was the challenge of singing, through a microphone, a ‘70s-style Euro-pop song - never done that before! Though I am 1/2 Dutch, I wanted to sing the part in English, and not change the genders of the love song around: the piece was written for Vera Beths. Louis immediately ok’d the piece’s transformation into a gay one, my subsequent meeting with him in Holland reinforcing my appreciation for this mercurial, humorous, and an endlessly energetic thinker... maintaining an ensemble after however brilliant a start is a tall order; even after years of doing unique or at the very least culturally nourishing things, the ‘newness’ wears off and the vehicle smells no longer like it’s recently been driven off the lot. Epic cycles of joys and sorrows seemed to lead, after six years or so, to the group’s near-hibernation. As the ensemble awakens again, I look forward to the creation of a renewed run of poetry and luck.

65 On the ARTISTs The Blank Canvas

Ensemble Sospeso’s Director, Nicholas DeMaison, is a highly regarded interpreter of new music and contemporary opera whose performances have been described as “consistently invigorating” (Allan Kozinn, The New York Times). A composer and conductor, he also serves as Music Supervisor for the critically acclaimed production company Giants Are Small, which received national attention for their stagings of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Janácek’sˇ The Cunning Little Vixen with the New York Philharmonic. For the latter, the Philharmonic commissioned DeMaison to contribute an original electronic soundscape for Avery Fisher Hall. He has conducted premieres and led recording projects of new pieces by over forty living composers, and was founding Music Director of Chicago’s Opera Cabal, called “Chicago’s most daring opera company” (Chicago Magazine).

DeMaison’s own music has been described as “emotionally provocative” (Time Out NY) and “faster and blippier…both ominous and playful at the same time” (Lucid Culture). Highlights of this season include new productions of Milhaud’s Le Pauvre Matelot and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine with Pocket Opera New York, the premiere of James Ilgenfritz’s opera The Ticket That Exploded (based on the writings of William S. Burroughs), and a new production of Georges Aperghis’s Sextuor: L’origine des espèces. es Flutist Amelia Lukas performs with “a fine balance of virtuosity and poetry” (Allan Kozinn, The New York Times) and has “a buoyancy of spirit that comes out in the flute, a just beautiful sound” (The Boston Globe). Recent projects include performances at Carnegie’s Zankel and Weill Halls, The Stone, Bargemusic, (Le) Poisson Rouge, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Orford Sound Art Festival, and premieres of works by Columbia University composers at Lincoln Center. She has appeared with ensembles such as the London Sinfo- nietta and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to performing, Ms. Lukas manages the chamber and dance cata- logues for music publisher G. Schirmer. As a respected curator, she produces modern chamber concerts throughout the city. Time Out NY deemed her ground- breaking Ear Heart Music series as “scintillating” and “a staple in the New York new-music soundscape.” Ms. Lukas also acts as the music advisor to Chicago arts service organization High Concept Laboratories. She holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London where she won three prizes for musical excellence.

66 The machine breathes

Born into a musical family, Alicia Lee grew up in Michigan where she began studying violin and piano at age 4, before switching to clarinet at 12. She has performed under the batons of Pierre Boulez, Susanna Malkki, James Con- lon, Charles Dutoit and David Robertson, and as a guest with orchestras both in the U.S. and abroad. Her chamber music experience includes the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Yellow Barn Mu- sic Festival, and the Marlboro Music Festival, and she has collaborated with many other artists. Active in contemporary music, Alicia performed in two Carnegie Hall work- shops led by John Adams and David Robertson, and as a three-time member of the Lucerne Festival Academy, has worked closely with the members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Alicia is an associate principal of the Santa Bar- bara Symphony (since 2006) and performs regularly with groups such as the Knights Chamber Orchestra, Talea Ensemble, American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Wet Ink Ensemble, Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, Inter- national Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Argento Chamber Ensemble. Alicia holds degrees from Columbia University, University of Southern Cali- fornia and the Colburn School, and served for two seasons as a fellow in The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute (ACJW). es Residing in the United States since 1991, Mark Menzies has established a world-wide reputation as a virtuoso new music performer. He has been described in a Los Angeles Times review as an “extraordinary musician” and a “riveting violinist.” As a musician, conductor and advocate of contemporary music, he has performed in Europe, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and across the United States, including Carnegie Hall and at many of the world’s most prestigious festivals. He joined Ensemble Sospeso in 1998, and also served on the board and as program advisor. Renowned for his work with complex scores, Menzies has received personal accolades from composers as diverse as Brian Ferneyhough, Roger Reynolds, Michael Finnissy, Vinko Globokar, Philippe Manoury, Jim Gardner, Elliott Carter, Liza Lim, Christian Wolff and Richard Barrett. Menzies has both toured and recorded with the Formalist Quartet, has also recorded chamber music of Roger Reynolds, and conducted the premiere recordings of Anne LeBaron’s dance opera, Pope Joan and (upcoming) ...above earth’s shadow by Michael Finn- issy. Menzies is currently viola and violin professor at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2011, as part of a five-concert festival of Sofia Gubaidulina’s music (in her presence), he played Offertorium with the CalArts Orchestra to wide critical acclaim.

67 Jason Ponce is a multimedia artist, musician, researcher, and educator. As a musician, his performance practice extends from noise to improvisation to on- going electroacoustic collaborations. Jason’s sound and video installations have been produced internationally and highlight the many intersections between art and science, especially interactivity, group dynamics, gesture and cognition. His recent creative efforts have focused on developing flexible performance ap- plications and creative multimedia content that extend realtime interactivity to contemporary opera and experimental theater. As an educator, Jason has lectured on music history, computing and the arts, and music technology at the University of California San Diego, The New School of Architecture and Design, and the Universidad Iberoamericana. He has also studied and instructed Sundanese gamelan during extended residen- cies in Central and Western Java. Jason is currently a researcher at the Center for Research and Computing in the Arts (CRCA), a San Diego area recording engineer, and a Ph.D candidate in Computer Music at UC San Diego, where he has studied with Miller Puck- ette, F. Richard Moore, Bob Ostertag and David Cope.

es Lisa Marks, the owner of The Art of Tension, is a Brooklyn based designer who was trained as a commercial furniture designer at Parsons School of De- sign where she currently teaches. Lisa has worked on fabric environments for museums including the Guggenheim, as well as companies including Microsoft, Nautica, Lean Cuisine, Wendy’s, and many others.

The Art of Tension specializes in custom tension fabric displays and temporary environments. With a variety of framing materials, The Art of Tension builds creative solutions at any scale with a focus on precision. Complimentary design consultations and renderings are available. www.artoftension.com

The Empire Falls Off a cliff

Hailed by Fanfare Magazine as a “hugely sensitive musician” and The Boston Globe as “having superior chops backed up by assured musicianship,” Eliot Gattegno is the only saxophonist to win the “Kranichsteiner Musikpreis”, widely considered the most prestigious prize for the new music interpretation. In 2010, he was appointed Associate Director as well as saxophone soloist for Ensemble Sospeso.

68 He regularly appears in recitals and some of the world’s most renowned festivals, and collaborates with groups such as Klangforum Wein, Ensemble Resonanz and Ensemble Linea. As a soloist, Gattegno gave the premiere of David Fulmer’s saxophone concerto with conductor Matthias Pintscher and the Heidelberger Frühling Festival Orchestra, and recorded a new concerto (among hundreds of works which he commissioned) by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan, with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Gatteg- no has given American premieres of works by Berio, Dusapin and Feldman. A sought-after lecturer, teacher and chamber music coach, Gattegno is a former Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University, and has presented lectures and master classes at major colleges and universities world-wide. His writings have been published in the New Grove Dictionary of American Music (Oxford University Press) and in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (Schott Music). Gattegno holds a Doctorate from the University of California, San Diego, Mas- ter and Bachelor of Music degrees from New England Conservatory, and a diploma from Interlochen Arts Academy. In 2010, Gattegno was appointed a Fellow at Harvard University.

es picking up the pieces John von Rhein of The Chicago Tribune writes, “Anything sung by soprano Tony Arnold is worth hearing.” Hailed by The New York Times as “a bold and powerful interpreter,” she has gained international acclaim for sparkling and insight- ful performances of the most daunting contemporary scores. In 2001, Arnold became the only vocalist ever to be awarded first prize in the Gaudeamus In- terpreters Competition, and later won first prize in the 15th Louise D. Mc- Mahon International Music Competition. Since then, she has received critical accolades for her appearances with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Los Angeles Philhar- monic New Music Group, New York New Music Ensemble, eighth blackbird, Boston Modern Orchestra Project and many others. With violinist Movses Pogossian, she has taken György Kurtág’s Kafka Frag- ments to more than 30 venues around the world, and released a critically acclaimed DVD/CD recording of the performance on Bridge Records (2009). Other recordings include her Grammy-nominated performance of George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children (2006), also on Bridge. She has been a frequent guest at international festivals in the United States and abroad. Since 2003 she has served on the faculty of the University at Buffalo, where she founded the extended vocal techniques ensemble, BABEL. Arnold is a graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University. Among her many mentors, she is greatly indebted to sopranos Carmen Mehta and Car- ol Webber, and conductors Robert Spano and Victor Yampolsky. 69 Since his 1990 critically acclaimed American debut with the Boston Pops performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, violinist Movses Pogossian has em- barked on a multi-faceted career, appearing in major concert halls with some of the world’s most renowned orchestras, and at some of the world’s most distin- guished festivals. In his native Armenia, he studied with Levon Zorian and Villy Mokatzian, and later under D. Oistrakh’s pupil Valery Klimov at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he completed his Doctorate. In 1985, at the age of 19, Pogossian became the youngest First Prize winner of the Seventh all-USSR National Violin Competition and later won prizes at the 1986 Tchaikovsky In- ternational Competition in Moscow and at Italy’s 1991 Rodolfo Lipizer Inter- national Violin Competition. In 1989, Pogossian was the first Soviet musician to receive a fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Festival. He has performed with members of the Tokyo, Kronos, Brentano, Borromeo, Blair, and Audubon String Quartets, and tours with the New Hampshire-based Apple Hill Chamber Players. His recordings include Kurtág’s monumental Kafka Fragments (with Tony Arnold), Augusta Read Thomas’ Pulsar, Jeffrey Stadelman’s Violin Concerto, Christopher Theo- fanidis’ On the edge of the infinite, and George Walker’s String Quartet No. 2, among others. Currently Professor of Violin at UCLA, Pogossian is also Artistic Director of the new Dilijan Chamber Music Series at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. Pogos- sian lives in Glendale with his wife, Los Angeles Philharmonic violinist Varty Manouelian, and their three children.

Daniele Sahr comes to Sospeso as a professional from the investment management business with a life-long dedication to musical performance and academia. Trained in classical violin performance from a young age, she continued her studies at Juilliard while a student at Columbia University, eventually making her way into the downtown avant-garde scene, as a musician and composer. Ms. Sahr has studied music theory at the University of Amsterdam at the graduate level. She is currently focused on writing about music while working towards an MA in Art History and the History of the Art Market at Christie’s.

70 on the composers

Luciano Berio’s biography begins like the story of many Italian (and German, and French…) composers of the past: his ancestors were all musicians ever since the 18th century. He was born in a small town, Oneglia, where his grand- father and his father played the organ in a local church and also composed. While Ernesto Berio was an ardent admirer of the Duce, his son was an equally ardent antifascist – ardent and furious: he could not forgive Mussolini for fal- sifying music history by suppressing the works of the pioneering composers of the 20th century. Having grown up in the provinces, Berio was in any case handicapped by having been cut off from cultural life but Italian fascism aggra- vated his isolation by depriving him of access to music which would have been so essential for his development. Berio was convinced of the need for young composers to come to terms with the achievements of their predecessors by studying their scores and writing music in various styles. He owed a great deal to his teacher Ghedini under whose influence he learned to love and respect the music of Monteverdi (in 1966, he was to make an arrangement of Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda); also to his friend Bruno Maderna (“I learned for instance from the way he conducted Mozart or my works and his own. He had a thorough knowledge of early counterpoint, Dufay and the others, and studied electronic music much earlier than I did”). Berio and Maderna founded together the Studio di Fonologia Musicale (1955) where Mutazioni, Perspectives and Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) as well as Différences were composed. They also established a journal, Incontri musi- cali (1956-1960), a title which they also gave to a concert series, with Boulez, Scherchen, Maderna among the conductors. (“We had many enemies. I remember on one occasion, when Boulez was conducting, it came to a scuffle so that the police had to intervene”). Luciano Berio was conscious of his responsibilities as a member of society. He said he could not understand composers who deluded themselves to be a mouthpiece of the universe or mankind. As he put it: “In my view it is enough if we endeavour to become responsible children of society.” -Universal Edition

71 Born in Montbrison/Loire on 26 March 1925, Pierre Boulez is a composer, conductor, thinker, a motor of international musical life, and an emblematic figure in post-war European, indeed, world culture. A living classic. Ever since the 1950’s, composers around the world have followed with curiosity what he was writing, to see if they could adapt his ideas in their own music or to reject them in their search for an idiom they could call their own. In 1957, György Kurtág arrived in Paris with the goal to compose something he could show to Boulez (in the end, he left without a work worthy of being presented). The music the French composer has written ever since the late 1940’s was a conscious act of rebellion against tradition as represented by Schönberg or Stravinsky but also his teacher, Messiaen, whose influence has nevertheless left its mark on Boulez’s music. In his compositions but also in his writings, Boulez was initially an angry and rebellious young man (see his scathing obituary “Schönberg est mort”). With the passage of time as he became an established figure, with France inviting him back to found IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain and his career as a conductor also taking off, there has probably been less to rebel against and Boulez has mellowed and broadened his horizons to conduct a wide range of repertoire including Bruckner and Mahler. Boulez has also been a highly influential teacher, beginning in Darmstadt in the 1950s and continuing right up to the present, primarily in Lucerne where he passes on his immense knowledge to fledgling conductors at the Festival Acad- emy. -Universal Edition

es Morton Feldman was born in New York in 1926 and died there in 1987. Just like Cage, a close friend, he was an American composer – an American artist – an American in the true sense of the word. He identified himself by differentiating his views on composition from those of his colleagues in Europe. He was proud to be an American because he was convinced that it enabled him the freedom, unparalleled in Europe, to work unfettered by tradition. And, he was an American also in what may have been a slight inferiority complex in the face of cultural traditions in Europe, something he proudly rejected and secretly admired. Like any true artist, Feldman was endowed with a sensitivity for impressions of a wide variety of sources, literature and painting in particular. His affinity to Samuel Beckett has enriched music literature by a unique music theatre piece, Neither, and two ensemble works. His friendship with abstract impressionist painters gave birth to a range of masterpieces, Rothko Chapel in particular. But even the knotting of oriental rugs gave Feldman musical ideas (The Turfan Fragments). 72 To the question as to why he preferred soft dynamic levels, he replied: “- Because when it’s loud, you can’t hear the sound. You hear its attack. Then you don’t hear the sound, only in its decay. And I think that’s essentially what impressed Boulez, that he heard a sound, not an attack, emerging and disappearing without attack and decay, almost like an electronic medium. Also, you have to remember that loud and soft is an aspect of differentiation. And my music is more like a kind of monologue that does not need exclamation point, colon, it does not need…” Feldman also had an intriguing reply up his sleeve when it came to answering the question why he composed in the first place: “You know that marvellous remark of Disraeli’s? Unfortunately, he was not a good writer, but if he was a great writer, it would have been a wonderful remark. They asked him why did he begin to write novels. He said because there was nothing to read. (laughs). I felt very much like that in terms of contemporary music. I was not really happy with it. It became like a Rohrschach test.” -Universal Edition

es The Czech composer Leoš Janácekˇ came from a family of musicians and studied music at the Prague Organ School as well as the Leipzig and Vienna Con- servatoires. In 1881 he founded an organ school in Brno. He was conductor of the Philharmonic Society Brno from 1881 to 1888 and editor of the periodical “Hudební listy”. In 1919 he became professor of composition at the Prague Conservatoire. In his extensive output, Janácekˇ created his own personal musical language with a unique Czech character. He created an unmistakable style, whose melodic characteristics are based on a precise observation of speech melody and north Moravian folk song. His operas, especially Katja Kabanova and Jenufa, had a far-reaching impact on the stage works of his time. -Bärenreiter

es György Kurtág was born at Lugos (Lugoj in Romania) on 19 February 1926. From 1940 he took piano lessons from Magda Kardos and studied composition with Max Eisikovits in Timisoara. Moving to Budapest, he enrolled at the Academy of Music in 1946 where his teachers included Sándor Veress and Ferenc Farkas (composition), Pál Kadosa (piano) and Leó Weiner (chamber music). In 1957-58 Kurtág studied in Paris with Marianne Stein and attended the courses of Messiaen and Milhaud. As a result, he rethought his ideas on composition and marked the first work he wrote after his return to Budapest, a string quartet, as his opus 1.

73 In 1958-63 Kurtág worked as a répétiteur with the Béla Bartók Music Second- ary School in Budapest. In 1960-80 he was répétiteur with soloists of the Na- tional Philhamonia. From 1967 he was assistant to Pál Kadosa at the Academy of Music, and the following year he was appointed professor of chamber music. He held this post until his retirement in 1986 and subsequently continued to teach at the Academy until 1993. With increased freedom of movement in the 1990s he has worked increasingly outside Hungary, as composer in residence with the Berlin Philharmonic (1993- 1994), with the Vienna Konzerthaus (1995), in the Netherlands (1996-98), in Berlin again (1998-99), and a Paris residency at the invitation of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cité de la Musique and the Festival d’Automne. Kurtág won the prestigious 2006 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his ‘...concertante...’. -Boosey & Hawkes

“Every composer – at all times and in all cases – gives his own interpretation of how modern society is structured: whether actively or passively, consciously or unconscious- ly, he makes choices in this regard. He may be conservative or he may subject himself to continual renewal; or he may strive for a revolutionary, historical or social palingen- esis. At a technical, linguistic and expressive level of communication – that is, with a full cognizance of “actuality” – the mancomposer assesses and selects his inventive and creative participation and establishes the value of his testimony in relation to the reality of his own time. Which is directly related to the economic-ideological confrontation that characterizes the time itself.” Right from his earliest works in the 1950s, Luigi Nono was an engagé composer. For him a right course for the “new music” implied a rigorously contemporary compositional method. At the same time, in order to arrive at “pure” music, the man-composer should connect the music to having an awareness of responsibility and taking a stand on the present. And finally, this position of the “organic intellectual” (Antonio Gramsci) required total involvement. Nono was not only one of the most important composers of the second half of the 20th century; he was also the most illustrious “moral agitator” of that generation of musicians. He was born in Venice on 24 January 1924 and had his first lessons of music theory with Gian Francesco Malipiero, who above all showed him the route to early music (particularly early Venetian music). After finishing his law studies at the University of Padua, in 1946 he resumed his musical studies, this time

74 with someone who became a close friend: the composer and conductor Bruno Maderna. In 1948 both became disciples of Hermann Scherchen, who deeply influenced Nono not only musically, but also culturally and politically. During the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt in 1950 Scherchen directed the highly contested first performance of Nono’s first work, the Canonic Variations on the series of Schönberg’s op. 41. From that moment on – first as a student and then very rapidly as a teacher – Nono took part in the “Laboratorium der seriellen Musik” of Darmstadt until 1955 (until his Incontri for 24 instruments), though without strictly following the compositional techniques of integral serialism. Often the points of departure for his works were texts, as well as “musical ob- jects”, melodies (folk), political songs, etc. – all things that directly influenced the very structure of his music. - Casa Ricordi

Sergei Prokofiev received his first piano instruction from his mother, who also encouraged composing. After studies with Gliere, he passed the entrance ex- amination at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. There he studied with Rimsky- Korsakov and Liadov. He formed a lasting relationship with Sergei Diaghilev, who arranged his first performance outside Russia (Rome, 1915). The opera “The Love of the Three Oranges” and the Third Piano Concerto were premiered in Chicago in 1921. In Paris, where Prokofiev settled, Diaghilev produced his ballets during the years 1921-32. After returning to Russia, he composed “Peter and the Wolf,” the opera “War and Peace,” and the ballets “Romeo and Juliet” and “Cinderella.” He died in 1953. es

On sospeso Kirk Noreen

he conception of Ensemble Sospeso stemmed from a nearly four-hour sprawling phone conversation between my colleague Joshua Cody in Paris and me in Seattle. Kurt Cobain had just died and I had moved T back to where I grew up – after a somewhat brief, di- sastrous time living in New York – not to embrace the flourishing grunge scene but to work on my own brand of contemporary music. Sometimes we have to go backwards to go forwards.

Seattle has always been a somewhat provincial and conservative town when it comes to classical music. It’s not surprising that the only music institutions that have had much staying power are the opera, the symphony and a handful of chamber music series; to an extent this probably explains the rise of the city’s grunge scene. For years, Seattle was isolated geographically and culturally so its scene was home-grown, indigenous and “do it yourself.” There was not much else around and no real models or heroes. (OK, Hendrix – but he got out of town pretty quickly, and the next biggest attraction was the rock group Heart – not exactly what one aspires to be.) What Josh and I wanted to do had nothing to do with rock. All of which makes it rather improbable that Sospeso debuted amidst the city’s grunge frenzy.

I was much more attuned to what was going on in the European music scene 5,000 miles away than what was going on at the Crocodile five miles away. Pre-Internet, pre-email, my reports on what was going on came from Josh and a small network of close friends, giving me morsels of information about a new Lachenmann opera or the next Ligeti premiere through late-night phone conversations (Seattle is nine hours behind Paris)

77 and faxed letters. This was exciting stuff! The closest I came to any sort of musical scene was hanging out with the handful of Microsoft geeks who had given up trying to make it as classical musicians. If you weren’t performing in the symphony or the opera, there wasn’t much else except for the few shows that came to town and community musical theater.

In the midst of all of this, Sospeso was born.

The name? Surrounded by a wall of CDs I took out my extensive collection of Wergo releases for inspiration. (People wax nostalgically about 1970’s rock album art – which for the most part I found garish, bloated and pretentious – but I did appreciate a visual counterpart to the music. And Wergo seemed to put a great deal of thought into pairing the right image with the music – a sort of high art geeki- ness.) Over the span of several hours Josh and I rehearsed possible names: Lontano, Ensemble Continuum, Points on a Curve, Seattle Polyphony Project, Ensemble Nono, Hay que caminar, Ensemble Pression, Sospeso, Ensemble Sospeso, Ensemble SOS, SOS, Sus- pension, Ensemble Suspension, Suspended, Suspended Ensem- ble, Ensemble Sospeso, Sospeso, Ensemble Sospeso…wait… Yes.

Luigi Nono was a hero of mine and everything to which I aspired to be as a composer (and perhaps of hundreds of others as well): uncompromising, intuitive, aloof. But only Nono could really pull it off; he was an aristocrat and a Communist. The name was taken from his piece, Il Canto Sospeso (“Song of the Suspended,” text settings from the victims of European fascism), a cycle as strident as it was moving. But as the ensemble developed and matured, the group’s name took on new meanings: suspended between Europe and the United States … a suspension of disbelief, concert as theater … suspending the rules for what can be played or done at a concert … suspension of time, that rare moment when music can induce a euphoric state and loss of time … that play, tension, dynamic of things that are not quite this or that … between two things,

78 the ineffable, what is in suspension.

That is Sospeso.

es on the Images Daniele Sahr

ll images by Albrecht Dürer * (1471 - 1528) A

Master engraver of the early 16th century, Albrecht Dürer came to be known as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance. His work displays the ideal Renaissance combination of precise perspective techniques, humanist expressions of subject matter, and an attention to detail that not only demonstrates his mastery in engraving but relays the passionate genius of his narrative abilities. Portions of his most famous works have been featured thrughout this book in an attempt to highlight similarities in compositional structure, mood, or creative essence between the images and the concert programs.

* except pp.30-31 | rendering of Installation #1 at the DiMenna Center on March 2, 2012 by Lisa Marks

80 The architects of the Renaissance include Nicholas DeMaison | Artistic Director Eliot Gattegno Daniele Sahr Jessica St.John

Sospeso’s Board of Directors is Kirk Noreen, President Bruce Hodges Katherine Michaelsen Ildikó Szöllosi||

Special Thanks to Zach Layton & Nick Hallet Bohemian National Hall Lisa Marks & The Art of Tension http://artoftension.com

The Renaissance is Now created by Nicholas DeMaison edited by Katherine Michaelsen and Ildikó Szöllosi||

Fonts Illuminated Letters: PaulusFranck1602 Titles: CharlemagneStd Body: Cochin Endmark: LikeGutembergCaps

Sospeso Ltd. PO Box 20322 Columbus Circle Station New York, NY 10023 646.504.8198 [email protected]

Sequenza IXB by Luciano Berio | 1981 Universal Edition Anthemes 2 by Pierre Boulez | 1997 Universal Edition Dialogue de l’ombre double by Pierre Boulez | 1984 Universal Edition For Christian Wolff by Morton Feldman | 1986 Universal Edition Capriole by Kimmo Hakola | 1991 Fennica Gehrman Kafka Fragments op. 24 by György Kurtág | 1985-1987 Editio Musica Budapest La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura by Luigi Nono | 1988 Casa Ricordi Sonata for Flute & Piano op.94 Sergei Prokofiev | 1942 G. Schirmer

All content remains the intellectual property of the authors. The Renaissance is Now © 2012 by Sospeso Ltd. This book and its contents shall not be reproduced by any means except with express written consent of Sospeso Ltd.

Sospeso’s 2011-2012 season is made possible in part by the generous support of ernst von siemens Meet THE music foundation Composer CZECH CENTER NEW YORK 81 E S