Byron Petty | Robert Stewart | Peter Homans
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Click on or drag the upper page corners to view booklet BYRON PETTY | ROBERT STEWART | PETER HOMANS tendrils BYRON PETTY 1 A General Disturbance 6:13 Lisa Hennessy, flute; Emmanuel Feldman, cello; Karolina Rojahn, piano 2 Distant Actions 7:58 Lisa Hennessy, flute; Charles Sherba, violin; Emmanuel Feldman, cello Tracks 1 – 5 recorded at Futura Studios, Roslindale MA, 3 Connecting 4:10 Shuko Watanabe, piano engineered by John Weston, and mixed by Shaun Michaud 4 Distractions 6:07 Byron Petty, flute; Shuko Watanabe, piano Tracks 2, 3 and 5 produced by Bob Lord 5 Mythical Moments 3:58 Charles Sherba, violin; Emmanuel Feldman, cello; Karolina Rojahn, piano Tracks 1 and 4 produced by Shaun Michaud PETER HOMANS 6 Three Italian Songs 5:12 Tracks 6 and 7 engineered by Beverly Morgan, mezzo soprano ˘ Frank Cunningham and produced by Peter Homans 7 Bridges 13:19 Dinosaur Annex: Cyrus Vance, violin; Anne Black, viola; Michael Curry, cello; Donald Berman, piano Track 8 engineered by Chris Murphy, produced by Omega, and edited by Curt Wittig ROBERT STEWART 8 Idyll 17:08 The Virtuoso Strings: Christopher Kendall, conductor 3 4 Byron Petty Flutist, pianist, composer, and conductor Byron Petty holds a BM in flute performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with renowned flutist Britton Johnson. He is currently a Lecturer of Music (flute) at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, where he has taught courses in composition and musical analysis as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music. His compositions have been performed at regional conferences of 7 PHOTO BY LARRY STENE 6 the Southeastern Composers League, the College Institute & State University; the Toho Koto Society Music Society, and the National Conference of of Washington, D.C.; and others. A CD of recent the Society of Composers, Inc. Petty served as chamber compositions by Petty titled Traveler’s Composition Chair for the Mid-Atlantic chapter Tales has been released by Capstone Records. of the College Music Society (1996-1998) and as For further information Independent Composer Representative on the http://www.wlu.edu/x18721.xml National Executive Committee for the Society of Composers, Inc. (2000-2002). He was selected About my Music as the Virginia Music Teachers Association The first comment I would make is that my music Commissioned Composer for 1995. From 1995- is modern. While not experimental, it does 2002, he was the Conductor/Music Director of contain a number of 20th/21st century classical the Eurydice Community Orchestra of Roanoke, art music techniques, such as continuous VA. Petty has received commissions from the development, expressionistic/atonal gestures, K&W Group, Inc.; Olin Conservation, Inc.; the pointillistic/disjunct melodic lines, mixed Department of Geology of Virginia Polytechnical chromatic/whole tone melody in a dissonant 7 8 frame work, quartal structures, complex cross which I call “Fringe Tonality” and “Lyrical Neo rhythms, the use of simultaneity with sudden, Complexist.” This CD contains the latter, with contrasting outbursts of dynamics and tempi. the exception of movements two and three of Connecting for solo piano. I feel that with While my music is modern, I am influenced by repeated hearings, the lyrical aspects of my music a variety of styles and periods, including early will come through prominently as will my regard Baroque, Gallant, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, for past traditions. Schoenberg, the Second Viennese School, Roger Sessions, Elliot Carter, and many other 20th Rather than describing each piece, the following century composers. Additionally, opera, jazz, will provide a clue to my thought process. It is ethnic Japanese music, and the general repertoire a performance note I wrote as a guide to the of both the flute and piano influence my music. rehearsals and recording of Mythical Moments for violin, cello, & piano. My compositions are abstract and not —Byron Petty programmatic. I write mainly in two styles, 9 10 Performance Notes on Mythical Moments General style points: Bar 4 – cello - molto lyrico Left over fragments – often based on Bar 6 – beat 6 – violin is part of cello line Beethovian humor – either meekly lost or Bar 9 – piano – septuplets – lyric, not too strict blatantly insulting. Bars 14-20 – simultaneity – different characters – Overly repeated ostinato or exact sequences cello gets carried away within the context of a-tonality/continuous Bars 24/25 – cello subtly resolves violin dissonance development style can exhibit humor with a soft Major seventh Stuck in place figures are a reference to Bar 34 – cello - think Brahms e minor sonata – Beethovian humor. dark, rich, almost ominous (Piatagorsky/Rubenstein recording) More specific moments: Bar 42/43 – pseudo-ending Modest beginnings – most pieces – stream of Bar 47/end – warm minor sixths & minor sevenths consciousness Piano provides pointillistic punctuation Bar 52 – piano – like drops of water running down a window. 11 12 Peter Homans Peter Homans received a BA in English from Washington & Lee University followed by two master’s degrees in music from New England Conservatory with Don Martino (Composition) and then Ernst Oster (Theory) in 1974 and 1976. He received two fellowships to Tanglewood in ‘75 and ‘76, studying with Gunther Schuller, Betsy Jolas, and Oliver Knussen. During his stay, he won the first ever Aaron Copland Prize for Composition. 13 After his studies, Homans worked as Assistant his viola concerto Dialogs with soloist Will Business Manager and Principal Musical Assistant Frampton, and Dinosaur Annex, which will for Leonard Bernstein. Having decided not to be released on PARMA Recordings along with pursue a career in academia, he has spent the pieces from this concert later this year. last 30 years in the financial industry, working as a partner at Bear Stearns, principal of his own Liner notes for Bridges and 3 Italian Songs brokerage firm, and most recently principal of In 1976 I was on tour with the New England the Parkman LP hedge fund. Conservatory Orchestra and Chorus in Europe performing Stravinsky’s Requiem, Verdi’s Te He has written and recorded numerous pieces for Deum, and other pieces. I had been studying chamber ensembles and orchestras, including the with Donald Martino, a great composer who NY Chamber Symphony, Marin Alsop’s Concordia, passed in 2005. Martino was a serialist, and he Boston Musica Viva, Dinosaur Annex, Czech Radio and I worked to develop my hand and ear from Orchestra, and the Silesian Radio Orchestra. He a dodecaphonic perspective. has released 3 CDs and most recently premiered 15 16 Although there are a number of great been used at some point or have been avoided organizational aspects to Schoenberg, Stravinsky, because they just don’t sound very good. and others in the serial world, I didn’t like much of the music that came out of the genre. Much I wrote 3 Italian Songs when I was on this tour of the complex serial relationships are barely for Beverly Morgan, a fabulous mezzo and audible, and I don’t understand the strictness good friend. In doing so, I completely dropped towards avoiding repetition of a note until you the entire serial approach and simply wrote explicate the other eleven pitch classes. Even what I heard. I can’t say my aural choices were the phrase “pitch class” always bothered me – I not affected by my prior studies in the 12-tone, see them as notes, and there are only twelve of but there is nothing serial about these songs. If them. And the serialist approach to writing music anything, they derive from the joy I experienced that has never been heard before flies in the singing bass in the chorus in Te Deum. face of the fact that all of the chordal and linear These were among the last pieces I wrote before relationships that these twelve notes allow have I stopped writing, out of “burn out” and out of 17 18 confusion over how to approach the building bridge between what I had been writing and of pieces, whether they be serial, rotational, or what I write now. There are many similarities tonal. between 3 Italian Songs and Bridges, but they differ in my approach to their composition. The Bridges was written in 1990 and was the first piece main connection is that I wanted to write what I wrote when I started composing again, having I hear, rather than what some organizational resolved the confusion I had felt years before. system drives me towards. I do work hard at the My principal influence, besides Don Martino, architecture of every piece, and I hope that my was Stravinsky. I found his approach to serialism, sense of organization is far more audible than which he called rotation, to be a far more liberal, that of the composers who were my peers and more audible, and more reasonable way to think predecessors at the Conservatory. about chromatic music. N.B. The score for 3 Italian Songs included on this Bridges is a piano quartet, and the title disc reflects some changes I made when I decided specifically refers to the fact that the piece is the to include it in this collection. I love the recorded 19 20 version here, and I love the “newer” version as Sme mor ar mi in un gri do well. I would urge anyone inclined to perform them to work from the 2009 version, rather than L’in fan zi a ho sot ter a to the original. Nel fon do del le no ti E, E, E o ra, spa da in vi si bi le Mi se pa ra da tut to. E E non po tro mai piu Lyrics for 3 Italian Songs #1 Di me ram men to che es ul ta vo a man do ti Ogn u no ogn u no sta so lo sul cuo re del la ter ra Ed ec co mi per du to Tra fit to da un rag gio di so le Tra a fit to da un rag gio di so le In in fi ni to del le no ti Ed e su bi to se ra Di sper a zi o ne che in ces san te au men ta #2 La vi ta non mi e piu Tut to ho per du to per du to dell in fan zi a Ar res ta ta in fon do al la go la E non po tro mai piu Che un roc ci a di gri di 21 22 #3 Gra zi a fe li ce Non a vres ti po tu to non spez zar ti In u na ce ci ta tan to in du ri ta Tu sem pli ce sof fio e cri stal lo, Trop po u man o lamp o per l’em pio Sel vo so, ac ca ni to, ron zan te Reggi to d’un so le ign u do 23 24 Robert Stewart Robert Stewart (1918–1995) has composed for a variety of soloists, orchestras, and ensembles.