ROBERT ERICKSON (1917–1997) DUO, FIVES, QUINTET, TRIO Camera Lucida 80808-2

NWR Erickson 2019 bklt pg ord01b.qxp_Layout 1 5/14/19 2:00 PM Page 1 Front View 4-3/4” 4-3/4” 4.75” 4.75” 120.650mm 120.650mm ROBERT ERICKSON (1917–1997) DUO, FIVES, QUINTET, TRIO Camera Lucida 80808-2 1 Fives (1988) 9:08 Andrea Overturf, English horn; Anthony Burr, clarinet; Che-Yen Chen, viola; Charles Curtis, cello; Reiko Uchida, piano Duo (1957) 17:05 Robert Erickson Jeff Thayer, violin; Reiko Uchida, piano 2 I. 8:10 3 II. 8:53 Duo 4 Trio (1986) 11:28 Fives Anthony Burr, clarinet; Charles Curtis, cello; Julie Smith Phillips, harp Quintet 5 Quintet (1985) 22:28 Trio Wilfrido Terrazas, flute; Steph Richards, trumpet; Anthony Burr, clarinets; Travis Maril, viola; Charles Curtis, cello camera lucida TT: 60:27 New World Records, 20 Jay Street, Suite 1001, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel (212) 290-1680 Fax (646) 224-9638 [email protected] www.newworldrecords.org 9 & B 2019 Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. BACK COVER FRONT COVER Folds In Half Ba nt TITLE: Compact Disc - F4 (4-page Folder) ck Fro Inside dotted lines are fold lines. 9-1/2” X 4-23/32” (9.5” X 4.71875”) Inside white spaces are safety areas. Outside solid lines are trim lines. DATE: 11/1/01 DL DIE NUMBER: FC.004.0 Outside dotted lines are bleed lines. NWR Erickson 2019 bklt pg ord01b.qxp_Layout 1 5/14/19 2:00 PM Page 2 early 1970s, he began suffering various debilitating symptoms, eventually diagnosed as polymyositis, a muscle-wasting immune system disorder. This, plus the side effects Robert Erickson: Three Late Works and One Mid-life Triumph of the Prednisone he was being treated with, gradually resulted in decreased mobility and constant pain, and by the early 80s he had largely withdrawn from the teaching “D ON ’T EVEN BEGIN TO COMPOSE A PIECE UNTIL YOU HAVE THE PERFORMERS world at UCSD. This period of decreasing teaching activity was accompanied, AGREED TO , AND , PREFERABLY , THE CONCERT ARRANGED !” Those were some of the however, by an increase in his musical output. Mostly a “one piece a year” kind of first words that Robert Erickson (1917–1997) said to me when I started studying composer, in 1985–86 he completed seven works (two of which are included here), composition with him at UC San Diego back in the autumn of 1971. Coming from under conditions of constantly increasing pain and decreasing mobility. 1987 and a milieu where we were encouraged to dream impossible dreams, Bob’s practicality 1988 saw one work each completed, followed by his final work in 1990. He passed was quite a shock to me. But his down-to-earth practicality has served me well in away in 1997, from the disease that had been slowly killing him for many years. many circumstances since then. His works can be looked at in three periods (sorry for the cliché, but that’s how Robert Erickson was many things—a composer, an instrument builder, a writer, they pan out). There was an early period where he worked out his relationship to an administrator, a broadcaster, among others. Although he began life in upper mid-twentieth century expressionism and atonality, producing such enduring and Michigan, his crucial early composing years were spent in Chicago and engaging works as the Duo for Violin and Piano (1957) (included here), the Chamber Minneapolis/St. Paul. In Chicago, his fellow students were composers like George Concerto (1960) and the Concerto for Piano and Seven Instruments (1963). A middle Perle and Ben Weber. Later, in Minnesota, he became acquainted with Wilbur period followed where he became involved with technology and all sorts of experi - Ogdon and Thomas Nee, among others. In both these cities, he was under the men - mental techniques. The tape-and-instrument pieces Pacific Sirens and Nine and a torship of Ernst Krenek, who had arrived in the US in 1938, and St. Paul in 1942. Half for Henry (and Wilbur and Orville) and the music-theater trombone extravaganza He left the Midwest for California in 1953, and established himself as one of the major General Speech can be said to typify this period. The final period begins in the mid- forces in the San Francisco Bay Area new music scene, both through his teaching work 70s, when technology is put aside (most likely because of his declining health) in and through his work for KPFA, the listener-sponsored radio station in Berkeley favor of instrumental works for his friends and associates. These works reach their where he was music director for a while, and then continued to guide and influence culmination in the works on this CD: Fives (1988), Trio (1986), and Quintet (1985) the station through a series of friends and associates who occupied the music director among others. In all three periods, what he never abandoned was a sense of taste, chair for many years. In 1967 he moved to San Diego, where he and Wilbur Ogdon elegance and style—and a curiosity about sound and its functioning. Also, through - founded the Music Department at the University of California, San Diego. By the out his life, he felt that sounds had their own form of intelligence, one that didn’t 2 3 23 NWR Erickson 2019 bklt pg ord01b.qxp_Layout 1 5/14/19 2:00 PM Page 3 need words or theories to prop them up. He frequently referred to his sounds as future, the way traditional counterpoint had formed the composer’s toolkit in the past. “forms of non-verbal intelligence,” and when, on a mid-80s visit to his house, I This was also the period where Bob was working at the Centre for Music asked him how he was composing his most recent work, he replied, “I just sit down Experiment with five performers on a piece he called Loops: An Informal Timbre and compose—I’m thinking sounds, not words.” At the time, I didn’t “get it.” Experiment . This consisted of a minimalist melody played as a hocket, one note at a Now, years later, after intense listening to works from all stages of his career, I time, between the five instruments. All sorts of combinations of the instruments were think I do “get it,” and think I’m beginning to understand the intuitive way he tried out. Working at CME at the time, I got to hear many rehearsals of the piece and was assembling his work, with an intuition formed by a whole lifetime of sonic listened as the various phenomena it embodied, such as auditory streaming, came and psychoacoustic investigation. together and lived. I often wondered what happened to that piece—why it had never Composition lessons with Bob were sometimes quite helpful, and sometimes quite been published or brought out on a recording. Then, years later, I heard Bob’s 1980 contentious. Sometimes both, of course. We had an ongoing disagreement about an orchestral piece, East of the Beach , and heard that he had incorporated the piece in its electronic piece I was composing. I wanted it to be an uninterrupted block of sound. entirety as the middle section of the work. (I had, in 1980, without knowing about He said it would be better with several inserts of a softer, quieter, different kind of East of the Beach , made my own electronic realization of the Loops concept with five sound. Eventually, I decided to go along with his suggestion. The piece then delighted analog FM timbres, and called it reLoopse . Bob was delighted when, on a return visit him, and sounded OK to me. But then, every five years since then, on average, I’ve to San Diego, I played it to him.) gone back to that piece and listened anew. Sometimes I think his suggestion was right Listening was very important to Bob. If anyone could be said to be a virtuoso on the money. Half a decade later I think he had rocks in his head. Then again, later, listener, it was him. He would sit in the front row of a concert, bolt upright, facing “Ah yes, he was right after all!” And so on. One small point in a composition lesson forward, with his eyes firmly shut and a broad smile on his face. Despite our student leads to a lifetime consideration of form. That’s probably what they call “good jokes about “Blind Lemon Erickson,” a number of us tried out his technique, and teaching.” If composition studies with Bob proved to be exciting, then challenging, found that yes, it worked. Without the distraction of vision, aspects of the sound his seminar in Timbre was eye-opening and life-changing. He had us reading all sorts became so much clearer and sharply in focus. I had very clear memories of Bob’s of papers on the latest developments in psychoacoustics, had guests of international listening like that, and then, when I recently found on YouTube the KPBS–TV standing (such as the Dutch acoustician Rainer Plomp) talk to the seminar, and had documentary on Bob for the Artists in America series, there he was—eyes shut, us do all sorts of experiments in assembling timbres of various kinds. It was one of the alert, facing forward, with a beatific smile on his face, entranced by the sound. A most rigorous, and most revelatory classes I ever took. Bob was convinced that all the lesson in the concentration of attention that is good listening for all of us. new research in psychoacoustics was going to form the composer’s toolkit in the (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1BH2kT1GHI about 8:25 in) 4 5 45 NWR Erickson 2019 bklt pg ord01b.qxp_Layout 1 5/14/19 2:00 PM Page 4 Despite being involved in the founding of the San Francisco Tape Music Centre, indication is to use different fingerings to get the detuning—but the exact fingering and being one of the people who designed the studios at UCSD, Bob had an is left up to the player.

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