Harvard University Department of M usic MUSICn e w s l e t t e r Vol. 10, No. 1/Winter 2010 Chaya Czernowin, Composer and Teacher Chaya Czernowin’s compositions have Music Building been performed at more than fifty festi- North Yard vals throughout the world. In addition to Harvard University numerous other prizes, Czernowin was awarded the Kranichsteiner musikpreis Cambridge, MA 02138 at the Darmstadt summer festival 1992, the Asahi Shimbun fellowship in Tokyo 617-495-2791 1992, IRCAM reading panel 1998, För- www.music.fas.harvard.edu derpreis of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2003, an award from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2004, and a Fromm Foundation Award in 2008. She is a nominated fellow of the Wissenschafts- INSIDE kolleg Berlin, and her work is published by Schott. In 2009, she was appointed the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music 3 Faculty News at Harvard. 3 Maestro Cortese zernowin’s chamber opera Pnima…ins Composition and teaching can 4 Graduate Student News Innere (premiered at the Munich Biennale 2000 and nominated by Opernwelt survey mutually benefit each other. In 5 Alumni News Cof 50 critics as the best premiere of 2000) is based order to teach in a deep way, 6 Leon Kirchner Remembered on the story “Momik,” from the larger work, see under: love, by David Grossman. In it, an Israeli which I always try to do, you have 7 Library News: Mazepa boy meets his grandfather, a concentration camp to see the score almost as if it was Myth Exhibit survivor who, in a way, never really got out. The a person. 8 Undergraduate News boy tries to connect to the old man and to decipher his urgent, cryptic, and threatening attempts at 9 Hydra Sound Diffusion communication. Her second opera, Zaide/Adama, completely autobiographical and personal based on 10 Oppens Residency fragments, was pinned on the hopeless love affair his own history. I did as well. I think that we both between an Israeli and Palestinian. Czernowin’s needed to talk about the Holocaust, not in a self- 11 Calendar of Events large-themed operas exist side by side with her righteous, blaming, or justifying way, but to figure 12 Topography of Early Music more ethereal, abstract chamber and orchestral out the way it was present in our lives. How does one works, such as Winter Song—Pending Light, approach a trauma which is unspoken, impossible Stones, and Roots (2002/3, based on instrumental- to talk about or comprehend, but which is present ists, electronics, percussion, and samplers); or the in one’s life on every level through one’s parents?” large-scale triptych Maim (2001/2007), inspired Czernowin’s approach touched an open nerve; by the element of water. people were moved to tears. Her work has always been abstract, and at the “Pnima was premiered in Germany, so it was same time, personal and even physical. But no one very emotional. It shed a light on something which Department Chair was more shocked than Czernowin that her operas was not talked about, but perhaps needed to be Anne C. Shreffler emerged with political themes. talked about in this way. Suddenly my abstract Director of Administration “My first opera, Pnima, was autobiographi- music was understood, taken in a different way. Nancy Shafman cal. Both my parents are Holocaust survivors. The reception of my music changed. There was The writer David Grossman created something access to it.” Newsletter Editor Lesley Bannatyne continued on p. 2 [email protected] Czernowin, continued example.” hiding in this score, what is trying to emerge, Right now Czernowin’s working on be expressed? It is an intimate dialogue with the piece lovesong, dedicated to the German another person’s mental language, in its origin, ensemble Recherche’s 25th-year anniversary. in its outset. One can learn so much from this She’s also thinking ahead to two orchestral com- kind of dialogue. It is an approach to acceptance missions; the piece Sand, snow, a study of dust, and to critique which leads to stronger clarity for the symphony orchestra of the Bayerisch about where and when to deepen or refine Radio, and a piece for guitar and orchestra, a something, versus when and where to erase or commission for the Lucerne Festival where she change. will be in residence in 2011. “Exercising this clarity is very pertinent “I work on one thing at a time,” says Cz- when one returns to their own work. This is ernowin. “But there are many pieces growing one of the ways in which teaching keeps me inside me in various stages of completion. I let on my toes creatively.” them grow subconsciously while working on other pieces, and then when I work on them the inquisitive light of conscious thinking shines on Upcoming Czernowin them as well.” Performances in the U. S. Pnima...ins Innere, an opera in three acts, Mode And teaching? Where does that fit into her Records. creative life? February 25–26, 2010: Tenri Cultural The opera is still very much a part of Czernowin laughs out loud, a happy, lilting Institute, New York City Czernowin’s creative life. In 2008 it had a new laugh. February 25 will include a lecture by the production in Weimar, and for the past three “From a young age—I was maybe four composer about her music and ideas, years Czernowin has been involved with a or five—I would gather the children from my along with live performance of musical 2010 production of Pnima to be presented by neighborhood and sit them in a line in our excerpts and multi-media presentation Stuttgart Staatstheatre. small yard. I had a blackboard, and I would of her operas. On February 26 at 8pm, “It will involve 100 children, and be play the teacher in a classroom. Teaching has four Czernowin pieces will be performed directed by Korean director Youn Kim. The always been very natural for me.” by new music ensemble Either-Or. http:// theater wanted to highlight the universal side It was so natural that as early as elementary www.eitherormusic.org/concerts.html of the work. I am really looking forward to school Czernowin was sent to classrooms whose this.” teachers were absent, because the children NEC composer in residence, June 12–19, Pnima put Czernowin on the map as a would listen to her stories. Teaching has been 2010 composer who not only wrote ethereal, “dif- part of her professional life since Czernowin Info at : http://sicpp.org/ ficult” new music, but as one who was able to was 20 years old. create emotionally intense internal landscapes “Composition and teaching can mutually April 8, 2011: A Portrait Concert, Miller of sound with universal themes. benefit each other. In order to teach in a deep Theatre at Columbia University, 2960 “My contemporary operas are not abstract; way, which I always try to do, you have to see Broadway, New York City. Watch for they are a place for me to figure things out. In the score almost as if it was a person. What is details at http://www.millertheatre.com/ Zaida /Adama [2004/05, Salzburg Festival, where Czernowin was in residence 2005/6], Martino CD of Late Works Released I could reflect on and express my anger and frustration with Palestinian/Israeli relations, The Group for Contemporary Music released the last and in Pnima, reflect on my own childhood works of Donald Martino in January, 2010. The CD biography. These works consider the fabric of includes Martino’s String Quartet No. 5 (Curt Ma- life, as it were. My chamber music and orches- comber, Carol Zeavin, Lois Martin, Chris Finckel), tral music, on the other hand, create islands Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano (Macomber/Aleck of alternative life. There I can be extremely Karis), Piano Trio (Macomber/Finckel/PeggyKamp- probing and push things towards questioning meier), and Trio for Clarinet, Cello, Piano (Alan Kay/ every aspect of music we take for granted, or Fred Sherry/Stephen Gosling). The CD is available on create alternate realities, like strangely mutated amazon.com. Further info at www.stokar.com/ organic elements: stones, roots, or water, for 2 Faculty News Cortese on Conducting, Musician- ship, & Tearing Down Walls Lecturer Richard Beaudoin’s recent com- globalism gone wild in joyful, enthusiastically As assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony positions inaugurate a new compositional realized performances of Diamond’s pieces by Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa from 1998 until technique involving microtiming. He has Javanese musicians.”—New World Records 2002, Cortese once, on short notice, conducted been invited to give lectures at research events William Powell Mason Professor Carol Beethoven’s Ninth for more than 100,000 people dedicated to his new works at Cambridge Uni- Oja published “West Side Story and The Mu- on Boston Common. He has studied voice, compo- versity, The Royal Academy of Music, London, sic Man: Whiteness, Immigration, and Race in sition, conducting, and has been music coordinator the Steinhardt School at New York University, the late 1950s,” in Studies in Musical Theatre, and associate conductor of the Spoleto Festival and New England Conservatory. Premieres III/1 (2009); and “On Friends, Mothers, and in Italy. He also served as assistant conductor to have taken place at CNMAT in Berkeley, Cali- Scholarship: Remembering Adrienne Fried Robert Spano at the Brooklyn Philharmonic and fornia, and are scheduled at Wiltons Hall in Block,” in American Music Review (December to Daniele Gatti at the Orchestra dell’Accademia London and in New York during early 2010. 2009). She gave the Robert and Ruth Fink Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.