Son of Chamber Symphony (2007) String Quartet (2008) International Contemporary Ensemble Eric Lamb, , piccolo 1. I 8:45 4. I 21:21 Nicholas Masterson, 2. II 7:45 5. II 8:49 Joshua Rubin, clarinet 3. III 7:20 Campbell MacDonald, bass clarinet St. Lawrence String Quartet Rebekah Heller, International Contemporary Ensemble David Byrd-Marrow , horn , conductor Gareth Flowers, David Nelson, David Bowlin, Jennifer Curtis, Maiya Papach, viola Kivie Cahn-Lipman, Scott Dixon, bass Cory Smythe, piano, celesta Nathan Davis, Ian Antonio, percussion

St. Lawrence String Quartet Son of Chamber Symphony was commissioned for Stanford Lively Arts in honor of the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Geoff Nuttall, violin Cancer Foundation during Lung Cancer Awareness Month, November 2007, with generous support from Van and Eddi Van Auken, and by The Carnegie Hall Corporation, and made possible in part by The Swanson Foun- Scott St. John, violin dation in honor of San Francisco Ballet’s 75th Anniversary. Choreographed as Joyride for the San Francisco Bal- Lesley Robertson, viola let by Mark Morris. World Premiere: November 30, 2007, by Alarm Will Sound (Alan Pierson, Cond.), at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University. Son of Chamber Symphony is dedicated to Ara Guzelimian. Christopher Costanza, cello

String Quartet was commissioned by The Juilliard School (with the generous support of the Trust of Francis Goelet), Stanford Lively Arts Stanford University, and The Banff Centre. World Premiere: January 29, 2009, by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, at The Juilliard School. String Quartet is dedicated to Joseph Polisi. Well, OK, perhaps my metaphors need to be reeled in, but there is no mistaking the attraction of this format to a composer like me who normally operates on the large canvas of orchestral and operatic forms. Where my two chamber sym- SON OF CHAMBER SYMPHONY, composed in 2007, bears an unmis- phonies differ from Schoenberg’s is in the addition of brass, percussion, and elec- takable family resemblance to its predecessor, the 1992 Chamber Symphony. tronic keyboards. The 1992 symphony features a drummer on a trap set and a Both are written for an ensemble of solo instruments (roughly fifteen instruments); synthesizer. The “son” includes a celesta, a set of orchestral chimes, and, in the both are cast in a three-movement fast-slow-fast form; and both share a highly ani- first movement, a keyboard sampler playing samples I made of a prepared piano, mated, in-your-face kind of cheeky buoyancy. This might strike one as surprising, the “boing” of which sets the tone for the first movement. given the lineage of the “chamber symphony” as a musical form, the begetter of which was , considered by some the most fearsomely serious I knew that Son of Chamber Symphony would be turned into a ballet by Mark Mor- party pooper of all time. ris, the genius choreographer who twenty years earlier had created the dance for and later for . Knowing that Mark is one of What is a “chamber symphony,” anyway? Judging from the two that Schoenberg the few choreographers since Balanchine whose choreography mirrors the formal composed, it is a piece of symphonic scale written for a large group of virtuoso and metric structure of the music, I thought long and hard about how to design soloists. As ensemble in live performance the “chamber symphony” provides all the musical structure. In truth I didn’t have visual images in my head while com- sorts of challenges, not only to the performer, but also to the listener. Balances are posing—I rarely do—but I was nonetheless surprised when Joyride, the title of the always in danger of going seriously out of whack. Individual string instruments Morris ballet, turned out to be one of his most severely abstract creations. Mark can easily be buried by an overly loud clarinet or, in my case, an enthusiastic largely passed over the humor and occasional wackiness of the piece in favor of a drummer. But when acoustical issues have been sorted out, the sound of a dozen geometrically complex, constantly morphing interplay of eight dancers, all or more skilled soloists can afford a musical experience that combines the inti- dressed in tight, Spandex body suits, each sporting on his or her chest an LED macy of with the breadth and scale of a full orchestra. digital readout of random numbers.

What drew me to the Austrian composer’s eponymous Op. 9 Chamber Sym- The first movement begins with a dropping octave “dactyl” rhythm (long-short- phony of 1906 were its explosive energy and the staggering, acrobatic virtuosity of short), a musical idea so basic that it ought not to be “owned,” but alas is—by the its instrumental writing. Schoenberg’s bounding, fast-moving themes weren’t so composer of the Ninth Symphony. Other instruments join in, confounding the much “stated” as they were launched like some daredevil circus performer shot perception of pulse until the activity reaches a cadential moment that leads into out of a canon. The hyper-lyricism of its melodies sounded as if all of Tristan had the first tutti, a boisterous unison melody for high instruments accompanied by been compressed into a tiny plutonium sphere, just one neutron short of going jabs and pecks from brass and percussion. From here the music thins out, passing super-critical. through a sequence of sudden stops and starts, the unexpected nature of which but it soon departs from the script, taking along only the driving, quarter-note pat- was cleverly incorporated into the choreography of Morris’s Joyride. ter of the bass line as it ventures into new terrain with passages that include a short parody of the opening of (is nothing sacred?) and a final ride- With its driving pulse, bouncing motives, and spiky, bright-edged surfaces, the out that features a delicately pulsing trash can lid. opening movement bears the closest resemblance to the earlier 1992 Chamber Symphony. The second movement contrasts this hectic virtuosity with a long, lyri- cal cantilena for flute and clarinet sung over a quietly strumming continuum in ce- lesta and pizzicato strings. This long “endless” melody is followed by a different THE STRING QUARTET of 2008 was composed for the St. Lawrence String but equally lyrical one played by the solo violin and cello, voiced three octaves Quartet, whose performance of my only other work for quartet, John’s Book of Al- apart, accompanied by a gently modulated tapestry of trills and shakes in the leged Dances, stimulated my imagination to write something tailored to their excep- winds and percussion. The opening cantilena melody returns, but this time it ap- tional blend of rhythmic drive and high-drama lyricism. The quartet—violinists pears in a parody version, with staccato barbs interrupting and mocking it. This Geoff Nuttall and Scott St. John, violist Lesley Robertson, and cellist Christopher interrupting material finally takes center stage, highlighted by an absurd dotted Costanza—possess a style of playing, perfectly balanced between the instinctual figure (in prosody a “trochee”) that manically hops and skips while the opening and the intellectual, that greatly appealed to me. Their performances of Haydn melody struggles to make do, as if coping with a rude, uninvited dancing partner. and late Beethoven convinced me that they would be ideal performers of my music (and indeed they were, to the point where, several years later, I composed a I toyed with calling the finale “Can-can” (French pronunciation: kãkã), but at the further piece for them, a concerto for quartet and orchestra, , based on last moment my better judgment took hold. Wikipedia, the unimpeachable source fragments from Beethoven). of all my higher learning, describes the can-can as a “high-energy and physically demanding music hall dance, traditionally performed by a chorus line of female Normally impatient with traditional titles, I uncharacteristically defaulted to dancers” featuring “high kicking and suggestive, provocative body movements.” “String Quartet” for this one. The only other time I’d employed such a generic But I decided against using the title because I could not accurately distinguish this title was with the 1993 . It may be that the choice of such an un- from the description of a “gallop,” to which, so suggests Wikipedia, the can-can is adorned name for both works reflected a certain awe that I felt in approaching the related but in a degraded, decidedly downscale version. medium. Historically speaking, both the violin concerto and the string quartet represent for me the epitome of the union of musical form and content. The mod- Those listeners familiar with Nixon in China will remark another family resem- els from the past, be they from the classical period of Haydn, Mozart, and blance here—this time with the “News” aria sung by the president at the beginning Beethoven, from the Romantic period of Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, or of Act I. For a brief time the third movement is a kind of snarky gloss on that aria, from the twentieth century—from Schoenberg, Berg, and Bartók all the way up to Ligeti and Carter—constitute a compendium of those composers’ most eloquent Produced by Judith Sherman and Apollonian statements. Son of Chamber Symphony Recorded September 14–15, 2010, at Sear Sound, New York, NY My quartet is cast in a uniquely asymmetrical form: a single long first part and a Engineered by John Kilgore much shorter second. The first part is itself divided into four distinct sections that, Assistant Engineers: Chris Allen & Tom Gloady taken together, create a fully formed musical structure. Opening with a rippling Keyboard Technician: Brian Mohr sixteenth-note figuration punctuated by the offbeat plucking of the cello, the music rapidly evolves into a sequence of intensely lyrical episodes that ride the String Quartet Recorded October 4–6, 2009, Rolston Recital Hall, The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada engine of a regular pulsation, an easily identifiable vestige of my minimalist past. Engineered by John D. S. Adams Assistant Engineer: Nathan Chandler A passage of becalmed stasis provides a relief from the restlessness of the open- Produced and recorded using the facilities of the Music & Sound Program ing; and this is followed by the eruption of a jaunty scherzo section, characterized by fractured dance steps and high-wire melodies for the . The energy winds Mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering Studios, Portland, ME down, and Part One concludes with a slower, muted music, similar to the opening Design by John Gall in its restless inner movement. Only in its very last minute does the energy, now Photography by Deborah O’Grady sounding as if blanketed by a layer of heavy cloth or snow, finally settle down to a short-lived slumber. Executive Director for the International Contemporary Ensemble: Claire Chase

Son of Chamber Symphony and String Quartet are published by Boosey & Hawkes. Part Two begins with bouncing octaves (not unlike the opening of Son of Chamber Symphony), a high-strung, nervous staccato that charges the entire remaining Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz movement with a driven energy that will only occasionally break for pockets of espressivo that recall the earlier movement. The frequent appearance of the open- ing bars’ Morse code figuration at critical structural points anchors the music’s growth. Its use might even suggest to some listeners a vestigial version of rondo form. A final coda pushes tempi and activity to the extreme. I make the kind of www.earbox.com www.iceorg.org www.slsq.com www.nonesuch.com ensemble and emotional demands on the players that are only possible in that ex- hilarating and utopian world of virtuoso chamber music. Nonesuch Records Inc., a Warner Music Group Company, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104. π & © 2011 Nonesuch Records Inc. for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States. Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federal —John Adams, March 2011 law and subject to criminal prosecution.