Janet Danielson at CalArts, 1974 CELEBRATING CANADIAN COMPOSERS Janet Danielson Celebration FOR WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH Monday • October 15, 2018 • 7∶00pm As a courtesy… Please turn off the sound for all phones and other electronic devices. You are welcome to take non-flash photos during applause between pieces, but please refrain from taking photos during a performance and between movements, thank you. We encourage you to post your photos and share your experience on social media using the hashtag #CMCBC CMC BC on Twitter: @MusicCentreBC CMC BC on Facebook: facebook.com/CanadianMusicCentreBC Website: musiccentrebc.ca CMC National on Twitter: @CMCnational CMC National on Facebook: facebook.com/CanadianMusic Website: musiccentre.ca ‘ Program Editor • Stefan Hintersteininger Program Designer • Tom Hudock Paper generously provided by C-PAC The Murray Adaskin Piano is maintained by Scott Harker of Harker Piano Services Letter from the BC Director We have embarked together on an epic voyage of discovery over the past three years — an exploration of worlds both familiar and strange, some both. Our magical little Murray Adaskin Salon has transported us back to a time of ancient legend explored vividly through Heather Pawsey’s brilliant one-woman show, perfectly expressed through Jeffrey Ryan’s Unheard, right up into the frozen, snow-drenched mountaintops of the Andes, through Lloyd Burritt’s powerful opera Miracle Flight 571. We have sailed with the salmon down BC’s mighty rivers in Murray Adaskin’s A Wedding Toast, and flown through the soaring Pines of Emily Carr so beautifully illustrated through the lyrics of Dorothy Davies — “from root to sky, no twist, no deviation”— and evoked so magisterially by Jean Coulthard’s elegiac music. We have assayed the avant-garde through Barbara Pentland’s intense serialism and Rudolf Komorous’ penchant for the unlikely; frolicked with frisky, lascivious vegetables in the unruly gardens of Leslie Uyeda; and walked through time, history and place, listening through the mystical ears and mind of Hildegard Westerkamp. We have even explored the quantum through Barry Truax’s evocative and brilliantly original granular synthesis. And through our Jean Coulthard String Quartet Readings, we have limned 2,200 years of western musical traditions, exploring the roots of polyphony and harmony itself. All of this is encapsulated in Janet Danielson’s personal musical journey spanning post-war modernist serialism, the origins of harmony, explorations of the music and traditions of other cultures, and more. All of which makes this Celebration of her music so perfect to hear at this stage of our journey as it marks an inflection point, an opportunity to reflect on the music we’ve heard and the extraordinarily diverse worlds we’ve visited along the way. Janet enthusiastically agreed to dedicate this concert to Women’s History Month in Canada. We are at an exciting time in history and in our own cultural evolution to realize the more enlightened society envisaged by those brave women who fought over the past century for a more equal, just, and better world. Looking ahead to the future, the concert also includes Cedar, a new work by Featured Emerging Composer Maren Lisac, inspired by another iconic tree so emblematic of the Canadian West Coast. This is a journey, too, that we are all embarked on together, and it may be the most exciting and rewarding yet! Sean Bickerton, BC Director Canadian Music Centre / Centre de musique canadienne – 1 – Janet Danielson: My Philosophy In Music My career had its beginnings in the rarified atmosphere of post-WWII modernism in which a composer’s mandate was to create music that was authentic manifestation of contemporary culture. I managed two compositions in a post-serial style before being confronted by my teacher Cornelius Cardew’s fairly compelling Marxist-Leninist critique of the European avant-garde. A more cogent neo- Calvinist critique sensitized me to the hollowness of the absolutist claims of historicism, whether Marxist and modernist. I became agnostic as regards ‘contemporary culture’: not my monkey, not my circus. Convinced that music had a reality and value that transcended cultural and stylistic categories, I focused my research efforts on the phenomenon of harmony: why was “Western” music so distinctive in its directionality, use of harmonic organization, and capacity for mobilizing large forces? Drawing on the work of James Tenney, Bruno Latour, and Giorgio Agamben, I concluded that harmony was a technique exploiting an organizing principle of physical reality, rather than merely a culturally-bound style. I also recognized that the harmonic practice of the western “classical music” tradition was not compatible with some of the rich and complex practices from elsewhere in the world. I therefore wrote a number of pieces combining Western and Chinese instruments so I could incorporate the purer tunings and more highly refined systems of ornamentation of Chinese music into my music; while in other pieces, including my opera, experimented with the profound effects of semitone shifts within the tetrachord. I am profoundly grateful to the many individuals who have sustained my career as a composer over the years. I am deeply grateful to those who have commissioned me: June Goldsmith, the late Ann Southam, Scott and Susan Eddlemon, Sherrill Grace, the Orchid Ensemble, and Elizabeth Carmack. Their support, artistic vision, and guidance has been of inestimable value to me. I was also privileged to be associated with Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University for more than twenty years and owe much to the kindness of my colleagues David MacIntyre, Martin Gotfrit, and Owen Underhill. I am grateful for the ongoing support of Sean Bickerton, Stefan Hintersteininger, and Dave McLaughlin of the Canadian Music Centre in BC, and particularly for the care and effort they have put into this concert. My biggest debt of gratitude, however, is to my parents, my children, and particularly to my husband Dennis. They have shown patient understanding of the solitude and intense focus required by the creative process. – 2 – Program Still Waters AK Coope, clarinet; Daniel Tones, marimba; Molly MacKinnon, violin; Christine Lin, violin; Luke Kim, cello Mary Songs I. To John, at the Cross II. To the Gardener III. Soliloquy Robyn Driedger-Klassen, soprano; Marguerite Witvoet, piano Two Movements for String Quartet I. Let Us Wake from This Dream II. Keening Molly MacKinnon, violin; Christine Lin, violin; Tawnya Popoff, viola; Luke Kim, cello Ow INTERMISSION Wo FEATURED EMERGING COMPOSER Cedar (2018) Composed by Maren Lisac AK Coope, clarinet; Daniel Tones, percussion Borromean Rings I. Looping II. Torsion (Devil’s Staircase) III. Unbinding AK Coope, clarinet; Daniel Tones, marimba; Marguerite Witvoet, piano from The Marvelous History of Mariken of Nimmegen I. End of Act II: Ode to Rhetoric II. Beginning of Act III: What Happened Robyn Driedger-Klassen, soprano; Molly MacKinnon, violin; Christine Lin, violin; Tawnya Popoff, viola; Luke Kim, cello – 3 – Still Waters Still Waters is an elaboration of the 1562 Genevan Psalter setting of Psalm 23. Genevan Psalter melodies were somewhat notorious in their day, their unique rhythm scheme precisely reflecting the emphases of late Medieval French. Long notes were used for accented syllables and short notes for unaccented syllables, resulting in lively syncopations, repeating patterns, and directional phrases marked by cadences — an earthy contrast to the ethereal flowing lines of Gregorian chant. Nonetheless, Genevan tunes have a remarkable coherence which Still Waters explores by means of phase-shifting, prolations, and ‘fractal’ ornamentation, using condensed fragments of the original melody. The middle section of the piece is a spare, extended cantilena formed from the arching contours of the first and last notes of each phrase of the original tune, and played by the clarinet in high register surrounded by an unpredictable aura of bowed vibraphone tones. A contrapuntal closing section gradually winds its way down to a recapitulation of the original material. Still Waters was composed in 1980 and first performed at Pioneer Music Camp, Quadra Island, BC by violinists Susan Eddlemon and Adele Pierre, cellist Lawrence Skaggs, clarinetist Stephen Pierre, and percussionist Scott Eddlemon. Mary Songs Mary Songs (1995) are based on the Trier Easter Play, dating from the early fifteenth century. Medieval vernacular dramas arose out of the emphasis in Franciscan spirituality on remorse inspired by compassion. And who cannot feel compassion at the grief of a mother over the unjust death of her innocent child? The fierce confrontation of maternity and mortality is invoked in Julia Kristeva’s proposal of her-ethics which “makes life’s bonds bearable … ‘Herethics’ is a-mort, amour. Eia mater, fons amoris. Let us listen again, therefore, to the Stabat Mater, and to music, all music. It swallows goddesses and strips them of necessity.” I. To John, at the Cross Ah, woe! my Maker is dead, and I in utter need. Great grows my lamentation, crushing my heart with desolation. II. To the Gardener Good sir, if you have carried him out of here, I beg you tell me where you have laid his body and I will take him away. III. Soliloquy I have truly seen the living Lord, my Lord. He did not permit me to touch his feet; my living Lord, I dared not touch his feet. The disciples’ faith will be restored. Christ will depart again, his Father to meet. – 4 – Let Us Wake from This Dream Let Us Wake from This Dream was commissioned by Dr. Sherrill Grace for the 2010 Royal Societies of Canada Conference, Cultures of War and Peace. It was inspired by a poem, Nijmegen, Holland – February 1945 written by my uncle shortly before his death from a wound just near the end of World War II. Nijmegen, Holland – February 1945 opens with a narration in my uncle’s voice in four six-line stanzas.