sic | David Hoose Mu , c w ond Ne uc e to ag r Beasts ll | o El C iz Martin Brody a b e t h

K e u s c Acknowledgments h ,

Recorded at St. Mary of the Hills Church, Milton, Milton, s o Massachusetts and Rogers Center for the Arts at Merrimack p r

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College in North Andover, Massachusetts — March 20, 26 n

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and April, 24, 2006.

Beasts |

Martin Brody o

Recording Engineer: Joel Gordon n

a Recording Production: Joel Gordon & Martin Brody r p

o s - Cover image: “A Wild Cat,” Zakariya ibn Muhammed o z Qazwini, 13th c., ‘Aja’ib al-makhluqat (Wonders of creation), z e 18th . ms., the Walters Collection m

l, a ll Photo of Pamela Dellal: Kate L Photography e D a el Martin Brody’s music is available from the composer. m Pa | Ja ano nice opr WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM Felty, ezzo-s TROY1595 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. m 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2015 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Collage New Music Performs Martin Brody Martin Brody Beasts 1 Refrain [1:28] 2 The Octopus [4:49] TROY1595 3 Refrain [1:27] 4 A Noiseless Patient Spider [3:16] 5 Beasts [6:02] Elizabeth Keusch, soprano Collage New Music David Hoose, conductor Millennium Sightings 6 Trina Voce [3:36] Collage New Music 7 Zechariahu, the Deliverer [3:55] David Hoose, musical director 8 Solitude [8:04] Frank Epstein, founder Janice Felty, mezzo-soprano flute bass Collage New Music Christopher Kreuger, * James Orleans, ‡ David Hoose, conductor Jessi Rosinski, flute‡ Benjamin Levy, bass* Peggy Pearson, oboe*‡# Anne Hobson Pilot, harp*‡ Tree of Life Robert Annis, clarinet‡ Donald Berman, piano* 9 Part 1 [15:22] Steven Jackson, clarinet* Christopher Oldfather, piano‡ 10 Part 2 [9:53] Catherine French, violin‡# Frank Epstein, percussion*‡ violin*# percussion* Pamela Dellal, mezzo-soprano Ronan Lefkowitz, Craig McNutt, ‡ Collage New Music Kate Vincent, viola# Anne Black, viola*‡ * Millennium Sightings Joel Moerschel, cello*‡# ‡ Beasts Total Time = 57:59 # Tree of Life TROY1595

WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1595 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2015 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Collage New Music Performs Martin Brody The Composer Millennium Sightings Martin Brody is Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music at Wellesley Reading about the 17th c. mystic, Shabbetai Zevi and his Kabbalah-based, messianic College, where he has been on the faculty since 1979. He served as movement got me interested in setting texts about the millennium--not “our” millennium, Fromm Resident in Musical Composition at the American Academy which was then rapidly approaching, but rather other millenarian moments, when someone in Rome in 2001, and he returned to the Academy as Andrew Heiskell or other declared a new age, the end of the world as we know it, an alternative year zero. Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome from 2007-10. He There were many possibilities. I settled on Joachim of Fiore, a 12th-century. Italian has received various awards for his work, among them the Academy- monk who declared that the Third Age, the age of the Holy Spirit and the “Sabbath of Institute Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim mankind” would begin in the year the Christian calendar calls 1284 A.D. A utopian Fellowship, several commissions from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Fromm socialist before his time, Joachim developed a detailed concordance of the Old and New Residency at the William Walton Estate in Ischia and the Roger Sessions Fellowship at Testaments, organized by complicated numerological formulations, and a dramatic vision the Liguria Arts and Humanities Center in Bogliasco. He has also written extensively of the apocalypse and the impending new age. For contrast, I turned to an excerpt from the about post-war American music and serves on the editorial boards of Perspectives of New nervous, apocalyptic writing of Abraham Abulafia, a 13th-century Kabbalist. Abulafia, who Music and The Open Space. An active advocate of modern and contemporary music, he is developed a system for meditating on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as a technique for currently serving as President of the Stefan Wolpe Society. achieving visionary trances, compared his “science” of alphabet combinations with music. In contrast to Joachim and Abulafia, both obsessed with finding a key to unlock the secrets of history, Miraji tells us to chill out, stop counting, and attend to the flow of time The Music and immediate experience. I tried to find musical parallels to the poem’s calm recycling and elaboration of images while letting the narrator’s spiritual epiphany speak for itself. Beasts Millennium Sightings is dedicated to the memory of Earl Kim. The three pieces presented here explore a common premise: imaginative identification with something or someone outside one’s self as a catalyst of self-transformation. In Beasts, it’s identification with animals—a spider casting its web, a werewolf’s “painful change,” Tree of Life an octopus staring back from the other side of an aquarium. I arranged the poems in this Tree of Life is a setting of poems by Richard Wilbur, John Ashbery, Robert Lowell, and set to suggest an initial resistance and gradual surrender to human/animal identification. James Merrill, interspersed with fragments of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Each of its texts A fragment of Richard Wilbur’s beautiful poem, “Beasts,” provides the language for a deals with the relation between a person and the natural world while touching on a range ritornello, which occurs twice before the poem is completed in the final song. Wilbur’s of themes—alienation, mortality, and human wastefulness. I have ordered the poems to werewolf appears, only in the fifth section, after an uncanny glimpse of James Merrill’s suggest an increasing identification with the natural world—ultimately in the ‘dust unto octopus and an encounter with Walt Whitman’s metaphysical spider. Beasts was dust’ sense. Although each song is complete, the music flows continuously, with cyclic commissioned by the Paul Buttonwieser Fund for New Music and is dedicated to the elements returning throughout in new contexts. memory of Clara Claiborne Park. Beasts and Millennium Sightings were commissioned and premiered by Collage New Millennium Sightings Music. Tree of Life was commissioned and premiered by Winsor Music. Heartfelt Trina Voce (attr. Joachim of Fiore) gratitude to the musicians and organizations that made this music their own and brought it Trina voce simul cantant inaudita cantica et collaudent regem celi, qui fecit hec omnia. to life. And special thanks to the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and Wellesley College for Trino deo trina turba electorum carmina modulatur et exultat per eterna secula. making this recording possible. (With triple voice they sing together unheard songs and praise the king of heaven, who has made all things. The triple multitude of the elect sings to the triune god, lifting up its The Texts songs throughout eternity.) Beasts (Richard Wilbur) Unable to obtain reprint permission. Zechariahu the Deliverer (from Abraham Abulafia, Book of the Letter, transl. Jack Hirschman) See http://werewolf-news.com/2009/06/beasts-by-richard-wilbur/ This is the day of annunciation and Zechariahu the Deliverer rides on a cloud heavily laden with dew—thin dew with light shining through. His mount is a chariot of The Octopus (James Merrill) fire, his horses stallions of air, his servants fiery animals talking fire and clouds around the Unable to obtain reprint permission. mountains of mountains. See http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/merrill/upward.html …and the breath of deliverance storms over the land in his flight, law and word renew his heart which he writes in flaming script out of a flaming pen’s power—fearful and awesome A Noiseless, Patient Spider (Walt Whitman) ink irrigating the land, licking the dryplaces, wringing from the dry places the bow and A noiseless patient spider, arrow of Torah, which will split the sky in two… I mark’d where, on a little promonotory, it stood isolated; and it’s a high wind the wind of God, it is life rousing the wise at heart to the voice of Mark’d how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, YDVD standing in sheer enlightenment; It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself; adhere to and swear in his name. Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them. And you, O my Soul, where you stand, Solitude (Miraji, trans. Geeta Patel) Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, Time isn’t evil Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing--seeking the spheres, to connect them; it’s only the easy wash of a river. Till the bridge you will need be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; This much I can say: I am neither evil, nor am I time I’m not even the easy river’s wash Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul. Though I cannot speak of time, this much I can say everyone who lives alone lives in death’s haunting Evil, good, time, a river--these are the things crowding eternity’s home I live not in any home, isolated, solitary a stranger The houses, these jungles, these flowing paths and rivers From Metamorphoses (Daphne) (Ovid) these mountains, tall buildings seen suddenly desolate tombs and a mosque caretaker ... torpor gravis occupat artus, mollia cinguntur tenui praecordia libro, in frondem crines, claimed by death children washing into laughter a dying traveller hit by a car tenuous in ramos bracchia crescunt, breezes, thick green few clouds floating back and forth back and forth pes modo tam velox pigris radicibus haeret, ora cacumen habet: remanet nitor unus in illa. What are they? (... her limbs grew numb, heavy, her breasts were folded in delicate bark, leaves grew in her They belong to time, they are the river’s easy wash hair, her arms becamee branches, and her fleet feet were rooted held in the ground, and her These houses, these jungles paths and rivers head became a tree top Everything gone except her grace, her shining.) buildings, a mosque caretaker breezes, foliage and clouds floating across the sky all these, each thing sits in my home. From Waking Early Sunday Morning (Robert Lowell) I am that time, with every breath the river washes Unable to obtain reprint permission. But there’s no evil in me. See http://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/rl-wakin.htm How can I say this—time’s beginning and time’s ending, death and the forever live in me. From Metamorphoses (Arethusa) (Ovid) Delia rupit humum, caecisque ego mersa cavernis advehor Ortygiam, quae me cognomine Tree of Life divae grata meae superas eduxit prima sub auras. From Advice to a Prophet (Richard Wilbur)) (Delia broke the earth, and I plunged into dark depths, and then emerged into the air here, Unable to obtain reprint permission. named Ortygia in gratitude to my goddess.) See http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/advice-to-a-prophet/ An Upward Look (James Merrill) From Metamorphoses (Daphne) (Ovid) Unable to obtain reprint permission. Si flumina numen habetis, qua nimium placui, mutando perde figuram! See http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/merrill/upward.html (If the rivers have any power in the rivers, change the body which has given too much delight!) From Metamorphoses (Hyacinth) (Ovid) semper eris mecum memorique haerebis in ore. te lyra pulsa manu, te carmina nostra The Grazing Grain (John Ashbery) sonabunt, flosque novus scripto gemitus imitabere nostros. Unable to obtain reprint permission. (You will be with me forever, your memory contained in song. And you will be reborn as a new flower whose markings will spell out my cries of grief.) sic | David Hoose The Performers Mu , c w ond Ne uc Praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer as “among the finest artists of contemporary e to ag r (or any other) music,” Collage New Music comprises some of the most experienced and ll | o El exciting instrumentalists skilled in the intricacies, virtuosity and emotional depth of new C iz a b music. Members include musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, highly respected e t h musicians from Boston’s freelance community, and musicians from New York and

K beyond. Throughout Collage’s four decades of distinguished and engaging performances of e u s compelling programs, the ensemble has stood as a leader in the community of adventurous c h music makers, providing a vital arena for the union of composer, performer and listener. ,

s The ensemble embraces a wide and deep repertoire that reaches from classical twentieth o p century works to powerful but obscure older works and to exciting creations by American

r a composers, and Collage New Music’s commissioning history has helped create a repertoire n o that serves all new music ensembles. Collage concerts have ranged from solo performances

| to large ensemble works, from theater works to fully staged chamber operas, and to music

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n with extensive electronic equipment. The ensemble appears on the New World, Koch, and

a r Albany labels, and its recording of Harbison’s Mottetti di Montale was a 2005 Grammy p o Nominee for Best Performance by a Small Ensemble. s - o z z Pamela Dellal, mezzo-soprano, has enjoyed a distinguished career as e m an acclaimed soloist and recitalist. She has appeared in Symphony Hall,

l, a the Kennedy Center, Avery Fisher Hall, and the Royal Albert Hall, and ll e premiered a Harbison chamber work in New York, San Francisco, Boston D a and London. Ms. Dellal has received critical acclaim for performances el m of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s C-minor Mass, Pa | and Bach’s B-minor Mass, St. Matthew and St. John Passions. Operatic appearances include J no anic pra leading roles in the operas Alcina, Albert Herring, Dido and Aeneas, La Clemenza di Tito, e Felt zzo-so y, me Così Fan Tutte, Vanessa, The Rape of Lucretia, and Winter’s Tale. She has been featured by the Handel and Haydn Society, Aston Magna, The Boston Early Music Festival, Tokyo Oratorio Society, Opera Company of Boston, the National Chamber Orchestra, Boston Baroque, Baltimore Choral Arts Society, and the Dallas Bach Society, appearing in concert in major cities in Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan. Known for her work with Renaissance and Baroque chamber music, Ms. Dellal Oberlin Conservatory, and with Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger at Brandeis University; has appeared multiple times with the Boston Early Music Festival, Ensemble Chaconne horn with Barry Tuckwell, Joseph Singer, and Richard Mackey; and conducting with and the Musicians of the Old Post Road, and is a current member of the Blue Heron Gustav Meier at the Tanglewood Music Center. Renaissance Choir. With Sequentia Ms. Dellal has made numerous recordings of the music of Hildegard von Bingen. A passionate advocate for contemporary music, she has sung Young American soprano Elizabeth Keusch has emerged as an artist to often with the Boston ensembles Collage New Music, Dinosaur Annex and Boston Musica watch. Firmly established in the new music community, her musical and Viva, premiering works by many prominent composers. She has been a regular soloist communication gifts have been acknowledged by the press in reviews in the renowned Bach Cantata series presented by Emmanuel Music for over 30 years, of her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in the American premiere having performed almost all 200 of Bach’s sacred cantatas. She has recorded for Arabesque, of Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos, and her performance of the Artona, BMG, CRI, Dorian, Meridian, and KOCH. She serves as faculty at the Boston Boston premiere of Judith Weir’s King Harald’s Saga. Her collaboration Conservatory and at the Longy School of Music of Bard College. with Helmuth Rilling has included successive engagements at the Oregon Bach Festival and the Seattle Symphony. The soprano performed James MacMillan’s Parthenogenesis Mezzo-soprano Janice Felty has premiered and recorded numerous and Judith Weir’s Thread in her first appearance on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green works, including those of John Harbison, John Adams. Philip Glass, Umbrella Series. As a graduate of New England Conservatory, Elizabeth Keusch has Martin Brody, Tod Machover, Judith Weir and Bernard Rands. She has appeared with virtually every musical organization in the Boston area, including Musica sung with the National Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Viva and Collage New Music. She is also in demand for opera productions worldwide. Seattle Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Bargemusic, Aspen Music Elizabeth Keusch holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas, Festival, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera. a Master’s of Music Degree, and an Artist Diploma from New England Conservatory.

David Hoose, music director of Collage New Music since 1992, is the recipient of the 2005 Alice M. Ditson Conductor’s Award, given “in recognition of exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers,” and of the 2008 Choral Arts New England’s Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr. Hoose has been Music Director of Cantata Singers & Ensemble for thirty-two years, and he is Professor of Music at the Boston University School of Music, where he has been Director of Orchestral Activities since 1987. As a horn player, he was a founding member of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet, 1981 winner of the Walter W. Naumburg Award for Chamber Music. He studied composition with Richard Hoffmann at the