Yale Percussion Group, Robert Van Sice and James Wood at Sprague Memorial Hall James Wood MDR Leipzig Radio Choir • Ear Massage Percussion Quartet © Cecile Van Sice © Cecile Van James Wood conductor • Yale Percussion Group • Robert Van Sice director 2 James Wood 1 Tongues of Fire 24’30 MDR Leipzig Radio Choir · Ear Massage Percussion Quartet James Wood conductor Cloud-Polyphonies 2 Starlings 7’27 3 Clouds 15’53 4 Buffalo 13’13 Yale Percussion Group · Robert Van Sice director Total timing 61’05 MDR Leipzig Radio Choir Yale Percussion Group Soloists: Felix Plock bass Directed by Robert Van Sice Kerstin Klein-Koyuncu soprano Victor Caccese Garrett Arney Jae-Hyong Kim speaker · Jonathan Allen · Mari Yoshinaga Ear Massage Percussion Quartet Doug Perry · Cristobál Gajardo Diego Espinosa Cruz Gonzalez Wim Vos · Lester Rodriguez Gomez Photo: James Wood at the recording session Enric Monfort Barberá for Cloud-Polyphonies © Cecile Van Sice 2 5 Notes by James Wood Soon the discourse splinters into eight different manufacture of steel pans in the West Indies languages and associated characters – Hebrew, is no coincidence, nor is their association Tongues of Fire Latin-American Spanish with its crisp rhythmic Maori, Jamaican English, Latin, Hungarian, with fi re, one of the many multi-faceted and Russian, German and French. After the symbolic images, which appear throughout the Tongues of Fire was written during the articulations, and possibilities for Salsa-like drunken climax of this section, Part III is more texts. Other instruments specially built for the summer of 2001 in response to an intriguing syncopations. I then sought out a wide variety contemplative, and sets the beautiful poem, work include some metal shakers and sand- commission from David Connell – to write a of complimentary texts, which would serve to O ignis Spiritus paracliti (O comforting fi re of boards, whose sound amplifi es, develops and substantial work for symphonic chorus and expand certain images and ideas within the Spirit) by Hildegard of Bingen. Finally Part IV blends with the hissing sibilant sounds from percussion quartet for the 140th Anniversary main text. Furthermore, I resolved to set each completes the story in a whirlwind of dreams, the chorus in Part I, and the specially-tuned of the Yale Glee Club. Conscious of the of these complimentary texts in a different ‘whirly tubes’ which blend with the choir’s enormous tradition of American university Glee language, so that the line ‘and they were prophesies, signs, blood, fi re and vapour, whistling at the end of Part III, adding an extra Clubs, and the part that gospel and spiritual all fi lled with the Holy Spirit, and began to culminating in Joel’s prophesy that ‘whoever dimension to Hildegard’s mysticism at the line music always seems to have played in it, my speak with other tongues’ would trigger a shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be thoughts for a subject were immediately drawn patchwork not only of different languages, but saved’. ‘de te nubes fl uunt, ether volat’. also of singing styles, colours and ethos. This towards the story of Pentecost. Not only The percussion instrumentation is based Cloud-Polyphonies patchwork would then be woven around the would this story serve as a perfect medium around a quartet of oil drums, which are laid Like many composers before me, I have long main Spanish text in ever-increasing detail and through which to try to ignite the kind of on their sides and mounted on special cradles. been fascinated by the phenomenon of clouds. transcendental spirituality (which is the very intensity throughout the work. I had already developed a system of notation For Debussy, clouds represented the perfect essence of gospel music) and indeed the very Tongues of Fire is laid out in four Parts, which for striking oil drums on different parts of their natural model for his ‘orchestration without act of singing together, but also I saw it as a follow each other without a break. After a short surfaces, and had been astonished by the feet’ – a music which fl oats free from any way to acknowledge and emphasize America’s introduction – an invocation to the Holy Spirit phenomenal timbral richness, diversity and discernible or defi nable bass-line. For Xenakis, rich cultural diversity. The inclusion of a and to Spirits in general – Part I develops into power of these apparently crude instruments. Stochastic Clouds were a phenomenon where percussion group would not only extend the a rather bizarre setting of the 10th-century In Tongues of Fire I went on to discover even a myriad of random elements come together role that percussion instruments often play in hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus. Here the text is greater potential in their use as resonators for to form a tangible, controllable mass, whilst traditional gospel music, but would also help to not really sung, but more ‘encoded’ beneath other instruments such as cowbells, gongs, in Messiaen’s La Transfi guration de Notre emphasize this sense of cultural diversity. ever-changing clouds of sibilants and breath- guiros and metal rods, which are placed on Seigneur, Jésus-Christ, the mystical cloud My fi rst main decision, therefore, was to sounds. This is the ‘lighting of the fi re’, which the surface of the drums and then struck or which enveloped Christ on the mountain is set the central text, from the Acts of the eventually ignites at the beginning of Part II, scraped to produce complex ‘hybrid-sounds’. depicted almost literally by clouds of string Apostles, in Spanish – not Castilian, but where the central Spanish narrative begins. The fact that oil drums are used in the glissandi. 4 5 My interest recalls a little of all these distorted canons. The musical material for As more and more starlings gather, these powerful upward draught of a thermal within representations, but specifi cally refers to the each percussionist consists of two distinct, pre-migration test-fl ights become increasingly them – they are dangerous, and therefore movements of large formations of organisms – polyphonic ‘voices’, making a total of twelve spectacular, until fi nally several thousand avoided by balloonists. Passive clouds (cirrus) whether animals, insects, birds, fi sh, water, voices in all. The individual motifs that make birds form up together to perform an extended are generally at a much higher altitude, and steam or crowds of human beings – where, up each voice are imitated in turn by each synchronized display. From this moment, have more of a wispy appearance – these are although the general direction of the mass of the six percussionists, although both the focus on any particular individual bird is harmless, although should be watched in case is clear, the relationship in space between motifs themselves and the rhythmic distance lost, as one becomes mesmerized by the they develop into active clouds. In Clouds, the individual elements within the mass is of each imitation are subject to continual brilliantly synchronized aerobatics and shape- passive clouds are represented by sounds in a constant state of fl ux. The freedom and transformation. Melodic fragments, each with transformations of an enormous black cloud of produced by bowing, scraping or rubbing, and individuality of these elements is nevertheless their own distinctive form and character, are several thousand starlings. Gradually, following active clouds by sounds produced by striking. sent across the six percussionists like waves – kept in check by a shared sense of purpose, some arcane signal, the cloud disappears and Between these two extremes come sounds either from right to left or from left to right – as if some mystical spirit were controlling is gone for the winter. sustained by tremolandi – these represent the sometimes very slowly, and sometimes very their behaviour, as a choreographer directs a The second movement was inspired by my clouds’ transitional state, as they develop from fast, like ricochets. group of dancers. Specifi c examples of this fi rst ever experience in a hot-air balloon. It was passive into active. are shoals of fi sh, water particles subjected Each of the three movements of Cloud- a beautiful day in August, and for a couple of The fi nal movement of Cloud-Polyphonies to the ebb and fl ow of tidal currents, fl ocks Polyphonies is scored for a completely hours we glided silently over the Oxfordshire invokes that quintessential American symbol, of migratory birds, herds of animals, clouds different instrumentation and can be performed countryside. Never before have I been so the North American Bison, or Buffalo. Here the of water vapour, swarms of bees, and even separately, or in any combination, as required. conscious of the presence and activities of continuously changing waves of sound which crowds of Pilgrims at the Hajj. The fi rst movement, Starlings, is written for the clouds. As we drifted up to our cruising six marimbas and woodblocks; the second, zigzag across the line of sixty-six drums recall When Mike Rosen fi rst invited me to write altitude, focus on these mystical, intangible Clouds, for metal instruments and prepared the sound of herds of galloping buffalo. The a percussion sextet for a consortium of and supernatural phenomena was intensifi ed piano; and the third, Buffalo, for drums, sound, however, comes not from the animals, American Universities, I immediately thought as we gradually became enveloped by an simantras and bullroarers. but from the earth itself – an ever-changing that this could provide the perfect medium to overwhelming sensation of deepest silence. terrain of mud, stone, brush, pampas and water explore this phenomenon in musical terms. The fi rst movement concerns the extraordinary Our pilot explained how to ‘read’ the clouds – becomes the surface for a thousand pounding The result was Cloud-Polyphonies.