CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM NOTES Saturday, January 21, 2012, 8pm Gérard Grisey (1946–1998) at UC Berkeley from 1982–1986, Grisey com- Hertz Hall Talea (ou la machine et les herbes folles) (1986) pleted work on Les Espaces Acoustiques, a cycle of six pieces totaling 90 minutes, which grow “We are musicians and our model is sound not from a solo viola in “Prologue” to full orches- Eco Ensemble literature, sound not mathematics, sound not tra and four solo horns in “Epilogue.” Grisey theater, visual arts, quantum physics, geology, then returned to France inspiring many younger David Milnes, conductor astrology or acupuncture.” This famed utter- composers at the Paris Conservatoire until his Jeff Anderle clarinet ance by Grisey highlights the importance of the untimely death in 1998. acoustics of sound as a new source of composi- The title Talea references a compositional Hrabba Atladottir violin tional inspiration. With scientific research into technique that involves the repetition of rhyth- Kyle Bruckmann oboe the world of sound as a central interest, Grisey’s mic patterns. This technique is generally associ- Laurie Camphouse flute ideas as well as his music have been taken to ated with 14th- and 15th-century motet writing, Leighton Fong cello heart by a still-growing number of composers in but can also be found in the work of modern Christopher Froh percussion his native France and abroad. He remains one composers such as Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen Hall Goff trombone of the most influential French composers of the and John Cage. Diane Grubbe flute generation after Pierre Boulez. We may think of rhythmic organization in Born in Belfort, France, near the Swiss Talea as stemming from two musical concepts, Peter Josheff clarinet and German borders, Grisey studied com- speed and contrast. During a performance of Bill Kalinkos clarinet position in Olivier Messaien’s class at the the piece, musical time is marked both by the Adam Luftman trumpet Paris Conservatoire from 1962–1972. Henri speed at which notes are played, particularly Stacey Pelinka flute Dutilleux, composition teacher at the Ecole perceivable during certain exuberant passages, Kurt Rohde violin Normale de la Musique also taught the young as well as by the deliberate transformation of Alicia Telford horn Grisey in 1968, the year before the composer be- a sound from one color to another. Speed and Ann Yi piano gan work on electroacoustics with Jean-Etienne contrast could then be thought of as two ways Marie. In 1972, Grisey attended the Darmstadt of expressing a single temporal phenomenon: summer school, where he was able to take cours- the passing of time during the performance of PROGRAM es by composers Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti a musical piece. and Karlheinz Stockhausen. During the second part of its two consecu- Gérard Grisey (1946–1998) Talea (ou la machine et les herbes folles) (1986) Together with his close colleagues Tristan tive sections, Talea restates previously heard Murail and Michael Levinas, Grisey formed the material in a different context, particularly re- Tristan Murail (b. 1947) L’Esprit des dunes (1993–1994) group L’Itinéraire in 1976. The three compos- lating to speed and contrast, which are both Yotam Mann electronics ers dedicated their work to the advancement of transformed. For example, the contrast between “spectral” music, which uses “spectra,” or series the parts playing simultaneously suggests a of a given sound’s harmonic overtones, as ma- polyphonic (or multi-voiced) texture in the first INTERMISSION terial for their compositions. Grisey and others half of the piece. Slowly we can hear this texture later became wary of using this term to refer to a move toward homogeneity in the second half, Edmund Campion (b. 1957) Flow. Debris. Falls (2010) specific compositional methodology. For Grisey, where contrast (or a lack thereof) between the Joanna Chao piano “Spectralism is not a system like serial music or voices is perceived differently. Jeff Lubow, Ilya Rostovtsev, Jay Cloidt electronics even tonal music. It’s an attitude.... It considers Like much of Grisey’s work, Talea highlights sounds, not as dead objects that you can easily colorful transitions between different sounds. In Marc-André Dalbavie (b. 1961) In advance of the broken time (1994) and arbitrarily permutate in all directions, but the composer’s own words on the piece: “By in- as being like living objects with a birth, lifetime cluding not only the sound but, moreover, the Disklavier courtesy of Yamaha Artist Services. and death.” differences perceived between sounds, the real Directional transformation of sound col- material of the composer becomes the degree of Technical support provided by the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). ors became central to Grisey’s works, both in predictability, or better, the degree of ‘preaudi- electronic and acoustic compositional contexts. bility.’ … It is no longer the single sound whose His Les Chants de l’Amour for 12 voices and density will embody time, but rather the differ- electronics (1982–1984) was an important early ence or lack of difference between one sound and Cal Performances’ 2011–2012 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. work at IRCAM. While teaching composition its neighbor; in other words, the transition from 30 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 31 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES the known to the unknown and the amount of played an important role in the creation of the Edmund Campion (b. 1957) become subversive vehicles, sites for the creator’s information that each sound event introduces.” “Patchwork” program, meant to help facilitate Flow. Debris. Falls (2010) imagination to run without censure. It would electroacoustic composition. Murail has taught please me if David Lynch liked the title, as it numerous important composers while giving Edmund J. Campion, born in Dallas, Texas, is meant to invoke a location in America where Tristan Murail (b. 1947) summer courses at Darmstadt, the Abbaye de in 1957, received his doctoral degree in com- normality exists mostly as an ornamental feature L’Esprit des dunes (1993–1994) Royaumont and the Centre Acanthes. Since position at Columbia University and attended masking a more sinister underbelly. 1997 he has lived in New York, where he a pro- the Paris Conservatory, where he worked with “Like most concertos, the work can be heard In a recent interview on his Winter Fragments fessor of composition at Columbia University. composer Gérard Grisey. In 1993, he created as a narrative—the old story of a solo instrument (2000), Murail discusses his compositional Murail has always been inspired by the the piece Losing Touch (Billaudot Editions, in dialog with an orchestra is played out. But goals in the following way: “Finally, my ulti- beauty and mystery of the desert landscape. His Paris) at IRCAM. He was then commissioned this time there is a technological agent, a ghost mate aim would be to create and master an en- earlier work Sables (1975) also used the desert as by IRCAM to produce a large work for interac- soloist whose part is generated through real-time tirely personal ‘language’—which is not a very a stimulus for musical creation. In L’Esprit des tive electronics, Natural Selection (2002). Other analysis of the soloist’s live performance. The precise term but I use it because there’s nothing dunes, the composer reflects on different sounds projects include a Radio France Commission, technology-born avatar invades the scene, pro- better—which I could use to communicate, a he associates with the desert to create musical L’Autre, the full-scale ballet Playback (commis- ducing a trail of dust and debris that calls into language which would be as flexible and versa- material for the piece. Murail uses brief extracts sioned by IRCAM and the Socitété des Auteurs question the various roles of the live perform- tile as, for example, the musical idioms of the from melodies originating from Mongolian et Compositeurs Dramatiques) and ME, for ers. This is/is not a piano concerto. Occupying end of the tonal period, a language that would diaphonic singing (or throat singing) and from baritone and live electronics, commissioned by the nether regions of expectation, the human- rediscover certain universal and permanent cat- Tibetan chants as one type of source material. the MANCA Festival in association with the computer interaction pushes the conforming egories of musical expression, without wading Another type of material exploited in this Centre National de Création Musicale. envelope of the music into unexpected places: through some sort of nostalgia, or taking one of piece comes from electronically synthesized Dr. Campion is currently Professor of ‘Frankenstein meets the Hydra from Area 13.’ the ‘postmodern’ paths with which we are bom- elaborations of sounds made by certain objects, Music at UC Berkeley, where he also serves as “As in much of my work, the piece is con- barded today.” including rain sticks, maracas, the friction of Co-Director of the Center for New Music and cerned with the manifestation of the unlike- Murail’s musical language is often charac- polystyrene and the tearing of paper (among Audio Technologies (CNMAT). His prizes ly—an attempt to alter the perception and terized by a complex mixture of textural mu- others). After collecting and analyzing these and honors include the Rome Prize, the Nadia emotion of the listener by presenting the ears sical material. His textures are given shape by sounds, Murail was able to put them into a Boulanger Award, the Paul Fromm Award at with the impossible, the forbidden, at times the the natural characteristics of sounds and the compositional context using his own software Tanglewood, a Charles Ives Award given by Grotesque. As with all strange and independent transformation between them. Territoires de “Patchwork” to explore how these sounds could the American Academy of Arts and Letters, creations, the ludic aspect is only one thread in l’oubli (1977), written for solo piano, asks the be transformed.