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Eastman American Music Series
A Message from the Director
Ever since the appointment of Howard Hanson as Director of the Eastman School of Music in 1924, Eastman has been on a continuing course to encourage the future of music by American composers. From the earliest years of Dr. Hanson's 40-year directorship, Eastman produced each Spring a festival of new works by young Americans, including the first performances of orchestral works by Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Elliott Carter, Randall Thompson, and Roger Sessions, for example, together with the initial performances of a great many works by Eastman faculty, graduates, and students. Recordings conducted by Hanson, of American composers of his own and earlier generations, helped spread both familiarity with many American composers and the reputation of the Eastman School all over the world.
In the meantime, the strength of Eastman's composition program remains unabated under the current faculty: Sydney Hodkinson, David Liptak, Robert Morris, Christopher Rouse, Allan Schindler, Joseph Schwantner, and Augusta Read Thomas.
Close collaborations are fostered between the School's performers and composers as the result of a long-standing requirement that no student singer or instrumentalist graduate from the School without the performance of some substantive work of the past 40 years. During the School's 75th anniversary celebration in 1996-97, all Eastman concerts will include a performance of a work by an Eastman graduate, faculty member, or student.
We at Eastman are all very proud of the opening of a new recording series with Albany Records, a firm that continues to make the most notable accomplishments in behalf of music in America.
Director, Eastman School of Music
Diversity is a defining feature of American society. Ours is a country full of differences - differences of race, ethnic heritage, ideology, sexuality, to name just a few. To be sure, this amazing range of differences was probably never envisioned by America's political architects. And certainly, our differences have not always made for smooth sailing; some of our disagreements have been harsh, even violent. But with a healthy mixture of curiosity and good will, America's sometimes bewildering diversity can be a source of rejuvenation and great joy.
The triumphs and challenges of America's diversity are no less evident in our concert music. We have seen a number of musical styles appear: neoclassicism and serialism (imported by way of Stravinsky, Bartók, Hindemith, Schoenberg, and others), indeterminacy, electronic and computer music, minimalism, the new complexity - the list goes on and on. Such diversity can also be found in this series of American music recordings.
It is important to remember that each new "innovation" has not replaced what has come before but, instead, joined in the fray. Now, at century's end, composers as disparate in aesthetic and technique as Philip Glass and Charles Wuorinen (to take two American composers born only a year apart) continue - almost stubbornly - to flourish. There are those who still imagine that one or another of these differing aesthetics will eventually emerge victorious. Perhaps it would be more fortuitous to see musical alternatives multiply and to see larger audiences even more open to new musical experiences.
Born in 1949, Christopher Rouse is professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he has taught since 1981. Rouse has received many awards for his music, including the 1993 Pulitzer Prize. His inclination for gloomy musical subjects and themes earned him the nickname "Mr. Sunshine" during his tenure as ComposerinResidence for the Baltimore Symphony (1986ú89). But the nickname is superficial; it tempts us to focus on the feeling of terror that pervades much of Rouse's music and to ignore other qualities, such as its energy or its solemnity.
The Mitternachtslieder were composed in 1979 to poetry by Georg Trakl. Set for bassbaritone, oboe/English horn (the latter always to be played with a contrabassoon reed), clarinet/bass clarinet, trumpet, piano/celesta, percussion (two players), violin, viola, cello, and double bass, Rouse's setting of this frightening poetry recalls both the harmonies and darkness of Berg's Wozzeck and the extended vocal and instrumental techniques of his former teacher, George Crumb. The music is also viscerally dramatic. Indeed, Rouse has suggested the piece should be performed in dim lighting to heighten its emotional effect. One interesting feature of the score, not immediately apparent, is the function of the instrumental interludes connecting the songs; for Rouse, these interludes depict the gradual descent of an imagined listener into Trakl's nightmarish world.
While the Mitternachtslieder portray a steady decline into psychosis, the Quattro Madrigali (written in 1976 for the Gregg Smith Singers) represent an altogether different sort of journey. The first two madrigals are marked by dissonant harmonies and complicated rhythms that can be traced to Messiaen's Cinq Rechants, a work that Rouse was studying at the time of composition. The remaining madrigals, however, become progressively less dissonant, as can be seen most strikingly in the third madrigal, "Luca serene." Here, Rouse quotes Monteverdi's famous setting of the same poem, from his fourth book of madrigals. Above the Monteverdi original, Rouse adds an additional layer of his own, more harmonically astringent, music.
Stephen Albert (1941-1992) was an American composer whose life was cut short tragically at the height of his career. He shared with many of his contemporaries a great disdain for the high modernist achievement of much post1945 music. However, Albert's condemnation of this music (particularly serialism) was unusually strident. He viewed the history of Western concert music prior to 1900 as "a sixhundredyear continuum, disrupted by the psychological shock and despair of the world wars, one hopeless cold war, and two disillusioning wars in Asia." That he wished to restore that continuum is evident from one of the major projects left uncompleted at the time of his death, a treatise entitled A General Theory of Tonality and the Harmonic Fields of Western Music.
Into Eclipse, a song cycle for tenor and chamber ensemble or orchestra, sets texts from Ted Hughes's adaptation of the Roman playwright Seneca's Oedipus. The themes of patricide and man's inability to control his destiny, already violent in Seneca's original, are graphically expressed in the Hughes version. Accordingly, Into Eclipse is more violent than some of Albert's other vocal works, such as his later Flower of the Mountain, which borrows a theme from the earlier work. Most striking, perhaps, in Albert's work is the logic of his harmonic progressions and his convincing sense of musical continuity.
I. Prologue and Riddle Song
a simple riddle lift everything aside
what has four legs at dawn
two legs at noon three legs at dusk
and is weakest when it has most?
“I will find the answer” is that an answer?
And I was happy fleeing from my father
Feeling, yes, but unafraid
Till I stumbled, as God in heaven saw me,
I stumbled on this kingdom.
The fear, someday, I'd kill him
Murder him! Murder him! Murder him!
I was terrified — I was so terrified
But the fear came with me
And it grew till it now surrounds me
Like a blind man in darkness.
Get away from these cries
This air that you've poisoned
With the curse that you carry
As you should have done long ago
If only our fate was ours to choose
You would see me on quiet waters
Full sail but a light wind
No blast no smashed rigging
No flogging downward into cliffs
If Fate were ours to choose.
The middle course is the safe one
I see things in darkness moving
Many pale masks lifted sinking
A growling sound a humming
That seems to silence everything
Like a vast flock of autumn starlings
A rushing gloomy wind of twitterings
Swirling back and round and round
And they come grabbing at the earth
The tree roots at out clothes
In their pale ghostly voices
His face pressed in the earth
"I am the man you murdered
O men O men drive him away
O men O men take the earth from him
His father will take the light!"
I wonder which god I've pleased
Which of them has brought me peace
And followed me everywhere
At last you've escaped it
It's left you your new face
Adaptation of Seneca's Oedipus.
Reprinted with permission of Mr. Hughes.
Rouse: Mitternachtslieder
poetry by Georg Trakl · translations by Alan Waldron
O der Abend, der in die finsteren Dörfer der Kindheit geht.
Der Weiher unter den Weiden
Füllt sich mit den verpesteten Seufzern der Schwermut.
O der Wald, der leise die braunen Augen senkt,
Da aus des Einsamen knöchernen Händen
Der Purpur seiner verzückten Tage hinsinkt.
O die Nähe des Todes. Laß uns beten.
In dieser Nacht lösen auf lauen Kissen
Vergilbt von Weihrauch sich der Liebenden schmächtige Glieder.
O the evening that enters the darker hamlets of childhood.
The pond under the willows
Fills up with the pestilent sighs of sorrow.
O the wood that softly lowers its eyes of brown
As from the lonely man's bony hands
The purple of his rapturous days sinks down.
O the nearness of death. Let us pray.
In this night unloosen on lukewarm cushions
Yellowed with incense the delicate limbs of the lovers.
In Hof scheint weiß der herbstliche Mond.
Vom Dachrand fallen phantastische Schatten.
Ein Schweigen in leeren Fenstern wohnt;
Da tauchen leise herauf die Ratten
Und huschen pfeifend hier und dort
Und ein gräulicher Dunsthauch wittert
Ihnen nach aus dem Abort,
Den geisterhaft der Mondschein durchzittert
Und sie keifen vor Gier wie toll
Und erfüllen Haus und Scheunen,
Die von Korn und Früchten voll.
Eisige Winde im Dunkel greinen.
In the courtyard shines white the autumnal moon
From the roof-edge fall fantastic shadows.
A hush resides in empty windows;
Now softly surface the rats
And whisk peeping here and there
After them out of the toilet
Through which the moonlight spookily shivers
And they squabble like mad with greed
And overrun house and silo
Full of grain and fruits.
Icy winds in the darkness keen.
Blinde Klage im Wind, mondene Wintertage,
Kindheit, leise verhallen die Schritte an schwarzer Hecke,
Leise kommt die weiße Nacht gezogen,
Verwandelt in purpurne Träume Schmerz und Plage
Daß nimmer der dornige Stachel
ablasse vom verwesenden Leib.
Tief im Schlummer aufseufzt die bange Seele,
Tief der Wind in zerbrochenen Bäumen,
Und es schwankt die Klagegestalt
Der Mutter durch den einsamen Wald
Dieser schweigenden Trauer; Nächte,
Erfüllt von Tränen, feurigen Engeln.
Silbern zerschellt an kahler Mauer ein kindlich Gerippe.
Blind lament in the wind, moony winter days,
Childhood, softly steps die away at the black hedge,
Softly the white night draws on,
Transforms into purple dreams pain and torment
That never the thorny spur
let up from the decaying body.
Deep in slumber, the anxious soul sighs out,
Deep the wind in shattered trees,
And there staggers the plaintive shape
Of the mother through the lonely wood
Of this silent grief; nights
Filled with tears, with fiery angels.
Silver smashes on a bare wall a childish frame.
Unter verschnittenen Weiden,
Und Blätter treiben, tönen Trompeten.
Fahnen von Scharlach stürzen
Reiter entlang an Roggenfeldern,
Oder Hirten singen nachts
In den Kreis ihrer Feuer,
von einer schwarzen Mauer;
Fahnen von Scharlach, Lachen,
where brown children play
And drive leaves, trumpets are sounding.
Banners of scarlet plunge
through the maple's mourning
Riders along by ryefields, empty mills.
Or shepherds sing at night, and deer step
Into the circle of their fires,
the grove's age-old grief,
Dancers lift themselves from off a black wall;
Banners of scarlet, laughing,
Sind die wilden Vögel fortgezogen.
Am Abend weht von unseren Sternen ein eisiger Wind.
Beugt sich die zerbrochene Stirne der Nacht.
Unter Eichen schaukeln wir auf einem silbernen Kahn.
Immer klingen die weißen Mauern der Stadt.
O mein Bruder klimmen wir blinde Zeiger gen Mitternacht.
The wild birds have departed.
At evening blows from our stars an icy wind.
Bends the broken brow of the night.
Under oak trees we rock in a silvery boat.
Always sound the white walls of the city.
O my brother, climb we blind hands towards midnight.
translations by Tom Donnan
Vezzosi augelli in fra le verdi fronde
Tempran' a prova lascivette note.
Mormora l'aura e fa le foglie e l'onde
Garrir, che variamente ella percote.
Quando tacciono gli augelli, alto risponde;
Quando cantan gli augei, più lieve scote
Fia caso od arte or accompagn' ed ora
Alterna i versi lor la musica ora.
Charming little birds among the green boughs
vie with each other, intoning wanton notes.
The breeze murmurs and makes the leaves and the waters
rustle, which it strikes this way and that.
When the birds are silent, loudly it answers;
when the birds sing, more lightly it strikes.
Whether by chance or by art, sometimes it accompanies, other times
It alternates their verses with music.
La giovinetta scorza che involge in tronco e i rami
D'un verde lauro, Amor vuol ch'io sempre ami;
E le tenere fronde fra cui vaghi concenti
Fan gli augeletti al mormorar de' venti;
E l'ombra fresca e lieta che da le foglie acerbe
Cade co' dolci somni in grembo a l'erbe
Quivi la rete asconde nè'n parte più secreta
Stanco di saettare Amor s'acqueta.
The young and tender bark that wraps the trunk and the branches
of a green laurel tree, Love wishes me always to love;
and the tender boughs among which the little birds
make lovely music to the murmuring of the winds;
and the cool and delightful shade which from the green leaves
falls with sweet slumber upon the meadow's lap.
Here he hides the snare, and in some secret place,
tired of shooting his arrows, Love rests.
Luci serene e chiare, Voi m'incendete; ma prov' il core
Nell'incendio diletto, non dolore.
Voi mi ferite; ma prov' il petto
Non dolor ne la piaga, ma diletto.
Alma ch' è tutta foco e tutta sangue
Si strugg' e non si duol, mor' e non langue.
you set me afire; but my heart feels
in the flame delight, not pain.
you wound me; but my breast feels
not pain in the wound, but delight.
a soul that's all afire and bathed in blood
wastes away but feels no pain, dies but does not languish.
IV (Michelangelo Buonarroti)
In me la morte, in te la vita mia.
Tu distingui e concedi e parti il tempo;
quanto vuo', breve e lungo è il viver mio.
Felice son nella tua cortesia
Beata l'alma, ove non corre tempo,
per te s'è fatta a contemplare Dio.
In me death, in you my life.
You mark and grant and divide time;
my life is as short or as long as you wish.
Happy am I in your kindness.
Blessed the soul where time does not course,
through you it has arrived at contemplating God.
Stephen Albert, Into Eclipse
Stephen Oosting, tenor · Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble; Sydney Hodkinson, Conductor · Susan Reath, flute · Alan Keating, clarinets · Craig Smith, horn · Frank Tamburro, trumpet · David Brickman, Julie Gigante, Florence Schwartz, Tamara Mickel, violins I · Sara Briggs, Mary Corbett, Kristine Fink, Rachel Waldron, violins II · Pamela Wert, Laura Kuennen, Nancy Holland, viola · David Crumb, Mark Stewart, cello · Joseph Carver, double bass ·John Manno, harp · Bryan Pezzone, piano · Kristin Shiner, John R. Beck, percussion
Recorded in Eastman Theatre 3/26/83 by Ros Ritchie
Christopher Rouse, Mitternachtslieder
Leslie Guinn, baritone · Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble; Sydney Hodkinson, Conductor · David Simon, oboe/English horn ·Mark Gallagher, clarinet ·James Hynes, trumpet ·Tracy Davis, Christopher Norton, percussion · Karen Marx, violin · Laura Kuennen, viola ·Karl Parens, cello · Paul Ousley, double bass ·Kathryn LeCouf, piano/celesta
Recorded in Eastman Theatre 11/29/83 by Ros Ritchie
Christopher Rouse, Quattro Madrigali
Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble; Donald Neuen, Conductor · Graduate Chamber Singers: Paula Miller, soprano · Leslie Umphrey, soprano · Erma Gattie, alto · Allyn Muth, alto · Kenneth Davis, tenor ·Rafael Bundage, tenor · Keith Frederick Howard, bass · Daniel McCabe, bass
Recorded in Eastman Theatre 2/22/84 by Ros Ritchie and Mary Van Houten;
Leslie Guinn, bass-baritone, has performed with the Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Baltimore, National, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras and l'Orchestre de Monte Carlo. He made his European debut in 1983 with the Stuttgart Opera singing Wozzeck. He has premiered and recorded many new works, including William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Menotti's Song of Hope, Rochberg's String Quartet No. 7 with Voice, and Rouse's Mitternachtslieder, which was dedicated to Mr. Guinn. He is currently director of the Division of Vocal Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Stephen Oosting, tenor, is a graduate of Michigan State University, and holds a doctorate and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. He has performed with Musica Sacra in New York, the New York Philharmonic, and with the symphony orchestras of Detroit, Rochester, Kalamazoo and Youngstown. He serves on the faculties of Wagner College, Upsala College and William Patterson College in New Jersey. Mr. Oosting's recordings appear on the Newport Classics, RCA, Pro Viva and Vox labels.
Sydney Hodkinson, Director of Eastman Musica Nova, the Eastman School's primary contemporary music ensemble, has held a joint appointment as professor of composition and ensembles at the Eastman School of Music since 1973. A noted composer as well as conductor, Mr. Hodkinson's works appear on the Nonesuch, CRI, Advance, Grenadilla, INNOVA, Novisse, Centaur and Louisville labels.
Donald Neuen was professor of conducting and director of choral activities at the Eastman School from 1981 to 1993. During 1970-72, he held the joint appointment of Director of Choral Activities and assistant conductor for Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Director of Choral and Orchestral Activities for Georgia State University. He has guest-conducted major choral works in over 30 states and Canada, and is currently professor of choral conducting at the University of California, Los Angeles.
All selections were recorded in the Kresge Recording Studios of the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. Session engineer, Ros Ritchie. Remastering engineer, Brian Sarvis. Digital signal processing by Dusman Audio, Rochester, NY. Digital tape transfers, Brian Regan and John Ebert. Notes by Robert Haskins; special production assistance by Suzanne Stover. Producer for the Eastman American Music Series is Sydney Hodkinson. Production supervision by David Peelle, Director of Recording Arts and Services.
The cover is a portion of a painting by Ilya Bolotowsky, Untitled (Relational Painting), 1950, from the collection of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester Marion Stratton Gould Fund. The entire work may be assembled by the joining of this cover with others in this series. Concept and artwork preparation by Marybeth Crider, Creative Arts Manager, Eastman School of Music.
I. Prologue and Riddle Song (6:43)
IV (Michelangelo Buonarroti) (2:49)
Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble
Sydney Hodkinson, Donald Neuen*, conductors
Leslie Guinn, bass-baritone
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