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Eastman
American Music
Series
Volume 5
Hodkinson • Maccombie • Walden
A Message from the Director
The Eastman School of Music is pleased to be a partner with Albany Records in the production of this series featuring American composers. Beginning with the appointment of Howard Hanson as Director in 1924 and proceeding consistently ever since, the Eastman School has stood for innovation in American music. While the Hanson era was characterized by consistency of genre as he established his concept of American music, succeeding generations of Eastman leaders and composers have promoted diversity in expressive means. These recordings are a fine example of this latter principle of exploration and discovery.
The series follows in Eastman's spirit of promoting opportunities for artists with significant voices to be heard in a society increasingly seduced by clutter. I salute Albany for its commitment to higher ideals.
James Undercofler
Director, Eastman School of Music
Notes on the program
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.
Bruce MacCombie was born in 1943 and studied with Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Wolfgang Fortner. For several years he taught composition at Yale University, and in the last decade has moved from teaching to administration, serving as Dean of The Juilliard School from 1986-92 and now as Dean of the School for the Arts at Boston University. He has received awards from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Leaden Echo, Golden Echo was originally scored for voice and piano; it was adapted, later, for soprano solo, flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, and solo or orchestral strings. Christopher Kendall led the first performances of the orchestral version in 1989 in Washington, D.C., and Seattle, Washington. Of the work, MacCombie writes:
"Leaden Echo, Golden Echo is a setting of a poem written by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), the English Jesuit poet whose metrical inventions, no less than his expressive energy and seriousness, anticipated much modern poetry. Essentially, the poem is a two-part meditation on beauty which can be interpreted as reflecting part of Hopkins' own attitude toward mortal beauty: rather than cling selfishly to beauty, one should recognize it as a manifestation of God. The poem also reflects Hopkins' belief in the responsibility of 'giving back' of one's natural talents through creative discipline and discovery. A more extended interpretation might include: it is important to retain a youthful spirit throughout life despite the ravages of age. In any event, the poem transcends any literal interpretations and its language is incredibly rich with echoes and alliteration, factors which make it immediately attractive to a musical setting."
Sydney Hodkinson, born in 1934, received his earliest training at the Eastman School of Music under Louis Mennini and Bernard Rogers; he also studied at the Princeton Seminars with Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions, and Milton Babbitt, and at the University of Michigan with Leslie Bassett, Niccolo Castiglioni, Ross Lee Finney and George B. Wilson. He joined the Eastman faculty in 1973, serving on both the conducting and composition faculties. His awards include the Farnsley Prize of the Louisville Orchestra and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Hodkinson's immense output includes nine symphonies as well as many other works for solo instruments, choir, voice, chamber ensembles, and the theatre.
The Alte Liebeslieder or "Old-fashioned Love Songs" are divided into four books. In Books I-III, Hodkinson set texts from Renaissance poetry. In Book IV (subtitled "Fingertip Words" and premiered in 1981 by Jan DeGaetani, Philip West, John Beck, Robert Spillman, and Robert Sylvester), he turned instead to contemporary poetry. He writes:
"The 'love poems' of St. Geraud (Bill Knott) are short lyrics: incandescent, passionate, tender, and often lonely works, unlike any I had ever read by an American poet. This piece attempts to convey in sound the seemingly spontaneous, lucid, sometimes humorous, and pure world I felt reading his poetry. Mr. Knott's voice, intensely direct, is also 'anonymous' in that he speaks of desires we all share but which few are able to succinctly articulate in a fresh, memorable language.
"Other than the use of a recurring 'signal motive,' as stated at the outset of the piece, there is no real cyclical treatment of the grouping. However, since all six songs are based on the material given in the opening three measures, each setting may be viewed simply as a 'variation' of each other.... Although the pitch material is 'contemporary' in the sense that it is very tightly controlled throughout, there is little else that is. Indeed, the work is marked, for me at least, by an absence of sound effects for their own sake, 'avant-garde' timbral and rhythmic techniques, and abstruse formal designs."
Born in 1932, Stanley Walden studied composition with Ben Weber and has been a faculty member at The Juilliard School, Sarah Lawrence College, and the State University of New York, College at Purchase. In addition to his Broadway musical Oh! Calcutta! which has been produced throughout the world, Walden has written scores for film and dance. His concert works include Invisible Cities, written for the Philadelphia Orchestra; After Auschwitz, for Eastman Musica Nova; and the chamber opera Liebster Vater (after Kafka), which was premiered by the Bremen Stadttheater in October of 1996.
Of Some Changes, Walden writes: "Sometime in the early '70s, Jan DeGaetani recommended to me texts by the poet June Jordan. I read her collection Some Changes and resolved to write a musico-dramatic piece for the two of us: Jan as mezzo and myself playing clarinet with electronic processing, plus dramatic actions and interactions for the both of us growing out of the texts. Since these poems dealt primarily with the Black experience in America, I first wrote to June Jordan, asking her how she would feel about a white Jew and a corn-fed Midwesterner performing her texts. She generously responded that this was fine with her, especially since she knew and had the highest respect for Jan. After the piece was finished and I was able to send her a recording (she may even have seen one live performance), she was very enthusiastic in her response. Actually, we proved to be somewhat prescient in choosing her texts: since then, Leonard Bernstein and John Adams have both sipped from that well. This was the second of five works I was to create for Jan, who became and remains my 'voice,' despite her premature death.
"The 'dramatic extensions' were part of my (and many others') occupation with the loosening of the boundaries of the concert performance. I have always been very active in the theater and, as composer (The Open Theater, Circus for the Louisville Orchestra, etc.) or performer (Druckman's Animus III, acting roles on the German stage), I have tried to bridge my enthusiasms.
1) 'In the Times of My Heart' A deconstruction of the phrase 'listen children listen,' which leads to an extended solo for amplified feedback, controlled through foot-switching the path of the unplayed signal traveling between the clarinet barrel-mic and the loudspeakers. This results in a visual 'dance,' as the clarinet is manipulated in space.
2) 'For Somebody to Start Singing' This setting exploits the use of the clarinet, without the mouthpiece, as a megaphone, with the amplified voice undergoing a modulation from direct brutality to desperate fear, while the singer experiences a mirror dramaturgy, from weakness to strength.
3) 'What Happens' A delightful poem about the child and the circus, which I set as a country duet.
4) 'Juice of a Lemon on the Trail of Little Yellow' Just the title alone would justify falling in love with this text, a biting, vicious attack on colonial exploitation in the Caribbean, sung in Calypso. At the end, the soprano stuffs the cowbell in the mouth of the clarinetist, while repeating the word 'empty.'
5) 'The New Pieta: For the Mothers and Children of Detroit' To re-establish parity between the performers, after the humiliation of 'Little Yellow,' I found it necessary to strike a celebratory note in which the handbell semitone fifth resonances are captured, tasted, and altered in the mouths of the ringers. The 'Pieta' itself ends with the soprano holding the clarinet as a somewhat religious artifact, and singing 'he moves no more' directly into the clarinet barrel-mic, with the resultant weeping sound caused by controlled feedback.
"By the time this recording was made (1982), I no longer performed as a clarinetist. I would like to pay homage to the degree of enthusiasm and artistry with which Stanley Hasty of the Eastman faculty agreed to perform what must have been for him a journey into terra incognita. Not only as a player of extraordinary refinement but as a vital, open musician, he was an exceptional role model for his many students at the Eastman School."
Robert Haskins
MacCombie, Leaden Echo, Golden Echo
Text by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Leaden Echo
How to keep is there any, any, is there none such, nowhere
known, some bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch
or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, ... from vanishing
away?
Oh, is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles
deep,
Down? no waving-off of these most mournful messengers, still
messengers, sad and stealing messengers of gray?
No there's none, there's none, Oh, no there's none!
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair
Do what you may do, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding
sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
Oh, there's none; no no no there's none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.
Golden Echo
Spare!
There is one, yes, I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's
air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah, well, where! one,
One. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's
fresh and fast-flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously
sweet
Of us, the simpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matched
face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to
fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-
lastingness of, Oh it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,
gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks,
loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant,
girlgrace
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them
with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the ghost, deliver it, early now, long before
death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's
self and beauty's giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mold
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the
wind whatwhile we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
Whatwhile we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then why should we tread? Oh why are we so
haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged,
so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer,
fonder
A care kept. Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.
Yonder. What high as that! We follow, now we follow.
Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.
Hodkinson: Alte Liebeslieder, Book IV
("Fingertip Words")
Text by Saint Geraud
What language will be safe
When we lie awake all night
Saying palm words, no fingertip words
This wound searching us for a voice
Will become a fountain with rooms to let
Or a language composed of kisses and leaves.
2. The Invisible Moon
We brush the other, Invisible moon.
Its caves come out and carry us inside.
When our hands are alone,
they open, like faces.
There is no shore
to their opening.
3. Dreaming Fingers
The beach holds and sifts us
through her dreaming fingers
Summer fragrances green between your legs
At night, naked auras cool the waves
Vanished
O Love
I kiss every body of you, every face
On nights like this the heart journeys to other islands.
Beaches rise and dance naked under moonlight.
Inland, asleep, you see
The stone face of your solitude being piled slowly.
4. Burn Off This Sleep
Far final peaks, burn off this sleep,
use it as fuel in your endless creation of the pure face!
Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as though I am flying into myself.
5. Your Body is a Dance
Your shadow leaps down from the sun to
Hold its happy half your cheek swells towards
The unsheared blood of summer ting
Ling morning awake your kisses play at sleep
Apronlapful of green ripples picked
From their first kiss fragrant voice
Crowned slumberer of days your
Body is a dance that rhymes the four
Winds.
6. Sweet Suicide
Fate is lucky not to have known you
as I have known you.
Your face alone has no echo in the void.
Your kisses still rustling in my voice,
you don't exist. I will fill you with
sweet suicide.
Love, love other women
Don't let this be their last words....
(...fingertip words,) only mine.
from Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans
Copyright ©1968 Saint Geraud. Used with permission.
Walden: Some Changes
Texts by June Jordan
In the Times of My Heart
In the times of my heart
the children tell the clock
a hallelujah
listen people
listen
Hallelujah (Amplifier Feedback Solo)
What Happens
What happens when the dog sits on a tiger
when the fat man sells a picture of himself
when a lady shoves a sword inside her
when an elephant takes tea cups from the shelf
or the giant starts to cry
and the grizzly loses his grip
or the acrobat begins to fly
and gorillas run away with the whip
What happens when a boy sits on a chair
and watches all the action on the ground and
in the air
or when the children leave the greatest
show on earth
and see the circus?
Juice of a Lemon on the Trail of Little Yellow
Little Yellow looked at the banana tree and
he looked at the moon and he heard a banana tree baboon
beneath the moon and he sat on the grass
and fell asleep there
Little Yellow nine years old underneath the moon beside
a big banana tree smiled a mango smile as he
listened to a lullaby palm and a naked woman broke
coconuts for him and fed him meat from her mango
mammaries
Little Yellow curled himself in a large banana leaf
and he deeply sailed asleep toward the mango moon
Little Yellow traveled to a place where coolies worked
to build a bathtub for the rough and tribal Caribbean
There on that lush cerulean plateau and trapped he
was kept by his boss brother who positively took
out his teeth and left the mango mouth of Little Yellow
empty
For Somebody to Start Singing
(Song in Memory of Newark, New Jersey)
He's a man on the roof
on the run with a gun
he's a man
Boys and little girls
they were bad and they were good
now they're dead
He's a man on the roof
on the run with a gun
he's a man
Had no name and looked
the same but today
the soldiers tremble
at his aim
He's a man on the roof
on the run with a gun
The country kept baiting
a people kept waiting
they all stood in a line
then they left
He's a man on the roof
on the run with a gun
he's a man
If I have to kill myself
Gonna burn this box burn
all the locks
that keep me out
He's a man on the roof
on the run with a gun
he's a man
he's a man
Celebration (Interlude)
The New Pieta: For the Mothers and Children of Detroit
They wait like darkness not becoming stars
long and early in a wrong one room
he moves no more
Weeping thins the mouth a poor escape from fire
lights to claim to torch the body
burial by war
She and her knees lock slowly closed (a burning door)
not to continue as they bled before
he moves no more
Bruce MacCombie, Leaden Echo, Golden Echo 17:02
Renée Fleming, soprano · Richard Bado, piano · Recorded in the Eastman Theatre 9/8/83 by Ros Ritchie; Sydney Hodkinson, producer
Sydney Hodkinson, Alte Liebeslieder, Bk. IV 23:06
Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano · Robert Sylvester, cello · Philip West, oboe · John Beck, percussion · Robert Spillman, piano · Sydney Hodkinson, conductor · Recorded in the Eastman Theatre 2/21/82 by Ros Ritchie; John Santuccio, producer
Stanley Walden, Some Changes 19:20
Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano ·Stanley Hasty, electric clarinet · Recorded in Kilbourn Hall 9/22/82 by Ros Ritchie, Rod Hanze, and John Gaines; Sydney Hodkinson, producer
Renée Fleming, soprano, received her M.M. degree from the Eastman School of Music, and now enjoys an international operatic career. Ms. Fleming made this recording with the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble in 1983 while she was a student at Eastman. A Fulbright Scholar, she won the Metropolitan Opera national auditions in 1988. In addition to regular appearances at the Met, she has performed at the Spoleto Festival, La Scala, the Houston Grand Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, the San Francisco Opera, Teatro Colon, Covent Garden and Carnegie Hall.
Richard Bado, piano, is head of music staff and chorus master for the Houston Grand Opera, and serves as the musical supervisor for the Houston Opera Studio. A former member of the Houston Opera Studio, Bado holds music degrees from the Eastman School of Music and West Virginia University. He is currently an artist-teacher at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, and has served on the music staff of the Opera Theater of St. Louis, Chautauqua Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Texas Opera Theater, Chautauqua Institution Music School, the Aspen Music Festival and the Bronx Opera.
The great American mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani (1933-1989) mastered an expansive repertoire of vocal music during her thirty-year career. Particularly celebrated for her performances of new music, she premiered compositions by Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Jacob Druckman, and many other major twentieth-century composers. Also noted as an inspiring teacher, Ms. DeGaetani's legacy continues through the careers of the many students she taught at the Eastman School of Music and the Aspen Music Festival.
Robert Sylvester, cello, is internationally renowned for his performances of solo and chamber music. As a faculty member of the Eastman School for twelve years, he performed extensively with the Eastman Trio. Sylvester is currently Director of Cultural Affairs at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, and is the founder of the Bellingham Festival of Music.
Philip West, oboe, was professor of chamber music at the Eastman School of Music from 1973-1996, where he directed the Eastman InterMusica Ensemble. He has performed throughout the United States and Europe and has premiered works by Britten, Harbison, Wernick, and others.
John Beck, marimba, is professor of percussion at the Eastman School of Music. He is active as a composer, conductor, and clinician, and recently served as editor for the Encyclopedia of Percussion, published in 1995 by Garland Press. Beck is timpanist for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, having performed with the orchestra since 1959.
Robert Spillman, piano, studied at Eastman and at the Hochschule für Musik, Stuttgart. A composer and pianist, Spillman was associate professor of piano and opera coordinator at the Eastman School from 1973-1987. He is presently professor of music at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Sydney Hodkinson, director of Eastman Musica Nova, the Eastman School's primary contemporary music ensemble from 1973-1997, holds a joint appointment as professor of composition and conducting at the Eastman School of Music. A noted composer as well as conductor, Hodkinson's works appear on the Nonesuch, CRI, Advance, Grenadilla, INNOVA, Novisse, Centaur and Louisville labels.
Stanley Hasty, electric clarinet, performed as principal clarinetist of the National, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. He taught at Indiana University, Peabody Conservatory of Music, and Carnegie-Mellon University before joining the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, where he taught from 1955-85. Hasty has presented master classes and visiting lectureships at many of America's most important music schools. Now professor emeritus at Eastman, he serves as a coach for the Asian Youth Orchestra.
All selections were recorded in the Kresge Recording Studios of the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. 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, Department of Recording Arts and Services.
The cover is a portion of a painting by the American artist Ilya Bolotowsky, Untitled (Relational Painting), 1950, from the collection of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, purchased by the 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.
bruce maccombie
Leaden Echo, Golden Echo (17:02)
Leaden Echo (6:59)
Golden Echo (10:00)
Renée Fleming, soprano · Richard Bado, piano
Sydney Hodkinson
Alte Liebeslieder, Book IV (23:07)
I. What Language 2:41)
II. The Invisble Moon (4:23)
III. Dreaming Fingers (3:45)
IV. Burn Off This Sleep (3:56)
V. Your Body is a Dance (2:22)
VI. Sweet Suicide (6:01)
Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano · Robert Sylvester, cello · Philip West, oboe · John Beck, percussion
Robert Spillman, piano · Sydney Hodkinson, conductor
Stanley Walden
Some Changes (18:49)
In the Times of My Heart (1:27)
Halleluja (amplifier feedback solo) (1:45)
For Somebody to Start (2:12)
What Happens? (2:15)
Juice of a Lemon (4:37)
Celebration (Interlude) (1:32)
The New Pieta (5:15)
Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano · Stanley Hasty, electric clarinet
Total Time = 59:33
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