FRIENDS PLAY FISHER TULL
More than anything, people probably remember Fisher Tull by saying: “He was my friend.” Known universally by his nickname, Mickey, he had the warm, honest smile and open-hearted character that bespeak the treasured friendship for which true Texans are known. Born, raised and trained in Texas, his life was dedicated to the cause of music within the state.
Tull was a native of Waco and earned his undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in music from the University of North Texas. He was a faculty member at Sam Houston State University for 37 years, from 1957 until his death in 1994. He was chairman of the university's Music Department for nearly half that time (1965-1982) and was a great builder of musical institutions at the university. His excellence in teaching won him a coveted Piper Professor Award in 1984. And as a composer, Tull received awards, commissions, appearances, performances and recordings, all of which brought recognition to his name from major musical institutions in Texas, across the United States, in London and continental Europe.
Tull's compositional activities grew out of his background as trumpet performer and jazz arranger in the early 1950s. During his years in college, he wrote over 100 arrangements for dance bands, radio and television productions and recordings. He was the first staff arranger for the renowned University of North Texas Lab Bands. His first serious compositions were for brass ensembles, followed by several works for symphonic band. As he matured, his works embraced a large segment of the instrumental, orchestral and vocal spectrum.
The first work on this program represents the later period in Tull's compositional career, beginning with the Nonet for Winds, Percussion and Piano [Boosey & Hawkes]. It was commissioned by the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors and was first performed by the Southwest Chamber Players on February 13, 1984, at the meeting of the Texas Music Educators Association and the Music Educators National Conference in San Antonio.
In a sense, the Nonet echoes some baroque concertos of Antonio Vivaldi, since the nine instruments serve collectively as an ensemble and individually as soloists. Tull has spaced solo passages for each of them throughout the work. He also included an exquisitely orchestrated duet for flute and muted trumpet toward the beginning of the concerto's Allegro section.
The concerto has a three-movement plan, but its slow-fast-slow sequence is the reverse of the customary fast-slow-fast plan of the baroque concerto. To some extent, its two outer movements might be considered a prelude and epilogue to the central Allegro, which is energized by a repeated four-note thematic motive that often serves as a basic rhythmic pulse and a ground bass. Harmonically, the concerto has nothing to do with baroque style, since it blends principles of 12-tone serial composition with the random adventures of chance music.
The next three works on this recording were all written during the earlier years of Tull's compositional career. Erato, for Flute and Piano, was published in 1971 [Southern Music Company] and employs music from a movement of an orchestral work Tull subsequently withdrew from his catalogue. His original commentary on the piece contains the reminder that it refers to the Greek muse of lyric poetry. That neatly matches the character of the music he composed. The very end of the flute's short opening cadenza emphasizes a thematic kernel that reappears in various ways at numerous points throughout the melodic line of this gentle piece.
The Sonata for Viola and Piano [unpublished manuscript] is the earliest work on this compact disc. It was composed during the beginning stages of Tull's doctoral studies, while he was spending a summer under the guidance of composer/flutist/violist George Morey. It received its premiere in 1962 on the Sam Houston State University campus and later won an award from the Texas Composers Guild.
“At that time I was influenced by Hindemith, so I took a neoclassical approach to this project,” Tull stated in a prefatory note to a performance of the work. That influence is reflected in the work's strong motor rhythms, the purposeful direction of its melodic lines and a preference for harmonies that are at once open and abstract, but spiced with sturdy dissonance. The sonata is cast in the traditional three-movement fast-slow-fast design.
The Sarabande and Gigue [Boosey & Hawkes] was composed in 1976 for saxophonist Kenneth Deans, who joined pianist Raymond Gotko in the world premiere of this two-movement work at the World Saxophone Congress in London July 1 of that year. The composer noted that the compass of the alto saxophone is extended to 3 1/2 octaves in the work and that its tonality centers about the Lydian modal scale. While the two pieces simulate the rhythms and the character of the two baroque dance forms they represent, the elliptical 5/8 and 7/8 meters he employed fall a hair short and long of the 3/4 and 6/8 meters commonly associated with those respective dance forms.
The Sarabande exudes a finely sculpted image of almost Grecian restraint, highlighted by delicate ornamental flourishes in its central section. The Gigue is more piquant and, with consultation from Dean, Tull employed a slap-tongue technique to simulate a pizzicato effect at various points in the saxophone melody.
By its title and its four-movement, slow-fast-slow-fast design, the Trio Sonata for Violin, Clarinet and Piano [Southern Music Company] openly acknowledges its instrumental forbear in the Baroque era. Like the sonata da chiesa of the 17th and 18th centuries, this work also contains a fugue as its second movement.
It was composed for the Texas Music Teachers Association, which named Tull the Texas Composer of the Year in 1991. The work received its premiere at the annual meeting of TMTA in Austin during June of that year.
Each of the slow movements flows into its succeeding fast movement, prompting Tull to state that listeners might hear it as a two-movement work. But contrasts between the four movements are pronounced and the opening Prelude is a particularly mysterious, free-flowing, neo-Romantic moment in his music. The Fugue begins rather strictly as a four-voice fugue on a single subject, but it is soon joined by a florid accompaniment, two new themes that serve as contrapuntal associates and two episodes where a fragment of its theme is slowed down, altered and stacked atop itself in climactic stretto passages.
The slow Interlude takes its thematic cue from the opening motive of the Prelude, filling its measures with exotic little cadenzas and mysterious yearnings. The concluding Scherzo is set forth in a lively 6/8 meter and its rapid, leaping opening theme contrasts with a quieter subsidiary theme, first stated in longer note values by the violin.
Tull's jocular Fantasy on L'Homme armé for Oboe and Piano was published in 1976 [Boosey & Hawkes]. It is based on the celebrated 15th-century tune that recalls the bloody Hundred Years' War between France and England and speaks of the terrors of the armed man with his chain mail. In the century or so beyond its time, the tune became the basis of dozens of Latin mass settings by the most celebrated Renaissance composers of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Although this is a modern secular setting of the tune, Tull took his cue from the ancient settings and applied some contrapuntal devices to his Fantasy that were common in Renaissance music. Essentially the piece is a theme followed by three free, interconnected variations. The tune is stated quite briskly in the oboe, while the swiftly running piano accompaniment carries suggestions of its thematic motives. The tune is turned upside down in the slow, placid first variation, then shaped into snappy march rhythms for the second. Fragments of the tune are reworked and tossed between the oboe and piano during the third variation, which leads to a short coda where the tune briefly chases itself canonically in three different tonalities.
The masterly Sonata for Trumpet and Piano [Boosey & Hawkes] testifies to a composer who knew instinctively how to write for the trumpet because he was also a performer on the instrument. It was commissioned by the International Trumpet Guild and was given its first performance by Häken Hardenberger and pianist Roland Pöntinen at the guild's annual conference in London August 4, 1986.
The work opens with a free recitative in which the trumpet and piano converse with each other, concluding in a long trumpet cadenza supported by a much-repeated cluster of figuration in the piano. The second movement is a neat, compact sonata form whose cocky opening theme is followed by a slow, quiet second theme, unobtrusively stated by the muted trumpet over a repeated figure in the piano. After a compact development, the themes return in reverse order and a brief codetta concludes the movement.
A free interplay between the two instruments again pervades the third movement, ending in a gentle lament for the muted trumpet, as the composer observed in his own commentary on the piece. The finale is a brisk five-part rondo, contrasting a lightly skipping first theme with a lyrical second theme that begins with a fragment resembling the beginning of the Latin Dies Irae melody. A cadenza intervenes before the final statement of the two themes, providing much elaborate display for the trumpet.
Trumpeter Randal Adams is a member of the orchestras of Houston Grand Opera and Theater Under the Stars, as well as the faculty brass quintets of Sam Houston State University and Houston Baptist University. During the summer, he tours Germany and Austria as a member of the European folk-music group, Alpenfest.
Christina Carroll is principal percussionist of the Houston Ballet Orchestra and performs frequently with the Houston Symphony and Houston Grand Opera Orchestra. She is a native of Kansas and a graduate of Rice University's Shepherd School of Music.
Flutist Ann Fairbanks is a member of the woodwind faculties at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and the University of St. Thomas in Houston. She is a performer on the baroque as well as the modern flute, and her credits include appearances with the orchestras of Winston-Salem, Beaumont, the Houston Bach Society Orchestra, Houston Baroque Ensemble and faculty chamber music ensembles at both universities where she teaches.
Violinist/violist James Gardner is associate dean of the University of Houston's Moores School of Music, where he appears regularly in recitals and chamber music performances. He was formerly a member of the orchestras of Fort Worth, Wilmington in North Carolina, and Arkansas.
Spring Hill is an award-winning oboist and a member of the Houston Ballet and Houston Grand Opera orchestras. She also performs with the Bach Society of Houston and the contemporary chamber ensemble, Mosaic. She is a faculty oboist at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and the University of St. Thomas in Houston.
Clarinetist Randall Luster is active as a performer and teacher in the Houston area. He holds music degrees from Sam Houston State University and Rice University's Shepherd School of Music.
Juliet Markovich was principal bassoonist of the Houston Ballet Orchestra for 14 years and has also performed with the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra and the Houston Symphony. She holds degrees in music from Indiana University and Rice University.
Anthony Plog has performed as soloist throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia and has been principal trumpeter of the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony and the symphony orchestras of Malmö, Sweden, and Basel, Switzerland. He has recorded on the BIS, Summit and Crystal labels.
Saxophonist Donald Theode performs in many different styles, working with many different musicians. He maintains a large class of students in Houston and holds degrees from Sam Houston State University and the University of Michigan.
Charlotte Tull has been involved in almost every performance venue available to a pianist: solo recitalist, soloist with orchestra, four-hand piano concerts and chamber music involving keyboard. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in piano from the University of North Texas and has taught diverse aspects of music education at Sam Houston State University for many years. She consulted with her late husband on many projects. All of the piano parts on the compositions heard on this CD were composed specifically for her.
Tim Tull, son of the composer, is a regular member of the Houston Ballet Orchestra percussion section and performs frequently with the orchestras of Houston Grand Opera, Theater Under the Stars and the Gilbert & Sullivan Society and many other ensembles. He holds a master's degree in conducting from Northwestern University and conducted the Wind Ensemble of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston for many years. He is a music copyist and editor of Taiga Press, the sole representative of Alaska composer John Luther Adams.
David Waters has been bass trombonist of the Houston Symphony since 1966, and was previously a member of the Austin Symphony and the National Orchestral Association. He has been a member of the trombone faculties at Sam Houston State University and Rice University's Shepherd School of Music for many years.
Lawrence Wheeler is a professor of music at the University of Houston Moores School of Music. He was formerly principal violist of the Pittsburgh Symphony and has performed as soloist with that orchestra and those of Minnesota, Iceland, the Texas and Hilton Head, NC, chamber orchestras and Mexico City's UNAM Philharmonic. His numerous CDs include one nominated for a Grammy award.
The significance of the title, “Friends play Fisher Tull” should be readily apparent after reading the player biographies: each performer has had personal contact with the composer at some time in their career and, in many cases, worked on these same pieces under his supervision. It is with great devotion and respect that they dedicate these performances to their friend, Fisher `Mickey'Tull.
Notes © 2001 by Carl Cunningham
A previous release on Albany Records, TROY223, Orchestral Music of Fisher Tull, features the Nürnberg Symphony conducted by Charles Anthony Johnson, in recordings of Tull's Symphonic Treatise, Overture for a Legacy, and Trumpet Concerto No. 1.
1 Nonet for Winds, Percussion and Piano [12:51]
Chamber Ensemble Charlotte Tull, piano
2 Erato for Flute and Piano [5:40]
Ann Fairbanks, flute Charlotte Tull, piano
Sonata for Viola and Piano
4 Slowly, with freedom [4:49]
Lawrence Wheeler, viola Charlotte Tull, piano
Sarabande and Gigue for Saxophone and Piano
Donald Theode, saxophone Charlotte Tull, piano
Trio Sonata for Violin, Clarinet and Piano
8 Prelude; slowly with freedom [2:50]
9 Fugue; allegro ritmato [2:22]
10 Interlude; rubato [2:05]
James Gardner, violin Randall Luster, clarinet
12 Fantasy on L'homme armé for Oboe and Piano [5:36]
Spring Hill, oboe Charlotte Tull, piano
Sonata for Trumpet and Piano
13 Senza misura quasi recitative [2:41]
16 Allegro giocoso [5:50]
Anthony Plog, trumpet Charlotte Tull, piano
TOTAL TIME, with pauses: 1:05:53
Recorded 9-10 January and 2 March 1999
in the Moores Opera House, University of Houston
Producer and recording engineer: John Gladney Proffitt
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