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Cycles was commissioned by the Kansas
Music Teachers for the state convention in 1969. The work
was subsequently submitted to the Music Teachers National
Association headquarters, where it was judged along with
entries from other states. Cycles had
the distinction of being named the best composition and
earning for me the Distinguished Composer of the Year
award. The twelve short pieces are of intermediate
difficulty and are unified by common melodic materials.
New notation and new keyboard techniques are in
evidence-introducing young pianists to spatial and
proportional notation of the 1950s and 1960s.
Jeffrey Kurtzman, a colleague at the Shepherd School,
commissioned the Four Intermezzi as a
gift for his wife. A double premiere in Houston-Kathi
Kurtzman for the Tuesday Musical Club and Gary Smart for
the SYZYGY, New Music at Rice series-launched the first
on numerous performances in the United States and Europe.
In the early 1960s, numerous colleagues and friends
commissioned me for several works resulting in the first
violin concerto, two string quartets, and six sonatas.
The Sonata for Piano is one such
composition, commissioned by the supremely gifted young
pianist, Ronald Rogers. The work is highly chromatic but
also lyrical, and consists of three sections plus a
reprise, all played without pause.
As with the Four Intermezzi, Frescoes
was commissioned by Mimi Walker on the occasion of her
husband, William Walker's 50th birthday. Each short
movement emphasizes a particular interval-thirds, fifths,
sixths, etc. Frescoes was widely performed in Europe this
past summer.
John Perry commissioned the Sinfonia for Solo
Piano to commemorate the 500,000th Steinway
piano. The premiere took place in the Cullen Theater of
the Wortham Theater Center in Houston. The fifty or sixty
performances have been worldwide-from China to Poland and
throughout the United States. It is a large, virtuoso
work in classical three-movement form. The outside
movements are extroverted while the middle movement might
suggest a funeral dirge.
I began notating my compositions when I was about eight
years old, and obviously there are more than these five
piano pieces. John Hendrickson performs those works that
I have included in my publisher's catalogue. The
compositions span more than thirty years of creativity
and are diverse in style and vocabulary.
-Paul Cooper, 1996
When the wind blows through the chimes on my lower
terrace, I always think of Paul and his fascination with
that sound. He discovered our wind chimes while wandering
through our garden during a cigarette break a few years
ago. Not only did he compose during that
"vacation," but he included the chimes in the
composition. He suspended an identical set of chimes next
to his piano at home.
Paul told me shortly before he died in 1996 that he had
written everything he wanted to and that he felt complete
as a composer. We spoke of mortality and immortality.
Most of us face mortality-our productivity and vitality
are our lives. Paul faced immortality-his music, his
compositions were for future musicians and listeners. His
earthly existence was a mere servant of future times. The
flow of his life combined with the deep romanticism of
his soul made up his music. His complex rhythms were a
simple ground for the profound emotion presented by his
melodies. His own unique compositional language, which
can seem exceptionally difficult and complicated to the
Cooper novice, is evident in all his music.
Paul was the consummate orchestrator, but as an
accomplished pianist he used the piano as a multi-colored
instrument. He could improvise in any style, using his
vast historical and theoretical knowledge as a playground
in which his heart and humor could run free. He would
play a composition in its entirety before writing down a
note, often singing parts which could not be covered by
his ten overtaxed fingers. From the early days of the
Shepherd School, Paul found a pianist with the technical
and musical capacity to be a champion of his music-John
Hendrickson. The enormous Scriabinesque note writing
flowed easily from John's hands, and the Cooper melodies
sang clearly in true vocal tones.
I mentioned to Paul that his life was his music: to have
changed a moment was to change a note. In Tune magazine
wrote "Cooper's music is immediately communicative
and powerful, although he makes no gesture toward
commercial tastes...always highly passionate, exquisitely
crafted in every detail, and serious in a dedicated way
that's nearly religious." When you add humor, you
have Paul Cooper.
-Ronald Patterson
PAUL COOPER was born in Victoria,
Illinois, on May 19, 1926. He died in Houston, Texas on
April 4, 1996, little more than a month before his 70th
birthday and less than two months after John
Hendrickson's concert which is heard on this disc. Cooper
was acknowledged as one of the country's most
distinguished composers with a large body of works in
many genres and an equally substantial and impressive
list of awards and citations.
Cooper studied at the University of Southern California
with Ingolf Dahl, Raymond Kendall and Halsey Stevens and
at the Paris Conservatoire with Boulanger on a Fulbright
scholarship. He made his professional debut in 1953 with
a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
From 1955 to 1968 he was on the faculty of the University
of Michigan (Ann Arbor) where he developed a close
association with composer Ross Lee Finney. Himself a
widely recognized musical figure, Finney cited Cooper as
"one of America's most distinguished
composers."
Cooper was affiliated with the Shepherd School of Music
at Rice University since 1974. At the end of his career
he was the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Music and
Composer-in-Residence. The majority of Cooper's music is
published by Wilhelm Hansen (Associated Music) and his
large catalogue includes six symphonies, six concertos,
four oratorios, six string quartets, and more than sixty
diverse vocal and instrumental chamber works.
Violinist RONALD PATTERSON had a long
associated with Paul Cooper. He played the premiers of
Cooper's Symphonies No. 4 & 5 and the Double Concerto
for Violin and Viola, which was also dedicated to him and
violist Roxanna Patterson (Duo Patterson). For CRI he has
recorded Cooper's String Quartets No. 5 & 6 and the
violin and viola duos Canons d'Amour and Verses, which
were both written for Duo Patterson, as well as Cooper's
Violin Concerto No. 2.
Pianist JOHN HENDRICKSON exemplifies the
best prominent artists performing today, wielding
powerful pianism with interpretive persuasion. Active as
a soloist, chamber musician and educator, Mr. Hendrickson
has appeared with many leading orchestras and chamber
ensembles in his native Texas. He currently serves as
Artist-in-Residence for the College of Arts and
Humanities at Houston Baptist University.
The National Endowment for the Arts awarded a Solo
Recitalist Grant to Mr. Hendrickson, in which he video
taped Chopin's twenty-four etudes as well as other major
keyboard works. Along with his passion for traditional
repertoire, he has a flair for the contemporary,
including numerous premieres by leading present-day
composers. He has been a frequent performer on the
Syzygy, New Music at Rice series at the Shepherd School
of Music.
An honor graduate of The Shepherd School of Music, Mr.
Hendrickson made his New York City debut at Merkin
Concert Hall. He has been on the Touring Roster of the
Texas Commission on the Arts for several seasons. His
scholarships include the Aspen Music Festival, Music
Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, and the Adamant
Festival in Vermont. His concert appearances include
recitals at London's Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival
Hall, the Terrace in Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
and Weill Recital Hall in New York City. He also appears
on CRI: recording of music by Ellsworth Milburn (CRI CD
736).
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