SKU: PR.14440515S
UPC: 680160667819. 9 x 12 inches.
In 1979, Martin produced a set of three quintets, in consideration of Gorky's piece Nighttime Enigma Nostalgia. Each is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. One role of music is to evoke. Therefore, Nighttime is a nocturne, a night piece suggestive of flickering shadows, perhaps created by firelight. It is a recurrent setting in human existence. The music opens with the scene of twilight calm, gently disturbed with the slight uncertainty about what is around us, what we cannot see. Later, the clarinet takes on a solo role, and the notes bleed like careless paint into the other instruments that quietly sustain them. Next, the flute takes over the role of solo. The piece ends with a repeated cadence of morning light. (From the performance notes.).
SKU: PR.144400560
UPC: 680160025107. 8.5 x 11 inches.
SKU: PR.514012210
UPC: 680160223022.
SKU: PR.514049200
UPC: 680160248940.
SKU: CF.FE192
ISBN 9780825877568. UPC: 798408077563. 9.5 x 13 inches.
The Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music notes: Talma was the first woman to receive two Guggenheims, the first woman elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1974), the first American woman to have a full-scale opera performed in Germany, the first American to teach at Fontainebleau, and the first woman to receive the Sibelius Medal for composition. This is only the highlights of a long life of composing. Talma spent a good amount of time at the MacDowell Colony, where she wrote many of her finest works, including the Violin Sonata. Having studied composition with Nadia Boulanger over 17 summers in her youth, Talma dedicated the Sonata to her former teacher and long-time friend on the occasion of Boulanger's 75th birthday. The single movement reflects Talma's style in 1962, with more than a passing nod to 12-tone construction. For advanced performers. Duration: 16'.
SKU: PR.164002390
UPC: 680160038091.
I became interested in the work of Plato through my friend and collaborator, the writer and philosopher Paul Woodruff. Paul's new translation, with Alexander Nehamas, of the Symposium gave me insights into ancient Greek ways of thinking about Love, Beauty, and Wisdom -- and managed to keep the earthy, and often bawdy side of it all in full view. But their new translation of Plato's later dialogue Phaedrus went even further: the beauty of the speeches is breathtaking, and the discourse itself is enough to keep one awake at night. Basically the Great Speech of Socrates in the Phaedrus dialogue has to do with the place of Eros in the world, and with the conflict in the soul between fleshly pleasure and philosophic discovery. I will not attempt to encapsulate this brilliant discourse in a program note: suffice it to say that reading it gave rise to my two-sided work for clarinet, violin, and piano, Phaedrus. The first movement represents the Philosophic life, and is thus subtitled Apollo's Lyre (Invocation and Hymn). It begins with an unaccompanied melody for the clarinet, which (after a pair of harp-like flourishes for the piano, expands into an accompanied canon. The voices in the dialogue (clarinet and violin) follow each other by a prescribed number of beats, but the music is totally devoid of any meter at all. The piano, representing the lyre, accompanies this lyric love-feast with repeated strummed chords. The canon has three large sections, and ends with violin echoing the unaccompanied clarinet invocation as the sound of the lyre fades. The second movement, called Dionysus' Dream-Orgy (Ritual Dance) presents, after a brief introduction, another kind of unmetered music. Rather than long lyric flights of philosophic song, however, this time we hear a unison dance of unbridled energy and sensual transport. The piece soon forms itself into a loose arch form, with contrasting metered dance sections divided by the unison unmetered orgy tune. Midway through the movement, Apollo's melody returns from the first movement, but it is a temporary reminiscence. The orgiastic dance returns, reaches a climax, and ends with a stomping of feet. While Plato asserts that a proper balance between lust and reason is necessary in all men, he (naturally) gives the nod to Philosophy as the better choice in which to live. Not so in my music: the two sides are meant to coexist and to complement each other. No sides are taken. Phaedrus was commissioned of the Verdehr Trio by Michigan State University. It is dedicated to the Vedehr Trio with great affection and admiration.
SKU: PR.414411630
ISBN 9781491114551. UPC: 680160089956. 9.5 x 13 inches.
EXCURSIONS is a one-movement work exploring two “characters.†A rhapsodic, descending passage is introduced by the cello, followed by a static, chorale-like phrase for the violin and cello. Their individual developments are separated by a slow, contrasting middle section. The composer has written: “This is analogous to situations in life: we stand by a crossroad, choosing one option and forfeiting the other. But in art, the realm of the imagination, we can perhaps afford to pursue more than one route to its ultimate destination… or can we? It is symbolic that in this work both roads eventually lead to the same place.â€.Excursions for violin, cello and piano, is a one-movement work of tripartite structure in which materials explored in the first of three large sections are brought back in the last section. The traditional statement-contrast-restatement form, which is readily suggested by such a description, is, however, not at all in the mold in which the work is cast. Rather, my aim was to subject the essential materials of the piece (two “characters†–the rhapsodic, descending passage played by the cello in the very opening and, later, a static, slow moving, chorale-like phrase for the violin and cello) to two entirely different developments separated by a slow, contrasting middle section. This is analogous to an exploration of the ramifications that two divergent choices made by the same person might lead to. In life, as we stand by a crossroad, choosing one option usually means having to forfeit the other. But in art, the realm of the imagination, we can perhaps afford to pursue more than one route to its ultimate destination…or can we? It is, I believe, symbolic that in this work both roads eventually lead to the same place: in composing Excursions, it seemed absolutely inescapable that at the end the slow, contrasting middle sections – both more resigned and peaceful than the battling spirits of the outer parts – should return briefly to end the work. The piano trio combination (once highly favored, but to this composer still as challenging today) is approached here as a collaborative effort of three equal soloists – partners. Of the available pairings, the two strings find themselves occasionally approached as a team pitted against the piano. The cello-piano combination is also not uncommon here, and there is an extended violin cadenza toward the end of the piece. The writing for the three instruments is closely and at times interlinked, but the players are all instructed to play from scores. Excursions was first performed at Brandeis University in 1982.
SKU: PR.14440516S
UPC: 680160667864. 9 x 12 inches.
In 1979, Martin produced a set of three quintets, in consideration of Gorky's piece Nighttime Enigma Nostalgia. Each is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. As the title suggests, the music is in a state of perpetual questioning using a variety of approaches. For example, Enigma opens using ostinati (plural of ostinato) that do not match in length, like a staircase with each step a different height. Additionally, the music has sudden starts and stops, again unexplained. There are dramatic and powerful explosive passages that are interrupted. The technique, used to create this feeling of a perplexed music world where things seem often not to make sense and to be left unresolved, is called in poetry and literature, anticlimax. In Enigma, the music suggests one direction; then refuses to continue, striking out in another direction. Artists use approaches such as this to force themselves into creative circumstances that they otherwise might not have discovered. (From the performance notes.).
SKU: PR.14440517S
UPC: 680160667888. 9 x 12 inches.
In 1979, Martin produced a set of three quintets, in consideration of Gorky's piece Nighttime Enigma Nostalgia. Each is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. There are passages in Nostalgia that build using two layers, a louder foreground and a quieter background. Both of these layers are independent of specific instruments, in other words, the various instruments jump in to play a role in either layer, then jump to the other layer. It is as if the ensemble has doubled. The technical musical term for multiple instruments interweaving to produce a single thread or idea is called Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color-melody). Because there are two layers (louder and softer), both using this technique, Nostalgia is a unique example of 'double Klangfarbenmelodie.' The piece ends with a series of intense rhythmic pulsations and several apocalyptic fanfares. (From the performance notes.).
SKU: CF.MXE71
ISBN 9781491144749. UPC: 680160902248. 9 x 12 inches.
The day that Australian and New Zealand forces joined the Allies for an invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey in World War I, with disastrous consequences, is celebrated in Australia as Anzac Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). To honor this special day, Bresnick takes inspiration from two selected poems by Bertolt Brecht (And I Always Thought and Legend of the Unknown Soldier Beneath the Triumphal Arch). Commissioned to commemorate Australia’s Anzac Day, similar to Memorial Day, and inspired by two Brecht poems…The somber opening violin and clarinet lines unfolded to haunting effect before eventually reaching a fervent climax. --Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times.
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