SKU: PR.114419200

ISBN 9781491114223. UPC: 680160671731. 9 x 12 inches.

Spirit was composed in memory of the renowned clarinetist Laura Flax. Laura commissioned Ran’s first solo clarinet work, For an Actor: Monologue for Clarinet, to premiere with the Da Capo Chamber Players in 1978. Ran returned to the clarinet in many compositions over the years, sometimes as a lead instrument and at other times as an important voice, yet always inspired by Laura’s rich sound, blazing technique, and the “brain and guts” that she brought to her playing. As a memorial, Spirit is not about absence, but rather a celebration displaying a wide range of emotions, with at least a tiny glimpse of Laura’s brilliant spirit and spiritedness. Only in the work’s final stretch does the sense of parting and loss take over.
SPIRIT was composed in memory of Laura Flax (1952-2017), the renowned New York-based clarinetist and my cherished friend. Our musical and personal association began in 1977 when Laura invited me to compose a solo clarinet work, For an Actor: Monologue for Clarinet, in memory of her mother, Hazel Flax, whom I had known.After composing For an Actor for Laura I came back to the clarinet in many of my compositions over the years, sometimes as a lead instrument and at other times as an important voice. In all of my clarinet music Laura is present. The rich sound, blazing technique, the “brain and guts” that she brought to her playing, and her remarkable person, have inspired me in so many ways during the four decades of our friendship, and beyond.I did not want Spirit to be about absence, though. I wanted the piece to exhibit a wider range of emotions, as well as capture at least a tiny glimpse of Laura’s brilliant spirit and spiritedness. Only in the work’s final stretch does the sense of “parting,” and of loss, take over.Upon completing Spirit on October 21, 2017 I found myself compelled to add at the bottom of the score the words “To Laura, always in my heart,” as though in an effort to reach out, for a brief moment, and touch the unreachable.—Shulamit Ran.

SKU: PR.11140180S

UPC: 680160601691. Text: Nelly Sachs. Nelly Sachs. Text: Five Poems of Nelly Sachs, Translation from German of Nos. I, III and IV by Ruth and Matthew Mead, of No. II by Michael Roloff and No. V by Michael Hamburger.

O The Chimneys is a setting of five poems by Nelly Sachs, the great German-Jewish 1966 Nobel Prize co-winner in literature, whose writing concerned itself almost entirely with the subject of the holocaust. Composed in 1969, the work was my own personal way of saying, through my own art, do not forget. Shockingly, these words have as much relevance today as they did when the work was written. Today we find ourselves having to say do not forget, do not distort, do not deny it ever happened.   I selected the five poems from Sachs' O The Chimneys collection, retaining its grimly evocative title even though I did not include the actual poem by that name. In scoring the work for female voice, flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, cello, piano and percussion, I aimed to give myself the broadest possible palette of instrumental colors while using the smallest number of participants. Yet as I was planning the final moments of my cycle, I felt that instrumental sound alone would not suffice to express the horror. An electronic tape segment was added to the work's final climax.   The first two poems (A Dead Child Speaks and Already Embraced by the Arm of Heavenly Solace), both depicting the tearing of a child away from his mother, are treated essentially as one unit, with the first acting as an introduction to the second. These two, and the cycle's apocalyptic fifth poem (Hell is Naked from Glowing Enigmas II), act as the two weighty pillar points, so to speak, surrounding the more introspective two middle poems (Fleeing and Someone Comes). To maximize dramatic differentiation within the constraints of a relentlessly tragic subject matter, I used range as a means to delineate contrast, by dividing the sounds available to me into low and dark (mvt. III) vs. high and, at times, eerily bright (mvt. IV) colors. Thus the two middle poems are intended to balance the frenzied madness of which the work's outer parts are made.   The work received its first performance in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Grace Rainey Auditorium on January 19, 1970.   --Shulamit Ran.

SKU: PR.11441690S

UPC: 680160626021. 9 x 12 inches.

Ran's third string quartet was written for the Pacifica Quartet, who are featuring it in numerous performances from May 2014 through February 2016, across the country and abroad. Their blog page dedicated to the work also features the composer's notes, for more indepth insight. ...impassioned solos emerge from ominous quiet, and high arpeggios in the violins quiver alongside the earthy cello. Ms. Ran skillfully deploys these extremes of color, volume and pitch, yet the overall somewhat chilly impression is one of poise. -- Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times.
My third string quartet was composed at the invitation of the Pacifica Quartet, whose music-making I have come to know closely and admire hugely as resident artists at the University of Chicago.  Already in our early conversations Pacifica proposed that this quartet might, in some manner, refer to the visual arts as a point of germination.  Probing further, I found out that the quartet members had special interest in art created during the earlier part of the 20th century, perhaps between the two world wars.  It was my good fortune to have met, a short while later, while in residence at the American Academy in Rome in the fall of 2011, art conservationist Albert Albano who steered me to the work of Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944), a German-Jewish painter who, like so many others, perished in the Holocaust at a young age, and who left some powerful, deeply moving art that spoke to the life that was unraveling around him. The title of my string quartet takes its inspiration from a major exhibit devoted to art by German artists of the period of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) titled “Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s”, first shown at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006-07.  Nussbaum would have been a bit too young to be included in this exhibit.  His most noteworthy art was created in the last very few years of his short life.  The exhibit’s evocative title, however, suggested to me the idea of “Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory” as a way of framing a possible musical composition that would be an homage to his life and art, and to that of so many others like him during that era.  Knowing that their days were numbered, yet intent on leaving a mark, a legacy, a memory, their art is triumph of the human spirit over annihilation. Parallel to my wish to compose a string quartet that, typically for this genre, would exist as “pure music”, independent of a narrative, was my desire to effect an awareness in my listener of matters which are, to me, of great human concern.  To my mind there is no contradiction between the two goals.  As in several other works composed since 1969, this is my way of saying ‘do not forget’, something that, I believe, can be done through music with special power and poignancy.    The individual titles of the quartet’s four movements give an indication of some of the emotional strands this work explores. 1) “That which happened” (das was geschah) – is how the poet Paul Celan referred to the Shoah – the Holocaust.  These simple words served for me, in the first movement, as a metaphor for the way in which an “ordinary” life, with its daily flow and its sense of sweet normalcy, was shockingly, inhumanely, inexplicably shattered. 2) “Menace” is a shorter movement, mimicking a Scherzo.  It is also machine-like, incessant, with an occasional, recurring, waltz-like little tune – perhaps the chilling grimace we recognize from the executioner’s guillotine mask.  Like the death machine it alludes to, it gathers momentum as it goes, and is unstoppable. 3) ”If I must perish - do not let my paintings die”; these words are by Felix Nussbaum who, knowing what was ahead, nonetheless continued painting till his death in Auschwitz in 1944.  If the heart of the first movement is the shuddering interruption of life as we know it, the third movement tries to capture something of what I can only imagine to be the conflicting states of mind that would have made it possible, and essential, to continue to live and practice one’s art – bearing witness to the events.  Creating must have been, for Nussbaum and for so many others, a way of maintaining sanity, both a struggle and a catharsis – an act of defiance and salvation all at the same time. 4) “Shards, Memory” is a direct reference to my quartet’s title.  Only shards are left.  And memory.  The memory is of things large and small, of unspeakable tragedy, but also of the song and the dance, the smile, the hopes.  All things human.  As we remember, in the face of death’s silence, we restore dignity to those who are gone.—Shulamit Ran .

SKU: PR.11441750S

UPC: 680160634934. 9.5 x 13 inches.

Stream for Clarinet and String Quartet (2015) was commissioned by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society in celebration of its 30th Anniversary Season, through support of The William Penn Foundation. The first performance was in April 2016 at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Notes from the composer: The 'line' in Stream is often threaded together into a chain made up of separate 'points' played by the strings, and sometimes by the string and the clarinet. An analogy might be that each instrument, at times, produces a single 'ray of light' from within the larger light source. Moreover, there are many passages where the intended effect is that of the strings providing a 'halo' surrounding the solo clarinet. Similarly, the clarinet often dovetails with, as well as emerges or submerges in and out of, a strand in the string music..
What's in a name?   In my titles, I generally aim to capture something that I believe to be essential about the particular work.  At some level this is to offer an entry-point for the listener, a glimpse of the composition in its totality.  STREAM as a title came to be when much of the music was already fully composed, and it encapsulates much of what I wish to say in words about this work: it suggests flow - whether gentle or forceful; it implies a journey, one that could take us onto unexpected terrains yet is always moving forward; embedded into this word is also the idea of stream of consciousness, and with it, free association and unexpected twists of fancy. Approximately 16 minutes in duration, STREAM is to be played without a break, yet there are strong elements of a three-movement structure here. An expository quasi-first-movement lays out important materials of varying character; the middle part, suggesting contrast and repose, is initially slow and reflective, but then embarks on new explorations of the notion of stasis, while the final movement is dominated by fast-moving music of high energy that consolidates the previous materials.  Important throughout is the way in which seemingly transitional stretches of music emerge and propel the music onward in ways that are at once unexpected and fantastical. A composer's statement about this work would not be complete without acknowledging the degree to which the work was inspired by the awareness that it was being created for a quintet of extraordinary performers of the most beautiful and flowing musicianship - clarinet virtuoso Anthony McGill and the intrepid Brentano Quartet. Shulamit Ran .

SKU: PR.11441429S

UPC: 680160594054. 9.5 x 13 inches.

Written for Concertante, a string sextet which has commissioned six different works, each highlighting one of its players. In Ran's new work, the second cellist, Zvi Plesser, was spotlighted with an outgoing, intensely lyrical opening theme, according to a New York Times review. Yet, Lyre of Orpheus never overlooks the collaborative, conversational essence of the ensemble. Read the full review here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/arts/music/18conc.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1286200920-wRrt7MJ416+FpOYAUe/IOQ For advanced performers.
Lyre of Orpheus was composed for Concertante, the New York-based string sextet, for its One Plus Five Project, a three-year, six-composer commissioning project designed to create six string sextets, each featuring one of Concertante’s core players. This particular commission was made with the goal of giving center-stage to the ensemble’s first cello, a choice I was especially grateful for, not only because it features Zvi Plesser, the outstanding Israeli cellist, but also because it gave ma an opportunity to highlight an instrument for which, from a very early stage in my life, I have felt a special affinity.  The cell’s “soul”, so naturally combining passion and lyricism, has always touched me in a special way. As sometimes happens, naming the piece was the final act in the process of creation.  Once titled, though, I found myself looking through the piece with a mixture of delight and astonishment – the narrative of the almost iconic mythological story of love and loss seems as one entirely plausible, and to my mind convincing, way to tract the unfolding of the musical events.  Of course, the music was written with no such tale (or any tale, for that matter) in mind.  But perhaps some stories are emblematic of so much that is part of our lives and psyches, of our desires, fears and wishes.  Orpheus, whose longing for Eurydice recognizes no boundaries of heaven and hell…  Love regained, then forever lost…  Orpheus’ lyre intoning his sorrowful yearning… Lyre of Orpheus, approximately fifteen minutes in length, composed in late 2008, is intermittently songful, caressing, passionate, pained, ferocious, longing.  The instrumentation consists of 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, the first of which is the soloist/protagonist, the second notable for having its lowest string tuned down a third to achieve extra lower notes. This commission has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Commissioning Program, with funding generously provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.—Shulamit Ran.