Charles Ives’s THE UNANSWERED QUESTION (1908)
is heard here in an alternate form as provided by the composer. The concert took place on October 11, 1999
at The New York Society For Ethical Culture.
An English horn solo, played by Derek Floyd, replaces the practically
iconic trumpet, nourished in this perspective by extending Pythagorean tuning
through two octaves (with all the fifths pure). This tuning distinguishes a notated C# from a notated Db. Ives had always insisted that a C# was
higher in pitch than its chromatic counterpart Db, and a B# an eighthtone
higher than a neighboring C, easily produced by spiraling perfect fifths through
two octaves. (See “The Ives Universe” by Johnny Reinhard,
AFMM.) The composer wrote that the
strings should sound “off stage” or away from the winds, and remain pianissimo in
their representation of the “The Silences of the Druids – Who Know, See and
Hear Nothing.” The English horn intones
“the Perennial Question of Existence,” according to Ives, in the same tone of
voice each time. “But the hunt for ‘The
Invisible Answer’ undertaken by the flutes” represents other human beings, and “becomes
gradually more active, faster and louder through an ‘animando’ to a ‘con
fuoco.’”
Charles Ives (1885-1954) remains
America’s preeminent composer at the turn of the 21st Century.
Paolo Bellomia (Ottawa, Ontario) conducted this
AFMM performance. Maestro Bellomia,
originally from Rome, Italy, is a champion of contemporary music, and currently
conducts in Montreal, Canada where he directs the Montreal Conservatory
Orchestra.
Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov (1901-1965), grandson of Nicolai, originally
wrote the PRELUDE FOR STRINGS for a string orchestra. This performance at the Church of St. Luke
in the Fields in New York City’s Greenwich Village on May 2, 2009 constitutes a
world premiere in lieu of the fact that there are no other known
performances. Rather, it had been thought,
other than some sketches for other pieces, that all of G. Rimsky-Korsakov’s
compositions were destroyed in World War II.
Providentially, the piece was discovered recently among the papers belonging
to Ivan Wyschnegradsky now in Switzerland.
Musicologist Lydia Ader communicated the finding to the American
Festival of Microtonal Music through composer Anton Rovner in Moscow, who had
been working diligently to uncover whatever might still remain of the
iconoclastic St. Petersburg-based microtonal pioneer.
Julián Carrillo’s I THINK OF YOU (1928) is
a romanza for voice and mixed
instruments. It is an unpublished work
that Julián Carrillo (1875-1965) composed in New York City at the beginning of
the first American tour of the ensemble Grupo
13. A concert with this piece on
March 15, 2003 at Washington Square United Methodist Church is presented on the
IDEAS CD, with the substitution of the Carrillo original “octavina” with a
cello. Contemporary guitarist Wim
Hoogewerf had reconstructed the score from its manuscript, where the Mexican composer
simply gave numbers for the notes, for each octave. For Carrillo, the 16th tone was the smallest usable
melodic step, and with which he built the Sonido
Trece, the “Thirteenth Sound.” The
performance here utilizes a 96-tone harp built and played by Skip La Plante
especially for presenting Carrillo’s music.
I THINK OF YOU
To sit beside a crystal spring,
Cool’d by the passing Zephyr’s wing,
And bend my very thought to thee, is
life is bliss is ecstasy,
Is ecstasy and as within that
spring,
I trace each line, each feature of
my face,
The faithful mirror tells me true.
It tells me that I think of you.
(above repeated)
Cool’d by the passing Zephyr’s wing.
The faithful mirror tells me true.
It tells me that I think of you.
It tells me that I think of you.
Meredith Borden, soprano,
has appeared frequently with the AFMM over the past 16 years, interpreting
works by composers as diverse as Partch, Carrillo, Carlos, and Bach. With
partner Jon Catler, Borden has collaborated in his compositions, most recently
in recordings of Willie McBlind. Borden has sung premieres by Meredith Monk (American Archeology), Elodie Lauten (Waking in New York), and Philip Glass (The Juniper Tree).
Harry Partch’s ULYSSES DEPARTS FROM THE EDGE OF
THE WORLD First Version for trumpet, string bass, and three Boobams
never received a concert premiere, until the encore heard on this CD. The Boobams, built by John Loughborough of
Wisconsin, are available for rental through Carroll Studios and Rentals. Partch wrote on the title page of the score
that the work is essentially a rhythmic study, in order to de-emphasize its
intonations aspects. Still, Partch
included all the Just Intonation ratios that he desired. A curious theatrical element at the end of
the piece has one player ask aloud what the conductor thinks of things. The answer returned is “Don’t ask me. Ask my sister. She’s intuitive.”
Harry Partch (1901-1974) is
the pioneer of American Just Intonation instrument building and multi-media
“corporealism.” A true American
vagabond, Partch often spent time on the road with not much more than his viola
and a satchel.
Lou Harrison’s SIMFONY IN FREE STYLE (1955)
was performed and recorded for the first time on this CD. It required a rewrite of Harrison’s
descriptive score to create a set of practical prescriptive parts. The ”free” intent is to liberate notes from
being tied to a fundamental tone. Just Intonation
musical intervals are added and subtracted from existing pitches. The composer, who passed away in 2004,
hadn’t imagined that flutes and violins could play microtones with
accuracy. He thought that it would be
necessary for the required flutes to be “correctly drilled” out of plastic, and
that the strings be of the viol family with their requisite frets. The composer did not think the actual
instrument timbres were critical if musical instruments could capture the
accurate pitch. He wrote, “violin
family may be used if these be adequately prepared for the use of frets.”
Nathan Fuhr, now a resident
of The Netherlands, conducted the premiere as part of Microthon 2000 at the
Quaker Meeting House in New York City.
David Beardsley’s SONIC BLOOM (1998) was performed at the second MicroFest
held on May 23, 1999 at New York University, from which it has been excerpted. It was premiered in its entirety at the
Trenton Avant-Garde Festival on September 12, 1998. The style of the piece was heavily
influenced by the composer’s interest in La Monte Young’s music. The live performance was recorded at the AFMM’s
first day-long Microthon, the composer using a guitar activated Korg 05R/W
synthesizer tuned to a 13-limit harmonic series produced Just Intonation scale. Especially important to the composer is the
inclusion of the 9/7 ratio from the overtone series.
David Beardsley (b.1960) can be heard performing microtonal music in the
New York City area and across the nation.
Edgard Varèse’s GRAPHS AND TIME was drawn
from a sketch curiously envisioned for a jazz ensemble. Evidently frustrated by the technical difficulties
of classical instrumentalists in his day to effect glissandi similar to a
siren, Varèse sketched out a piece that Teo Macero titled, based on the graphic
nature of the manuscript. There are
eight distinct instrumental parts, one of which must be a percussionist. The graphically notated score is comprised
of linear graph melodies drawn within the parameters of compound 4/4 measures,
each with a quarter note beat of about a second each. There are in total only 16 measures in the single page score. The choices of instrumentation, in combinations,
and in specific repetitions were conceived by Johnny Reinhard, who presents
each performance of the work with a different instrumentation. Varèse wrote on one version of the sketch:
“Dear Mr. Macero, here is the first sketch of an experiment” and left it
undated. Although Varèse did conduct an
ensemble in preparation for the work, that reportedly included percussionist
Paul Motion, it was never again performed until 1987 by the AFMM in New York City. It has been performed since then in Paris at
the Centre Pompidou, in Moscow at the Alternativa Festival, and by performances
in NYC by the AFMM.
Edgard Varèse (1885-1965)
was an influential early 20th century composer who theorized of a
future of microtonal music in his personal Manifesto.
John Cage’s IN THE NAME OF THE HOLOCAUST was written for prepared piano. The holocaust connotation intended by Cage
was actually a double entendre with the
proverbial “Holy Ghost,” with no special historical reference evoked. However, the work has an ominous sound,
easily connected to the profound gravity that the title usually
represents. Preparing the piano gets
past the conventional equal temperament of the instrument, providing what the
composer called “aggregates” of sound, as opposed to traditional chords. John Cage went from detuning his music to inventing
actual microtonal systems near the end of his life.
John Cage (1912-1992) began
a Californian son of an inventor. But
along the way he introduced percussion music, new ways of constituting music,
and all manner of piano preparations.
He especially loved be called a “microtonalist” and devoted his last
compositions, the so-called “number pieces,” to differently tuned works.
Gloria Coates's LUNAR LOOPS is for two traditionally tuned
guitars which during the piece are retuned while playing to include 12
differently tuned open strings which turn out to be the 12 tone row. The
row is eventually used to form microtones that cascade in clusters before
being again retuned while playing back to the original 6-note scale. The
work, which takes the listener through worlds of new harmonic meaning, was
based on the structures she developed in her "Music on Open Strings"
(Symphony No. 1) written in 1972 and premiered at the Warsaw Autumn Festival.
She retuned the strings to a pentatonic
scale while the guitarists were playing and discovered new forms and colors as
well as structures. The Fischer/Stiens Duo had commissioned the work for
the opening of a new guitar festival in Munich in 1978. They received a grant from Munich ’s
Ministry of Culture to participate in the AFMM concert in New York on April 30,
1993 at the St. Paul’s Chapel of Columbia University. Gloria Coates’s
music is GEMA.
Gloria Coates's music has been performed by leading ensembles and
orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony orchestra, the Stuttgart Philharmonic,
Brooklyn Philharmonic, Polish Chamber Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, and
the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Research performed by Kyle Gann indicates
she has written more symphonies than any other woman in history. Her
performance of “Music on Open Strings” at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1978
was proclaimed throughout the press as the most discussed work on the festival,
and was called her "breakthrough" piece.
Ruth Fischer and Stephen Stiens, along with Paco Pena, are
founders of the Munich Guitar Festival . They had previously performed “Lunar
Loops” at Hans Werner Henzes' Cantiere Internazionale Festival in
Montepulciano, Italy, and the Dresden Festival. They feature both
old and new music, having made the first complete recording of the “Sonatas
and Partitas” of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Johnny Reinhard, composer, conductor, bassoonist, director and founder of
the American Festival of Microtonal Music (AFMM), is a native New Yorker
specializing in all manner of microtonal performance. Additionally, Reinhard performs on the recorder, and is a
vocalist specializing in the works of American microtonal pioneer Harry
Partch. He has given numerous full
recitals including in New York, Seattle, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Montreal,
Amsterdam, Sapporo, Moscow, and Kazan.
Of particular interest is his finishing important works of composers in
exemplary performance. These include
his realization and subsequent premiere performance of Charles Ives’s “Universe
Symphony” in 1996 in New York’s Lincoln Center, and the premiere in of Edgard
Varèse’s “Graphs and Time” in 1987 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Reinhard’s transcription of Ivan
Wyschnegradsky’s “Meditation sur deux themes” (1917) for bassoon and piano was
recorded on “Between the Keys” for Newport Classic (now Sony), and has been
re-recorded for Solyd Records (Russia), and again for the AFMM’s PITCH
label. Among the world premieres he
produced are Lou Harrison’s “Simfony in Free Style,” Terry Riley’s “In C in
Just Intonation,” Percy Grainger’s “Free Music” for 4 Theremin, the original
version of Harry Partch’s “Ulysses Departs From the Edge of the World” for
trumpet, double bass and boobams, and Mordecai Sandberg’s orchestral “Psalm
51.” Johnny Reinhard’s original
compositions feature polymicrotonality – either the active mixing of microtonal
tunings in a single composition, or the invention of brand new pitch
relationships (e.g., harmonic 17 tuning, quadratic prime just intonation,
collapsed just intonation). Among his
works are a symphony (“Middle-earth”), cello concerto (“Odysseus”), string
quartet (“Cosmic Rays”), a large number of virtuoso solo pieces for different
instruments in distinctive tunings, and numerous chamber works featuring
unusual timbres and requiring different degrees of improvisation. Johnny Reinhard’s compositions can be heard
on the “Raven” album, available from www.stereosociety.com. He recently completed a triptych for bass
trombonist Dave Taylor. Reinhard has
performed as a soloist throughout Europe and the United States, Japan, Canada,
and Russia. He has played with such
international virtuosi as kavalist Theodossii Spassov (Bulgaria), oboist Bram
Kreeftmeijer (The Netherlands), saxophonist John Butcher (London),
percussionist Rashied Ali (NYC), and Thereminist Lydia Kavina (Russia). In 2002 he was featured on bassoon to
critical acclaim by Ornette Coleman for the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival. Reinhard is professor of bassoon at New York
University. Previously, he taught music
composition and theory at C.W. Post, Long Island University, taught The
Arithmetic of Listening at Bard College, and taught Western Art Music at
Columbia University. He has guest
lectured on tuning related subjects at Columbia University, New York
University, Manhattan School of Music, Hunter College/CUNY, CalArts, San Jose
State University, Indiana University, South Dakota State University, the
Hamburg Hochschule in Germany, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and York
University in England. Reinhard
introduced first performances of Harry Partch’s 43-tone just intonation works
in Norway (International Bergen Festival), France (M.A.N.C.A.), Switzerland
(RoteFabrik), Italy (Teatro la Fenice), Canada (Toronto, Winnipeg, and St.
John’s), and England (London’s Barbican).
In the early ‘90s he published PITCH for the International Microtonalist
as a 4-issue set for musicians working independently. Since 2004, the AFMM launched 15 different PITCH CD titles,
available at www.afmm.org. Johnny Reinhard hosts New York-based WKCR-FM
radio’s popular four-hour Christmas Day “Microtonal Bach” segment in their
annual 10-day Bach Festival. He is
often a guest on John Schaefer’s New
Sounds show on WNYC-FM, and has been featured in radio programs by radio
interviewers Anatol Vieru (Bucharest), Laurie Schwartz (Berlin/RIAS &
Sender Frei), PILOTA radio (Bergen), and John Schneider (KPFK Los Angeles).
Joshua Pierce grew up in New York City, studying at the Juilliard School of Music,
where for seven years he was the recipient of the Heckscher Foundation Award,
as well as awards from the Manhattan School of Music, Columbia University, and
the Cleveland Institute where he received the Victor Babin Award. Many more
awards would follow during his career. His principal teacher and mentor was
Dorothy Taubman, with extensive chamber music work with Bernard Greenhouse,
Joseph Seiger and Artur Balsam. Mr.
Pierce has performed internationally as solo recitalist, in chamber music
performances, with Russia's famed Leontovich String Quartet, as well as with
many of the major orchestras of Western and Eastern Europe, the U.S. and Latin
America. He reached much acclaim as part of the piano team, Pierce and Jonas,
with Dorothy Jonas. He has given
historic performances of works by Charles Ives and John Cage in Russia where he
received outstanding reviews and audience acclaim. A highly prolific recording artist, Mr. Pierce has recorded over
200 works including numerous World Premieres as a soloist and with orchestra
for MSR Classics, EMI Classics, Carlton Classics, Helicon, Koch International
Classics, MMC, Pro Arte, Sony Classics, PITCH, Vox and other labels. He has
recorded more than 40 solo concertos including works by Tchaikovsky,
Khachaturian, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev as well as the complete piano concertos of
Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt and Gershwin. Other recordings include works by
Schubert, Hummel, Czerny, Reinecke, Weber, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Franck,
Strauss, Casella, Respighi and Ellington.
His 20-year association and work with the late innovator-composer John
Cage, is legendary. Mr. Pierce's landmark series of recordings of Cage's
keyboard music for the German label Wergo: John Cage, Works for Piano and
Prepared Piano Volumes I, II, III, IV and Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared
Piano have received many prizes, much critical acclaim, and in 1991 won the Prieses Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
In May 2000, Mr. Pierce made music history by becoming the first pianist ever
to perform John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, Daughters of
the Lonesome Isle and the Three Page Sonata by Charles Ives at the Alternitivo
Festival of Contemporary Music 2000 in Moscow, Russia and at the 4th ISCM
Festival Europe/Asia 2000 in Kazan, Russia to great critical acclaim. Mr.
Pierce continues his association with the American Festival of Microtonal
Music, Inc. (AFMM), as he is the organization's official pianist, and an active
member of the AFMM Board. In 1996,
Johnny Reinhard brought his realization of Charles Ives' Universe Symphony to
Alice Tully Hall with Mr. Pierce as pianist. They have performed together
throughout Russia, Europe and the United States since 1983, presenting a wide
variety of composers including many important works by John Cage, Harry Partch,
Charles Ives, and Ivan Wyschnegradsky.
His website is at http://www.jamesarts.com/pierce/bio.html.
All
recordings “live” from AFMM concerts
Recording
Engineer: Norman Greenspan
Mastered by
Paul Geluso
CD Cover
Artist: Orlanda Brugnola
Produced by
Johnny Reinhard
www.afmm.org ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
AMERICAN
FESTIVAL OF MICROTONAL MUSIC © 2009