Clapp Recital Hall

Sunday, December 5, 2004, 8:00 p.m.

Program

Notes & Bios

RICHARD HERVIG

Sonata No.1 for Clarinet and Piano (1953)

This, the earliest work on the concert, was composed while I was teaching at Long Beach State College (1952-55). It was written for Bert McGarrity, clarinet, and Dave Vazquez, piano, both of whom have since died. The three movements are neo-classical, Fast, Slow, Fast, including (at least one!) fugato. The work is distinctly tonal, and is one of my most frequently performed.

Toccata for piano solo

The Toccata for piano solo listed is from 1997. It was actually composed much earlier, (I'm not sure when) and has since had several revisions.

The Subtle Thief, for mezzo-soprano and piano

The Subtle Thief, for mezzo-soprano and piano, is a setting of the Milton Sonnet which begins "How now hath time, the subtle thief of youth, stolen on its wing my three - and twentieth year." It was composed in 1997, for the composer's eightieth birthday concert at the Juilliard School.

Sonatina

The Chamber music for Six Players (Flute, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet, Violin, Contrabass, Piano and Percussion) was composed in 1976 as part of the Bi-centennial (1776-1976) celebration.

Each state provided music relevant to that state. The works were performed in the order that each state entered the union. They were performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The title is relevant to the works which is for six players, (not six instruments)!

Since it was from Iowa, I included a theme from a piano composition by Bix Beiderbeck, who was born in Davenport, Iowa.

Richard Hervig, (b. Story City, IA, 24 Nov 1917). American composer and educator. He studied English at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota (BA 1939) and after teaching for a time in the public schools, studied composition with Clapp at the University of Iowa (MA 1942, PhD 1947). He joined the faculty there in 1955 and became the founding director of the Center for New Music in 1966. Upon his retirement in 1988, he was appointed to a post at the Julliard School. His pupils have included Charles Dodge and William Hibbard, among others. He has received commissions from the National Music Council, the National Federation of Music Clubs and numerous performers.

Hervig's compositions, most of which are instrumental and tonal, show a disciplined approach to standard forms and an exploration of timbral possibilities. In two early works, the Clarinet Sonata no. 1 and the String Quartet, he casts sections in confliction rhythms, exploiting the resulting tensions. In the Chamber Music for Six Players, he continued his concern for establishing relationships between the parts while maintaining a separate musical personality for each instrument; in this way, his compositional approach takes on concerns more readily associated with the theatre.

MICHAEL ECKERT

Bassoon Duo

Bassoon Duo was written between December 2003 and May 2004 for Benjamin Coelho and Franck Leblois, professor of bassoon at the Conservatoire d'Angouleme, France, for a CD recording of works for two bassoons. The piece is a single movement lasting about six minutes.

Michael Eckert joined the Composition/Theory Area of the University of Iowa School of Music in 1985, becoming an Associate Professor in 1988. He studied composition with John Richard Ronsheim at Antioch College, and with Ralph Shapey at the University of Chicago. His awards for composition include the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, a Charles E. Ives Scholarship from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an NEA fellowship, and the Music Teachers National Association Distinguished Composer of the Year Award. He has been a fellow at the Charles Ives Center for American Music, and at the Composers Conference at Wellesley College.

ANDREW JASINSKI

Funk Hole (after Lelio) (2004)

During the composition of what would become my thesis piece, I had the opportunity to study Berlioz's 1831 score Lelio ou le retour a la vie while enrolled in a Genres of Music seminar on the symphonic poem. I found the fifth movement of the work, La harpe eolienne- Souvenirs, particularly engaging. Berlioz had excerpted the entire movement (with marginal revision) from an earlier work, La mort d'Orphee, an unsuccessful submission for the 1827 Prix de Rome. More than any other movement in Lelio, it is explicitly mimetic: an evocation of wind blowing through an Aeolian harp, the final chord ascends through the harmonic series to the seventh partial (or its equal-tempered approximation), ending the movement with a non-functional major-minor seventh built on the tonic. The allure that gesture held for me, the explicitness of the tone-painting and the suggestion of something prefabricated about the movement drew me to use it as the basis for my own work. I quote it freely throughout, departing from the original by varying degrees. Tendency tones from the original A-major tonality (G#/A, C#/D, E/F/F#) retain a likeness to their function (use of b6 in major to destabilize the tonic; expansion of the subdominant as a form of dominant replacement), though within a predominantly non-tonal context. The title refers to my reading of the protagonist Lelio's reclusive, convalescent nature, and to the inviolacy of interior life, the want for that inviolacy, or the lack of an interior life altogether.

Andrew Jasinski (b.1977, Okinawa, Japan) is studying towards the MA degree at The University of Iowa, having received the BMus in music theory and composition from Christopher Newport University in Virginia. While at Iowa he has participated in master classes with Andrew May, Marilyn Shrude, Fabio Ciardi and Alessandro Cipriani of Edison Studio, David Rakowski and Vladimir Tarnopolski. His teachers have included Jennifer Barker, Amelia Kaplan, Lawrence Fritts and David Gompper. Jasinski's music will be featured on a forthcoming CD celebrating the 40th anniversary of The University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios. He currently resides in the Chicago area.

RODION SHCHEDRIN

The Geometry of Sound
 

Rodion Shchedrin (b Moscow, 16 Dec 1932), graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1955 and taught there between 1965 and 1969, thereafter as a freelance artist. He is married to the ballerina Mayya Plisetskaya. A prolific writer, Shchedrin is considered one of the preeminent composers of the latter half of the twentieth century. His work is identified with a diverse style that endeavors to unify disparate elements in a unified manner. He uses materials borrowed freely from many sources, and he is considered a post-modernist in the truest sense. The Sealed Angel (1988) for mixed choir and reed pipe continues the rich choral tradition continued by Rachmaninoff's Vespers (1916) and confirmed by Schnittke's Concerto for Mixed Chorus (1984-85).