Opposites attract in music drawing on the drama of contradiction, whether in the combination of folk, jazz, and classical styles in Bartók’s Contrasts or in the surprising mood shifts of Schumann’s Kreisleriana.
Steven Roens: Countermeasures: Four Pieces for Wind Quartet (World Premiere)
Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana, op. 16
Libby Larsen: Dancing Solo
Béla Bartók: Contrasts
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Program Notes
Countermeasures, commissioned by the NOVA Chamber Music Series, is a set of four pieces for woodwind quartet (flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon). Inspired by the concept of “contrasts”, I attempted to express this idea in a number of different ways throughout the four pieces. As the title suggests, I conceived these contrasts as oppositions to each other (or “countermeasures”). Accordingly, the first of the four pieces begins melodically, with a large leap in the bassoon that returns to the same pitch and then lands on a major second with the clarinet. The first countermeasure arrives as an interruption of the melodic material by a dissonant four-note chord made of minor seconds. This contrast is carried into the second piece, which begins with a unison that quickly evolves into the dissonant four-note chord. The rest of the piece continues with slow-moving chords interrupted briefly by a melodic passage. The third piece begins again with the four-note chord, but continues with melodic material consisting of duets, first between the clarinet and bassoon, and then between the flute and the oboe. It ends with another kind of countermeasure: the music from the opening played in reverse by the oboe and clarinet. The final piece begins again with the chord in seconds, but this time in major seconds, recalling the initial major second from the opening of the first piece. This is followed by a melody in the bassoon. The final countermeasure occurs toward the end of the piece, when the flute plays the bassoon melody in an approximate retrograde inversion (that is, in reverse and upside down), and then the bassoon plays its original melody in reverse to end the piece.
- Steve Roens
As the son of a bookseller, Robert Schumann was always destined to be influenced by literary thought, and the fact that he came of intellectual age in a world so recently turned upside down by Goethe certainly played a part. Young Schumann’s interests ran the gamut of German letters, but it was the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann that most often captured his fullest attention. Hoffman was a true polymath, with equal success as a composer, painter, critic, lawyer—you name it—but his legacy endures most vividly in short fantasy/horror stories he fashioned. Among the first to write such tales, Hoffmann had quite a secondary impact on the music world. The Nutcracker and Coppélia were based on his work, as was Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. For his part, Schumann chose one of Hoffmann’s most eccentric fictional creations, the crazed Kappellmeister Johannes Kreisler. Kreisleriana (1838) perfectly distills the mood swings and flights of manic fancy that define the unpredictable title character and, as a prime example of Romantic era tone-poetry, it presents a richly complex emotional experience.
“Dancing alone—improvising with the shadows, the air, on an inner beat, upon a fleeting feeling—has always enthralled me. With Dancing Solo, I am making a dance for clarinet, a dance composed of color, rhythm, beat implied and explicit, and breath: the music is the dance and the dance is the music.” These are Libby Larsen’s own words on this virtuosic woodwind showpiece, and they speak to a desire on her part to, in essence, choreograph an implied physical action into the sounds of her work. This was an especially meaningful bit of insight for Caroline Hartig, for whom the work was written. Ms. Hartig worte in a 2002 article that Dancing Solo “is inspired by instrumental virtuosity, which parallels the kinetic motions of the human body,” and she further confirms the concept when she mentions the “ballet-like gestures” of the first movement and the jazz- or adrenaline-fueled passages later in the piece. Dancing Solo was premiered by Hartig in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 1994.
Bartók was hard at work on a new concerto for Zoltán Székely in the summer of 1938 when an unusual commission from another violinist came his way. Joseph Szigeti wrote the composer on behalf of himself and swing band clarinetist Benny Goodman with the suggestion of a two-movement rhapsody that would feature them with the composer. Szigeti further suggested a performance length of roughly seven minutes but, as he so often did, Bartók followed his own instincts and eventually settled on three movements and fifteen minutes. He was not unrepentant and, in a letter he sent to Goodman along with the score, admitted that “generally the salesman delivers less than he is supposed to…” while also offering that “there are exceptions, however.” Perhaps Bartók hoped to distract his commissioner from the fact that he had also abandoned the original Rhapsody title in favor of Contrasts, which the trio would eventually perform in its final form in 1941. Goodman might not have been a world-class classical technician, but he was an avid practitioner, and his personal investment in contemporary repertoire (he commissioned the Copland Concerto, performed the premiere of Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs and recorded Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto) certainly enhanced his already robust contribution to the history of his instrument.
- Jeff Counts