Contemporary Classics April 24, 2018 Celebration of Water

Emily Doolittle Four pieces about water (2000)

Canadian-born, Scotland-based composer Emily Doolittle grew up in Halifax Nova Scotia and was educated at Dalhousie University, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, Indiana University and Princeton University. From 2008-2015 she was Assistant/Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Cornish College of the Arts. She now lives in Glasgow, UK, where she is an Athenaeum Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.   Emily Doolittle has an ongoing interest in the relationships between music and sounds from the natural world, particularly bird and other animal songs. 

Four pieces about water (2000)

            I. running water

            II. salt water

            III. frozen water

            IV. rain water

for nine instruments;  commissioned by the Nova Scotia Arts Council for Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal

Luke Carlson: Water Words (2014)            6:18            Chartreuse            on water  no label

Luke Carlson is an active performer of both traditional and contemporary music, conducting several recent premieres of his own orchestral and chamber works. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at College of the Ozarks in Branson, MO, where he coordinates the entire theory and composition program.

“Water Words” is inspired by brief phrases from the Bible. Each phrase evokes a differing aspect of water, from mysterious darkness to light-hearted drops of rain.  The piece opens with the text, “darkness was upon the face of the deep,” which comes from the creation account in Genesis. This is followed by, “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” The imagery of the Spirit reminded him of the ancient hymn tune, “Veni Creator Spiritus” (Come Creator Spirit). He chose to utilize fragments of the melody here and there, tying the movements together with a cohesive, musical thread.

 

Toru Takemitsu - I Hear The Water Dreaming

Concern - one might say obsession - for the environment dominated much of Takemitsu's life and this release shows how much of an influence the world about him was on his artistic thinking and composition. The title "I hear the water dreaming" was prompted by an Australian aboriginal painting. Takemitsu was a Francophile and whether his love of French music led him to this or followed from it is not clear. Debussy and Messiaen were particular favorites and he felt a particular affinity with the flute, an instrument used so much by French composers, and one that is in some form or other used in so many societies worldwide and is common to his own native Japanese culture as well as to western music.

Richard Faith:  Sea Pieces:

Richard Faith 92 last month was born in Evansville IN, educated in Chicago but spent much of his life in Tucson AZ- all far from the sea.  Faith's music displays a freely modulating harmonic language within the boundaries of tonality that combines neo-romantic and impressionistic qualities, with Debussy, Ravel as major influences.   Two Sea Pieces for Clarinet and Piano was written in 1966

Arnold Bax: On the Sea Shore (Arr. for Orchestra)     

Arnold Bax was an English composer whose works had disappeared from performance at the time of his death in the early 1950s.  His work was not rediscovered until the late 1970s & 1980s On the Sea Shore was written in 1908 and orchestrated by Graham Parlett in 1984.

 

Maurice Ravel "Une barque sur l'océan" ("A Boat on the Ocean"). F♯ minor. Originally written as part of a piano suite Mirrors and Dedicated to Paul Sordes. It is the third and the longest piece of this set.   The piece recounts a boat as it sails upon the waves of the ocean. Arpeggiated sections and sweeping melodies imitate the flow of ocean currents. It was later transcribed as an orchestral version by Ravel.
 

Claude Debussy “La Mer”

La mer written between 1903-1905 is often considered a masterpiece of suggestion and subtlety in its rich depiction of the ocean, which combines unusual orchestration with daring impressionistic harmonies. The work has proven very influential, and its use of sensuous tonal colors and its orchestration methods have influenced many later film scores. Although it is called a symphonic suite, it obviously uses descriptive devices to suggest wind, waves and the ambience of the sea so is both programmatic and abstract.

While composing "La mer," he rarely visited the sea, spending most of his time far away from large bodies of water. Debussy drew inspiration from art, "preferring the seascapes available in painting and literature..." to the physical sea.

Caroline Potter writes that Debussy's depiction of the sea "avoids monotony by using a multitude of water figurations that could be classified as musical onomatopoeia: they evoke the sensation of swaying movement off waves and suggest the pitter-patter of falling droplets of spray" (and so forth), and — significantly — avoid the arpeggiated triads used by Wagner and Schubert to evoke the movement of water.

David Lang: Writing on Water

Written for 3 voices and small orchestra and commissioned in 2005 for the London Sinfonietta and Synergy Vocal Group and was premiered on 29 October 2005, Queen Elisabeth Hall, London, UK, Jurjen Hempel, conductor.   Libretto (English) by Peter Greenaway

The sweeping, oceanic scope of this piece is immense but it never becomes programmatic to mimic ocean sounds.  It swings from the immense and loud to the subtle and quiet.