During the early morning hours of January 1st, 1983, after attending a New Year’s Eve party with her boyfriend, Karen was shot by him at point blank range, while seated in her car, parked in the driveway of her parent’s home. Her boyfriend then turned the gun on himself and took his own life. This event cast a dark and persistent shadow over my otherwise almost idyllic childhood, and has had a profound influence on the evolution of my religious, spiritual, philosophical, and world views--both as an artist and as a human being. My symphony is not intended to give voice to the outpouring of grief, anger, and sense of futility that followed Karen’s murder; rather, it is intended as a way of remembering a particular time in my life, of remembering the people and places surrounding this tragic event, and of remembering Karen and her brief life.
Musically, the symphony is cast in three main movements, with a prologue and an epilogue. The Prologue is an instrumental arrangement of my song, “On the Death of Friends in Childhood“, after the poem by Donald Justice. The orchestra interrupts the song at the end of the opening section, with the first of three chronically arranged winter tableaux: “Snow Games”, a moderato, inspired by memories of my childhood with Mark and Karen before Karen’s murder; “Murder-Suicide”, an allegro, a contemplation of the event itself; and following a brief “Flashforward” for solo percussion, “Driving Past the House”, an adagio, inspired by my memories of Karen’s murder in the present day, which are frequently awakened when driving past her former house, in my hometown. This movement, and the symphony as a whole, culminates in a recitation of the aforementioned Justice poem, accompanied by the orchestra. The Epilogue concludes the symphony with a complete statement of the instrumental arrangement of my song, “On the Death of Friends in Childhood”, that began the work.
For my teachers--David Del Tredici, George Tsontakis, and Richard Danielpour; and in memory of Karen Thomson (1966-1983).
“La tristesse durera” (The sadness remains) is a phrase that was written by van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo. Like many artists, I have been both deeply moved and greatly inspired by van Gogh’s life and work. In 1995, while studying in Fontainebleau, France, I planed an ongoing series of short pieces inspired by some of his early paintings from his years in the Dutch town of Neunen, and in Paris. My idea was to transform my experience of these paintings into music—as opposed to simply creating musical depictions of them. From my first viewing of his painting, Chapel at Neunen with Churchgoers (1884), I associated the churchgoers in it with people leaving a funeral, and this association gave me a clear sense of what the expressive character of my piece would be. “La tristesse durera” was composed in January 2006 while in residence at Copland House, and was premiered by Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra in December 2006. The forthcoming recording of “La tristesse durera” is supported, in part, by Copland House’s 2007 Sylvia Goldstein Award. “La tristesse durera” is dedicated to my childhood friend, John McRoberts, who died from cancer in 1995, during the initial planning of the work.
In the months before I began work on the piece I realized that my memories of earlier periods of my life were most strongly stimulated by shadows and silences. As I started to sketch the work, shadows and silences acted as portals through which I would pass from the world of the present into the world of the past. In one sense, the two contrasting musics found in this work are representative of the emotional and expressive qualities I have come to associate with each of these two distinct spiritual worlds. “in shadows, in silence” was composed at the MacDowell Colony in May and June of 2002 and premiered by eighth blackbird at the 2002 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. The chamber orchestra-version of “in shadows, in silence” was completed in May-June 2003 and premiered at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in July 2003.
Program Note: From the first time I encountered his work in my early twenties, the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche have been an important of my spiritual life...
Passages from two of his works served as the inspiration for both the pieces I composed in 1998, Brilliant Mirrors, for wind quintet, and Deep Midnight, for orchestra. The passage which inspired Deep Midnight is from Nietzsche’s most famous work, Also Sprach Zarathustra, which I happened to be reading in the spring of 1998. This was a particularly dark period in my personal life, as I had recently lost my father to lung cancer in the October of 1997. During this time, I was struggling to reconcile an optimistic, life-affirming view of human existence with the sorrow, loss, and awareness of physical suffering I had experienced throughout my father’s illness and after his death. When I read the aforementioned passage from Zarathustra, it offered not only a possible solution to the conflict in which I was engaged, but also challenged me to rethink my entire notion of how to approach and experience my life, from both an emotional and spiritual point of view. In particular, I became almost obsessed with the lines “reach out for deeper happiness, for deeper unhappiness”, and felt that if I could understand and begin to “live” these words, I would perhaps be able to embrace my sadness and loss, therefore enabling myself to experience all of the emotions in my life more fully. Being a composer, I thought that the best way for me to approach Nietzsche’s words would be through my own music. Having said that, it is important to note that Deep Midnight is not an attempt to musically express the Nietzschean “deeper happiness” and “deeper unhappiness” of the aforementioned passage, but rather, an attempt to express in music, what it felt like for me to acknowledge, accept, and begin to understand the meaning of these words and all of the ramifications they would have on my future life.
Deep Midnight was awarded the 2000 Aspen Music Festival.
The first setting, entitled Mourning Songs, was completed in 1998 and premiered at the Brevard Summer Music Festival. The Michigan Music Teachers Association commissioned the revised version of Mourning Songs, which was premiered at their annual conference in 2002. Familiar Clouds replaces both versions of Mourning Songs (which have since been withdrawn) and differs from those earlier settings in two significant ways: the changing of the voice type from mezzo-soprano to soprano, and the structuring of the work as a song cycle in one movement as opposed to a cycle of three separate songs. The three poems I have chosen for this cycle are typical of much of Mr. Justice’s work in that they deal with the themes of sadness, loss, and memory. Familiar Clouds is the second work I have completed in a series of four projected vocal works on poems by Donald Justice. The first, Into the Black Oblivion (1999), a setting of Mr. Justice’s Psalm and Lament for baritone and ensemble, was written in memory of my father and premiered at the Aspen Music Festival. It has also been recorded by the Society of Composers on Capstone Records.
Familiar Clouds was composed between December 2003 and May 2004 and was greatly facilitated by a residency at Yaddo. I would like to acknowledge and express my gratitude to the following individuals and organizations whose support made the completion of this work possible: Donald Justice, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., George Tsontakis, and Maria Choy-Kwong.
In the months before I began work on the piece I realized that my memories of earlier periods of my life were most strongly stimulated by shadows and silences. As I started to sketch the work, shadows and silences acted as portals through which I would pass from the world of the present into the world of the past. In one sense, the two contrasting musics found in this work are representative of the emotional and expressive qualities I have come to associate with each of these two distinct spiritual worlds. “in shadows, in silence” was composed at the MacDowell Colony in May and June of 2002 and premiered by eighth blackbird at the 2002 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. The chamber orchestra-version of “in shadows, in silence” was completed in May-June 2003 and premiered at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in July 2003.
Program Note: “Brilliant Mirrors” is cast in 5 movements which are arranged in a mirrored arch form, so that relationships in tempo, texture, and general musical character exist between movements 1 and 5, and 2 and 4; with the third movement acting as the emotional and dramatic focal point of the work...
The first and fifth movements feature fast tempos and dense, contrapuntal textures, while the second and fourth movements are in moderate tempos, with mainly homophonic textures. The third movement is set apart from the others by its slow tempo and chorale-style writing for the quintet. Most of the melodic and harmonic material in the piece is derived from a six-note chord containing the pitches E, A, F, G-sharp, B, and F-sharp.
The work’s title is taken from a passage in Nietzsche’s “Human, All Too Human”, which offers an optimistic interpretation of the various imperfections man is aware of in his own nature and actions when comparing himself to God. The passage reminded me of the generally optimistic emotional character of my quinet, and Nietzsche’s image of man looking at himself in a brilliant mirror when comparing himself to God, reminded me of the preponderance of mirror-writing, or inversion, in my quintet’s melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and formal structure.
Program Note: The initial inspiration for “Seven Solitudes” came to me during pianist Bruce Levingston’s recital at Alice Tully Hall in the spring of 2002, he premiered "Seven Solitudes" one year later at his second Alice Tully Hall recital...
The image of Bruce walking onstage alone at the start of his recital made an impression on me. A single performer, sitting at a single instrument, performing a program he prepared alone for the better part of a year made me realize the close relationship between pianists and composers; we are solitary rather than communal musicians. This idea of solitude reminded me of a passage from Nietzsche I had read years before: “New ears for new music, new eyes for the most distant things. An experience out of seven solitudes.” This gave me my title, and the idea of solitude became the driving force behind the composition of my piece for Bruce. As I wrote the work, I began to imagine that the solitude that is a necessary part of the lives of composers and pianists gave us access to a world of emotional and spiritual experiences different than those of other less-solitary people. In the work I attempted to create a kind of music that stemmed directly from the spiritual and emotional experiences I have had during moments of my deepest solitude.
Program Note: I first encountered Sherwood Anderson’s short stories in the fall of 1988, during my freshman year of college, while reading his classic story collection, “Winesburg, Ohio”, for an American literature survey course...
Later, in the summer of 1993, I read his collection “Certain Things Last”, which includes the story, “Brothers”. Initially, I planned to set the story as a one-act opera and got as far as composing the first 30 minutes of music in piano-vocal score in the fall of 1996. Though I later abandoned this project, I always felt that the music I wrote for the opera’s prelude in some way captured the essence of the story, particularly the lovely, poetic imagery of its opening and closing paragraphs. When asked by Brian Messier to write a new work for wind ensemble, I knew I wanted to write a piece that would contrast my extroverted concert opener from 2001, “The Last Days of Summer”, and we agreed that I’d write a quiet, lyrical work. The expressive character I imagined for the piece reminded me first of the Anderson story, then of my music for it, and I then decided to base this composition on the prelude I wrote for my operatic setting of the story. “Brothers” is dedicated with gratitude to Brian Messier, the ARHS Wind Ensemble, and the consortium of ensembles who commissioned the work.
Program Note: Summer has always been my favorite season, and many of my happiest summers took place at my family’s former home near the ocean in New Jersey. In 1998-2000, I returned there each year in late August, after having been away on residencies in other parts of the country...
During the first of these homecomings, I immediately noticed that these days held a heightened emotional intensity for me, both an urgent exuberance and a bittersweet sadness. The bittersweet quality was unexpected--a contemplative moment of calm that quietly interrupted the other, almost frenzied, and more experience-driven emotions I was feeling at the time. During my two subsequent homecomings, in 1999 and 2000, these emotions resurfaced, and it was then that the idea came to me of expressing in music these two sharply contrasting emotions, which I had come to associate with the last days of summer.
The piece features two kinds of music, and by extension, two different ensembles. The larger of the groups is comprised of all but eight members of the band, and is used for the music I associate with the joyful exuberance of the last days of summer. This music features fast tempos, driving, repetitive rhythms, homophonic textures, diatonic harmony, extroverted gestures, loud dynamics, and brilliant colors. The other group consists of the remaining eight players--E-flat clarinet, saxophone quartet, two euphoniums, and contrabass-and is used for the music I associate with the bittersweet sadness of the last days of summer. This music features slow tempos, relaxed rhythms, lyrical melody, chromatic harmony, mildly contrapuntal textures, soft dynamics, dark colors, and introverted gestures. This music also quotes several themes from an earlier work of mine, “Into the Black Oblivion” (1999), which was written in memory of my father.
While initially inspired by emotions I associated with a particular time of year and season, the piece does not attempt to musically depict this time and season-rather, it afforded me an opportunity to explore the emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical implications that the aforementioned experience held for me.
PHOTO: Murat Eyüboğlu