Music Chamber

With Guest Artists: Mitch McGugan (viola) Emma Price (flute) Charlotte Webber (clarinet)

 

presents: American Impressions

 

Sante Fe Songs: Twelve Poems of Witter Bynner Ned Rorem

Santa Fe

Opus 101

Any other time

Sonnet

Coming down the stairs

He never knew

El Musico

The Wintry-Mind

Water-Hyacinths

Moving Leaves

Yes I hear them

The Sowers

 

Intermission

 

Thomasine Michael Kosch

from Eight Great Lives

 

Vignettes from an African Childhood Evelyn Pursley-Koptizke

Baobabs, Anthills and Thorntrees

Azure Skies and Thunderstorms

Floods on the Zambezi

Sunset on Dream Mountain

Kopjes and Marmots

Lament for Friends, Wild and Tame

Serengeti

 

Twenty21 is a new London-based ensemble dedicated to sharing music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Our goal is to dispel the notion that art music of our time is disconnected from our daily lives. We hope to challenge expectations of live performance, to juxtapose the theatrical with the absurd and the spiritual with the mundane. Our repertoire is chosen to enlighten as well as entertain.

 

Program Notes:

 

Santa Fe Songs by Ned Rorem (1923 -)

 

Ned Rorem is a living American composer of nearly legendary status. He is most well known for his songs but has composed an abundance of instrumental music with the same lyrical qualities. He is famous as an author of multiple diaries that give a unique view of the twentieth century’s musical environment. He has been a friend of many major American and European: composers as well as a host of other types of celebrities during his life including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Noel Coward, Samuel Barber, and British composer, Virgil Thompson. 

 

Born in Richmond, Indiana, Ned Rorem has been called by Time magazine "the world's best composer of art songs". He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his orchestral suite, Air Music, and has championed tonality throughout his career. His output spans nearly every musical medium, plus sixteen books. A new documentary entitled, Ned Rorem: Word and Music was released in 2005 and he is frequently seen at premieres of his works in New York City. You can find further details of his life on his website: www.nedrorem.com  

 

Of the Santa Fe songs, the Guardian UK says that this cycle of songs,

 

 “. . . show how instinctively sharp Rorem's response to words can be, and how his vocal lines - with echoes of Britten and even Finzi that are surprising from a composer raised in Chicago and trained on the east coast and in Paris - are perfectly matched to the weight and rhythm of the poetry. The accompaniments often undercut their smooth contours with a sharper, more expressionist edge. The Santa Fe Songs from 1980, to texts by Witter Bynner, are discursive, aphoristic, (with the) need of a the lighter touch . . .”

 

Poet, Witter Bynner, (August 10, 1881 – June 1, 1968) was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Harvard University, where he was invited by Wallace Stevens to join the Harvard Advocate. After college he edited McClure’s in New York for four years. His collections of poetry include An Ode to Harvard (1907), The Beloved Stranger (1919), Pins for Wings (1921), Indian Earth (1929), and New Poems (1960). In 1916 Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke co-authored Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments, which they published under pen names. The book was a spoof on the literary movement known as Imagism—the poems in the book were allegedly written by “Spectrists.” The hoax was uncovered in 1917, and Bynner and Ficke admitted to the playful decption.

 

Bynner was a professor of Oral English for the Students’ Army Training Corps at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1918. When World War I ended, he taught a course in poetry writing but lost his job when he served alcohol to students at the beginning of the Prohibition Era (1920-33). In 1922 he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he and his partner, Robert Hunt, entertained artists and literary figures such as D.H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Carl Sandburg at their home. 

 

Thomasine by Michael Kosch (1960 - )

 

Michael Kosch was born in Paterson, New Jersey and currently lives in New York City. He earned degrees in music from the Univeristy of Miami and the University of Illinois, studying composition with Ben Johnston, Salvatore Martirano, Morgan Powell, and Dennis Kam. Kosch has received many commissions and awards including a fellowship from the Bush Foundation Artists and the McKnight Fellowship in Music Composition; and, grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, and the American Composers Forum. 

 

Kosch’s instrumental music has been played by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, Zeitgeist, Giverny, Harmonia Mundi, the Northstar Brass Quintet, and the Buffalo New Music Ensemble, and has been programmed in most of the major venues in New York City as well as many important venues throughout the United States. His timpani solo, Hand Held Shots, is published by Ludwig Music Publishers. His recordings include Highland Dances for piano on the CD Building Higher Nests (INNOVA), and Glimpses for electro-acoustic tape on the collection In Celebration (University ofIllinos). His work Colatudes, for Coke bottles and cans, was released on the CD Sonic Circuits VIII (INNOVA).  

From the author’s preface to the libretto of his theatrical work Eight Great Lives from which Thomasine is extracted, he writes,  

 

Eight Great Lives is a two-person music theater work in which a human soul passing through Limbo between incarnations, relives several past lives during an otherworldly lecture-demonstration. The presentation is hosted by an enigmatic female presence, Lady Limbo, who promises to reveal to the audience the secret of “death, life, love, and dreams”. She introduces the soul-in-transit, Tom, and guides him through eight earthly sojourns – a series of Tom’s Celtic incarnations, which Lady Limbo explains, best illustrate “the points which must be made.” Thomasine is Tom’s sixth life, a Breton pastry cook, 1792, a servant of Queen Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution.

 

Vignettes from an African Childhood by Evelyn Pursley-Kopitzke (1954-)

 

A Tanzania-born American living in Tennessee, Evelyn Pursley-Kopitzke is a neo-classical composer, church musician and teacher whose extensive opus includes chamber, choral, art songs, and orchestral works. Her music has been heard from coast to coast (USA) and in Europe. She holds a graduate degree in composition and studied with Drs. Margarita Merriman, Barney Childs, and Kenneth Jacobs. In 1995 she co-founded the Greater Tri-Cities Area Composers’ Consortium and her music has been in every group production since. She received top honors in the 2002 Carton Savage international “I Wage Peace” project for her “Salaam, Frieden.” Three of her piano pieces were included in an anthology commissioned in 2005 by the Appalachian Music Teachers’ Association and that same year was AMTA Composer of the Year. She often is PR writer for the Composers’ Consortium—including national press. Pursley-Kopitzke’s recent works include African Vignettes (2007, Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano), an Arts Build Communities Tennessee Arts Commission, Reflections (2008, Marimba, Choir, Organ), Festival (2008, 3 C-Flutes, Alto Flute, Bass Flute), “Magnificat” (2008, two Sopranos, Choir, Piano), Victoria Vignettes (2009, Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano), “May in the Greenwood,” (2009, Choir and Piano), “Adagio, Beyond the Silence” (2010, Soprano and Chamber Orchestra), “Expectations” (2010, Percussion Solo on 11 instruments, commissioned and premiered in 2011 by Alan Fey), Cetacean Suite (2010, Brass Quintet), and a symphony, The Constellations for Orchestra (2011-12).

 

Although a lifelong citizen of the United States, it is significant that Pursley-Kopitzke was born in Tanzania, Africa, and lived most of her first decade in African countries, the child of missionaries. She was fluent in two African languages that she has now forgotten; however, the rhythms and harmonies of African speech and playground songs may have carried over into her music. As well as conventional idioms, you can often find unusual harmonies, migrating tonal centers, odd accent patterns (5/4, 7/8 and changing meters) and unusual uses of traditional instruments in her music. In Vignettes from an African Childhood, you will hear percussive use of cello, violin, and piano. 



 

Vignettes From An African Childhood is programmatic music, a designation that implies the music was conceived as a way of evoking a specific image or story. Famous examples of this type of music are The Four Seasons by Vivaldi, Symphony Fantastique by Berlioz, Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, and Don Juan by Richard Strauss. Prior to the 20th century and the advent of movie music, the idea of creating music around a story or visual idea was a major alternative to abstract music. In fact, Strauss is reputed to say that music could describe anything, even a teaspoon!



 

In Vignettes From An African Childhood, Evelyn Pursley-Kopitzke has chosen the word “vignette” to describe her artistic vision, a picture that is focused in the center and fades off at the edges, the idea of an object out of focus and yet still recognizable. This concept will be very helpful in the hearing of this new piece. Music is an inexact activity and as such does not lend itself to specific communication.



 

1. “Baobabs, Anthills and Thorntrees” – Baobabs are gigantic trees with diameters of over twenty feet. The anthill she describes is taller than her father. The Thorntrees are called “wait-a-bit” trees by locals describing the time it takes to extricate yourself from the thorns if caught up in them.



 

2. “Azure Skies and Thunderstorms” – Daily, violent thunderstorms are juxtaposed with the clearest blue skies Evelyn has ever seen.



 

3. “Floods on the Zambezi” – Annual floods in Zambia create surrealistic scenes of islands floating down the river and treetops poking out of the water. The bloated river makes water-loving animals more active – hippopotami, crocodiles, fishing birds, and snakes.



 

4. “Sunset on Dream Mountain” – A dream of Mbeya Mountain in Tanzania where a little girl dreams of whirling fast enough to fly!



 

5. “Kopjes and Marmots” – Memories of hiking on a flat-topped rocky hill (Kopjes) while trying to get close enough for a better look at the “rock-rabbits” (Marmots) moving so fast that one minute they were there and the next gone!



 

6. “Friends, Wild and Tame/Lament of a Child” – evocation of the memory of pets and the lament of having to say goodbye when the unkind African environment always took them away.



 

7. “Serengeti” – a programmatic description of the migration of massive herds of animals that Evelyn witnessed on the equatorial plains during her childhood.

 

 

Text – Santa Fe Songs 

 

 

1. Santa Fe

Among the automobiles and in a region

Now Democrat, now Republican, 

With a department store, a branch of the Legion, 

A Chamber of Commerce and a moving-van, 

In spite of cities crowding on the Trail, 

Here is a mountain-town that prays and dances

With something left, though much besides must fail, 

Of the ancient faith and wisdom of St. Francis. 

 

His annual feast has come. His image moves

Along theses streets of people. And the trees

And kneeling women, just as they did before, 

Welcome and worship him because he proves

That natural sinners put him at his ease, 

And so he enters the cathedral door. 

 

2. Opus 101

He not only plays

One note

But holds another note

Away from it – 

As a lover

Lifts

A waft of hair

From loved eyes.

 

The piano shivers, 

When he touches it, 

And the leg shines. 

 

3. Any other time

Any other time would have done

But not now

Because now there is not time

And when there is no time

It only stands still on its own center

Waiting to be wound

 

Once upon a time somebody will unwind it

And then what a time

In no time at all. 

 

4. Sonnet

Summer, O Summer, fill thy shadowy trees

With a reprieve of cooling sacrament

Before we die among the mysteries;

Loosen our wreaths and let us be content

To bow our heads before thy flower-bells

Beneath whose mould we too shall soon be spent,   - 

Lovers desiring this and little else:

Thy laurel now, not ours, thy firmament

Of blue in which to dedicate our blood

To earth, our vernal meaning now but meant, 

Like the least meaning of thy smallest bud, 

To go the way the earlier seasons went. 

Breath is our fee and dividend and cost:

So let us grant the forfeit and be lost!

 

5. Coming down the stairs

Coming down the stairs

She paused midway

And turned

And assembled the railing

Which thereupon went upstairs

Leaving her slowly alone

 

6. He never knew

He never knew what was the matter with him

Until one night

He chopped up his bed for firewood

 

It was comfortable that way

 

And then another night a year later

It came roaring up the street at him

As a sunset.

 

7. El Musico

Looking beyond us always

He played the harp

And sang the song with it

A little sharp

Or took from one of the others

A violin

And sang the song with it

A little thin, 

Or else he stroked the sand

Where he sat

And sang the song with it

A little flat;

But whatever song he sang, 

He seemed to know

Exactly in his voice

How the winds blow, 

And how the waves come up

Chapala shore, 

And how the birds sing a little

And then more, 

And why the birds are careless

Of a church-bell.

Others sang better than he, 

But none so well.

 

 

8. The Wintry-Mind

Winter uncovers distances, I find;

And so the cold and so the wintry mind

Takes leaves away, till there is left behind

A wide cold world. And so the heart grows blind

To the earth’s green motions lying warm below

Field upon field, field upon field, of snow.  

 

 

9. Water-Hyacinths

I

What is so permanent as a first love, 

Except the impermanence of later loves? 

. . . I sit in a rowboat, watching hyacinths

Float down the lake and thinking about people, 

How they insinuate and change and vanish, 

How everyone leaves everyone alone, 

How even the look of a beloved child

Is lesser solace than a mountain-rim. 

 

II

Have I a grievance then against my friends, 

Against my lovers? Is love so unavailing, 

That here in a rowboat I shrug my naked shoulder

And watch the hyacinths go down the lake? 

Do words that were light as air on living lips

Last longer when they crumble underground? 

And is the soul an insecurer thing, 

Less intimate, than the connecting earth? 

 

10. Moving Leaves

How could I know the wisdom of a world

That blows its withered leaves down from the air

They gleamed in once and gathers their strength 

again upward

In the sap of the earth, if I set my fervid heart

On a leaf unmoved by any wind of change, 

If I wanted still that spring when first I loved? 

No leaves that have ever fallen anywhere

Are anywhere but here, heaping the trees. 

 

11. Yes I hear them

Yes I hear them

Steps on the staircase outside my door

With no one attached

 

I have stopped looking 

But always when I snap off the last bulb

The footsteps come and wander

 

And always

When the dawn-light follows

They wander away

Footsteps with no one attached

 

I have stopped looking 

So that last week

They changed

They came with the daylight and are here now

 

But we have no railings. 

 

12. The Sowers

Now horses’ hooves are treading earth again

To start the wheat from darkness into day, 

And along the heavy field go seven men

With hands on ploughs and eyes on furrowing clay. 

 

Six of the men are old; but one, a boy, 

Knows in his heart that more than fields are sown – 

For spring is ploughing heaven with rows of joy

In the voice of one high bird, singing alone. 

 

Text - THOMASINE

 

“Pierre, mon Dieux, where can he be?  Lost youth – you’ll prove the death of me!

Pierre promised, ‘I’ll find firewood’ now they tell me he’s a liar.

Good Queen Marie requests a cake, but with an oven cool for lack of fuel,

How can a cook bake?

When word is hear I’ve failed the queen, the staff will laugh at Thomasine.

Cruel jabs and jokes obscene.

 

Cooking for the court, churning bowls of pain – culinary conquests burning souls insane!

The butcher snubs the chef, both hate the Queen; she loves pastry, 

Thus the chef and the butcher loathe me.

I just ignore their griping smiling through their taunts and sniping

I sail away on girlhood reveries, lush fields of greener days,

Swirling scenes of Brittany, unfurling litanies; my family, old friends –

Songs to sing again.

Insults I deflect laughing ‘la-di-da’.  At a pinch, I’m deadly with a spatula!

Rumours swiftly die, lies wax then wane, juicy gossip dries 

But my memories and daydreams remain.

 

Who’d ever claim in this city of light, the means for flame would seem so slight?

Hopes were sinking – no more wood around. Pierre, winking, swore some could be found.

Foolish boast, ‘twill cost my post!  Elusive youth gone ‘poof’ – perhaps it’s proof

Pierre was a ghost!

Our fires burned bright in Brittany, long days, warm nights for cookery,

Perched on my Grandma’s knee.

 

 

‘Grandmama’ I would cry, ‘oh I yearn to cook.’  ‘Thomasine’ she’d reply, ‘learn the holy book.

There’s a time for the flour, time for the salt, chosen hours for milk and honey.

Like the sun rising east, there’s a time for the yeast, winter sleet melts to feed sweet spring.

There’s a time for each seasoning.’

 

Daily mobs threaten the end of the Queen.  How will Pierre every wend his way home?

Gaily this rabble quotes ditties obscene, they drown out old folksongs my mother sang to me.

 

Sitting in Mama’s kitchen – symphonies of sights and scents.

Marmalade melodies, meet honey-glazed harmonies.  

Mama hummed her measures curiously as she fumbled with dough, furiously.

She would drum advice into me:  ‘dear Thomasine – great recipes spring from a baker’s heart.

Pastry sings, or breaks apart.  Whist your eggs fluttery for whispy crepes buttery.’

How I long for Mama’s wisdom, rich in kitchen secrets dipped in song.

 

No doubt that rascally lad gave in, to lurid vice and enticing sin.  No man can resist.

I risk termination enlisting this lad.  Paris temptation could make pure Sir Galahad go bad!

A dancing hall; a gambling stall; and should a pretty, painted lady call – ‘Pierre!’  his virtue will fall!

Such dreadful, seamy city life, best serve preserves of country life, spread with a butter knife!

 

Aunt Abby pulled me aside one day, whispering in a confiding way,

‘My dear, to fashion a wafery tart, first learn of passionate bakery art.  

The search for fruit is a daft pursuit.

Find apples crispest on soggy land, rasberries  reddest on snow-white sand.

Sweetest peaches hide where the honey bee hums;

 the leanest branch yields the plumpest of plumbs.

‘Tis nature’s jest to spice a baker’s quest.’

 

What to tell the queen?

How I dread being led to her bedroom.  Imagine the fuss!

‘My Queen – about our favourite cake – excuse us – they’ll have to eat bread.’

She will lose her head.  ‘You’ll rue this blunder!’

How I wonder why that blasted boy, would destroy me.

That brat, that rat, it isn’t fair!  But who is this amidst the blinding glare?

Perhaps it’s Pierre?  At last it’s Pierre!

 

Dear Pierre, see him run with a bundle near the stair with his arms chock full.

Greet him give a shout, there was never any doubt – my faith was strong, I understood,

Oui, oui, before too long he’d bring me my wood.

 

Oh here he comes:  bugle man, blow a fanfare:  beat brass drums – rat-a-tat the snare:

Flags and banners fly, Roman Candles light the sky:  Pierre returns to save the day –

Hey, hey, he earns a rave, hurrah and hurray!

 

From roof and tower strew the hero’s route with flowers!

Peal Cathedral bells, trill great organ!  Feel the city swell – spill the hoards in.

Line the avenues, clap your glad hands:  light the canon fuse, clang your pastry pans!

So starved were we for news this good, we’ll eat our fill now for Thomasine has firewood!

 

Crown Pierre with a branch of the Laurel.  Crowd the square, chant a choral hymn.

Sculptors cave his bust, painters rush to brush his portrait. 

Proud Ulysses can’t compare, I swear – he wouldn’t dare to challenge Pierre!

Roar from shack or palace, fill the air, all Paris, Hail Pierre!

 

He’s been growing – yes, he’s much too tall!  Where’s he going?  

That’s not wood it’s all optic tricks, no logs or sticks.

No matter how I stare, it’s not Pierre – I’m still in a fix!

No world, no time, I weep bereft of words to rhyme – these three are left.

Un – scared.

Deux – unprepared.

Trois – Ah, Merde!”