Sonic Diasporas Festival, Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, La Jolla, January 20, 2011. Patti Cudd, percussion and Shannon Wettstein, piano 

"Accord" for percussion and piano, was written for Patti Cudd and Shannon Wettstein, longtime friends and colleagues, and members of the Twin Cities ensemble Zeitgeist. The work takes its point of departure from the Oresteia of Aeschylus, particularly in the final scene of The Eumenides: the confrontation between Athena and the Furies. While this is an archetypal encounter of opposites, one inevitably seeks ways of identifying common ground. After all, that is the intent of Athena’s entreaties to the Furies, who threaten to lay waste to the land, precipitating a calamitous war. Still, the confrontation is elemental, visceral, and the Furies are irrational, so the notion of agreement is remote, even though moments of openness within the piece allow for periods of less fractious interaction. The Furies return again and again with a rant, frustrating Athena’s attempts at persuasion. How does one persuade another who refuses to listen? 

Accord

soundON Festival of Modern Music, La Jolla Athenaeum, January 11, 2014. Colin McAllister, guitar, Lisa Cella, Flute and Franklin Cox, Cello.

"Flame" is dedicated to the guitarist Colin McAllister. It is a character piece in which the guitar is placed in an uncomfortable center between the volatile, imbalanced bass flute and the spectral, yet stately ‘cello. The guitar’s preparation inhibits its natural resonance, indicating that its initial association with the flute is somewhat unnatural. Only when it removes the preparation is it allowed to sound fully as it was intended, but this does not come without a price. 

Though archetypal, the characters are loosely drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid, with particular attention to Book IV. By chain of reference, the piece borrows from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689) with a loose quotation of the ground bass from Song 34 (“When I am laid in Earth may my wrong create no trouble in thy breast”). 

Flame

Premiere performance: Jewett Fine Arts Center Auditorium, Wellesley College, August 5, 2000. Aleck Karis and Christopher Oldfather, pianists.

Non Plus Ultra

Premiere performance: SONOR, featuring John Fonville, flute, and János Négyesy, violin, and Donald Palma, conductor, April 23, 2003. 


A Breath Between

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus travels widely and survives numerous trials through wit and cunning while the most important figure in his life, Penelope, remains at home and survives an equally harrowing situation in an effort to preserve the kingdom. In order to delay the unwanted advances from the crowd of suitors determined to force her into marriage, she develops a ruse in which she agrees to consider their proposals only after completing a death shroud for her father-in-law. Alone in her quarters, she weaves during the day and unweaves the entire tapestry at night, thus maintaining her solitude and holding her household intact for more than three long years. Brilliant and combative in public, she becomes increasingly despondent in private. 
	SHROUD takes Penelope’s character and circumstance as a point of departure, rather than being wedded to the narrative itself. This provides the framework for a somewhat unconventional concerto formulation that obviates the sort of exchange of ideas that characterizes the core of the genre. While the pianist and ensemble have some direct encounters, the normative condition for the piece is one in which they occupy distinct spaces, where there is little meaningful interaction, and virtually no common ground. Our protagonist is not looking to persuade anyone and finds the very presence of the ensemble to be a torment. 
	Broadly speaking, the piano part is vested with elaborate figuration depicting an ingenious and rhetorically brilliant persona whereas the ensemble tends to be elemental and feral – a malignant presence. In the first movement the piano engages warily with the ensemble but soon takes on a critical distance, eventually displaying an imperious rage at the very circumstance of this encounter. The second movement examines the costs of this situation, particularly the effects of isolation, and features a gradual loss of the piano’s fluency and resonance. These are perhaps the central attributes that define its character, and thus this loss is a tragic one. 
	
Recorded live in Iowa City, April 24, 2016, Riverside Recital Hall
The CNM (Center for New Music) Ensemble, David Gompper, conductor, Shannon Wettstein Sadler, piano soloist.

Shroud: concerto for piano and chamber orchestra

Absence is a sort of compressed suite in three movements, an allusion to a common formal conceit in the standard guitar repertoire. Each movement has a binary form, although this is partially subverted by the use of codas and interludial material. The materials in this piece tend to limit or impede the instrument’s natural resonance. The broad aim here is to construe a sense of entropy, impermanence, and loss. The poetic environment for each movement is framed by the following textual fragments:

I

“Surely you see her now! – that Fiend from Hell! And on her head
look at the snakes, their mouths wide open, writhing for my blood!”
-Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, ln. 286-8

II

A black stormcloud of pain shrouded Akhilleus, on his bowed head he scattered dust and ash in handfuls and befouled his beautiful face....
-Iliad, XVIII, p. 430

III

Ecuba trista, mesera e cattiva,
  poscia che vide Polissena morta,
  e del suo Polidoro in su la riva
del mar si fu la dolorosa accorta,
  forsennata latrò sì come cane;
  tanto il dolor la fé la mente torta.
-Inferno, Canto XXX (16-21)

Hecuba, wretched, a captive, after they killed
Polyxena with her there witnessing,
Saw her Polydorus washed ashore: the weight
Of sorrow drove her mad, her soul so wrung
She began barking like a dog. (trans. Robert Pinsky)

Colin McAllister, guitar

Recorded from a live performance at the Athenaeum Library, La Jolla, CA, January 4, 2018

Absence

Orpheus was the sole figure in mythology who was able to serve both Apollo and Dionysus, those warring gods whose opposing stances (order vs. chaos, reason vs. emotion, etc.) left no middle ground. He was conflicted, though, and eventually chose to leave the cult of Dionysus because he could no longer participate in killing. Alas, it was a fatal choice. The Maenads pursued him in fury for his apostasy, and tore him to pieces. The legend ends with his disembodied head floating down the river Hebrus upon his lyre, still singing. 

ORPHEUS DIES explores the nature of impractical coexistence of contradictory ideas and attitudes, and of contrasting approaches. Written for Frankin Cox, who has pioneered the performance and composition of complex music for the cello, ORPHEUS DIES simultaneously presents divergent materials and modes of sound production, which tend to have either teleological implications or momentary, emotive ones. 

The piece consists of six “panels,” ranging in duration from an aphoristic 34 seconds to a contemplative, obsessive 1’40” and ends with a coda that features a fragment from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.

Franklin Cox, cello solo

Recorded from a live performance at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library, La Jolla, CA, January 6, 2018

Orpheus Dies

Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades, CA, December 11, 2010. Formalist Quartet

My String Quartet consists of nine episodes which explore three thematic ideas regarding the consequences of war: emptiness and loss, the folly of sacrifice, and madness. The titles of the episodes are mostly drawn from Greek tragedy, with the Trojan War figuring as a contextual framework within which universal and contemporary issues might be addressed. I have made little attempt to “depict” scenes in the music (as in Program Music) yet I have surely responded to texts and editorialized them throughout the piece. Indeed, text has been indispensable to my work, in particular The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Oresteia, and Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. From these sources I wrote a scenario that served as a guide for each episode, making plain the fatal recurrences (such as the sacrifices of Iphegenia and Polyxena) that characterize the remarkable capacity for human beings to ignore their past mistakes and repeat them with deadly accuracy.

String Quartet: Threnody

Adam Greene’s work often explores connections between language and music, both as an expression of a personal, poetic perspective and as a means of inviting a performer’s commitment to the interpretation of unfamiliar musical terrain. His recent music has been steeped in the Classics, exploring dramatic themes that are archetypal, yet chillingly poignant. 

Born in Chicago and raised in Massachusetts, Greene now lives and works in San Diego.

AdamGreene