Four Bagatelles with Curious Titles is an attempt to share the unique sound vocabulary of a relatively unknown and intriguing instrument. The piece focuses on timbral varieties which often go neglected in standard literature for handbells. In Four Bagatelles the four players act upon the set of bells and handchimes as a single instrument. This distinctive performance style is typical for handbell music; however, this piece takes the concept further by integrating other timbres into the mix, especially those that stretch the bounds of the motion-based playing style that handbells already require.

The titles of the short pieces are meant to conjure up imagery while remaining curiously disconnected. (The third title is an exception. That one is just dutifully fulfilling its role as the archetypal slow movement.) 

III. This Is The Slow One

II. Cute Bug Until I

I. But I Was Asleep

Four Bagatelles with Curious Titles is an attempt to share the unique sound vocabulary of a relatively unknown and intriguing instrument. The piece focuses on timbral varieties which often go neglected in standard literature for handbells. In Four Bagatelles the four players act upon the set of bells and handchimes as a single instrument. This distinctive performance style is typical for handbell music; however, this piece takes the concept further by integrating other timbres into the mix, especially those that stretch the bounds of the motion-based playing style that handbells already require.

The titles of the short pieces are meant to conjure up imagery while remaining curiously disconnected. (The third title is an exception. That one is just dutifully fulfilling its role as the archetypal slow movement.) 

IV. CPU Usage

From the program notes.
--Christian          

Rondo Capovolto is based on the principle of reversible music, in which the spirit and energy
can be maintained regardless of whether the music moves forward or backward. The first section (mm. 1-40) is presented at the end (mm. 77-end) in an exact retrograde. The Italian 'capovolto' (flipped, inverted) suggests this.

Rondo Capovolto

Sightread by Alexander String Quartet. There is a longer version that might be part of something else later.
--Christian

Rhapsody for String Quartet (ROUGH SKETCH) (1)

The Clock

Schism for Bass Flute/Flute and Conga Drum (draft) (summer arts '11)

NOTES AND TEXT:

"The Untold Want" (2016 prizewinner of the Pacific Chorale Young Composers Competition) delves into Whitman’s poetry of the sea, and the American author’s fascination of its existential and spiritual metaphors. The music is immediately propelled by the vibrant exhortation “now…” addressing the Voyager with vigor and intrepid energy. A second poem is set, beginning “Gliding o’er all…” and spanning all of the wide dimension it describes. It speaks of life and death with fluency, and the choir will merge it with the energy of the former poem, appealing all the more “now” to set sail on life’s voyage.

I am drawn to the seafaring poems in the author’s work which led me to select this text, among many others. The unaccompanied choral setting of "The Untold Want" is conceived as a movement of a large choral cycle of Whitman poetry scored for choir, harp, and handbells entitled Voyaging. A 4-note motif at the word “Gliding” is one of its primary musical themes. My conception of the musical material of Voyaging began with 2011's "Aboard at a Ship's Helm," and its framework includes a setting of “O Captain! My Captain!” among other text settings of seafaring poetry from Leaves of Grass.

The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,          
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
 
Gliding o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul—not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.
 
WALT WHITMAN

The Untold Want (John Alexander Singers)

Based on poetic ideas by a Walt Whitman poem, “Aboard at a Ship’s Helm,” this piece was written originally for full orchestra in a shorter version. The composition title An Ocean Bell, Ringing is from a pivotal line of the poem. The 10-minute composition was re-orchestrated for this large ensemble. The poem focuses on the warning alarm bell sounded on a ship; this bell sound becomes a central musical gesture of the piece. The word “ringing” from the source text is a focal point for this instrumental work. The bell sounds are achieved through bells and bell-like instruments, but also with specifically chosen pitch collections intended to imitate the distinctive harmonic series of a bell. There is a prominent battery of percussion including handbells, whirling tubes and spring drum. Wave-like swells manifest as a shifting chord sequence of seven chords, each progressing slowly into the next, until the seventh is finally achieved (only twice in the composition).

(2013 Chamber Ensemble recording)

An Ocean Bell, Ringing

"O Captain! My Captain!" is the sixth movement of a large choral cycle of Whitman poetry scored for choir, harp, and handbells entitled Voyaging.  Choral Arts Initiative's PREMIERE|Project Festival commissioned the piece under a composer fellowship in June 2018. This premiere recording is taken from the Festival concert, led by Artistic Director Brandon Elliott.

The most famous and grim of the Whitman poetry selected by the composer, this movement serves as the center of the larger work. Bell tones heralding the celebration of the victorious ship are set against impassioned phrases of shock that the leader has perished. While the other poems depict the voyage of the soul aboard the body and the eagerness to sail forth, this poem (itself metaphorical for the Civil War and the fallen Lincoln) depicts the starkness of a fresh tragedy.

O Captain! My Captain! (Choral Arts Initiative)

Christian Guebert is a composer and music educator from Orange, California. His commissioned works include published and award-winning pieces, settings, and orchestrations for instrumental and choral ensembles. His music aims for immediacy, thoughtfulness, idiomatic performing style, and sonic depth. 

A prolific program director, he heads several yearly concert series including community handbell ensemble concerts and sacred music festivals, and he has served as adjudicator and clinician for handbell topics including several teaching appointments at National Seminars of Handbell Musicians of America. Guebert holds an MM degree (Cal State University, Fullerton, 2013, composition) and a Parish Music Certification (2015) and BA (2010) from Concordia University, Irvine, CA; he is now a PhD student in composition at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music where he is a teaching associate for advanced musicianship and theory courses. He has taught university classes and lessons in theory, composition, ear training, singing, piano, counterpoint, orchestration, percussion, handbells, conducting, technology, and sacred music. Aside from current doctoral work, he also serves as music director at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Orange and adjunct professor at Concordia University Irvine (where he served as Composer-in-Residence). Recent publications include a handbell piece (Glad Adoration, Lorenz) and an orchestration of a choral work (Peter Anglea’s Silent Night, Beckenhorst). 

Recent works include a commissioning project as a Composition Fellow with Orange County-based Choral Arts Initiative, culminating in a March 2019 premiere of a large choral song cycle of Walt Whitman sea poetry set with harp and handbell ensemble (Voyaging, 2019), which incorporates “The Untold Want,” the prizewinning piece of the 2017 Pacific Chorale Young Composers Competition, performed by the John Alexander Singers.

Christian Guebert

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