

This is the first movement from Sewing the Earthworm, a song cycle for soprano and piano. It was recorded by soprano Carla Huhtanen and pianist Steven Philcox, and is available on iTunes here: itunes.apple.com/ca/album/brian-h…worm/id982346381

Program Note:
The character in Sewing the Earthworm is inspired by 1970s punk rock icon Wendy O. Williams. The work dramatizes a private frustration as she looks back on a fragmented life, from the radical punk aesthetic to champion of environmental issues, before her suicide in 1998. This character relates to many other iconic artists: Frida Kahlo, Anaïs Nin and Elizabeth Bishop, for example. Because of these artists’ outspokenness, we find their human weaknesses even more intriguing.

The setting for the piece is inspired by an anecdote about Albert Einstein: he loved to garden, but couldn’t bear the accidental killing of creatures living in the ground. Sewing the Earthworm begins with a lonely woman contemplating her garden as a haven for both herself and the many forms of life she tends to within it.

The language of Sewing the Earthworm is that of myth, poetry, and spectacle. A physically deteriorating woman remains thankful that her hands can still control larger clumps of dirt in the maintenance of her private garden. She remembers her former abilities, especially with finer manual endeavours, and laments that her mind has remained long enough to know her body’s condition.

When she accidentally cuts an earthworm in half while gardening, she decides to attach the pieces with needle and thread to save its life. The seemingly futile attempt is compounded by her desire to prove that physical control has not abandoned her, and the piece makes a rapid shift both musically and textually as a mental struggle takes over.


Sewing the Earthworm: I. Soil

Stir, for flute and piano
Performed by Tiresias Duo (Mark McGregor and Rachel Iwaasa)
Performed Oct 20, 2015, presented by Music on Main
National InQueeries Program
Fox Cabaret
Vancouver, BC

Stir

Dans la nuit profonde
for 8 flutes and cello

Performed by Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal+
Conducted by Véronique Lacroix
Chloé Dominguez, cello solo

May 18, 2016, Montreal

Dans la nuit profonde

Commissioned and Performed by New Music Concerts
Conducted by Robert Aitken

For this commission, I was asked to write a piece inspired by Claude Vivier’s Zipangu — one of my favourite pieces of music. Vivier’s work has been influential on my music in so many ways — from small technical ideas to overarching themes and extra musical ideas. Like Vivier, I often employ melodies as central components of a composition that guide other compositional decisions. We also share an interest in ritualistic and ceremonial aspects of music. I thought a lot about Vivier, his music and his life while writing the piece, but did not attempt to make explicit connections between my new work and Zipangu.

to dash against darkness is in two movements. It uses more violas and cellos than violins, allowing me to explore the depths of this rich ensemble. I’m interested in distorting musical materials by submerging them into the lower register, as if plunging them underwater, rendering them murky and less clear. This is quite different from much of my music, which tends to reside mostly above middle C.

I always find it strange, and difficult, to give a title to a piece of music. to dash against darkness is a line from an e. e. cummings poem, entitled i will wade out, that reflects what I was thinking about while writing the piece.

to dash against darkness

Gregarious Machines, for nine instruments, was written for the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal+, for their Génération 2008 touring project. It is the second in a series of pieces that explores the modern-day relationship between humans and technology. Inspired by the instrumentation for the piece, I have used the interaction between non-amplified instruments and an amplified, electric instrument (the electric guitar) as a metaphor for the relationship between humans and technology. The relationship between the guitar and the rest of the ensemble is therefore important as the piece unfolds. The work explores a number of questions: while technology is, in many different ways, a useful tool for humans, in what ways does technology control how we do things and limit decisions that we make? How has the use of technology affected our social habits and the way that we interact with each other? Most importantly, how has our use of technology altered our consciousness and the way that we perceive the world around us?

Gregarious Machines (2008)

Three Rooms and a Lobby explores the relationship between music and architecture. Set to the composer’s own text, the music is aimed at evoking a journey through a strange and fantastical building. As the piece progresses and we return to previously-explored rooms in this musical building, we see them from new perspectives: with more or less illumination, for more or less time, or with more or less activity occurring in each space. In this way, the piece suggests an architecture lacking the visual dimension, but with a new and unusual temporal dimension.

The work explores the relationship between our perception of both musical time and physical space. Each room has its own sense of time, giving it a unique character that may change during the piece. Are there certain architectural characteristics in the world around us that affect our perception of time? How can music allow us to experience physical space in new ways?

Three Rooms and a Lobby was written for VivaVoce of Montréal, directed by Peter Schubert, in the context of the choir’s composer mentorship project, under the mentorship of Tim Brady.

Three Rooms and a Lobby (2008)

Leaning, for solo clarinet, was composed for Mark Bradley as part of Nu:Nord 2012.

Leaning (2012)

Surface, for solo flute, was premiered by Myriam Valley in Sudbury, ON, presented by 5-Penny New Music Concerts.

Surface (2010)

À la Fois, for violin and cello, was commissioned by Montreal's Codes d'accès, and premiered by Geneviève Liboiron and Emilie Girard-Charest on November 1, 2012.

À la Fois (2012) (Excerpt)

Sewing the Earthworm
Song cycle for soprano and piano
Text by David Brock
Commissioned by the Canadian Art Song Project

Premiered by Carla Huhtanen (soprano) and Steven Philcox (piano)
Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre
Canadian Opera Company
March 6, 2012
I: Soil (excerpt)
II: Interlude
III: Haiku for the Severed Annelid
IV: Needle (excerpt)
V: Interlude
VI: A Second Haiku for the Severed Annelid
VII: Sewing the Earthworm (excerpt)
VIII: Epilogue

Program Note
The character in Sewing the Earthworm is inspired by 1970s punk rock icon Wendy O. Williams. The work dramatizes a private frustration as she looks back on a fragmented life, from the radical punk aesthetic to champion of environmental issues, before her suicide in 1998. This character relates to many other iconic artists: Frida Kahlo, Anaïs Nin and Elizabeth Bishop, for example. Because of these artists’ outspokenness, we find their human weaknesses even more intriguing.

The setting for the piece is inspired by an anecdote about Albert Einstein: he loved to garden, but couldn’t bear the accidental killing of creatures living in the ground. Sewing the Earthworm begins with a lonely woman contemplating her garden as a haven for both herself and the many forms of life she tends to within it.

The language of Sewing the Earthworm is that of myth, poetry, and spectacle. A physically deteriorating woman remains thankful that her hands can still control larger clumps of dirt in the maintenance of her private garden. She remembers her former abilities, especially with finer manual endeavours, and laments that her mind has remained long enough to know her body’s condition.  

When she accidentally cuts an earthworm in half while gardening, she decides to attach the pieces with needle and thread to save its life. The seemingly futile attempt is compounded by her desire to prove that physical control has not abandoned her, and the piece makes a rapid shift both musically and textually as a mental struggle takes over.

Sewing the Earthworm (2011) (Compilation of Excerpts)

Brian Harman (b. 1981) is a Canadian composer, teacher and writer whose music has been described as “three-dimensional, maybe four-dimensional” (Arthur Kaptainis, The Gazette) and “effective and chilling” (Richard Todd, Ottawa Citizen). Harman’s music is frequently inspired by extra-musical elements, such as architecture, human speech, modern dance, technology and concepts of ritual. He has collaborated extensively with artists in other disciplines (performance artist Nina Arsenault, choreographer/dancer Geneviève Bolla, visual artist Danilo Ursini), and has written for a wide variety of media: orchestra, wind ensemble, choir, chamber ensembles, song cycle, opera, solo piano, theatre, modern dance, film and live electronics.

In 2013, worked closely with Georges Aperghis on a new percussion trio at Austria’s Impuls Festival, and was a featured composer in the SOUNDLAB podcast series. His orchestral work Supposed Spaces was selected as part of Canada’s 2013 submission to the ISCM’s World New Music Days, and was a winner in the 2012 SOCAN Foundation awards. In 2011 he was a winner in ISCM’s International Vocal Music Competition, resulting in a commission from Vienna’s Wiener Jeunesse Kammerchor, and received an honourable mention for his work Gregarious Machines in the CLC’s 60th Anniversary Composition Competition. In 2009 he was a finalist in the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra Composition Competition. He toured Canada with the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal+ as part of their Génération 2008 program, and in 2004 he was a finalist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s New Creations competition.

Harman’s music has been performed across Canada, the US, England, Austria, and Japan, and by such ensembles as the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, New Music Concerts, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal+, VivaVoce Montreal, 5-Penny New Music Ensemble, and Codes d’accès. He has also collaborated with various festivals and organizations: he is part of the creative team for Nu:Nord (Montreal/Oslo), was a visiting artist for Cluster Music and Integrated Arts Festival (Winnipeg), and was a guest artist and lecturer for the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab 2012. He has developed youth composition workshops for Conservatory Canada and the Ottawa Chamber Music Society.

Harman received his Doctor of Music (Composition) from McGill University in 2012, where he studied music-architecture relationships in his dissertation. Among his composition teachers are Denys Bouliane, Brian Cherney, Larysa Kuzmenko and Chan Ka Nin. His research focuses on 20th/21st Century Canadian m­usic, especially that of Ana Sokolovic and Claude Vivier. His analysis of Sokolovic’s Géométrie Sentimentale was published in Circuit in February 2013. He has taught extensively as a sessional instructor, teaching assistant and private theory/composition teacher.

Harman is an associate composer with the Canadian Music Centre, and has participated in various international workshops and residencies, including Impuls (Graz, Austria, 2013), Ostrava Days (Czech Republic, 2011), Rencontres de Nouvelle Musique (Domaine Forget, 2007) and the National Arts Centre Composers Programme (Ottawa, 2006). He has received grants for his compositions and research from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the SOCAN Foundation, the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, and the Fonds de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture.

Current commissions include an extended work for chamber orchestra for the Glenn Gould School New Music Ensemble (Toronto), a flute octet for Ensemble de Flûtes Alizé, an extended work for Montreal’s Ensemble Paramirabo, a multidisciplinary performance art piece with Nina Arsenault and Danilo Ursini, and a large-scale vocal composition-research project spanning several works.

Updated May 2013

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