This piece dates from 1980 and is a setting of several poems by Herman Hesse (with whose poetry I was a bit obsessed at the time).  It was written (as was most of my vocal music) for the divine Michelle Disco (see the description at the head of the Vocal Music playlist for a bit more about her).  She's accompanied here by her long-time accompanist Jeffrey Farrington who, sadly, passed away himself in November of 2023.  

The mood of these poems is superficially morose (the title comes from the central song in the cycle which includes the line "I have already died all deaths..."  That sense of melodrama would have appealed to me very much at the time but, several decades later, I know find I focus more on the poems' leading to an (ultimately calm) acceptance of death.

As was my wont in those days, this music is highly virtuosic and, being the first piece I ever wrote for Michelle, I probably over-exploited her high end.  For anyone who's interested, I did make several tweaks quite some time after this recording was made and cut back on some of those extreme notes (I came to realize that Michelle was really more a light lyric soprano than a coloratura).  The last song in the cycle, in particular, became much more mellow in its re-write (with almost all the "above-the-staff" notes taken down an octave or two).  Sadly, we never had a chance to record that final version.  If any highly ambitious sopranos out there would like to give this piece (or any of the other vocal numbers on here) a shot, please contact me about getting a score.

Alle Tode (1980)

Michelle Disco, soprano
Jeffrey Farrington, piano

Another piece written for Michelle Disco and, again, with Jeffrey Farrington on piano.  The sonnets in question are both by Gerard Manley Hopkins whose rich and complex internal rhyme schemes have always fascinated me.  The first sonnet is entitled "The Windhover" and the second is "The Sea and the Skylark." 

These short, relatively simple settings were among the very last things I wrote for Michelle before her untimely death from cancer in 1993.

Two Sonnets (1987)

Circonspection (1982)
Michelle Disco (soprano), Beth Wiemann (clarinet)

A setting of the French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine poem of the same name, this may be notable as one of the most idyllic and gentle pieces I've ever written. Although employing rigorous and particularly complex forms of twelve-tone counterpoint, the overall sensation is of a very soft, lyrical circumspection, much in keeping with the mood of the poem.

For the technically curious, the melodic and harmonic material in this piece makes extensive use of what is known as "self-derivation." The soprano and clarinet parts each play distinct statements of the same twelve-tone row in their high and low registers, the combination of these parts forms additional twelve-tone statements within each part and the combination of all four rows forms yet other statements of the same twelve-tone row across the whole ensemble. On top of that, the pitch structure follows a tradition that dates back at least to the 14th century with Guillaume de Machaut's self-symmetric rondeau "Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement" ("My End is My Beginning"). That is to say, the entire piece is its own mirror-image. In the case of Circonspection, this is somewhat less literally true than in Machaut's case but even the casual listener will easily notice that the ending clarinet solo is the reversal of the opening one.

These technical details are only for those who appreciate such stuff. This piece can be easily enjoyed as a "mood piece" that I hope nicely complements the gentle reflection of Verlaine's poem.

NOTE:  This is a higher-definition recording than the one posted elsewhere on this site (I'll consolidate things eventually!)

Circonspection (1982)

Echoes is a setting for soprano and computer-generated tape of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo. While the poem is most notable for its plethora of internal rhyme schemes, alliterations and assonances, one is also struck by the progression from darkness to light; from the opening strains of grief and despair over the transience of physical beauty to a resplendent, almost playful rejoicing over the discovery of a deeper, more lasting beauty. Musically, there is a parallel progression: the work opens with relatively thick, static music in a clear melody (soprano) plus accompaniment (tape) disposition (up through the words "Despair, despair, despair, despair"). This progresses through a more harmonically active "punctuated recitative," wherein the tape responds more directly on a line-by-line basis to the soprano's declamation of the text (beginning around the words "Spare! There is one . . .”), to a very active section where many individual voices are allowed to emerge, often with fairly extended "riffs" and melodies (starting around "fastened with the tenderest truth"). This culminates in the soprano's unaccompanied line, "[Why are we so] haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered." From here to the end of the piece, earlier textures are allowed to return, resulting in many individual accompanimental melodies responding to the final queries of the soprano.

Echoes was composed in November and December of 1983. The tape part was generated on Princeton University's IBM 3081 computer in the fall of 1984.

NOTE:  This is a higher-definition recording than the one posted elsewhere on this page (I'll consolidate things more neatly soon).

Echoes (1984)

Double Helix (1980/1992)
Recorded 1994 (Joel Suben conducting the Silesian Philharmonic)

The title Double Helix is rich in multiple entendres that include allusions of a purely personal nature as well as puns on some of the compositional structures employed in the work (it originally sprang to mind when I realized the degree to which the opening was built of Type D and Type A all-combinatorial hexachords (D ‘n’ A)). For the listener hearing the work for the first time, however, the sub-title (Dissolutions II) may be more meaningful, for the work deals, to a large extent, with the dissolving of one musical personality into another and the subsequent emergence of ever-new personalities (the II indicates only that this is the second of a series of such works).

Double Helix breaks the orchestra into four choirs of instruments (woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings) each of which is assigned a very different musical personality. The "characters" on this stage are highly volatile, however, and the specific vocabulary of gestures, rhythms and pitches which define any one group are in a constant state of flux. Choirs come to the fore only to have their "personalities" usurped by other choirs who, in turn, use their newly-enhanced repertoire of sounds to generate still newer personalities. These relations are expressed on many levels and the aurally acute listener may be able to recognize the multiplicity of meanings associated with any given musical event in the score. Because the manifestation of personalities is so multifarious, however, such acuity is by no means requisite to understanding the work. One need only be aware of the presence of four "individuals" who interact in many ways.  (In order to enhance this nature of the work, I’ve always wanted the piece to be performed with the four different “choirs” seated in isolated groups on the stage (strings clustered at the front, percussion in a cluster several yards behind them, woodwinds at the far left and brass to the far right).  Unfortunately, few stages are large enough to accommodate this and fewer conductors (and players) are willing to accommodate the disruption to their conventional seating pattern).

The work, then, is a kind of quartet grown to massive proportions. For example, after a few bars of introduction, the first passage presents the four groups as rather independent entities. Sustained brass chords and fleeting murmurs from the woodwinds form a backdrop for the more jittery staccato outbursts of the strings. The percussion, meanwhile, begin to tick off a very slowly moving pulse which begins as sporadic rhythmic interjections and gradually accelerates throughout the first half of the piece. Little by little the groups pull towards one another, but just as they begin to converge into a single homophonic statement, a very new character appears in the strings...one whose appearance could only have been vaguely surmised before this point. This "solo" meets opposition in the form of that ever-present "ticking" which has left the percussion "solo" but which now resurfaces in a "trio" of winds, brass and percussion. After some rather extreme "pulling-aparts" and "coming-togethers," the piece settles down into a long passage in which the contrapuntal texture is re-established but with individual choirs waxing and waning prominent at an increasingly rapid rate. Very important here, too, is the fact that for the first time in the piece, each choir's basic material is the same, being a synthesis of many heretofore disparate elements. The ensuing coda is a brief series of "solos" which culminate with a single "soloist's" macabre 'marcia funebre,' the extra-musical implications of which are left for the listener to draw.

Double Helix (1980, rev. 1991)

Masques was originally written in 1984 at the request of oboist Nora Post who had recently acquired a bass oboe and wanted some music for it.  Although I wrote this piece fairly quickly, I lost touch with Nora and that version was never played.  To make it a bit more accessible, I made some minor adjustments so it was playable on a regular oboe.  Still no takers.  In 1986,  I then arranged it for flute (Masques II) and the wonderful Jayn Rosenfeld gave this performance at a private fund-raising event in Princeton, NJ (I need to check some old notes to get the date of that performance!).  

For twelve-tone aficionados out there, I'll just point out that the piece makes a single pass over a 4-voice all-partition array with most of the forward movement being determined by cross-lyne aggregates combining to "predict" (or adumbrate, to use a favorite word of my then-teacher, Milton Babbitt!) larger lyne-segments in subsequent aggregates.

For those of you for whom that's a bunch of gobbledygook, try this instead:
The title "Masques" most generally refers to the way in which the flute performs a bit as a character who keeps adopting different "appearances" at a masquerade ball.  While the title is also meaningful by way of several personal puns (which would take longer to explain than the piece takes to play!).  Broadly speaking though, the attentive listener will find a number of small motives (starting with the three widely-spaced notes that open the piece) that are disguised and recombined in multiple ways to create a mosaic of sorts.  Different registers and different styles represent "characters" who all wear their own masks which sometimes make them look like each other but sometimes you see beneath the mask to pick out a more unique character.  Another contrast of characters comes in playing techniques.  You'll hear several spots where pitches are bent and distorted, sometimes quite dramatically (much in the style of a type of traditional Japanese flute called a shakuhachi).  This type of "smearing" to fill up a register contrasts sharply with the more traditional (to western ears) saturation of all the distinct chromatic pitches in a given register.

To date, this is the only performance the piece has had.  We had some technical problems with the recording equipment and ended up with one channel not recording so this recording is in mono.

For any clarinet players out there, I also arranged the piece for solo clarinet as Masques III in 1987.  I suppose I could do a version for solo bassoon as well but enough is enough! :-)

Masques II (1986)

Chamber Concerto (1982)

Originally written when I was about 18, I've returned to this piece about every 10-15 years and done major rewrites.  I think I finally have it the way I like it but this version is only from 2013 so check back in about 8-13 years!

Tales Of Uriah (rough sketch)

Questions (17:34)
The original version of this dates back to 1970! I did a major re-write of it in 2001 and then tweaked it some more when I did this rough sketch on my computer's sound card a few years later. Although there's a vaguely voice-like synth tone playing the vocal parts, they tend to get lost in the mix . Eventually, I'll redo this with my full-fledged synth stack, real guitars & drums and add in the voices.

For anyone who cares about these things, I'll point out that, even though I wrote the basic material of this piece when I was 14, I intuitively managed to get enough similarity in all the material that when I came to do the re-write 30 years later, I found that with some relatively minor re-working, I was able to put the piece together in such a way that pretty much the whole thing grows out of the little glockenspiel melody (and the syncopated counter-melody in the harp) of the opening few bars. You'll hear snippets of that tune appearing as background lines as well as primary thematic material throughout the piece but if you listen more closely, you'll hear that many of the chord progressions (even the "added 2nd" chords that dominate much of the harmony) are derived by turning snippets of that opening melody into harmonic sonorities. Although that's something that's highly characteristic of my compositions from my mid-20's onward, it was certainly nothing I understood at 14 so I'm especially pleased that I found such workable raw material inside that nascent composition and was able to evolve it into such a tightly interwoven piece.

Questions (rough sketch)

Recorded 1981 ( Efrain Guigi conducting the Composers Conference Chamber Players)

This piece had a long genesis throughout 1980.  Early that year, I’d evolved a rather abstract pitch construct which was very intriguing to me and I started out attempting to realize it as a piece for two harps. When problems of scoring and registral balance came about, I abandoned this realization and started a fairly different one for two pianos. Again, I was dissatisfied with the results and began a third realization (for a mixed septet) which I liked but which was put aside when school let out for the summer and financial problems began to nag at me. 

In July, 1980, I attended a Composers' Workshop at Bennington College where a string quartet was made available to me. Once again, I returned to the same pitch structure and finally turned it into a completed work (Quintetino (for piano and string quartet)). In the Fall, I again picked up the septet sketches and began to continue them, changing the name to Septetino (the "ino's" in this and the still later Concertino are all allusions to the heavy influence my former teacher Donald Martino's music had on the piece(s)). When Arthur Berger (my then-current composition teacher) made some suggestions about the piece which necessitated the addition of more instruments, I added a cello, horn and celeste and finished the piece as Nonetino. It was only when I made a clean copy of the piece that the name Concertino was added. 

This recording comes from my first of two summers at the Johnson Composers Conference.  I was blessed with having some of the true superstars of contemporary music at my disposal and, in spite of a grueling schedule where they were required to learn and perform a couple dozen new, often virtuosic pieces within a two-week period, this performance is excellent in almost all respects (Come Sopra, which opens this recording, was also recorded that same summer).  However, we did not have a harpist nor access to a celesta so we substituted a second piano for the harp part and used vibraphone and glockenspiel to cover the celesta part.  As a result, some of the originally conceived colors are lost.  

This piece was my first major prize-winner (Second Prize in the BMI Student Composers Contest) and I dedicated it to my teacher and friend Donald Martino on the occasion of his 50th birthday.  (I’m sad to say that Martino, one of the truly great influences on my music, died very suddenly of a heart attack late last year while on vacation with his wife.   I eagerly awaited all new works from his pen and it’s a great loss for the music world that he was taken at a relatively young 74.  If you like Concertino, I urge you to check out Martino’s music…his Notturno, Triple Concerto, and Saxophone Concerto are particularly fabulous pieces with which to start).

Concertino (1980)

Just a sampling of some of my music over the years.  You can play them all from this page but if you click any of the titles , you'll be taken to a dedicated page that includes commentary about the history and/or structure of the piece.

As for me, I became interested in music at a very young age and began taking drum lessons around the age of 9 or 10.  I formed my first band around 1969.  At first we mostly played rock'n'roll and blues covers but quickly began gravitating towards original music and progressive rock covers.  During this period, I also began playing guitar, a little flute and keyboards.  By the time I went off to the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, piano was my primary instrument and I was studying classical music seriously.  

After getting a B.A. degree in 1978, I headed off to the New England Conservatory of Music where I earned an M.M. degree in music composition, studying with Donald Martino and Arthur Berger.  Through Martino's influence, I became increasingly enamoured of the music and teachings of Milton Babbitt (as well as finding him a profoundly warm and entertaining human being when I met him) and so it seemed natural that my next step would be to move on to Princeton University where I earned my Ph.D. in composition and theory, studying with Milton (as well as Peter Westergaard and Joe DuBiel).  I also did extensive work with digital synthesis and computer analysis of music, working with Paul Lansky.

Unfortunately, 1985 was not an auspicious time for an academically-oriented composer to enter the job market and I ended up turning those musically-acquired computer skills into several years of programming and increasingly comfortable paychecks.  A few decades later and I still work in the data world (but now on the business side).  I make music whenever time (and the muse) permit. Sadly, that's not that often these days and so you won't find much recent music here.

David_Kowalski

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