First Quartet  Movement 4

First Quartet  Movement 1

Page 30 in the score.  Performance by Musicatreize

ENTIRE TEXT

Elegy and Observation (2016)
for chorus and electronics  - Eric Chasalow

I.   Spring Dawn
 
     In spring sleep, dawn arrives unnoticed.
     Suddenly, all around, I hear birds in song.
 
     A loud night. Wind and rain came, tearing
     blossoms down. Who knows few or many?
 
     [Meng Hai-jan (689-740 CE) – translation by David Hinton (used by permission)]
 
II. I remember one,  
     hovering at first
     and then, as only those in flight are able, focused;
     she was above, determined
     and he was below, carrying on
     into the keening wind and rain.
     We have a problem, I thought.

III. Considerable research has been undertaken, 
       yet detailed studies concerning these dynamics have only recently begun to emerge.    Previous hypotheses have proposed causal relationships between precipitation  variability and species survival, though these are predominantly built upon the inferences  of a narrow range of datasets. 

      These are the tokens of the eleventh day before Doom, to wit, all the birds and fowls of the earth will be moving and flitting continually, without resting or delaying.  

IV.  The sea darkening…  
       oh voices
       of the wild ducks 
      crying, whirling, white
      (Sono-Jo)
 
V.   Described herein is the parametric and structural uncertainty quantification for the monthly Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature. And these are the tokens of he tenth day before Doom. All the seas and waters will rise from the face of the earth up to the clouds of heaven, fifteen cubits above the mountains, and all the springs of the 
     geat deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens open.  And rain, because  initial experiments indicate the existence of significant nonlinear interactions. 



VI. The event does not create the preconditions,
       and to the extent that preconditions create the event they do not,
       but if they did, there would consequences  and those consequences would increase exponentially as a result of the preconditions that did not create them.
 
      And frequent, rough, keen winds rise there, whereby the whole world is shaken at once. Wailing and screaming and crying and wretched sorrowful groaning.

VII. 

Elephant bird, Upland moa, King Island emu,West Coast spotted kiwi,Crested shelduck,
Réunion shelduck, Mauritian shelduck, Amsterdam duck, Saint Paul Island duck,Mariana mallard, Finsch’s duck, Pink-headed duck, Réunion pochard, Labrador duck, Auckland merganser, pile-builder megapode, Viti Levu scrubfowl, Raoul Island scrubfowl, Himalayan quail, Javan lapwing, Kiritimati sandpiper, Tahiti sandpiper, White-winged sandpiper, North Island snipe, South Island snipe, Eskimo curlew, Slender-billed curlew, Great auk, Canary Islands oystercatcher, Antillean cave rail, Hawkins's rail, Red rail, New Caledonian rail, Norfolk rail, Chatham rail, Réunion rail, Ascension crake, Saint Helena crake, Hawaiian rail, Kosrae crake, Passenger pigeon,
Bonin woodpigeon, Sulu bleeding-heart, Dodo Society parakeet, Cuban macaw, Carolina parakeet, Saint Helena cuckoo, Laughing owl, Puerto Rican barn owl, Brace's emerald, Turquoise-throated puffleg, Ivory-billed woodpecker, Nuku Hiva monarch, Mysterious starling, Grand Cayman thrush, Slender-billed grackle, Lesser koa finch, Hooded seedeater, Bermuda towhee
 
VIII. 

I remember coming in at dawn in mid September and seeing the new moon over Pine Street, and a flock of white egrets using the street for a flyway. Nature was looking to reclaim the abandoned city. The street still & quiet, and piles of broken branches and twigs everywhere, buildings all of wood. All it would take was a careless flame and a bit of wind to wipe out all.  

(anonymous visitor to the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina 10th anniversary exhibition)
 
Dew evaporates
And all our world
Is dew…so dear,
So fresh, so fleeting
(Basho)

CHASALOW Elegy And Observation Performance Mvt !V

for violin and chamber orchestra - in three movements

1. Infamous Rhythms
2. Ancient Signs
3. The Green Linnet

to Miranda Cuckson

Miranda Cuckson, violin and Yoko Hagino, piano

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION - This is a demonstration recording made without rehearsal and only lightly edited

CHASALOW: Violin Concerto (Ancient Signs & Infamous Rhythms) - piano reduction

(PLEASE LISTEN WITH HEADPHONES) 

Inspired by my residency at Bogliasco Foundation in April/May 2022 and my stay in the Chalet della Musica.

Thanks to the Lydian String quartet for their beautiful recording of an earlier piece of mine that found its way into this.

Vista Dal Giardino Di Bogliasco (Chasalow 2022)

DREAM SONGS for orchestra and tape

5 poems by John Berryman

Dream Songs for orchestra and tape

Performed by Mari Kimura - April 1, 2023 mix

The Wings That Bear The Night Away (2022) Violin And Fixed Media

Ben Fingland, clarinet - University of Georgia performance, April 2023
Composed with the support of the Bogliasco Foundation

Extinction 

If randomly 
allowing for a breath
Perhaps a bit of tension
But then, back to business
We don’t sing,
We slog.

Our narrative should
rely on riveting 
rivulets of sound
shriek and moan words. 
Rhyme or not, 
who cares?

Eye contact
filling our space with energy,
demanding to be listened to,
demand to be heard!
Not passive!
Speak. 

Speak?!
But about what?
And why?
This onslaught will persist.
We will cease to notice
violent swings that
now seem shocking.

And, with each
Diminishing
our twilight.
Then, completely dark
By the thousands,
the millions
until nothing sings
or even
Breathes.

Barbara Cassidy and Eric Chasalow

Copyright 2022 Suspicious Motives Music

EXTINCTION For Clarinet And Fixed Media (2022)

To The Edge And Back - for flute and piano (violin version)

each successive variations is based on the previous one

Var1

Muriel’s Songs – text adapted by Eric Chasalow from Years of Understanding, by Muriel Chasalow.

Text may be found at this link: https://www.ericchasalow.com/blog/muriels-songs-1

For the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress
and dedicated to the memory of Andrew Imbrie  

March 16, 2024 Premiere, for the Women’s Studies Research Center’s annual DiLuzio Concert

Sound Icon, Jeffrey Means, music director

Jeff Means, conductor;  
Sharon Harms, soprano; 
Ashley Addington, flute;
Amy Advocat, clarinet; 
Sean Mix, alto saxophone; 
Natalie Zemba, bassoon
Mike Williams, percussion; 
Elaine Rombola, piano; 
Pierre Bibault, guitar
Lilit Hartunian, violin; 
Mark Berger, viola; 
Steve Marotto, cello; 
Eddie Kaas, bass




Muriel's Song's for mezzo-soprano and eleven instruments

For Soprano and String Quartet. 

Poems of Charles Simic from The World Doesn't End (winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize). Used by Permission.

Premiere performance - November 14, 1998 - Brandeis University
Nancy Armstrong, soprano
The Lydian String Quartet

The hundred-year-old...

O witches, O poverty...

Everything's forseeable...

We were so poor...

My mother was...

Performance by Andrea Chenoweth Wells, soprano and the Ulysses Quartet on October 18, 2024. Marsh Chapel at Boston University. The Shakespeare Concerts, Joseph Summer, director.

Recorded by Antonio Oliart.

Poems from The World Doesn't End, by Charles Simic, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Used by permission.

Five Simic Songs (1998) -  October 18th,  2024 performance

Muriel’s Songs – text adapted by Eric Chasalow from Years of Understanding, by Muriel Chasalow.

Text may be found at this link: www.ericchasalow.com/blog/muriels-songs-1

For the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress
and dedicated to the memory of Andrew Imbrie

March 16, 2024 Premiere, for the Women’s Studies Research Center’s annual DiLuzio Concert

Sound Icon, Jeffrey Means, music director

Jeff Means, conductor;
Sharon Harms, soprano;
Ashley Addington, flute;
Amy Advocat, clarinet;
Sean Mix, alto saxophone;
Natalie Zemba, bassoon
Mike Williams, percussion;
Elaine Rombola, piano;
Pierre Bibault, guitar
Lilit Hartunian, violin;
Mark Berger, viola;
Steve Marotto, cello;
Eddie Kaas, bass

Muriel's Song's for mezzo-soprano and eleven instruments (better mix)

Philipp Stauedlin, alto saxophone

CD release May 19, 2015

copyright 2015 Suspicious Motives Records (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Are You Radioactive, Pal? (alto saxophone and tape)

October 1, 2023 premiere on a concert honoring Davy Rakowski on his 65th birthday.  Heather Braun, violin with Collage New Music Ensemble.  Brandeis University

Quasi Troppo Veloce (2023) violin solo

April 04, 2025 Performance at Brandeis University by Talea Ensemble

James Baker, conductor
Sharon Harms, soprano
Adrian Morejon, bassoon
Miho Saegusa,   violin
Noriko Futagami, viola
Chris Gross,  cello
David Friend, piano

NOTES 

Fever Dream (2024) – Eric Chasalow

Lately, I have been writing most of my own texts and using them as the starting point for each piece. In writing Fever Dream, I wanted to create the sense of an internal dialog, with words pouring out into breathless, winding lines; one thought leading organically to the next with increasing urgency. The poem starts with the description of a repeatedly dreamed vision and moves out into a stream of interpretations and self-inspections, becoming more and more desperate to understand experience and feelings. Any ability to resolve things, ultimately, is complicated by our post-pandemic context.  

Fever Dream was commissioned by Talea Ensemble for soloists Sharon Harms and Adrian Morejon.

Fever Dream (2024) Chasalow - Talea Ensemble

Commissioned by Bates College in 2000 for the new millennium.

Crossing Boundaries

In progress - draft of one movement from an entire CD's worth of pieces made on the Buchla 100 by Eric Chasalow

Buchla Piece 1 (hommage Don Buchla)

US Premiere by MusicaTreize, November 12, 2016. Brandeis University.

Commissioned by MusicaTreize (Marseille)

Copyright 2016 Suspicious Motives Music (ASCAP)

Elegy and Observation is an environmental requiem. Drawing on ancient and modern texts, the piece leaps and lurches among perspectives from intimate to global, tender to catastrophic. So too, our perceived relationship to the natural world is constantly shifting, from the poet’s tension between fear and delight, to scientific observation, biblical prediction of catastrophe, the unassailable truth of species extinction, and the poetry of those who have experienced natural disaster.

Songs 1, 4 and 8 are settings of poems by Meng Hai-jan, Sono-Jo, and Basho. 
In between, I have intertwined highly contrasting sources. Songs 2 and 6 started with bits of reportage from the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, which are assembled into poems. Song 7 sets a list of extinct birds.  The remainder of the texts combine scientific abstracts related to climate, a nineteen-century translation of an ancient Celtic text, The fifteen tokens of Doomsday, the book of Genesis, and an anonymous oral history from a survivor of hurricane Katrina.

Elegy And Observation  - 12 voices and tape

Christopher Oldfather (piano), Andrea Schultz (violin), and Michael Finckel. ( cello)

Yes, I Really Did

Portrait Of The Artist (1997 for John Lennon)

Icarus Has Fallen (to The End)

Eric Chasalow  (dur  10:14)

These three pieces were made in three steps.  First, three fixed media narrative pieces were created from materials produced on a Buchla 100 synthesizer.  Next, these pieces were played back in their entirety in the studio while turntable artist, Barry Rothman and the composer recorded improvised material in response.  Lastly, the original pieces and the new materials were mixed into final form.

Buchla Piece 1

for fl, cl, vln, vc, and fixed media (1999)
composed by Eric Chasalow
Auros New Music Ensemble - recorded 2002

commissioned by Boston Musica Viva
dedicated to Mario Davidovsky

Suspicious Motives (for fl, cl, vln, cello, tape)

composed by Eric Chasalow
commissioned and premiered by Vicki Ray, piano

2 movements - Three Symbolic Gestures
                         Cloudbands

copyright 2002 Suspicious Motives Music (all rights reserved)

Due (Cinta)mani (for piano and tape)

for fl,cl,vln,vc,perc,pn, and fixed media

in four movements

Eric Chasalow, Composer
New York New Music Ensemble. at Merkin Hall, NYC March 2012.

A Chamber Music America commission


commissioned by Chamber Music America

On That Swirl of Ending Dust

Ghost of John William

The history of our obsession with guns in the US is long and feelings about it run so deep that rational discussion about the horrific violence this causes has been impossible.  

I chose a modal frame and a traditional genre to signify that long history and the text is purposely without a specific reference to any time period, remote or present. The issue is not an artifact of history, but urgent and on-going. The cry that “this insanity has got to stop” is meant as a kind of exhausted scream. 

I wrote the song out of a deep sense of frustration and exhaustion. The urgency that rises with each horrific incident recedes almost immediately, normalizing violence as something we are all suppose to accept for the sake of the rights of a minority to live without even reasonable restrictions. I find this intolerable, even from my position of both economic and racial privilege.   It is our communities of color that suffer most from our glorification of guns. It is crystal clear that gun rights and white supremacy are intertwined.  The deeply entrenched, well-financed gun-rights movement is, at its core, a fear-driven, reactionary institution for maintaining our racist and classist power-structure. So the insanity I sing of in this song is about much more than unbridled gun ownership – it is about ever-present violence fueled by fear, greed, and hate.

Ghost of John William

John William was a very fine tailor
John William never hurt no one
John William wasn’t nothing but your neighbor
‘Till the day that he got a gun.

Feeling fear and rage because they said so
Couldn’t say where it would stop.
Always said he’d never have to use it
But everybody wants to take their shot.

All that hatred blowing through the country
All that hate can’t be contained
Every hate just calling for another
When did life become a hateful game?

It’s a story older than the ages
Hatred calling from the mountaintops
All those neighbors aiming at each other
This insanity has got to stop.

Every gun just calling for another
Calling out from the mountaintop
Calling out like the only true religion
This insanity has got to stop.

John saw them bowing down to dollars
Calling citizens to take their shot
It’s your right to murder one another
Everybody wants to take their shot.

John William was a very fine tailor
John William was a very fine shot
Took aim didn’t think about his brother
This insanity has got to stop 
This insanity has got to stop 
This insanity has got to stop…

Copyright 2020 Suspicious Motives Music (ASCAP)

Ghost Of John William

From the New World Records CD of the same title (2003)

Left To His Own Devices (1996)  Eric Chasalow

to Milton Babbitt at 80


I am Milton Babbitt
the only composer from Jackson Mississippi (there was one other...)
		an old-fashioned academic twelve-tone serialist (Right)
Fine, I have no quarrel with that whatsoever

	It became our tradition
It changed the whole atmosphere of how we thought about music in every respect
		into new Regions of thought about Time in music, about Order in music...

Left To His Own Devices (1996)

Poem by Rachel Hadas (used with permission)

Christine Schadeberg, soprano
James Primosch, piano

recorded by Judith Sherman in 1999

Pass It On (poem by Rachel Hadas)

In Three movements (1999)

recorded by Marilyn Nonken in concert at Brandeis University in 1999

A Loose Translation (First piano sonata)

WWW.ERICCHASALOW.COM

Please try to listen to music with reasonable speakers or headphones. Be aware that this music has lots of subtleties and your experience of it is highly compromised when reproduced through phone speakers, computer speakers or cheap earbuds


Eric Chasalow is a composer known for both electro-acoustic music and music for traditional instruments.  Among the last generation to work at the original Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, since 1990 he has directed BEAMS, the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio. Eric’s music is programmed throughout the world and he holds awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  The Library of Congress established an Eric Chasalow Collection in 2009, and his music may be found on a number of record labels, including New World Records, and his own, Suspicious Motives Records.  A library edition of his complete works for solo instrument and electronics was released in 2015 for his 60th birthday (available through Tfront.com).

Eric is the Irving G. Fine Professor of Music and the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University.

Eric Chasalow

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