COMMISSIONED & PERFORMED BY THE WICKER PARK CHORAL SINGERS
Poem by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting,
She across his knee and they are looking face into face
Talking to each other without words, singing rhythms in silence to
 	each other.
A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an outgoing boat,
Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of green
And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his knee.

Program Note:
Carl Sandburg’s collection of Chicago Poems was published in 1916, but I have repeatedly found that the near hundred-year-old words still apply. Then and now, the city is heartbreaking but achingly beautiful at the same time. Details have changed – just replace Sandburg’s Italians with Mexicans and his streetcars with L trains.
This poem, published in the same book as Chicago Poems but in a different set entitled Fogs and Fires, still speaks to me here-and-now. The season still applies, but the breakwater is in Rogers Park, beside a stand of dune grasses bending in a gentle breeze, with a view south of a dazzling, gleaming city, and to the east of us nothing but an auburn sky dissolving into the horizon.

On The Breakwater

This and more recordings of modern American song available for purchase here: http://www.vox3.org/releases/new-song/
(look down the page for physical and digital purchase options)

Baritone Sean Stanton and pianist James Morehead perform, both of the VOX3 Collective in Chicago: http://www.vox3.org/

ANNA IMROTH from Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems (1916)

Cross the hands over the breast here—so.	
Straighten the legs a little more—so.	
And call for the wagon to come and take her home.	
Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and brothers.	
But all of the others got down and they are safe and this is the only one of the factory girls who wasn’t lucky in making the jump when the fire broke.	
It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes.


Anna Imroth - From Chicago Songs

Prelude No. 2 "Essay" - from Three Preludes

The WICKER PARK CHORAL SINGERS:
http://wickerparksings.org/
https://soundcloud.com/wickerparksings

Alto soloist E. ALEXANDER CRAWLEY

As I get older and find myself nearing the end of my twenties, it has struck me how much less insulated I am to the sorrowful side of life – grandparents arrive at their dotage or death; parents are found to be distressingly fallible and human, just like myself; friends have troubles unforeseen and undeserved. We find ourselves subjected to repeated and overlaid stresses that never have clear or finite resolutions.

Cast iron is a metal that is durable but brittle. It can stand up to great pressure, but just too much pressure and it breaks. As human beings, we too are constantly under stress and trial. For each of us, how much is too much? Where is the tipping point between pressure that strengthens and seasons, and that which breaks?

Text by the composer:
I’ve been cast out of iron;
I’ve been blackened by fire;
I’m rusted and worn;
 	The heat gets to me.



Cast Out Of Iron

Commissioned and performed here by the
WICKER PARK CHORAL SINGERS
CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
May 13th, 2016 - St. James Cathedral, Chicago

ANNE BRADSTREET ( 1612 - 1672 )
From school-boyes tongue no rhet'rick we expect
Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings,
Nor perfect beauty, where's a main defect:
My foolish, broken blemish'd Muse so sings
And this to mend, alas, no Art is able,
'Cause nature, made it so irreparable.

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.
A Poets pen all scorn I should thus wrong.
For such despite they cast on Female wits:
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'l say it's stoln, or else it was by chance.

Blemish'd Muse - I. The Prologue

Commissioned and performed here by the
WICKER PARK CHORAL SINGERS
CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
May 13th, 2016 - St. James Cathedral, Chicago

PHILLIS WHEATLEY ( Boston Slave; c. 1753 - 1784 )
For when thy pitying eye did see
The languid muse in low degree,
    Then, then at thy desire
Descended the celestial nine;
O'er me methought they deign'd to shine,
    And deign'd to string my lyre.

Can Afric's muse forgetful prove?
Or can such friendship fail to move
    A tender human heart?
Immortal Friendship laurel-crown'd
The smiling Graces all surround
    With ev'ry heav'nly Art.


Blemish'd Muse - II. An Hymn To Humanity

Commissioned and performed here by the
WICKER PARK CHORAL SINGERS
CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
May 13th, 2016 - St. James Cathedral, Chicago

WALT WHITMAN ( 1819 - 1892 )
O tan-faced prairie-boy, 
Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift, 
Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among the recruits, 
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give – we but look’d on each other, 
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me. 

Blemish'd Muse - III. O Tan - Faced Prairie Boy

Commissioned and performed here by the
WICKER PARK CHORAL SINGERS
CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA
May 13th, 2016 - St. James Cathedral, Chicago

CARL SANDBURG ( 1878 - 1967 )
I sang to you and the moon	
But only the moon remembers.	
     I sang	
O reckless free-hearted	
            free-throated rhythms,	        
Even the moon remembers them	
     And is kind to me.

Blemish'd Muse - IV. I Sang

Commissioned and performed by the CHICAGO YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS, ALLEN TINKHAM MUSIC DIRECTOR for the Ear Taxi Festival, October 2016.

This piece was conceived on a late fall road trip through some Midwestern states. It was in the middle of fall, and though the fields had just been stripped bare of corn, the trees were just beginning to turn and the sun shone through all the hours of our drive. I decided to write landscape music dedicated to the peculiar beauties of my homeland.

Months later, when I had the time to actually begin writing, I realized something about why that beauty is so peculiar – it’s almost entirely man-made. The land was sectioned off into a precise grid by the Northwest Ordinance, with most of our roads and streets following straight north-south or east-west lines for miles. What contours or forests there were have been plowed flat. Our mountains and cliffs are artificial – a steady rise of buildings from the suburbs ending abruptly at the Lake. It’s a human landscape – stark and unnatural, but also filled with memories.

CYSO

Prairie Music

Pianist JONATHAN HANNAU
www.jonathanhannau.com

This piece was inspired by a night on Chicago’s lakefront in the summer of 2014. 

We were standing on the end of a concrete pier, leaning on the iron railing with a disused beacon at our backs. The air was thick with fog - cool, damp, and heavy. The water of the Great Lake was eerily still except for small ripples which glinted in the glare of white and orange floodlights on the beach. To the west was the orange glow of a major city, but the misty air and the surrounding water swallowed up all sounds except the gentle ripples of the lake. To the east was a black sky dissolving into an ever blacker horizon. 

We stood alone and in silence, and drank it all in.

Nocturne

Commissioned in 2015 by pianist Joy Doran for her cellist son-in-law, Andrew Hesse. Performed here by Andrew Hesse and Talar Khosdeghian

Composer’s Note:
At time of writing I am not particularly wise or old, but as my life continues I find that both sorrows and joys of life multiply in ways that I never could have imagined even a few short years ago. Loved ones go through misfortunes, stress mounts in careers, and what’s more life never seems to let one catch up. At the same time, one can find solace and love in partners and in the wisdom of friends.

There can be so much love and so much bitterness, all flowing in an endless stream that might quicken or slow, but never, ever stops for even a breath. In some small way, this music is meant to be a reflection of this.

Sonata for Cello and Piano - I. Prologue

Commissioned in 2015 by pianist Joy Doran for her cellist son-in-law, Andrew Hesse. Performed here by Andrew Hesse and Talar Khosdeghian

Composer’s Note:
At time of writing I am not particularly wise or old, but as my life continues I find that both sorrows and joys of life multiply in ways that I never could have imagined even a few short years ago. Loved ones go through
misfortunes, stress mounts in careers, and what’s more life never seems to let one catch up. At the same time, one can find solace and love in partners and in the wisdom of friends.

There can be so much love and so much bitterness, all flowing in an endless stream that might quicken or slow, but never, ever stops for even a breath. In some small way, this music is meant to be a reflection of this.

Sonata for Cello and Piano - III. Nocturne

Sonata for Cello and Piano - V. Epilogue

Commissioned and performed by the WICKER PARK CHORAL SINGERS
May 7, 2017 - St. Paul's in Pilsen, Chicago, IL

In an era when science, morality, and philosophy overlapped and blended together, the ancient Greco-Sicilian philosopher Empedocles was one of the first to envision a cosmology of the universe and an ethical system based thereon. Writing in Ionic Greek verse, he originated the notion that all matter is made of the same four elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air – sort of an early “we are all made of stardust” – which are constantly repelled or attracted by opposed forces of Strife and Love. A vegetarian who believed that eyes worked by emitting tiny rays of flame, he made a case for the
indestructibility of matter and an eternal life through reincarnation.

Text by Empedocles of Agrigentum
Translation by William Leonard, 1908
Sung in English and Ionic Greek:
I will report a twofold truth. Now grows
The One from Many into being, now
Even from the One disparting come the Many.
Twofold the birth, twofold the death of things:
For, now, the meeting of the Many brings
To birth and death; and, now, whatever grew
From out their sundering, flies apart and dies.
And this long interchange shall never end.
Whiles into One do all through Love unite;
Whiles too the same are rent through hate of Strife.
And in so far as is the One still wont
To grow from Many, and the Many, again,
Spring from primeval scattering of the One,
So far have they a birth and mortal date;
And in so far as the long interchange
Ends not, so far forever established gods
Around the circle of the world they move.
But come! but hear my words! For knowledge gained
Makes strong thy soul. For as before I spake,
Naming the utter goal of these my words,
I will report a twofold truth. Now grows
The One from Many into being, now
Even from the One disparting come the Many,—
Fire, Water, Earth and awful heights of Air;
And shut from them apart, the deadly Strife
In equipoise, and Love within their midst
In all her being in length and breadth the same.
Behold her now with mind, and sit not there
With eyes astonished, for 'tis she inborn
Abides established in the limbs of men.

The Cosmic Process

Commissioned and performed by SUZANNE GILLEN

Written in the summer and fall of 2015, I think of this piece as “summer music”. In Chicago, it’s a season of almost compulsive activity after long months of cold, snow, and staying indoors. I also find it a season to reflect – to sit by the lake, watching the horizon. It’s a season of both joy and longing:

“The winter’s passed and the leaves are green,
The time is passed that we have seen,
But still I hope the time will come
When you and I shall be as one.” 
(Traditional American folk-song)

In collaborating with Suzanne Gillen, the commissioner of this work, we focused on making a piece suited just for her: at times outgoing, at others reserved, and always supremely virtuosic.

Sonata For Solo Flute

Performed by CHARLES METZ (May 11, 2018 - Ann Arbor, MI)
Poggi Virginal (Italian, c. 1590)

The First Suite for Harpsichord was commissioned by Charles Metz for his C/E short octave instruments, especially his 16th century Poggi Virginal. This suite takes advantage of the colors of the instrument, but also the incomparable interpretive skills of musicians trained in historically-informed performance.

Passacaglia (from First Harpsichord Suite)

Reverie (from First Harpsichord Suite)

Commissioned and performed by LA CACCINA
Poetry by REBECCA MORGAN FRANK

Queen of the Bees, your hum builds hives,
bores a buzz in the hearts of drones.
Your stinger stuns your last week’s rival
and sends her spiraling to the hay.
All the pretty boys listen from above
the stalls; they hate for you to call their name.
This stable your palace where you command
workers at your feet or out on flowered streets.
Why does it all sound like honey on your tongue?
Your venom entombed in combs, you never leave
but reign over the fields your workers keep
while you complain of them and sleep.
The horses swat their tails, swipe as flies flit by.
They don’t even hear your little bee-speak.

Rebecca Morgan Frank’s poetry collection Little Murders Everywhere contains a wealth of her carefully considered works, include a series of sonnets on everyday sins. Some of these sins are characteristically female “sins” – gossip, passiveness and bossiness. Using natural imagery, these sonnets portray these “sins”, employing gossipy pigeons, a lazy whippet and finally a queen bee who finds herself ignored.

For the Sin of Bossiness was commissioned by La Caccina, a professional women’s vocal ensemble based in Chicago and directed by Carling FitzSimmons.

For The Sin Of Bossiness

Commissioned and performed by CONSTELLATION MEN'S ENSEMBLE

This piece was specifically written for a concert theme of “the sounds of silence.” When considering how to represent non-sound with sound, I had a great discussion with a dear friend who reminded me how much music relies on silent communication. As a composer, my work is trapped on paper or on screen unless it’s brought to life by collaborators. Those performers bring a wealth of skill and artistry to interpreting silent dots and lines on a page, and communicate with each other on stage with subtle glances and precise movements. Finally, any meaning the audience finds in my music is unique and personal to each of them, with every reaction being perfectly valid. Performers creating music and meaning out of silent notation is what this piece is ultimately about.

The text is entirely solfège, meaningless “do re mi” syllables corresponding to pitches. Using this offers another opportunity for composer-audience communication, allowing listeners to hear how the music is constructed as it moves along – we can hear “fa mi do” being passed around all the voice parts and so forth. Maybe the solfège even becomes a sort of nonsense language, a thought I’ve extended to the title.

Famídoté

PERFORMED BY THE CHICAGO CHICAGO COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA led by MATTHEW KASPER
In around 3300 B.C.E, the largest city in the world, Uruk, is estimated to have held around 40,000 people. The civilization of Sumer and Akkad –  the source of the world’s earliest writing and the foundation for modern, urban life as we know it in the West – was made of a handful of cities roughly the size of my hometown of Morris, Illinois, or a little bigger.

Imagine the mayor as a god-king living in a palace. Or the priest from a local parish climbing a ziggurat every day to worship and propitiate the gods. Local shopkeepers are taking accounts on clay tablets, and stamping their seals on contracts. 

Imagine typical small town drama, fueled by the fact that everyone knows everyone, at a momentous time in history that laid the groundwork for almost all European and Middle Eastern civilization – and at a time when “civilization” ended at the city walls.


Everyone in Civilization Knew Each Other

PERFORMED BY LUKE GULLICKSON
Unlike my most of my work, this is a piece of music that isn't about Byzantines, Romans, or any other bit of history. Every once in a while, I like to write a piece that captures a mood, crystalizes a moment in time and examines it, looking backwards from it and ahead, trying to slow it down and grasp hold before it drifts away. 

I didn't really set out to write a piano sonata, but when I had finished a movement and decided to call it that, I avoided any classical idioms besides three linked movements.

I wrote the motive, which shows up in various guises throughout the work, in the late 1990's while I was in high school in my hometown of Morris, Illinois. I think I have the manuscript somewhere, still.


Piano Sonata

Eric Malmquist (b. 1985) writes earnestly heartfelt and engaging music. He draws on a deep love of early music and modern influences to produce works that are focused and emotional.

He has been commissioned by the Chicago Composers Orchestra, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, tubist Scott Tegge, the International Chamber Artists, the Newberry Consort and the Wicker Park Choral Singers.

His commissioned work Prairie Music for CYSO was featured on Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival in October 2016 and at Midwest Clinic in December 2016. CCO and WPCS co-commissioned his Blemish’d Muse, a twenty-minute work for choir and orchestra, in 2016. His song cycle If You Travel Far Enough was the very first commission of the ICA, and was featured on Live from WFMT in 2015. Michael Hall premiered his Sonata for Viola and Piano in 2014, and Gaudete Brass premiered his Three Preludes in 2013.

His music has been performed outside of Chicago on both coasts and in Texas, and has been featured repeatedly on 98.7WFMT. His music has been recorded by VOX 3 on the disc “New Song” and by pianist Jonathan Hannau.

Popular tracks by EricMalmquist