Lauren Treiber, mezzo soprano
Vince Kurtz, violin I
Peter Paetkau, violin II
Bryan Yoder, viola
Matt Wimmer, violoncello

Text from Gedichte, by Georg Trakl

Translations:
Verfall (Demise)
At evening, when the bells are tolling peace, 
I follow the wondrous flights of birds, 
Which gathered long like pious pilgrims' trains 
Vanish afar in autumn's clear expanses.

Meandering through the garden filled with twilight 
I dream about their brighter destinies 
And scarcely feel the hours' pointers move. 
So I follow their paths above the clouds.

A breath of decay then makes me shudder. 
The blackbird laments in leafless branches. 
The red vine on the rusty railings wavers,

While like a dance of death with pallid children 
Around dark rims of wells, which slowly weather, 
Blue asters shivering in the wind are drooping.

De Profundis (From the Depths)
There is a stubble-field into which black rain falls. 
There is a brown tree standing there alone. 
There is a hissing wind encircling empty huts. 
What sadness in this evening.

Past the hamlet 
The gentle orphan girl still garners frugal ears of corn. 
Her eyes feast round and golden in the twilight 
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home 
The shepherds found the sweet body 
Decayed in the thorn-bush.

I am a shadow far from somber villages. 
God's silence 
I drank from the spring in the grove.

Cold metal enters upon my brow, 
Spiders seek out my heart. 
There is a light that goes out in my mouth.

At night I found myself on a heath, 
Stiff with refuse and dust of stars. 
In the hazel-bush 
Crystalline angels sounded again.

Verfall And De Profundis

Undescence

Merle's hopped the rails for the last time.

Merle's Last Ride

Premiered by Kayleigh Butcher and Duo Damiana at the Charlotte New Music Festival. Tate Hall at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, NC. June 11, 2016.

Different Perspectives, for flute, mezzo-soprano, and acoustic classical guitar, was inspired by my personal experience struggling with issues brought on by Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.  It is a setting of the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), which is provided below. The piece is divided into four sections, one for each stanza of the poem. Each section portrays adversity in a different situation and approaches it from a different perspective.
The first section evokes a vast, dark, empty space through the use of silence, register, and harmony.  The person in this space faces this adversity with aplomb. In the second section, the person is violently struck down in an animalistic, savage world. However, she keeps rising back up and refuses to succumb to the world’s hostility. The third section takes place in a world that does not adhere to the normal rules of time. In this surreal place, time moves randomly in a nonlinear fashion as the person ponders the foreboding unknown after death. The fourth section illustrates a perspective of adversity in general. In the same manner that the different elements within a Cubist painting come together to make a new whole, these sections add cumulatively in the listener’s mind to form a comprehensive image of adversity and different ways to approach and hopefully overcome it.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
 
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
 
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Different Perspectives

Remix by Daniel Neumann, Sound Engineer of Alarm Will Sound, of Matt Marks performing "Spagliato" by Oren Ambarchi (arranged by Marcos Balter). Matt's performance is from May 9, 2018. This would be Matt's final concert, he passed away May 11. 

From Daniel:
"I spend the day yesterday listening to the horn track from our Wednesday concert and I was struck by Spagliato (Ital.: wrong, error, mistaken..). I couldn't stop listening to it and ended up making a remix, an attempt to extend his notes, sustaining them. I named it:: Spagliato, for Matt Marks (gated solo horn with artificial reverberation DNremix). No pressure to listen though, if it seems too early or wrong. Just wanted to share, in case someone finds it helpful as an anchor for their grief, which it provided for me."

Verfall And De Profundis

Henry Breneman Stewart

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