composed by Joseph Scardetta
performed by Jenna Ferdon, Brianna Smith, violin; Hannah Salazar, viola; Britney Whiting, cello, Stephanie Meyer, soprano
"A Bee" was my first attempt at writing serial music, composing music with a fixed set of notes.  The piece begins with a six-note array introduced by the individual string instruments.  These six pitches form a single chord that becomes the central harmony in the piece itself, while the array helps to determine the ensuing pitches.
The title references the sounds of the strings buzzing, shaking, and fluttering, as well as a spelling bee, in which competitors recite the letters of the words they are spelling.
recorded in Dingledine Music Center, Bradley University, Peoria, IL on Friday, March 26, 2010.

A Bee (Bradley Univ. Students, 2010)

My Hero - Foo Fighters (Cover)

A beautiful string cue with choir and soprano voice that uses suspensions to create tension and a feeling of sorrow and loss.

The End Of Hope

Illinois Saxophone Saxophone Quintet 2014. Fourth movement (Allegro) of Mozart's Quintet K. 406 arr. Robert Sibbing
Keith Zimmerman (soprano), Doug Stewart (alto), Corey Burns (alto), Russell Zehr (tenor), Tim Karth (bari)



Mozart K.406 IV. Allegro

Music by Nicholas Omiccioli
Performed by Alarm Will Sound
Live at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, July 26, 2014

[fuse]

Sabertooth is a short, fast, and loud piece for two pianos that was a bit of a departure from my previous methods of sketching out and planning my compositions. I focused on motivic gestures and syncopations, and used a series of 12-note all-interval vertical sonorities, (specifically, I used 'Link chords,' or chords that contain the all-trichord-hexachord as a discrete hexachord and were discovered by theorist John Link,) to guide my pitch content and orchestrations.

This premier performance was given by John Orfe and Chee Hyeon Choi for Bradley University's new music concert Peoria Lunaire, on April 22nd, 2015.

Sabertooth

Premiere performance: Sophia Tegart, flute; Michael Seregow, piano, 2019 Festival of Contemporary Art Music, Washington State University, Pullman, WA - March 2, 2019.

Leonardo Saw the Spring for Flute and Piano
   I. Leonardo Saw the Spring 
   II. Leonardo Drew the Blooms 
   III. Leonardo Loved the Still 
   IV. Leonardo Drew in Spring

Program Notes: Many of my compositions have been inspired by poetry. Many poets in turn have been inspired by visual art, creating what is called ekphrastic poetry in which vivid and often dramatic descriptions of visual works of art form the basis of the poetry. To have both, the poetic interpretation and the visual art upon which it was based, created another inspirational layer to my creative process. “Leonardo Saw the Spring” takes as its inspiration the ekphrastic poem “Drawing of Roses and Violets” which in turn was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Studies of Flowers. The poem was published in 1892 as part of a collection of thirty-one poems depicting paintings exhibited in European art galleries. The collection entitled “Sight and Song” was published by Michael Field which was the joint pseudonym of collaborative poets and lovers Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper. In the preface the authors state: “The aim of this little volume is, as far as may be, to translate into verse what the lines and colours of certain chosen pictures sing in themselves; to express not so much what these pictures are to the poet, but rather what poetry they objectively incarnate.” This too is my aim with “Leonardo Saw the Spring” – to find the music that is innately embedded in the lines of the poetry and drawing. 

“Leonardo Saw the Spring” was commissioned by flutist Sophia Tegart with support by a Washington State University New Faculty Seed Grant. 

Drawing of Roses and Violets
LEONARDO SAW THE SPRING 
Centuries ago, 
Saw the spring and loved it in its flowers— 
Violet, rose : 
One that grows 
Mystic, shining on the tufted bowers, 
And burns its incense to the summer hours ; 
And one that hiding low, 
Half-face, half-wing, 
With shaded wiles 
Hides and yet smiles. 

LEONARDO DREW THE BLOOMS 
On an April day : 
How his subtle pencil loved its toil, 
Loved to draw ! 
For he saw 
In the rose's amorous, open coil 
Women's placid temples that would foil 
Hearts in the luring way 
That checks and dooms 
Men with reserve 
Of limpid curve. 

LEONARDO LOVED THE STILL 
Violet as it blows, 
Plucked it from the darkness of its leaves, 
Where it shoots 
From wet roots ; 
Found in it the precious smile that weaves 
Sweetness round Madonna's mouth and heaves 
Her secret lips, then goes, 
At its fine will, 
About her face 
He loved to trace. 
LEONARDO DREW IN SPRING, 
Restless spring gone by, 
Flowers he chose should never after fade 
For the wealth
Of strange stealth 
In the rose, the violet's half-displayed, 
Mysterious smile within the petals' shade 
That season did not die, 
Like everything, 
Of ruin's blight 
And April's flight.
From “Sight and Song” (1892) by Michael Field (pseud.)

Leonardo Saw the Spring for Flute and Piano

Goose whipass exteeeended

My name is Joseph Scardetta.  I live in San Antonio.  I am a composer, a double bassist, a pianist, a vocalist (bass/baritone) and an avid music listener.  I have a Bachelor of Music degree in composition (2010) from Bradley University in Peoria, IL, and a Master of Music degree in music theory and composition (2017) at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, CO.

A Bee (Bradley Univ. Students, 2010)

Joseph Scardetta

Related tracks