Piezas para Espantar los Demonios de la Noche (Pieces to Disperse the Demons of the Night) was written for Blanca Uribe. The five pieces were written in April 2005.  The initial motivation was to write music with a simple texture that breaks the mood, the tensions and insistent thoughts that allow insomnia to become the king demon of the night. The name of the piece is a reference to any demon that does not allow peace or a peaceful atmosphere around. There is a consistent harmonic language present in the five pieces. Pieces 1 and 5, with a quiet character, mirror each other and open and close the composition.  Pieces 2 and 4 are more active. In Piece 2 an old Romance preserved and transformed through centuries by the black Colombian community of the Pacific Coast, known as Romance de Catalina, can be heard clearly in the beginning and disappears little by little throughout the piece. Piece 4 has a spare, insistent, and repetitive quality with insistent bass notes throughout the whole movement.  Piece 3, the center of the work, contains a cluster that covers and uncovers a melodic line and the counterpoint around it. Traces of this old romance appear also in Piece 5, a movement that peacefully closes the composition. A geometrical design can be seen in the structure of the piece.

Blanca Uribe

Piezas para Espantar los Demonios de la Noche/Pieces to Disperse the Demons of the Night

In this Roots of Reality Experiences episode, historian Ben Baumann talks with musician Steve Everett about his journey as an independent artist, what is Pop 'N' Roll, and songwriting.

#80 Pop 'N' Roll with Steve Everett

https://repeater-radio.com/shows/semibegun/

This episode focuses entirely on one instrument: the Trautonium. Unlike its more popular early electronic siblings the Theremin and the Ondes Martenot, the Trautonium receives a bit of neglect. But with the level of timbral depth, warmth, and expressivity the instrument can achieve, it deserves a renaissance (preferably one that includes more than just adding the Hindemith pieces to the common practice repertoire). 

Until that happens, or perhaps to inspire such a thing, listen here to an hour of dulcet tones from Paul Hindemith, Oskar Sala, Peter Pichler, a German Coca-Cola commercial, sound effects from Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, and an array of YouTube enthusiasts keeping the warm sawtooths flowing.

Semibegun #08 | The Trautonium 09282022

Live performance by C4 (The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, www.c4ensemble.org), conducted by Michael Conley, Saturday, May 31, 2014, at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields. 

Soloists: Melissa Wozniak, soprano; Melissa Bybee, mezzo-soprano; Colin Britt, tenor; Hayes Biggs, bass.

composed in celebration of my marriage to Susan Orzel, and is dedicated to her with all my love. The Choir of All Saints Church, New York City, under the direction of Dr. Gail Archer, gave the work its premiere at our wedding on January 16, 1999. The texts are biblical, from the Song of Songs, in Latin and English.

The main material of the motet is the opening unison melody for altos and tenors set to the words “Tota pulchra es, amica mea” (“You are all beautiful, my love”). The piece begins in a style that I would loosely describe as neo-Medieval, at times tinged with influences of Renaissance sacred polyphony. Gradually a solo quartet takes over, ultimately leading to the first major stylistic shift in the motet: the reappearance of the opening motive (presented in the soprano part, with one octave-displaced pitch) and words, sung by the full choir in a much more lush, Romantic harmonization. This introduces the English text beginning with the words, “Set me as a seal upon thine heart,” heard in a duet for altos and tenors. The culmination of the piece is a restatement of the Romantic harmonization of the initial Latin text a half step higher than before, with the initial English words presented as a countermelody in the altos and second tenors. A gradual winding down ensues, and at the end of the motet a solo tenor voice remains, singing a much slower variant of the opening melody on the words “pulchra es.”

-Hayes Biggs

Published by C. F. Peters Corporation, Edition Peters 67949, Copyright © 2000.

Texts and translation:

Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te.
(You are all beautiful, my love, and there is no flaw in you.)
Vox dilecti mei, en dilectus meus loquitur mihi:
(The voice of my beloved! Behold, my beloved speaks to me:)
Surge, amica mea.
(Arise, my love.)
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm:
For love is strong as death: jealousy is cruel as the grave.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

Wedding Motet: Tota pulchra es/Set me as a seal upon thine heart (1998) (C4, 5/31/14)

This work was premiered in Merkin Concert Hall on May 31, 2023, by an extraordinary group of players: Curtis Macomber, violin; Lois Martin, viola; Chris Gross, cello; and Christopher Oldfather, piano. Edited and Mixed by Paul Kozel at the Sonic Arts Center, New York, New York, from audio from the dress rehearsal and performance at Merkin Concert Hall.

I began working on Reveries. Passions. in 1990. It is a piece that, it turns out, I was not yet ready to write when I began struggling with my initial ideas for it. In addition, the vagaries of life and various other projects got in the way, and, though I occasionally glanced at it and picked at it a bit, I basically put it away for about 20 years and really didn’t resume work on it in earnest until around 2012. 

The quartet might be described as a reflection of my love of nineteenth century music, particularly in its more obsessive and extreme manifestations. My title refers to that of the opening movement of Symphonie fantastique: Épisode de la
vie d'un artiste ... en cinq parties (Fantastical Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist, in five parts) by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), that quintessential arch-Romantic. The beginning of the composer's program for his symphony
reads as follows:

“A young musician of unhealthily sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself with
opium in a paroxysm of love-sick despair. The narcotic dose he had taken was too weak to cause death but it has thrown him into a long sleep accompanied by the most extraordinary visions. In this condition his sensations, his feelings and memories find utterance in his sick brain in the form of musical imagery. Even the beloved one takes the form of melody in his mind, like a fixed idea which is ever returning and which he hears everywhere.” (N.B.: Do not try this at home.)

III. Passion recalled. (Reverie.) Marked “Lento (Wistful),” this movement commences with a ruminative, bittersweet
piano solo that grows in volume and intensity, culminating in the sudden entry of the strings, which brings back material from the first movement, including the lyrical tune initially heard in the viola (the same instrument that plays it this time around). After the climax, all the instruments join to recap the material of the opening piano solo, eventually introducing the Schumann quotation and a quiet ending.

Reveries. Passions. (Fantasy-Quartet for Piano & Strings)(2020) III. Passion recalled. (Reverie.)

This work was premiered in Merkin Concert Hall on May 31, 2023, by an extraordinary group of players: Curtis Macomber, violin; Lois Martin, viola; Chris Gross, cello; and Christopher Oldfather, piano. Edited and Mixed by Paul Kozel at the Sonic Arts Center, New York, New York, from audio from the dress rehearsal and performance at Merkin Concert Hall.From Berlioz's program for Symphonie fanastique: 

“A young musician of unhealthily sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself with opium in a paroxysm of love-sick despair. The narcotic dose he had taken was too weak to cause death but it has thrown him into a long sleep accompanied by the most extraordinary visions. In this condition his sensations, his feelings and memories find utterance in his sick brain in the form of musical imagery. Even the beloved one takes the form of melody in his mind, like a fixed idea which is ever returning and which he hears everywhere.” (N.B.: Do not try this at home.)
 
II. Passion mocked. (“Barb’ry Allen.”) This scherzo is a flippant, bitterly sardonic take on the folksong “Barb’ry Allen”. The lyrics of that song — which with the right performer is a sad, poignant, and moving one — concern a young woman spurning the love of her suitor, who is on his deathbed. She is angry that he once slighted her while drinking toasts with and to his friends at a tavern, and on her arrival at his bedside she greets him coldly with the words, “Young man, I think you’re dying.” After she leaves the young man confirms the aptness of her observation;
Barb’ry Allen hears his funeral bell tolling and dies of a broken heart. In many versions of the song, the two end up buried in the same churchyard, and a rose growing from his grave intertwines with a briar growing from hers in a “true
lovers’ knot.” My treatment of the song downplays these more heartwarming parts of the story. It begins with a pizzicato cello introduction, joined shortly by the viola after a brief rest, both parts marked “jaunty.” After another rest,
the violin and viola accompany the cello as it presents the tune in its lowest register, still pizzicato. The tune reemerges a few more times, notably in the slower middle section, played “a little drunkenly” by the piano, after which the music
grows alternately frenetic and halting, ultimately lurching into Berlioz’s nuit du sabbat before hitting a wall.

Reveries. Passions. (Fantasy-Quartet for Piano & Strings)(2020 — II. Passion mocked. "Barb'ry Allen"

This work was premiered in Merkin Concert Hall on May 31, 2023, by an extraordinary group of players: Curtis Macomber, violin; Lois Martin, viola; Chris Gross, cello; and Christopher Oldfather, piano. Edited and Mixed by Paul Kozel at the Sonic Arts Center, New York, New York, from audio from the dress rehearsal and performance at Merkin Concert Hall.

From Berlioz's program for Symphonie fanastique: “A young musician of unhealthily sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself with opium in a paroxysm of love-sick despair. The narcotic dose he had taken was too weak to cause death but it has thrown him into a long sleep accompanied by the most extraordinary visions. In this condition his sensations, his feelings and memories find utterance in his sick brain in the form of musical imagery. Even the beloved one takes the form of melody in his mind, like a fixed idea which is ever returning and which he hears everywhere.” (N.B.: Do not try this at home.)

When I began writing Reveries. Passions., I spent time looking at and listening to many quartets and quintets for piano and strings, from the standard ones by Mozart, Brahms, and Fauré to more modern examples by Aaron Copland and
my first composition teacher Don Freund, but the one that had the most profound effect on me was Schumann's Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47, particularly its slow movement, with its beautiful cantilena and the scordatura low B-flat
pedal point in the cello at the end. I quote from the opening of Schumann’s first movement near the conclusion of my quartet.

I. Passion awakened. The first movement, bearing the indication “Wistful,” starts softly and tentatively and becomes increasingly agitated, building to an outburst in the cello, marked appassionato, accompanied by tremolo figures in the other instruments. Once this has subsided, a lyrical tune is introduced in the viola and developed, ultimately leading to a recapitulation of the opening material and a subdued, austere, and desolate sounding coda.

Reveries. Passions. (Fantasy-Quartet for Piano and Strings)(2020) - I. Passion awakened.

HOW THE AXE ESCAPED THE WOODSMAN

A song cycle for six vocalists and chamber orchestra, based on poems by Adrienne Rich.

I. Nights on the coast
II. Aching in mind
III. Misfeathered and miscloaked
IV. Vigil (A story about love)
V. Nothing is listening
VI. Republic (A story about war)

Premiered May 18, 2019 at BAM Fisher by the Brooklyn Metro Chamber Orchestra and vocalists Amber Evans (soloist in Mvt. I), Christina Kay (soloist in Mvt. V), Shannyn Rinker (soloist in Mvt. VI), Melanie Long (soloist in Mvt. II), Megan Schubert (soloist in Mvt. IV), and Elenna Sindler (soloist in Mvt. III). Guest conductor: Corrado Valvo.

Text: "Six Narratives" by Adrienne Rich from Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995.

V. Nothing is listening

Leonore Fromlet, flute
Akiko Okawa, viola
Martina Antognozzi, harp

After Andrée Arty's collage ,,Instantané''  'La vitesse du temps, le destin, l'heure ardente'', 1966

© SABAM. All rights reserved to the author.

Evans Koçja - Instantané, for flute, viola and harp (2019)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew Greenbaum. Senior professor of composition at Temple University. Lives in Brooklyn.

HOW THE AXE ESCAPED THE WOODSMAN

Matthew Greenbaum

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