Xantippe's Rebuke was written for Libby Van Cleve. It is for eight taped oboes and one live, solo oboe. The eight taped parts are equal and dependent, while the solo part is meant to be a solo with the tape as accompaniment. The piece works very carefully with the unique sound of the oboe. (The partials of the oboe are so strong that I had to stop using headphones while I worked on the piece.) The taped oboes are written to exploit the harmonic properties of the oboe's sound, combining to create combination and interference tones. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote occurred naturally before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created others. So, in effect, the nature of the oboe and its natural sound determined the direction of the piece. The solo part starts off by playing notes that are being created, but not notated, on the tape, continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped oboes. Xantippe was the wife of Socrates.

Xantippe's Rebuke

MARY JANE LEACH is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. In many of her works Leach creates an other-worldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from Leach’s deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities: “an acoustic Through the Looking Glass world based on sound that the performer is not making.” (The New Yorker).

Xantippe's Rebuke

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