Piece for guitar solo by composer Naftali Schindler
Guitarist: Ruben Seroussi

Program Notes:
The piece is slightly influenced by the Henri Rousseau painting The Sleeping Gypsy, only imagining it set in Central Asia, with a Tuvan nomad sleeping next to her doshpuluur in the taiga with a brown bear creeping by... But no overt tone-painting was intended.

Thanks to Israel Composers׳ League for their support
Recording Engineer: Yaron Aldema

The Sleeping Nomad

Moznayim traces a path from the abstract and coloristic opening to a lyrical and melodic center, and back to abstraction at the end. The opening focuses on great contrasts between collections of many different pitches, and obsessive focus on one pitch or very few pitches. Gradually the pitches become more evenly distributed leading to
greater lyricism. Eventually, the contrast of many pitches and very few returns, leading to the abstract and coloristic ending.
Performed by the Yale Philharmonia conducted by Shinik Hahm

Moznayim

The Tombeau is a French musical term from the 17th century describing a memorial piece. My title quite obviously references Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and that in itself is homage to Ravel (the music doesn't reference him consciously); however, this piece serves as homage to many composers and musical traditions that have influenced me and this piece. The piece begins somberly and deliberately, but goes through a wide range of styles in presenting the various musical motifs of the piece. These motifs are then freely developed, combined, and recapitulated. This piece was written for Tomo Matsuo.

Le Tombeau de...

String quartet based on a the motive: La, do (ut), fa, si, which in the outer sections is developed in the manner of the old Gamelan Gong Gede, and in the middle section in a post-Romantic Western manner.

Gending Lautfasi

This piece is inspired by the idea of troping environmental sounds, explored by Ingram Marshall in several pieces. The idea is to trope, or overlay, the environmental sound with musical commentary. In Water Tropes I use the string quartet, throat singing (singing more than one pitch at a time), to imitate and respond to the percussive bubbliness and trills of the water sounds. Over time, the musical response gains independence, causing the water sounds to become tropes to the music. Eventually, the music loses cohesion and starts returning to water, creating an overall "from the water and back to the water" theme for the piece.

Water Tropes

Performed by Brian Elingsen
This piece is based on a musical phrase typical of traditional improvisations on the igil – the Tuvan spike fiddle. The phrase revolves over and over again in this piece, at first evolving into itself from fragments and later devolving into different fragments. The revolutions become faster and smaller as the piece progresses.

Volution I

Laurelle Mathison, mezzo
BU symphony orchestra
Emily Senturia, conductor

Naftali Schindler

Petrarch Sonnets for mezzo and orchestra

This is an excerpt from the piece as performed by Ryan Yure and an ensemble.
This piece combines kelzmer tonal language with Balinese gamelan textures. The free-rhythm introduction contrasts a raga-like meditation on the klezmer Ahava Raba mode (and others), interrupted by outbursts typical of Balinese Gong Kebyar. The following rhythmic section has gong-like punctuation in the piano with interlocking rhythmic patterns in the violins (first slowly, and then at double speed). 

Gending Ahava Raba

I was inspired to write Ubangi upon hearing the complex polyphonic vocal music of the Aka people. The Aka live around the Ubangi river in central Africa (hence the title of the piece). The dense contrapuntal textures of their music are created by layering of repeating melodic cells of irregular length. This irregularity causes a constant shift in the relationship of the voices and in the resulting texture. Their music -- and the current piece -- doesn’t really have downbeats; instead, they have a fast microbeat which is common to all voices. Aside from that commonality, the voices move in almost complete rhythmic freedom from each other.
In Ubangi, I didn’t attempt to imitate Aka music; rather, I employed the structural and rhythmic concepts of their music to create a piece I can call my own. The tonal/harmonic and the large scale form of the piece, have no connection to Aka music. 
The thematic material of the piece is presented in two thematic groups, each of which grows from one solo line by adding new layers in the Aka manner. Each group of themes is in a different tonal area. This presentation is followed by a development in which the themes from the two groups intermingle and mutate. A central episode in this development is reached at the point of furthest tonal remove from the original tonal areas (in technical terms, the tonal area includes the complement of the set on which the second group is based, and is at a tritone relationship to it). The music builds to a climax which coincides with the reappearance of the original thematic material in reverse order. The various layers also appear in a different order, creating a different perspective. The first thematic group (which now appears last) is modified to fit the tonal area of the second group (now appearing first). The various layers peel away leading to a short coda. Mention should be made of two other, non-Aka, African elements in this piece. One is the piano ostinato throughout the piece, which is an actual bell pattern from West African (Ewe) music. This ostinato provides a timeline against which the other irregular elements appear in context. The other is the hocketing of the opening theme at the coda, this is characteristic of the Ba’aka pygmies (neighbors of the Aka).  
This is a recording of a performance conducted by John Concklin. 

Naftali Schindler's Best

Ubangi

Conducted by Yiannis Hadjiloizou.
I. Kaleidoscope: notes slowly spread out from a central core and later return to it. In the middle, playing around with a hocket of the complement notes.
II. Temporal Coordinates: a Balinese textures built from the bottom up. This means it starts with slow gong-like punctuation and gradually builds up to a full texture. IT then evaporates into nothingness.
III. Harmony of Nonagonal Spheres: Nine lines which are based on the first nine notes in the harmonic series, in harmonic relationships based on these nine notes, in a rhythmic relationship of nine. Nine syllables in the title too!

Naftalis

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