Intermezzo

Stephen Peles: Intermezzo

Cone saved a postcard from Milton Babbitt, dated November 25, 1949, which is now part of the Cone Collection at Firestone Library. Babbitt wrote: “Dear Eddie, Having studied your Quartet for a few hours, I feel strongly moved to tell you that I think it’s a remarkably impressive work. Of course, many details still elude me, but what impresses me above all is the great diversity, technically & sonically, that you have been able to achieve within a totality that is explicitly controlled by what I would call implicative tonality. I hope we have a chance to go over it very soon.”

The first movement opens – (a quiet andante minor third rises from the viola’s low E answered by a quiet minor third falling from the second violin’s lowest F-sharp and twisting up a major second) – trades brief gestures between the viola and second violin – extends brief gestures (first violin joined by second) – gathers strength – arrives at a line in octaves (first violin doubled by the cello then by the second violin) – relaxes – falls – passes E-flat (through B-flat) to D.

The first movement begins to end – all parts muted – (a now very quiet andante minor third rises from the viola’s low E answered by a now very quiet minor third falling from the second violin’s lowest F-sharp and twisting up a major second) – trades brief gestures among all the instruments – ends in a quiet dissolve – (E-flat gently (and briefly) sustained).

The second movement begins immediately – Allegro con brio, senza sordino, forte – (first violin and viola octaves passing E-flats to Ds – second violin and cello punctuating with quadruple stops – first violin and viola octaves extend and pass E-flat to D).

Sunghae Anna Lim, Lisa Shihoten, Burchard Tang, and Thomas Kraines will fill in the details and bring the piece to its conclusion, a grand gesture passing E-flat to D (amongst other things).

Edward T. Cone

Edward Toner Cone: Second String Quartet (1949)

The Songs of Innocence and Experience is the last written of Cone’s six pieces for a cappella choir. The earliest piece he regarded as publishable, a setting from 1937 of James Stephens’ In the Night (now the third part of Three Miniatures (1948)) was the first.

Blake’s full title is “Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”. Cone’s selection of texts juxtaposes lamb and tiger, unselfish and selfish love, anger resolved and anger fed, a child lost and found. In the howling night storm of The Sick Rose he creates an echo of the fearful noise of the silent dark from his setting of In the Night. The Little Boy Lost – The Little Boy Found echoes Schubert’s Erlkönig. Throughout, fear and beauty, terror and exultation, aggression and grace – all resolved in the reunion of lost boy with weeping mother.

Edward Toner Cone: Songs of Innocence and Experience (after 1997)

Arnold Schoenberg: Drei Klavierstucke, Opus 11, Jeffrey Farrington, pianist

Frank Brickle: Bete Noire

Tom Kraines, cello, Princeton University, Taplin Hall, December 5, 2008

The first version of the Sonata for Violoncello Solo was performed by David Wells in both Philadelphia and New York in 1961 and in Princeton in 1964. Cone revised the piece in 1976 and again, finally, in 2000. Eric Salzman reviewed the New York performance in the New York Times. He characterized the piece as “a craggy, bleak composition, long, developed, carefully laid out”. It is assumed that “craggy” was meant in the best possible sense and it is certainly long, developed, and carefully laid out – but “bleak”? It has to be assumed that “bleak” was also meant in the best possible sense.

The sonata begins with a quiet motion upward from the cello’s low E – rising minor thirds, transposed by major sevenths, opening four octaves, arriving at a descending minor third (E-C-sharp). The thirds and the rising motion are worked until the falling third at the top is replaced with a falling major second which is itself worked until a fortissimo motion downward – descending major seconds transposed by fourths lands, finally, double sforzando, on the cello’s low D.

Not to give too much away, but the low D is destined, eventually, to descend to C.

Sonata for Violoncello Solo

Edward Toner Cone: Sonata for Violoncello Solo (1954-55, revised 2000)

Jeffrey Farrington, piano, Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University, November 11, 1994

Edward T. Cone: Prelude, Passacaglia, And Fugue (1957)

Mimmi Fulmer, soprano; Jeffrey Farrington, piano; Jayn Rosenfeld, flute; Scott Rawls, viola: Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University, November 11, 1994

Edward T. Cone: Philomela - Three Nightingale Songs (1954 - 1970)

Edward T. Cone & Walter Nollner. pianists. Carnegie Recital Hall, New York City, March 4, 1973.

Edward Toner Cone: Fantasy for Two Pianos (1965)

David Wells performed what became the first version of Cone's Sonata for Violoncello Solo at the National Association of American Composers and Conductors, Philadelphia Branch, November 7, 1961, a month later at the Donnell Library Center, New York City, December 11, 1961, and at Princeton sometime in 1964. This recording is, most likely, of the 1964 Princeton performance. Cone revised the piece in 1976 and again, finally, in 2000. 

Eric Salzman reviewed the New York performance in the New York Times. He characterized the piece as “a craggy, bleak composition, long, developed, carefully laid out”. It is assumed that “craggy” was meant in the best possible sense and it is certainly long, developed, and carefully laid out – but “bleak”? It has to be assumed that “bleak” was also meant in the best possible sense.

Edward Toner Cone: Sonata for Violoncello Solo (1954-55), David Wells, cellist

1. Dedication (Allegro ma appassionato).
2. A Poem for Bhain (Allegro).
3. Epilogue (Tranquillo).

First performed by Janice Harsanyi, soprano and Louise Stransky, piano at the
Princeton Symposium, March 14, 1959. This performance by Scott Ramsay, tenor & Jeffrey Farrington, piano, Opera New Jersey, July 18, 2009, Roger S. Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center for the Performing Arts, Princeton, NJ.

Edward Toner Cone: Triptych: Three Poems by John Berryman (1950)

Performed by Kathleen Nester, flute, and Barbara Biggers, harp, as part of Cone Creations, a concert produced by Opera New Jersey, July 18, 2009, Roger S. Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center for the Performing Arts, Princeton, New Jersey.

Pastoral Variations is in seven sections – an Introduction (mostly for flute alone), Theme, four Variations, and a Coda. The flute sweetly opens the piece with a tranquil rising fifth (A to E) – scurries back to A – sweeps up to a higher A – twitters about at length testing the space – finally settles down to a sustained D. Harp enters, tidies up a bit after the flute, closes the introduction. The Theme is mostly the harp’s doing, though the flute joins in the second half. Variation I is a little faster, the harp answering the flute’s improvisatory Introduction with its own improvisatory music. Flute reenters at the top of a harp glissando. Harp continues with a small fit of glissandi. Flute ends Variation I with a sustained D which is becomes the first of Variation II’s sustained notes. Harp scurries quickly and quietly around flute’s sustained notes until they switch roles. All ends with a quiet sustained flute D. Harp opens Variation III, alone again, adagio espressivo. Flute joins half way through and closes the Variation with a version of its introductory music. Harp opens Variation IV, alone yet again, allegretto grazioso. Flute occasionally interrupts with wisps of its introductory music. Harp yields to flute for the Coda. Flute once again plays a version of its introductory music, settles down to a sustained D. Harp enters for one last time, tidies up after the flute, and closes the piece.

Edward Toner Cone: Pastoral Variations for Flute & Harp (1996)

Performed by Daniel Mobbs, baritone & Jeffrey Farrington, piano, as part of Cone Creations, a concert produced by Opera New Jersey, July 18, 2009, Roger S. Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center for the Performing Arts, Princeton, New Jersey.

Edward Toner Cone: Nine Lyrics from Tennyson's "In Memoriam" (1978)

New Weather: Four Songs to Poems by Paul Muldoon for Tenor, or Soprano, and Piano (1993); Scott Ramsay, tenor; Jeffrey Farrington, piano

Note by Edward T. Cone:

“Related to the pleasure of composing for specific performers is the joy I experience when making musical settings of poetry by my friends. I am fortunate to have known many first‐rate poets, and they have been most gracious about letting me use their verse in this way. The most recent example is New Weather, a cycle on four short lyrics by the eminent young Irish poet Paul Muldoon. The title is derived from the first song, ʺWind and Trees.ʺ After describing trees in a storm, the poet compares himself to a single tree, concluding that ʺby my broken bones/I tell new weather.ʺ Although recent medical evidence has tended to question the validity of this kind of prophecy, I found it musically suggestive.

ʺBlemishʺ tells of a (presumably beautiful) woman with eyes of different colors. That discrepancy is symbolized by a piano accompaniment that is freely canonical between the left and the right hands, a minor ninth apart. The half‐step relationship is brought into the open by the voice when it sings of ʺone brown, and one blue eye.ʺ In ʺBran,ʺ the poet, despite the pleasure of sexual passion, nostalgically remembers the sheer rapture of his boyhood love for his dog. That was ʺan oatmeal Labrador,ʺ but when I wrote the song I was thinking of a red cocker spaniel. 

The longest of the songs is ʺHedgehog.ʺ That animal has appealed to me ever since I first encountered one during World War II, at an army camp near Tel Aviv. This extraordinary little creature rolls itself into a hard, spiny ball at the first hint of danger but proves to be gentle and friendly when induced to unwind. The poem begins with a description of the steady motion of a snail, which is suggested on the piano by a constantly modulating twelve‐tone ostinato for the two hands four octaves apart. In contrast, the hedgehog is depicted by a sudden spasmodic figure that brings the hands close together on a dissonant chord. This motif and its derivations punctuate the poet’s address to the hedgehog—which never unrolls. It is quite right not to ʺtrust in the worldʺ: the Arabs told me that they drop the animals into water, slit their stomachs when they try to swim, and eat them.”

Cone New Weather

Edward Toner Cone: New Weather

Cone Psalm 90

Edward Toner Cone: part one of Two Psalms (1948), Psalm 90

Cone Psalm 91

Edward Toner Cone: part two of Two Psalms (1948) Psalm 91

Margaret Kampmeier, pianist

The pianist and in this instance, critic, Jerry Kuderna (San Francisco Classical Voice) wrote of a performance of Sphinxes: “Each segment … was like a freshly opened fortune cookie, tasty and revealing an enigmatic message about the possible meaning of music and of life.” 

Given Cone’s instructions for ordering this collection of 25 + 1 tiny segments (“N.B.: These pieces are in random order. Any number, from 0 to 25, may be played in any order.”), and assuming that no segment is repeated, the fortune cookies can be opened in any of approximately 62 septillion permutations. Even more alarmingly, Cone’s instruction that any number of the pieces — from none to all — may be played and count as a performance, leads to the conclusion that any time a  pianist declines to play any of the segments at all, he or she has actually played Sphinxes.

Jeffrey Farrington, Ringoes, NJ, September 18, 2019

Jeffrey Farrington

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