I'm honored to have an upcoming performance
at ETSU (East Tennessee State University)
on October 2nd, 2010
of my piece for Saxophone and Piano titled
Harold in Italy.
The performers will be...
Rachel G. Cox received a Master’s Degree in Saxophone Performance from the University of Georgia and a Bachelor’s Degree from East Tennessee State University, where she was a student of Thomas Crawford. She plays bass clarinet and saxophone in the Symphony of the Mountains and the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra. In the past, she was a member of the nationally recognized Watauga Saxophone Quartet. Ms. Cox was also a semi-finalist in the Kingsville International Young Performer’s Competition. The Floyd Cramer Scholarship and the Frank E. Little Outstanding Student Award were among her academic awards. In addition to working as a postal clerk in Jonesborough, Tennessee, Ms. Cox directs the orchestra and Selah Brass quintet at Central Baptist Church in Johnson City. She also performs in the Johnson City Community Concert Band.
Robert Jeter received his Master of Music degree in piano performance in 2006 from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, studying with Phillip Kawin. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree from East Tennessee State University in 2004 studying piano with Dr. Lynn Rice-See. Mr. Jeter has served as adjunct faculty at ETSU since 2006 teaching in the Music Theory department.
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Program Notes:
My sonata for alto saxophone and piano “Harold in Italy” has nothing to do with Berlioz’ work of the same name. The title refers to the American neoclassic composer Harold Shapero with whom I studied with at Brandeis in the early 1980’s. Harold Shapero is a musical institution that made an indelible mark on the modern music of his generation. He kept students engaged with his seemingly endless stories about the important musical figures that he was so closely associated with: Igor Stravinsky, “Lenny” Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Nadia Boulanger – just to name a few.
Harold strived to pass down to his students the fundamentals of music making, including the elements of traditional fugue, tonal harmony, and sonata form. His admiration of select popular music and the great classical composers – Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven – was inspiring.
So, when I had the opportunity of writing a piece celebrating Harold Shapero’s birthday, I felt it would be interesting to abandon my usual “modernist” style and attempt to compose a piece in a language that would more appropriately reflect an aspect of my student experiences. For example, towards the end of the Divertimento, my sonata combines a jazzy sax “improv” accompanied by an extended verbatim excerpt from the Andante movement of the Mozart A Major Piano Concerto Nr. 23 K.488. The slow second movement is an attempt at a musical theme for an imaginary Italian art film. In the final movement, I “deranged” the Presto of Haydn’s Sonata No. 43 in E Flat Major (Hob.XVI:28) and turned it into a Latin American Tango. These disparate influences conspire to form the intentionally jovial nature of the work.
Finally, the title also refers to the historical fact that in 1941 Harold Shapero won the prestigious Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, but had his residency cancelled because of World War II. Fortunately, in 1970 he was able to belately claim his trip to Italy in the capacity of Composer-in-Residence at the American Academy in Rome.
The piece was first perfomed by Kenneth Radnofsky (sax) and John McDonald (piano) on April 29th, 2007 at a LUMEN Contemporary Music concert held on Shapero’s 87th birthday.
Link: http://www.etsu.edu/calendar/EventList.aspx?view=EventDetails&eventidn=4534&information_id=18449&type=&syndicate=syndicate
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Now, if I or any of my immediate colleagues were to pre-screen our ideas against the body of musical work that has been produced to date, we would probably find a lot of precedents for what we are writing. As much as we would like to think we are original, we very often draw upon the stored memory of works that reside in our collective past experience, works that have influenced us profoundly in one way or another. From that wellspring, we remodel those techniques, patterns, and sounds into a seemingly new framework that (one hopes) will reflect our thoughts and ideas within the context of our uniquely personal tone of voice.
I am not one of those composers who has an ambition to invent a brand new syntax, create an entirely new musical language, or start a brand new artistic school or movement. I’m too preoccupied just writing down what I hear. That task tends to be challenging enough and a full-time job in itself. But as a composer of comparatively conservative tastes, I my internal Antagonist occasionally asks the question about the relevance of my work. Seeds of doubt are sown throughout my psyche.
The basic set of standard resources of contemporary classical music have been rather consistent and surprisingly static over the past 100 years or so. The primary materials are about as generic as they can get. I work with 12 pitches to the octave, rhythms that are easily played, and instrumentation that hasn’t changed much since the good ol'days of Papa Haydn. A lot of other composers work within the same baseline of raw materials. In other words, we design sound-art to be implemented with vocal cords, drums, pianos, flutes, and assorted strings. You can't get more fundamental than that. It's not unlike banging rocks together for entertainment while sitting around the campfire at night. Primitive, but timeless fun.
When it comes to musical form, there is also a predisposition on my part to lean toward structural patterns and musical dialogs that have been hanging around for a while. For example, something as banal as ABA’ form seems agreeable enough to most, and apparently is still possible within a contemporary modernist context. To take this not-so radical idea to another level, there is almost an expectation by the audience that some sort of musical “return” should occur – at least somewhere in the overall design of the musical work.
One law that my Muse and Antagonist can agree on is that "Contrast and Unity are polar opposites." The problem is that they can't agree on what the proper balance and middle ground for Contrast verses Unity should be. The New Complexity school advocates information overload and maximal contrast. The Orthodox sect of the Minimalist party seems to advocate minimal contrast as their overriding virtue (hence their label). I'm in neither camp.
Sometimes I succumb to the voice of negativity in my head and give in to my Antagonist. For example, I had been working on an orchestral piece this summer but shelved it because it just didn’t seem original enough. Following my intuition, I was experimenting with rich chords drawn from late 19th century harmony along with grand orchestral clichés and gestures. But after many weeks of struggle, it finally occurred to me that my audience would be so much better off listening to Richard Strauss or one of David Del Tredici’s lush Alice pieces from the 1980s instead.
My Antagonist regularly attends concerts with me, and is not shy about offering harsh criticism of the works on the program. I’m quite use to his brash cynicism, and sometimes agree with what he says about individual works. His nihilistic attitude about what is considered to be state-of-the-art in this sometimes hokey pokey world contemporary music makes me grin.
I can't fire my Muse or Antagonist. This is a profession I did not volunteer for, and they are necessary partners in crime. I was drafted into this wacky business against my will. I'm incapable of doing anything else, so I better make the most of it. Mr. Muse and Mr. Antagonist are like annoying but unavoidable co-workers assigned to the cubicle next to mine.
One particular example of 21st century self-consciousness arises in the area of musical form. For instance, the concept of the Concerto seems to retain durability in modern times. Yet some composers, such as Boulez, have abandoned the concept entirely. For them it is an impoverished art form, a legacy of past centuries - although their music is clearly virtuosic in every degree.
In contrast, many other composers have embraced the Concerto idea and have chosen to run with the ball. Master American composers such as Peter Lieberson, Elliott Carter, Martin Boykan, and Yehudi Wyner all come to mind as composers who have adopted the Concerto form rather successfully. They have done so even though the classically-derived concerto is probably not up-and-front in the minds of our 21st century European counterparts. It could be that Concertos are just another “American” fetish.
My Antagonist is unrelenting in his brutal analysis of contemporary musical discourse. Just the other day he said that nothing new can be written within the existing framework of standard musical materials (I’m paraphrasing). In other words, I’m redundant and should retire ASAP. Concertos are old hat, and chamber or orchestral works written for traditional instruments using traditional notation and traditional tuning systems are hopelessly old school. To use a metaphor borrowed from the business of Information Technology, it’s like writing code in “COBOL” when the industry has migrated to “dot NET” or “JavaScript.”
Now and then I sit down with my Antagonist and try to prove him wrong. “Originality is not equivalent to Change!" I scream.
I go on to make my case... "Salient examples of new and original music are created all the time in our present culture. These works still blow my socks off – even though they are by common standards of measurement neither radical nor revolutionary. A composer does not have to create a paradigm-shift for every piece they write. As Charles Wuorinen once famously said, 'How do you create a revolution when the guy before you said anything goes?'"
My Antagonist looks up at me with a Devilish grin and blurts out, "You are an idiot."
My Muse sits by silently, paralyzed and afraid to say a word while holding back tears.