Chamber Symphony (1993-94)

Commissioned by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Premiered by same under the direction of David Stock on March 20, 1995 at Levi Hall in the Rodef Shalom temple in Pittsburgh, PA. Written in Ann Arbor, Winston-Salem, and at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H. Part copying supported by a grant from the Margaret Fairbanks Jory Copy Assistance Fund of the American Music Center, 1994.

Program Notes for the Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble performance on 11/9/01 (conducted by Tim Weiss):

When I began composing Chamber Symphony (the first movement), I put one objective foremost: to proceed with freedom from many preconceptions about writing music, primarily those of form and counterpoint -- or the "successful" locking together of pitches. I wanted no impediments (quasi-stream of consciousness) to my "writing left to right" with no visible limitations about where that may lead. I wanted to disregard any past obediences to the consonance-dissonance dichotomy of delineating phrase structure. Basically, I wanted to have my own personal revolution against consonance in the manner of Schoenberg and others in the early 20th century. This helps to explain why I chose a rather tradition-implicating title for this venture. Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony -- which actually precedes his most extreme break with consonance, though it exhibits a maximal approach to counterpoint -- is the earliest of my work's influences. [Another aspect of the Schoenberg I used is his use of instrumental doublings in extreme registers to create a "hot" sonority. (The first time I heard Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony performed live was in Finney Chapel by students in 1987.)]

In my world of musical freedom, I actually tried to create as much dissonance as possible without following any tone rows or pitch schematics. I piled original lines upon original lines in improvisatory fashion, and deferred to extreme dissonance in the chord structures. (If one either is not bothered by this or becomes used to it, then my objective has been met.) I shunned repetition, wrote for extreme instrumental virtuosity, and favored thick and busy textures.

I titled the first movement "Zero Gravity Cage." At two points in the movement, all the "racket" stops and things are extremely quiet and suspended; ultimately the music floats to the ceiling like the grandfather and son in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory who have drunk the forbidden gassy beverage. I ventured an image in the title to capture this modest narrative: an enraged gorilla in a zoo cage who is cruelly sedated by the flip of switch, rendering his cage a zero gravity chamber where his flailings are against nothing -- the air only -- which seems to me to be a most frustrating fate, where one is denied even a sense of resistance to one's anger. This affectation of rage in the first movement was underscored at the time of its composition by the suicide of hard rock musician Kurt Cobain which signified for me the ending of a juvenile ambition to be a rock star (we were exactly the same age). Therefore some hard rock mannerisms are present in this movement -- the drum solo at the end, for example, may be seen as a tribute to Cobain (a guitarist).

The second movement (untitled:The Schizophrenic Watchmaker), marked "Mechanical, but a little joyful," it is full of canonical activity which increasingly spins out of control. About halfway though the composing of this movement I heard the chamber orchestral arrangements of Conlon Nancarrow's player piano music for the first time. I found a correlation between the music of Nancarrow and Nirvana (Cobain's Seattle-based group): both like to use block major triads with non-diatonic root movement, which opens new vistas on and reasons for chromatic-type voice-leading. The second movement incorporates this quirky use of triads in its later stages.

Here I will say the following: since this work, as with many of my compositions, was composed in the chronological order in which you hear it, you can assume that such extra-musical revelations were made in relative real time, and that inner musical references (developments of themes in this work) always look backwards and not forwards.

The beginning of the third movement employed a compositional technique that I used in the first movement of my piano chamber concerto, Vocabularium (performed in 1993 by Tim Weiss and the Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble*), where I wrote all rhythms first and attached notes to them later. The rhythms in question were of a fast, country-music-style stomp with polyrhythmic sprinklings on top. Proceeded to directly from movement two, it begins with a burning vibraphone solo over piano accompaniment. A major influence for this movement was another, contemporary (1991) Chamber Symphony - that of John Adams. He, too, took Schoenberg as a departure point and brought his own, more populist, wit to bear on the medium. He, too, took the opportunity to depart from a more consonant style by evoking the iconoclastic attitude of the past master. This third movement (untitled:Hi-Jinks), becomes something of a set of variations on the opening riff. At the very end of the movement, a high trombone glissando humorously evokes the end of the last, and perhaps the deepest, influence on my Chamber Symphony as a whole: Ligeti's Chamber Concerto for 13 Instrumentalists (1969), which was performed at the University of Michigan during the composer's visit in 1993. Portions of my first movement, in particular, drew greatly from the dense passagework of the Ligeti, at once breathtakingly, dissonantly virtuosic and strangely, consonantly static.

I incorporated formal cohesion in the Chamber Symphony in one small, audible way. At the center of each of the three movements, like the center of a Tootsie Roll tootsie pop, is a beacon-like passage for brass trio. These trio passages get shorter in length from movement to movement, while the surroudning filigree becomes more and more torrential, and they use the same (tri-) chords.

I recognize that my approach to musical composition in this work is rather selfish: few attempts at unity are made, no revision of earlier music made in light of later music, new ideas continually stream forth, and a musical "diary" of sorts is imposed on the audience. It is very hard to play, to boot. I feel that this cleansing wave of anarchy upon my personal shore of hierarchical preconceptions was necessary in order to see what shiny seashells of my musical-artistic likes and dislikes would be left upon its sands. I hope others might be able to hear it as a modest offering in this continuum of the "Chamber Symphony" and help to bring the medium into focus as field for experimentation and rebirth, whatever that may entail.

*I would like to note that, as a result of the first Weiss performance of Vocabularium at the 1993 SCI conference at Cleveland State University, I was approached by David Stock for a new work for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. That work was Chamber Symphony (which was already in progress), and they premiered it on March 20, 1995 at Levi Hall in the Rodef Shalom temple in Pittsburgh, PA.

.mp3 DOWNLOAD:

Title Duration Size
I. Zero Gravity Cage 6:19 2.57 MB
II. untitled: The Schizophrenic Watchmaker 4:42 1.93 MB
III. untitled: Hi-Jinks 3:32 1.45 MB

Recording may not be sold. © by the Composer. All Rights Reserved. Performance licensing: BMI.

Score and parts on rental from the Composer. Perusal score available.

INSTRUMENTATION:

Flute/Piccolo
Oboe/English Horn
Bb Clarinet
Bassoon

Horn
Trumpet
Trombone

Percussion (1 player)

Piano/Celesta

Solo Strings