SKU: A0.1008374

Estampes (Engravings) is the title of the triptych of three pieces which Debussy put together in 1903. The first complete performance was given on 9 January 1904 in the Salle Erard, Paris, by the young Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, who was already emerging as the prime interpreter of the new French music of Debussy and Ravel. The first two pieces were completed in 1903, but the third derives from an earlier group of pieces from 1894, collectively titled Images, which remained unpublished until 60 years after Debussy’s death, when they were printed as Images (oubliées). Estampes marks an expansion of Debussy’s keyboard style: he was apparently spurred to fuse neo-Lisztian technique with a sensitive, impressionistic pictorial impulse under the impact of discovering Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, published in 1902. The opening movement, ‘Pagodes’, is Debussy’s first pianistic evocation of the Orient and is essentially a fixed contemplation of its object, as in a Chinese print. This static impression is partly caused by Debussy’s use of long pedal-points, partly by his almost constant preoccupation with pentatonic melodies which subvert the sense of harmonic movement. He uses such pentatonic fragments in many different ways: in delicate arabesques, in two-part counterpoint, in canon, harmonized in fourths and fifths and as an underpinning for pattering, gamelan-like ostinato writing. Altogether the piece reflects the decisive impression made on him by hearing Javanese and Cambodian musicians at the 1889 Paris Exposition, which he had striven for years to incorporate effectively in music. In its final bars the music begins to dissolve into elaborate filigree.

Just as ‘Pagodes’ was his first Oriental piece, so ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ was the first of Debussy’s evocations of Spain-that preternatural embodiment of an ‘imaginary Andalusia’ which would inspire Manuel de Falla, the native Spaniard, to go back to his country and create a true modern Spanish music based on Debussyan principles. Debussy’s personal acquaintance with Spain was virtually non-existent (he had spent a day just over the border at San Sebastian) and it is possible that one model for the piece was Ravel’s Habanera. Yet he wrote of this piece (to his friend Pierre Louÿs, to whom it was dedicated), ‘if this isn’t the music they play in Granada, so much the worse for Granada!’-and there is no debate about the absolute authenticity of Debussy’s use of Spanish idioms here. Falla himself pronounced it ‘characteristically Spanish in every detail’. ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ is founded on an ostinato that echoes the rhythm of the habanera and is present almost throughout. Beginning and ending in almost complete silence, this dark nocturne of warm summer nights builds powerfully to its climaxes. The melodic material ranges from a doleful Moorish chant with a distinctly oriental character to a stamping, vivacious dance-measure, taking in brief suggestions of guitar strumming and perfumed Impressionist haze. There is even a hint of castanets near the end. The piece fades out in a coda that seems to distil all the melancholy of the Moorish theme and a last few distant chords of the guitar.

 â€˜Jardins sous la pluie’ is based on the children’s song ‘Nous n’rons plus au bois’ (We shan’t go to the woods): its original 1894 form was in fact entitled Quelques aspects de ‘Nous n’rons plus au bois’. The two versions are really two distinct treatments of the same set of ideas, but in ‘Jardins sous la pluie’ Estampes the earlier piece has been entirely rethought. The whole conception is more impressionistic, and subtilized. The teeming semiquaver motion is more all-pervasive, the tunes (for Debussy has added a second children’s song for treatment, ‘Do, do, l’enfant do’) more elusive and tinged sometimes with melancholy or nostalgia. The ending of the piece is entirely new. What it loses, perha.

SKU: A0.1008375

Estampes (Engravings) is the title of the triptych of three pieces which Debussy put together in 1903. The first complete performance was given on 9 January 1904 in the Salle Erard, Paris, by the young Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, who was already emerging as the prime interpreter of the new French music of Debussy and Ravel. The first two pieces were completed in 1903, but the third derives from an earlier group of pieces from 1894, collectively titled Images, which remained unpublished until 60 years after Debussy’s death, when they were printed as Images (oubliées). Estampes marks an expansion of Debussy’s keyboard style: he was apparently spurred to fuse neo-Lisztian technique with a sensitive, impressionistic pictorial impulse under the impact of discovering Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, published in 1902. The opening movement, ‘Pagodes’, is Debussy’s first pianistic evocation of the Orient and is essentially a fixed contemplation of its object, as in a Chinese print. This static impression is partly caused by Debussy’s use of long pedal-points, partly by his almost constant preoccupation with pentatonic melodies which subvert the sense of harmonic movement. He uses such pentatonic fragments in many different ways: in delicate arabesques, in two-part counterpoint, in canon, harmonized in fourths and fifths and as an underpinning for pattering, gamelan-like ostinato writing. Altogether the piece reflects the decisive impression made on him by hearing Javanese and Cambodian musicians at the 1889 Paris Exposition, which he had striven for years to incorporate effectively in music. In its final bars the music begins to dissolve into elaborate filigree.

Just as ‘Pagodes’ was his first Oriental piece, so ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ was the first of Debussy’s evocations of Spain-that preternatural embodiment of an ‘imaginary Andalusia’ which would inspire Manuel de Falla, the native Spaniard, to go back to his country and create a true modern Spanish music based on Debussyan principles. Debussy’s personal acquaintance with Spain was virtually non-existent (he had spent a day just over the border at San Sebastian) and it is possible that one model for the piece was Ravel’s Habanera. Yet he wrote of this piece (to his friend Pierre Louÿs, to whom it was dedicated), ‘if this isn’t the music they play in Granada, so much the worse for Granada!’-and there is no debate about the absolute authenticity of Debussy’s use of Spanish idioms here. Falla himself pronounced it ‘characteristically Spanish in every detail’. ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ is founded on an ostinato that echoes the rhythm of the habanera and is present almost throughout. Beginning and ending in almost complete silence, this dark nocturne of warm summer nights builds powerfully to its climaxes. The melodic material ranges from a doleful Moorish chant with a distinctly oriental character to a stamping, vivacious dance-measure, taking in brief suggestions of guitar strumming and perfumed Impressionist haze. There is even a hint of castanets near the end. The piece fades out in a coda that seems to distil all the melancholy of the Moorish theme and a last few distant chords of the guitar.

 â€˜Jardins sous la pluie’ is based on the children’s song ‘Nous n’rons plus au bois’ (We shan’t go to the woods): its original 1894 form was in fact entitled Quelques aspects de ‘Nous n’rons plus au bois’. The two versions are really two distinct treatments of the same set of ideas, but in ‘Jardins sous la pluie’ Estampes the earlier piece has been entirely rethought. The whole conception is more impressionistic, and subtilized. The teeming semiquaver motion is more all-pervasive, the tunes (for Debussy has added a second children’s song for treatment, ‘Do, do, l’enfant do’) more elusive and tinged sometimes with melancholy or nostalgia. The ending of the piece is entirely new. What it loses, perha.

SKU: A0.869295

Instrumentation: 3222-4231-timp-2perc-hp-chorus-strings

Program note:

It has been a wonderful two years of thinking, learning and working on my Continental Harmony Project with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. It is a rare occasion that a composer in the 21st century would receive a commission to write a musical work of such scale: a 40-minute piece for symphony orchestra, 200-plus chorus and a ballet company.  

At the Bangor Public Library I found some wonderful evocative 19th century texts for the chorus about the city of Bangor and its environs: the Penobscot River, Mt. Ktaadn, the logging industry, the native American culture, etc.   At times I felt overwhelmed, but most of the times I was exuberant and quite inspired by the music that came forth in the process.   The premiere is less than a month away, and I am looking forward to it.

Susan Jonason, Executive Director of the Bangor Symphony, has made the occasion a very public one: a free concert on a Saturday evening! I hope the audience will go home humming the tunes from the work as they walk into the crisp, cool Bangor night.

Formally the work is in five movements. The first, third and fifth movements are choral, and the two in between are orchestral.   In the premiere, the Robinson Ballet will dance in the orchestral movements.  

The first movement is about the Penobscot River from winter to spring. The melting of the ice is a harbinger of things to come: warmer weather, for instance; but it has also contributed to a lot of flooding in the city of Bangor and its surroundings.

The second movement is a waltz, a grand 19th century ballroom waltz for the ladies of the rich lumber barons. They come to the ball showing off their latest hats and gowns from London, Paris and Milan.

The third movement is about the woods and the people who work in them. Thoreau’s text about Mt. Ktaadn is full of awesome thoughts about how nature is beautiful, yet unkind to man.   It is followed by a J.G. Whittier lyric entitled The Logger’s Boast. The original song had twenty stanzas to it. I whittled it down to five. I don’t know what the original song sounded like, so I made up my own version of a lumberjack’s drinking song.

The fourth movement is a wild, drunken polka. After a long week of working in the woods the lumbermen come back to the city and spend all their earnings on booze, women and gambling. And they dance the night away …

The last movement begins with a funeral march for Joe Attien, a native American who was Thoreau’s guide when he came up here in the 1900’s. The work ends with a rousing march, a centennial hymn to the city of Bangor.   God bless our city Bangor, now! On this its birthday morn …

NB: The two ballet movements, II. La Valse and IV. Drunken Polka, are optional.

SKU: A0.1277133

Missa Solemnis in B major, op. 27 (conductor's score).
Based on its Neo-classical style, this setting of the Roman Catholic mass text could possibly work as a festive mass (missa solemnis) with trumpets and timpani, and its duration would fit such a solemn service. However, its intense and sometimes dramatic treatment and universal addressability due to its well-known and rather concentrated text, yet also due to eliminating the „Filioque� (which would still fit the rhythm of the repeated „qui ex Patre�, should any Catholics ever wish to perform this as a mass) make it rather a „liturgical oratorio for all nations�, more appropriate in the concert hall. 

The work has had a long gestation: imagined in 1984 after the composer’s first contact with Beethoven’s masterpiece, then sketched first in 1987-1989, and many of its themes date back from those years. Its working out is quite polyphonic, discretely modal and cyclical, and also full of centuries-old musical symbols traditionally associated with the setting of the mass text: e.g. unisons for the more dogmatical parts, Baroque dotted rhythms at the Nativity (the first coming of the  King of Kings), „rex caelestis� and also at his Passion (whose setting is discretely inspired by folkloric Romanian laments), the „anabasis� gesture at „Gloria in excelsis Deo�, „et ascendit in caelis�, „in remissionem peccatorum� and the resurrection, a flute trill standing for the Holy Spirit who has come ’like a dove’ at „et incarnatus est�, a cross-shaped texture at „crucifixus�, and some word-painting (hushed sonorities at „et invisibilium�, anticipations between orchestra and chorus at „et exspecto� etc.). Moreover, certain symbolic roles are assigned to the instrumental groups when alone (the organ represents God the Father and transcendence, the winds and/or solo voices represent God the Son and humanity, and the strings represent the Holy Spirit). 

„Kyrie� is restrained and soft, besides the powerful chords opening the respective sections of its tripartite, simple structure, and it leans towards Palestrina’s serene modality and counterpoint. „Gloria� begins with a colorful orchestral introduction depicting discretely the shepherds who kept watch over their flocks right before the Nativity, and then gradually the bright revelation. „Credo� has an orchestral introduction as well, but powerful, recurring and based on the beginning of the plainchant hymn „Pange lingua�, made famous by Mozart’s last symphony and by other Classical composers. Both „Gloria� and „Credo� end with extended, powerful and elaborate fugues („in gloria Dei Patris� and „et vitam venturi saeculi�, respectively) with dramatic modulations and sometimes with enthusiastic syncopations at odds with the words’ accents, a la Stravinsky. The same sections plus „Agnus Dei� end with soft quartal harmonies suggesting transcendent appeasement (similar harmonies appear powerfully at the beginning of „Sanctus�). „Judicare� quotes the beginning of the well-known „Dies irae� plainchant tune, and the Consecration between the „Sanctus� and „Benedictus� sections is represented by a contemplative prelude for solo organ, quoting Lutheran chorales, too. Another long orchestral introduction, suggesting the Last Judgment and based on traditional Byzantine hymns, opens „Agnus Dei�, which includes another quotation (the famous ’Dresden Amen’ at „qui tollis peccata mundi� and „dona nobis pacem�). In the final section, with its refined simplicity, the choral voices enter in descending order, and the „Kyrie eleison� theme is briefly remembered, then it ends softly and peacefully. 

Total duration: 50 min. Performing Rights Organization: SOCAN. The mp3 audio clip is Kyrie.

SKU: A0.1103613

N the Emilia province of Italy, out of solidarity with the workers fired from another failed company, the workers occupy the factory of self-made industrialist Annibale Doberdò. In dealing with the situation, he starts negotiations. An employee, the beautiful and fiery Irene, nicknamed Califfa, whose worker-husband was killed during a demonstration, meets with Doberdò. He wants to induce the strikers back to work and they show uncertainty between the directives of their union and the incitements to violence by extremists. Irene becomes Doberdò's lover and asks the workers to listen to the industrialist's proposals for renewal of working terms and worker participation in the factory management. The riots, however, continue. The industrialist's stance is badly received by other employers. While he returns from yet another meeting with his lover, Doberdò is killed by assassins.