Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day is an English carol usually attributed as 'traditional'; it first appeared in print in William B. Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833). The verses of the hymn progress through the story of Jesus told in his own voice, with an innovative feature of the telling being that Jesus' life is repeatedly characterized as a dance. This device was later used in the modern hymn Lord of the Dance. Most well known in John Gardner's choral adaptation, many other composers have set or arranged the tune, including Gustav Holst, David Willcocks, John Rutter and Andrew Carter. . Watch a performance of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day in John Gardner's 1965 version performed by King's College Choir, Cambridge . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

James Travers (Films de France) writes about René Clair's 1924 film Entr'acte: "This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between two acts of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 1924. Picabia famously wrote a synopsis for the film on one sheet of note paper headed Maxim’s (the famous Parisian restaurant), which he sent to René Clair. This formed the basis for what ultimately appeared on screen, with some additional improvisations. Music for the film was composed by the famous avant-garde composer Erik Satie, who appears in the film, along side its originator, Francis Picabia. The surrealist photographer Man Ray also puts in an appearance, in a film which curiously resembles his own experimental films of this era. Entr'acte is a surrealistic concoction of unrelated images, reflecting Clair’s interest in Dada, a fashionable radical approach to visual art which relied on experimentation and surreal expressionism. Clair’s imagery is both captivating and disturbing, giving life to inanimate objects (most notably the rifle range dummies), whilst attacking conventions, even the sobriety of a funeral march. When the first performance of Relâche was cancelled because of the ill-health of one of is stars, the public were outraged. There was a belief that Picabia had staged the ultimate Dada stunt – as Relâche is the French word used on posters to indicate that a show is canceled, or the theater is closed. The controversy was laid to rest when the show opened, a few days later than planned. For its part, Clair’s Entr'acte won widespread praise, although the response from the paying public was divided. As to what the film actually means, well that’s anyone’s guess. Like all good surrealist art there are an infinite number of possible interpretations, and one’s appreciation and understanding of this film is very much a subjective experience. Themes which appear to dominate the work are death, mortality and the hastening pace of technology. Hence, one possible interpretation is that the film is mocking mankind’s attempts to cope with the brevity of his existence. As progress is made, man has to run faster and faster to cram more and more into a fixed duration, his limited lifespan. Could the Entr'acte of the film’s title represent that short period of what we call 'life', that too brief an interval between two acts of an eternal duration?" Watch René Clair's Entr'acte with music by Erik Satie . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

In the Fall of 1910, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky convinced Alexandre Benois to write a scenario (in collaboration with Stravinsky) and to design costumes and sets for an original ballet to be entitled Petrushka. The ballet premiered in Paris in 1911, and was perhaps the most successful and influential of Diaghilev's "Ballets Russes" productions. The All Music Guide writes, "Stravinsky's score for Petrushka is brilliant, charming and absorbing, one of the most magical scores in all the classical literature. Stravinsky borrowed folk tunes to illustrate the crowd scenes, used bitonal chords to signify Petrushka's dual existence as puppet and living being, wrote his own seductive melodies, and stitched it all together seamlessly with a genius for dramatization and flair for orchestration that could only come from Stravinsky." Watch a performance of Stravinsky's Petrushka, one of the most brilliant and magical ballets in the modern repertoire in a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet . . . our DANSES PYTHEUSES this week.

Pawel Lukaszewski is one of the younger generation of Polish composers specialising in sacred and choral music. He studied composition with Marian Borkowski and cello with Andrzej Wrobel at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and in 2000 and 2007 he received a Ph.D and Ph.D Hab. respectively in composition. His works have been performed throughout Europe, as well as in Argentine, Chile, China, Israel, Cuba, Canada, South Korea, Peru, Uruguay and the United States. In addition, his works have been recorded on more than fifty CDs. Hear a performance of Pawel Lukaszewski's choral work Hommage a Edith Stein (2002) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

David Maslanka (born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and now living in Missoula, Montana) is a composer who writes for a variety of genres, including works for choir, concert band, chamber ensembles and orchestra. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Europe, and he has received three National Endowment for the Arts Composer Awards and five residence fellowships from the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Best known for his highly acclaimed wind ensemble compositions, Maslanka has published nearly 100 pieces, including eight symphonies (six of them for concert band), nine concerti, and a full Mass. His compositional style can be rhythmically intense and extremely complex, yet it also possesses at points an underlying delicate beauty. He is a composer who works from a meditative standpoint of spiritual inspiration, and this gentle, warm spiritual quality can be felt throughout his music. Watch the Amethyst Saxophone Quartet perform Fanfare/Variations on the chorale melody 'Durch Adams Fall' (Through Adam’s Fall), the last movement of Maslanka's Recitation Book (2006) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Kile Smith, based in Philadelphia, has collaborated with the Renaissance music ensemble Piffaro and the modern music choir The Crossing to create his Vespers (2008), just out on the Navona label and selling well at local concerts by both groups. According to David Patrick Stearns (Philly.com), "Smith's music suggests a state of being that many people aspire to: His Vespers is a sanctuary, a refuge from life. His use of musical antiquity - Piffaro's Renaissance instruments - is about cheery, primary colors. The relative lack of emotional complication might suggest his is a more lightweight piece. Listen closely, though, and the spiritual solidity of his music is full of distinctive rewards." Check out more about Kile Smith's Vespers and listen to excerpts from the new Navona recording . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.

Winner of the 2006-2007 Rome Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer and vocalist whose wide range of innovative works have been thrilling audiences around the world. Informed by his experience as an electric guitarist and overtone singer, his music fuses the culture of Japanese underground electronic music with an awareness of European modernism. He engages with multiple modes of music making: as a composer of acoustic works, as an electronic musician, and as an improviser specializing in extended vocal techniques. Hear a performance of Ueno's Ga-uah-Chon-Ch-cha (A Song of the Rapture) (2006) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Paul Witney is a composer, musician and educator, in demand both nationally and internationally. He has studied with some of Australia's finest contemporary Composers, including Nigel Butterley and Michael Smetanin. His works have been performed by many leading Australian and International ensembles including Australian Symphony Orchestras, The Song Company, Generator, and The Zurich Ensemble for New Music. Witney was awarded the 2MBS Young Australian Composers Award for his composition Zero Through Nine (1997). He has also been active in continuing to compose for young musicians. His association with various national and international musicians has resulted in performances of his works in the Ukraine, Canada, USA, Holland, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, and his interaction with local and Indigenous Australians has lead to exciting developments as many of his new works have an Indigenous focus and historical inspiration. Listen to a performance of Witney's Zero Through Nine . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Peter Sculthorpe is Australia's best-known and most respected composer. His music may be heard on radio, recordings and in concert programs almost anywhere in the world. His life and work are inextricably linked to his surrounding world of artists, writers, composers and performers. Works such as Earth Cry (1986) and Kakadu (1988) reflect the breadth, vastness and loneliness of the Australian landscape and the sounds of its wildlife. Many of his works draw on Aboriginal history, language or melody. Watch a performance of Sculthorpe's Jabiru Dreaming (1989) performed by Grupo de percusión del CONSMUPA . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Morton Subotnick is one of the United States' premier composers of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre. The work which brought Subotnick celebrity was Silver Apples of the Moon (1967). Commissioned by Nonesuch Records and written in two parts to correspond to the two sides of an LP, Silver Apples marked the first time an original large-scale composition had been created specifically for the disc medium. The record was an American bestseller in the classical music category, an extremely unusual occurrence for any contemporary concert music at the time. In the late 1970s, Subotnick developed the "ghost" box, an electronic device consisting of a pitch and envelope follower for a live signal, an amplifier, a frequency shifter and a ring modulator, which allowed sophisticated control over real-time electronic processing of a live performance. His recent works utilize computerized sound generation, specially designed software Interactor and "intelligent" computer controls which allow the performers to interact with the computer technology. Hear Morton Subotnick talk about his life and his music . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Philip Glass is generally regarded as one of the most prominent composers associated with the minimalist school. His style is quite recognizable, owing to its seeming simplicity of repeated sounds, comprised of evolving patterns of rhythms, which are often quite complex, and rhythmic themes. In some of his early works, like Two Pages (1967), the whole of the piece evolves from a single unit or idea that expands as notes are added. In later works, expansion comes via the lengthening of note values or through other inventive processes. Many describe his music in the minimalist vein as mesmerizing; others hear it as numbingly repetitive and devoid of variety in its simplicity. The latter view of his style is itself simplistic and fails to take into account the many subtleties and complexities found in his methods. Glass' mature style embraces more than just minimalism and thus must be viewed being more eclectic and far less dogmatic. There is greater emphasis on melody, less on controlling rhythmic patterns. He is one of the most popular serious composers of the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and must be regarded as among the most important composers of his time. Hear and watch Philip Glass describe the origins of his opera Satyagraha in April of 2008 at the Garrison Institute . . . it's our FEATURED THOUGHT this week.

Composer Robert Gans received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Oswego. After one semester of post graduate study he returned home to New York City to pursue his musical studies and interests for the next seven years. Since moving to Maine he has continued to compose and perform his own works, and the works of others on piano in a variety of styles and settings. On the faculty of the Portland Conservatory of Music since 2005, he teaches piano, music theory and composition. As Gans describes his artistic philosophy, "I believe that art is part of life and that music is enriched and informed by life experience. Therefore for me it is desirable to live as fully as possible, to be grounded in craftsmanship, and to follow my heart in achieving the realization of my concepts. In my compositions the materials and form I employ are determined by the expressive intent of the work and the process is a mixture of planning and living spontaneity. In the marketplace, the supply of talent so far exceeds the demand, that an exclusive focus on popular acclaim is self defeating to the qualities of inspiration and originality. Art paradoxically lifts us above the trivial while acknowledging it's existence in our lives." Hear the 4th movement of his Blue Ballet (2004) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

For those of you in Maine this weekend, here's a heads-up about a wonderful chance to hear one of the string quartets of world renowned Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, who turned 81 this past April. Maine's DaPonte String Quartet will be performing Sculthorpe's String Quartet No. 8 (1969), along with quartets by Haydn and Beethoven at the Second Congregational Church, Newcastle (Friday, Dec 3, 7:30 pm), St. Mary's Church, Falmouth (Saturday, Dec 4, 7:30 pm), and the United Methodist Church, Brunswick (Sunday, Dec 5, 3:00 pm). For more information, check out the DSQ website . And for more information on Peter Sculthorpe, head over to the Pytheas Center's Peter Sculthorpe Composer Page.

Although it is one of the most significant concertante works for cello and orchestra to have appeared during the second part of the 20th century, the words "cello concerto" do not appear anywhere on the score of Tout un monde lointain ... (A whole remote world ...), a work composed in 1970 by French composer Henri Dutilleux. The title of the work is taken from Baudelaire's poem La chevelure, from which the individual titles of the five movements are also taken. These (Enigma, Gaze, Surges, Mirrors, and Hymn) suggest something of the atmosphere of the whole, but are not to be interpreted too literally. Structurally, the work is extremely complex. The opening movement sets out a basic dialogue between solo cello and orchestra, wide-ranging in tempo and registral effects, but with no sense of resolution between the protagonists. The music is cast as a set of variations on the 12-note theme heard at the outset and cross-referenced in each of the successive movements. The second and fourth sections are slow moving, while the third has the function of a scherzo, with solo writing of enormous technical difficulty. The final movement (Hymn) is in the form of a vibrant Allegro, though the enigmatic overall feel of the work is still evident here (- from the All Music Guide). Watch a fabulous performance of Dutilleux's "Tout un monde lointain . . ." by cellist Xavier Phillips and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Marek Janowski . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Voices from the Archives is a BBC website providing free access to audio interviews with authors, artists, actors, architects, broadcasters, cartoonists, composers, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, painters, philosophers, photographers, playwrights, poets, political activists, religious thinkers, scientists, sculptors, sports, writers. Among the composer interviews available in the BBC Audio Archive are ones with Elizabeth Maconchy, André Previn, Michael Tippett, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Aaron Copland. This week to Aaron Copland talk about his life and music, all thanks to BBC Four . . . and our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Violinist Hilary Hahn and composer Jennifer Higdon shared a love of 20th century music history when Higdon was Hahn's professor at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. "Good teaching is actually a partnership," Hahn says. Flash forward 15 years, and this student-teacher relationship has been transformed into a partnership with colleagues at the top of their field. Higdon won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for a concerto she composed especially for Hahn, who has released 11 solo albums and played more than 1,300 concerts the world over. Jeffrey Brown talked with the women at the Curtis Institute of Music recently about their collaboration and the process behind it. See the full interview with Higdon, Hahn and The PBS NewsHour's Jeffery Brown . . . our FEATURED THOUGHT this week.

David Patrick Stearns of the Philadelphia Inquirer called Kile Smith’s Vespers "breathtaking" and "ecstatically beautiful," adding that "few have Smith’s lyrical immediacy and ability to find great musical variety while maintaining an overall coherent personality." Kile Smith’s frequently performed music has been praised by audiences and critics for its emotional power, direct appeal, and strong voice. Listen to his As Kingfishers Catch Fire (2000) from the collection Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music