David Lang's impetus for Cheating, Lying, Stealing (1993) was to be the opposite of a big-brained, I-am-so-smart composer. Instead, Lang wanted to focus more on the more appalling and snide aspects of life. Lang tries to get every bang for his buck out of the musical material that he has. His composition is like a ten-minute-long machine that follows a set of laws that he invented, at which point the music seems to have simply written itself. He tweaks one aspect of the conventions, and cheats his way into having even more material. The piece, composed for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and scored for bass clarinet, cello, piano, and two percussionists (who play junk metals on opposite ends of the stage), is angular, edgy, and repetitious . . . Watch a performance of Cheating, Lying, Stealing with Sam Chernoff, Paul Kerekes, Hiromi Nishida, Derek Kwan, Austin Shadduck, and Joe Fee, with Matthew Kasper conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The Pytheas Center's director Vinny Fuerst writes: "The Richard Rodgers/Robert Russell Bennett score of the NBC documentary series Victory at Sea [26 half hour episodes which first aired from October 26, 1952 through May 3, 1953] has always held a special place in my heart. My mother tells the story of how I, age 5, would sit in front of the stereo and listen over and over again to the album of highlights for Victory at Sea. I must have been swept away by the drama, adventure and heroism evoked in that famous score. Just recently, I've found out the fascinating details behind the collaboration between Richard Rodgers (one of the most famous composers in American musical theater) and Robert Russell Bennett (a composer, too, and one of the most famous and sought after arrangers and orchestrators of the 20th century); how Bennett took Rodgers' twelve themes and a total of seventeen pages of music, and arranged (transformed, really) them into over 11 hours of music". Watch part of the first episode of Victory at Sea . . . it's this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

And read more about the Richard Rodgers/Robert Russell Bennett collaboration . . . here at Pytheas.

In his fifty career, Brian Fennelly has contributed more than ninety works to the repertoire of twentieth-century music. He brought the discipline garnered by studies in mechanical engineering at Union College in Schenectady, New York to graduate studies in music at Yale University, from which he received Master of Music and Ph.D. degrees. His most significant teachers were Mel Powell, Donald Martino, Gunther Schuller, George Perle, and Allen Forte. From 1968 to 1997 he was Professor of Music in the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. In addition to a Guggenheim fellowship, his awards include three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two commissions from the Koussevitsky Foundation as well as commissions from the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and others. In 1997 he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Fennelly's music has been performed by orchestras including the Rochester Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, and The Louisville Orchestra, as well as by chamber ensembles such as the American and Empire Brass Quintets, and the Concord and Audubon String Quartets. In addition to composing and teaching, he has been active as a pianist, and co-directs the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, which he founded in 1976. Hear a performance of Brian Fennelly's Sukhi! (1999) for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (1999) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

According to American composer Gian Carlo Menotti, "One of the essential ingredients for music to sound 'modern'... is the constant and unrelieved use of dissonances. I don't know why dissonance per se should be more exciting or interesting than consonance ... There are people who consider it essential for contemporary music to be nervous and intense. Again, why should tension be more interesting than serenity? Artists struggling to be original seem to be unaware that there is only one way to be honestly and candidly oneself ... I am convinced that composition is more an act of discovery than of creation ... and only when I feel I have reached the inner chambers of my heart, I know that I have become an original composer." The human voice played a significant role in Menotti's work, and the bulk of his output consists of opera, musical theater, and choral music, for most of which he composed both music and text. He created the first opera for radio, The Old Maid and the Thief (1939), and for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), and wrote a number of ballets and works for children. Menotti received the Pulitzer Prize in music and Drama Critics' Circle Award for both The Consul (1949) and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954). In 1958 Menotti founded the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in Italy, devoted to cultural collaboration between Europe and America; in 1977 he founded Spoleto USA in Charleston, South Carolina. Menotti's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was commissioned in 1952 by Efrem Zimbalist, violinist and then director of the Curtis Institute of Music, of which Menotti was a former student. The work was premiered by Zimbalist and the Philadelphia Orchestra in December of that year. Divided into three movements, the concerto is a conventional showpiece for the virtuoso soloist, with a lyricism and tonality characteristic of much of Menotti's work. The final movement features a section for oboe, tambourine, and Indian drum reminiscent of the Middle Eastern influences found in Menotti's opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. Hear a performance of Menotti's Violin Concerto by violinist Ruggiero Ricci with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Keith Clark conducting . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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