Composer Robert McCauley talks about his Kamrick Variations (2010): "Oboist Janet Rarick and bassoonist Benjamin Kamins are legends in the Houston orchestra arena; both teach at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, and they happen to be married. It is in Janet's capacity as artist, teacher and chamber music coach that I got to know her, as I tried to get some of my wind pieces programmed in the school's wind chamber music program. What impressed me even in my dealings with her more than her musicality and professionalism was her warmth and caring. After a number of years, I thought that I'd like to write a piece for her, and of course I thought, 'I've got to include her husband Ben, too.' They both said they would be delighted to look over the piece once I finished it. It took six weeks in the spring of 2010 to write a theme and 10 variations for oboe, bassoon and piano - the most famous 20th century piece for that combination being the Trio by Francis Poulenc. After reading through the piece, they accepted the work as their own. I wanted to call the piece "Rarick Variations", but in a gesture of modesty Janet demurred, so I combined Rarick and Kamins to form Kamrick, and thus Kamrick Variations. Watch a performance of Robert McCauley's Kamrick Variations played by oboist Scott Bell, bassoonist Jim Rodgers, and pianist Alaine Fink . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

According to composer Barry Truax, his work Riverrun (1986) . . . "creates a sound environment in which stasis and flux, solidity and movement co-exist in a dynamic balance. The corresponding metaphor is that of a river, always moving yet seemingly permanent. From the smallest rivulet to the fullest force of its mass, a river is formed from a collection of countless droplets and sources. So too with the sound in this composition which bases itself on the smallest possible 'unit' of sound in order to create larger textures and masses. The title is the first word in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Riverrun is entirely realized with the method of sound production known as granular synthesis. With this method small units or 'grains' of sound are produced, usually with very high densities (100-2000 grains/sec), with each grain having a separately defined frequency and duration. When the grains all have similar parameters, the result is a pitched and amplitude modulated sound, but when random variation is allowed in a parameter, a broad-band noise component is introduced." Hear a performance of Barry Truax's Riverrun . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Miriam Gideon’s Of Shadows Numberless (1966) takes its title from a phrase in John Keats’ poem, Ode to a Nightingale, and each of its six movements, likewise, draws inspiration from a phrase in Keats’ work. Ode to a Nightingale addresses the popular Romantic trope of a bird as an idealized version of a poet, a version who – according to Shelley’s analogous work, To a Skylark – "pourest [his] full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art," or according to Wordsworth’s To a Cuckoo, is "an invisible thing / a voice, a mystery." Keats’ poem focuses on the bird-poet dichotomy by following the fanciful journey of a depressed subject who is thrown into further despair when confronted with the unreachable beauty of the nightingale’s "plaintive anthem." The piece, like the poem, is full of shadows and mazes. Whereas Keats writes of "verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways," and "fad[ing] away into the forest dim," Gideon writes dense, dark music filled with half-step, major seventh, and minor ninth relationships, crowded clusters, and incessantly mumbling inner voices. Although the melodies are tuneful and usually simple, Gideon often includes some oddity in the phrasing or intervallic structure that makes the tune feel just out of reach, transported a step beyond the realm of ordinary music (thanks to Jeremy Siskind for these notes!). Listen to a performance of Miriam Gideon's Of Shadows Numberless by pianist Paula Ennis Dwyer . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

John Tavener's choral work Song for Athene (1993) is an elegiac tribute, not, as one might suppose, to the mythological goddess Athene, but to a young family friend, Athene Hariades, half Greek, a talented actress who was tragically killed in a cycling accident. "Her beauty," writes Tavener, "both outward and inner, was reflected in her love of acting, poetry, music and of the Orthodox Church." Tavener had heard Athene reading Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey and, rather as in the case of his Little Requiem For Father Malachy Lynch, conceived the piece after her funeral, lighting on the effective ideas, so touchingly realized, of combining words from the Orthodox liturgy with lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Between each line is a monodic "Alleluia", and, following the example of traditional Byzantine music, the whole piece unfolds over a continuous "ison" or drone. The music also received its most famous performance at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Hear a performance of John Tavener's Song for Athene sung by the Westminster Abbey Choir . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.