Composer Osvaldo Golijov writes, "I wrote Tenebrae (2002) as a consequence of witnessing two contrasting realities in a short period of time in September 2000. I was in Israel at the start of the new wave of violence that is still continuing today, and a week later I took my son to the new planetarium in New York, where we could see the Earth as a beautiful blue dot in space. I wanted to write a piece that could be listened to from different perspectives. That is, if one chooses to listen to it 'from afar', the music would probably offer a 'beautiful' surface but, from a metaphorically closer distance, one could hear that, beneath that surface, the music is full of pain. I lifted some of the haunting melismas from Couperin's Troisieme Leçon de Tenebrae, using them as sources for loops, and wrote new interludes between them, always within a pulsating, vibrating, aerial texture. The compositional challenge was to write music that would sound as an orbiting spaceship that never touches ground. After finishing the composition, I realized that Tenebrae could be heard as the slow, quiet reading of an illuminated medieval manuscript in which the appearances of the voice singing the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet (from Yod to Nun, as in Couperin) signal the beginning of new chapters, leading to the ending section, built around a single, repeated word: Jerusalem." Watch a performance of Osvaldo Golijov's Tenebrae by the Odeon Quartet . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

In writing about his dance film Blue Yellow (1995), director Adam Roberts writes, "Sylvie Guillem, the celebrated ballerina, asked Jonathan Burrows and I to make a dance film. The film would be included in a prime time experiment to be called Evidentia, funded by BBC 2 and France 2. The film is called blue yellow after the Mattisse’s painting Intérieur jaune et bleu, 1946. This colour scheme inspired my design and much of the pictorial composition. Inevitably, being neither a dancer nor a choreographer, I felt rather removed from the choreographic process, and so decided that I should reflect this is the form of the film. I also wanted to consolidate ideas I had first tried out on a film called Very, where I had explored and made overt the very fragmentary nature of my untutored, subjective experience of dance. The aim would be to make it a task for a viewer of the film to imagine the space and the continuity of movement – so that the dance, if it exists at all, exists and is held in the mind of the viewer. The filming took two days, and the editing about a week. Kevin Volans suggested using a section of one of his string quartets which we cut up an interspersed through the film. At first we laid out the sections at regular intervals, but, as with all editing, human judgment finds some coincidences more pleasing than others. Hugh Strain at De Lane Lea sound studios achieved a perfect sound mix, foregrounding the music, as if it were, “this side” of the door. In broad terms, the film tries, by means of patterning and rhythm, to maintain interest in what is glimpsed through a door, and sometimes allows a pause long enough but unobtrusive enough to satisfy a kind of longing, even if such stolen moments must only ever be brief. Watch Blue Yellow with dancer Sylvie Guillem and music by Kevin Volans . . . it's this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

"Elliott Schwartz's music combines so many disparate elements that it moves beyond eclecticism into its own genre - multifaceted yet self-contained. Schwartz's music is virtuosic for the performer, challenging to the listener, yet, for the most part, he eschews the spiky Modernist shield that less secure composers use to dissuade all comers. His work combines tonal and nontonal elements, improvised and fully notated passages and unusual instrumental effects (plucking the inside of a piano, stratospheric squeals for the woodwinds, and so on) in an idiosyncratic manner that is Mr. Schwartz's own." (Tim Page/The New York Times) Hear a performance of Elliott Schwartz's Souvenir (1978) for clarinet and piano, featuring clarinetist Jerome Bunke and the composer as pianist . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

"Manuel de Falla wrote his Harpsichord Concerto (1926) for Wanda Landowska, the pioneering Polish-French harpsichordist who had been urging her contemporaries to write new music for her chosen instrument. In this Concerto for six solo instruments, 'the composer felt no constraint to conform to the classic form of the concerto for a single instrument with the accompaniment of the orchestra,' Falla wrote in a note for the premiere. This austere, stripped down style – of 'the esthetic which is ascetic,' in Alexis Roland-Manuel’s words – is similar to that of contemporary works such as Stravinsky’s L'histoire du soldat, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, or the chamber symphonies of Schoenberg." (John Henken/Los Angeles Philharmonic). Hear a performance of Falla's brilliant Harpsichord Concerto . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Osvaldo Golijov is known for his musical hybridity in combining the traditions of classical chamber, Jewish liturgical, and klezmer music with hints of the tango of Astor Piazzolla in his compositions. He is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, the Vilcek Prize, and the recording of his opera "Ainadamar" was awarded two Grammy Awards in 2006: Best Opera Recording, and Best Contemporary Composition. His piece for solo cello Omaramoor (1991) is described by Richard Buell (The Boston Globe) as "a kind of quest piece - the solo cello wanders toward some tantalizingly withheld realization - the near-statement, the composer tells us, of a song made famous by the Argentine tango specialist Carlos Gandel". Watch a performance of Omaramoor by cellist Amy Sue Barston . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Richard Addinsell was a British composer most famous for his composition "Warsaw Concerto", which was written originally for the little-seen 1941 film "Dangerous Moonlight". Over the course of his career he composed scores for over 40 films, including "Blithe Spirit" (1945), "Under Capricorn" (1949) [with director Alfred Hitchcock], and "Scrooge" (A Christmas Carol) (1951), as well as music for Broadway musical plays and revues, orchestra and popular songs, especially in collaboration with Joyce Grenfell. Hear his moody and brooding score for director George Cukor's Gaslight (1944) . . . it's our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Richard Maxfield was a composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and electronic music. Born in Seattle, he most likely taught the first University-level course in electronic music in America at the New School for Social Research. His electronic piece Amazing Grace (1960) mixes tape loops from two sources which are played back at various speeds, causing the fragments to overlap in complex ways, predating both Terry Riley’s and Steve Reich’s tape-loop pieces. "Amazing Grace" even uses a tape of a preacher, as Steve Reich's did in his famous "It's Gonna Rain" (1965); the results are at least equal to Reich's! Maxfield's pieces represent the state of new music just before minimalism was born. Sit back and listen to Richard Maxfield's Amazing Grace . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Edgard Varese's Ionisation (1931) is credited with being the first Western work written for percussion alone, having no basis in traditional concepts of melody and harmony. As such, the implications of the work (from the standpoint of when the piece was written) questioned the meaning of the word music, as it was understood in the Western world. Viewed historically, it is actually a return to a very ancient Eastern tradition of percussion music, particularly in the aspect of timbre. Eastern concepts of sound and Western formal concepts of structure and logic merge, resulting in a musical entity which is universal (from "Tater Z the Anti-G and DJ Hunsmire's Musical Studies Index"). Watch a classic performance of Varèse's Ionisation by the Ensemble InterContemporain with Pierre Boulez conducting . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

John Rutter is one of England's best-known composers of the late twentieth century, as well as a widely respected choral conductor and music scholar and editor. While his choral works (including the Te Deum, Magnificat, and Requiem) are the most familiar, he has also written instrumental works and two children's operas. He has a strong sense of the English musical traditions, and some of the more significant English musical influences on his work include Vaughn Williams, Walton and Britten. Listen to his beautiful setting of the 23rd Psalm, The Lord is My Shepherd (1978) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Born in La Plata, Argentina to Romanian-Jewish immigrants nearly 50 years ago, composer Osvaldo Golijov now lives just outside Boston, as one of the world's most admired composers. The reason why his music connects so magnetically with performers and audiences alike is its clear appeal to the senses. "I want my music to be intuitive," the composer explains. Each of Golijov's compositions is different. The influences include South America, the synagogue and the shtetl, wrapped in a life-filled tonal shimmer. It wasn't always easy for Golijov to express himself this way in university – he completed his graduate studies in Israel and the U.S. "I was feeling alienated from that aesthetic," Golijov says of the tyranny of serialism and other atonal experiments in the 1980s. "Then, in one week, my first daughter was born and my mother, who taught me how to play piano, died. It was that whole cycle of new life and death. It opened my eyes, and I realized I don't have to please academic orthodoxy. "You don't become a musician to get rich," he adds, laughing. "So I decided I should do what makes me happy." Golijov describes his method of writing as a combination of "intuitive impulses." "It's like Michelangelo, who said that the shape is inside the piece of marble. All you need are the right tools to find it". Listen to Osvaldo Golijov speak about his life and music . . . he's our current FEATURED COMPOSER.

Here's what Jacob Swanson of the Erie Saxophone Quartet has written about Sarah Horick's Deleted Scenes (2008), "Recently our quartet was SO FORTUNATE to have the opportunity to work with Sarah Horick, a composer currently working in Florida. She wrote a lovely piece for our ensemble, "Deleted Scenes," which consists of seven short movements - each portraying a different character. Our ensemble is looking forward to growing with this work and performing it for a long time to come. I'd love to hear what you think of the piece!" Have a listen for yourself to Deleted Scenes (2008) and let US know what you think . . . the work is one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

In 1920 Maurice Ravel was asked to contribute to a special commemorative supplement of La Revue musicale dedicated to Claude Debussy. Appearing in December 1920, the supplement included what would become the first movement of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-22). Ravel had begun this movement in April 1920, and would need almost two years to complete the four movements of the Sonata. Of the Sonata Ravel wrote, "In my own work of composition I find a long period of conscious gestation, in general, necessary. During this interval I come gradually to see, and with growing precision, the form and evolution which the subsequent work should have as a whole." "The music is stripped to the bone," Ravel wrote. "Harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody." This lean, ruthlessly linear Sonata is dedicated to the memory of Debussy. Watch a performance of the second movement of Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello performed by Paul and Yan-Pascal Tortelier . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Greg Sandow writes, "Measured by index space in Paul Griffiths’s Modern Music, Milton Babbitt is the most important living American nonexperimental composer, and apart from John Cage, the most notable American composer of any kind. But Griffiths can't show nonspecialists why they should care. Babbitt's Second String Quartet, he says, "is based on an all-interval series which is introduced interval by interval, as it were, with each new arrival initiating a development of the interval repertory acquired thus far, each development being argued in terms of derived sets." This comes close to what George Bernard Shaw dismissed as "parsing", and which parodied with an "analysis" of "To be or not to be." Shakespeare, Shaw wrote, "announces his subject at once in the infinitive, in which mood it is presently repeated after a short connecting passage in which, brief as it is, we recognize the alternative and negative forms on which so much of the significance of repetition depends." Musical parsing is far more defensible now than it was in Shaw's time -- styles vary so much that musical grammar can't be taken for granted – but Griffiths does too much of it. He doesn't say how the structures he talks about really work, how Babbitt's derived sets "argue" (whatever that means) each new "development"(oh, really?); and Griffith has only passing remarks about the music's "wit", "surface rhythmic appeal", and the work's "sure musical continuity" - nothing about how Babbitt's music sounds or how it might make a listener feel. This isn't entirely his fault, though, because composer Milton Babbitt talks about music the same way." With all that in mine, let's just sit back and LISTEN to Babbitt's music - in this case his String Quartet No. 4 (1970) - and enjoy the sound world of one of the great composers of our time . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

"Take an Argentine composer of Jewish extraction, mix in the dance rhythms of Africa – by way of Brazil and Cuba – and you might just get a flavor of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) - a work which has been rapturously received by audiences everywhere. So, without hearing a note of La Pasión según San Marcos it’s clearly as far from Johann Sebastian Bach’s own Passions and Lutheran sensibilities as it’s possible to get. Golijov was able to start from a clean slate as it were, since the score of Bach’s St. Mark Passion, premiered in Leipzig in 1731, is lost. One can only wonder what the venerable old organist would have made of the forces assembled by Golijov – choir, all-important percussionists, trumpets, trombones, guitars (including bass), piano, strings, Berimbau (a Brazilian instrument of African origin), vocalists and dancers. Indeed, only the stoniest of hearts could fail to be moved – and moved mightily – by this searing work." [Dan Morgan, MusicWeb International] . . . read more about the latest recording of this groundbreaking work and hear, and watch, excerpts from Golijov's St. Mark Passion . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.

"The Seven Deadly Sins marks the end of Kurt Weill’s European career and the beginning of a nearly two-decade hiatus in Bertold Brecht’s. It was Weill’s last collaboration with Brecht and the last enduring work that he composed in his European theater style. This style is characterized by its directness, which is a product of Weill’s use of elements from popular music – in the case of this work, dance music and the barbershop quartet – as well as his use of established musical forms, like the church chorale. Weill would adapt his style to Broadway when he came to the United States in 1935, and he really never composed anything quite like The Seven Deadly Sins again." [John Mangum/The LA Philharmonic] Hear a performance of "Anger" from Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins (1933) by Measha Brueggergosman, Peter John Buchan, Scott Reimer, Kris Kornelsen, Derek Morphy and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra with Ann Manson conducting . . . our current PYTHEAS EARFUL.

Born in 1876 in Cadiz, Spain, the historical seaport town at the southern-most tip of Andalucia, Manuel de Falla was the greatest Spanish composer of the 20th century. After the death of Claude Debussy in 1918, Falla was asked to contribute to a planned memorial issue of La revue Musicale, one of the most famous musical publications of the time. Though the request was for an article, Falla preferred to respond with a piece of music. The result was his Homenaje (Homage) - The tomb of Debussy (1920). Watch a performance by the great Julian Bream . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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