According to composer Jesse Ayers, his piece Jericho (2005) is "a surround-sound piece employing expanded instrumentation, multiple antiphonal effects, narration, and extensive and unorthodox audience participation. It is based on the Biblical account of the Battle of Jericho (Joshua 6), in which the famed walls of Jericho fell down flat. The work was composed over a 17-month period from Oct 2003 - Feb 2005, and was premiered April 22, 2005, by the Valparaiso University Chamber Concert Band under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Scott Doebler. The score carries the dedication 'to Ted, from whom I learned about risk taking and breakthrough.' Compositionally, Jericho makes extensive use of the 15th-century melody Veni Emmanuel (O come, O come, Emmanuel). It is used to generate motivic ideas; it appears as a cantus firmus in the bass in the long pedal tones; a three-voice, fifth species harmonization of Veni is used to generate harmonic cycles; and finally it is quoted directly in the last section of the piece as the audience sings the phrase O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Watch a performance of Jesse Ayers' Jericho by narrator Kenneth Cox with the Lamont Symphony Orchestra and Chorale, conducted by Lawrence Golan. . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Composer Richard Maxfield is one of the little-sung names in American avant-garde music. "For someone nearly forgotten today, Maxfield had a tremendous impact—largely through his classes at The New School in New York, which attracted radically avant-garde musicians such as Joseph Byrd, Dick Higgins, and even John Cage himself. Born in Seattle in 1927, Maxfield had studied with Krenek, Babbitt, Sessions, and Dallapiccola, but left this Eurocentric background behind to move toward a Cagean experimentalism." Eventually he made contributions to the so-called "minimalism" movement, while forecasting a wide range of developments in the future of electronic music. His Amazing Grace (1960) mixes tape loops from two sources: a speech by revivalist James G. Brodie and electronic fragments from Maxfield's 1958 opera Stacked Deck. The loops play back at various speeds, causing the fragments to overlap in complex ways. This method would later be explored further by Terry Riley, Steve Reich and others. "It is astonishing how many threads of 1960s music seem to begin with the ideas Maxfield explores, and it is a tragedy that his early death, from leaping out a window at age 42, kept him from participating in the more rewarding scene that would later appear" (our thanks to New World Records' liner notes). Listen to Maxfield's Amazing Grace . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Louise Talma was born in Arcachon, France to American parents. Her pianist father died during her infancy, and her mother, an opera singer, moved the family to New York City in 1914. She studied at the Institute of Musical Arts (later the Juilliard School), New York University and Columbia University, where she received her Master’s of Arts in 1933; she also spent sixteen summers in Fontainebleau, France studying piano with Isidor Philipp and composition with Nadia Boulanger, who was the first to suggest that she compose. Talma's many awards include two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Grant to compose the opera The Alcestiad (1958) (featuring a libretto by Thornton Wilder), the Sibelius Medal for Composition, the Bearns Prize for Composition, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities. And in 1974, she became the first woman composer to be elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In addition, she served on the music faculty of Hunter College in New York for over fifty years. Her best-known choral work is the charming three movement cycle Let's Touch the Sky (1952) for chorus, flute, oboe and bassoon to words by e.e. cummings. Listen to the Jane Hardester Singers performing "If ups the word...", the third movement of Louise Talma's Let's Touch the Sky . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFUL for the week.

In October 1918, Charles Ives suffered a heart attack brought on by exhaustion and undiagnosed diabetes. This marked a turning point in his career. As Ives' biographer Jan Swafford points out, for the remainder of his life the primary focus of Ives' musical efforts would be promoting his works, rather than composing. The very first work that he chose to show to the world - after fifteen years of nearly absolute artistic isolation - was his Second Piano Sonata, subtitled "Concord, Mass., (1840-1860). Ives had a special regard for the work. He took great pains to explain his aims in his Essays Before a Sonata, a programmatic overview of the sonata that Ives included when he published the work (at his own considerable expense) in 1921. In short, the sonata is a series of meditations on four great Transcendentalist writers: Emerson, Hawthorne, "The Alcotts," and Thoreau. The fourth movement is dedicated to Thoreau, who Ives describes as "a great musician, not because he played the flute, but because he did not have to go to Boston to hear 'the Symphony'". (note by Scott Mortensen/MusicWeb International) Listen to a performance of the Thoreau movement of Ives' Piano Sonata No. 2 . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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