Note: The information below is intended for two purposes: (1) to help potential performers or teachers decide whether a given piece will be useful before going to the trouble of aquiring the score and (2) to provide program notes for those performing my music! Help yourselves.
Circle's End for guitar and chamber orchestra was commissioned by the Guitar Society of Toronto and the C.B.C. with additional funds from the Ontario Arts Council for use as the final test piece in the 1986 Guitar Canada Competition. It was my intent to produce a piece that was technically and musically challenging for the guitarists, attractive for the listener but easy to put together with an orchestra; in fact, the orchestra had only 30' practice before rehearsing with each of the five finalists. It is a lush "impressionistic" piece, very triadic and very lyrical which could be performed by an advanced student -- a fourth-year performance major for example -- with good string and wind quintets. Circle's End was premiered by the five finalists on April 28, 1986. The performance by competition winner Richard Bradley was recorded and broadcast nationally on C.B.C.
Three Pieces for Guitar and Strings was commissioned by the Woodstock Strings -- Patrick Burroughs, cond. -- and Ray Sealey, with funds from the Ontario Arts Council. It is a conventional three-movement work (fast-slow-fast) written for a professional guitarist and a community orchestra. It is challenging but not unusually difficult. I was premiered March 7, 1982 at the Woodstock Secondary School Auditorium in Woodstock Ontario and received a warm response from a large mixed audience.
In the Spring of 1995, I was discussing with Ray Sealey the possibility of writing a song cycle for the trio Girigonza (of which he was a member) when he asked if I would be willing to write a short piece for the University of Ottawa Guitar Ensemble. As I had been interested in writing for guitar ensemble for a number of years, I agreed eagerly. I decided that the piece would be short, reasonably easy (at least the individual parts) and fun to play. The climax, which would occur almost at the end, would be the loudest, thickest sound that four guitars could produce and the rest of the piece would lead as clearly as possible to that point. I tried to make Fanfare a fast-moving, entertaining piece which would be fun to play and to hear. Judging from the audience response, I succeeded. Although basically in E major (sort of) and 4/4 throughout, there are rhythmic "anomalies" in the piece which make a conductor useful. By the date of the performance, however, the players (all university students) were able to play it without me! I think it will work best with just four players but I would like to hear it some time with more than one on a part. However it's done, it's a flashy, audience-pleaser and well worth the rehearsal time!I conducted the première on March 19, 1996, with guitarists Michael Hopkins, Jean LaFrenière, Gary Pereira and Luc Arsenault, in Freiman Hall at the University of Ottawa.
Improvisations and Interludes was inspired by an exhibition of Australian Aboriginal Art at the Seay Gallery, Harvard University in the Spring of 1990. In these pieces I have tried to capture the same expression of intensity with minimal tools. The music, like the art is highly recursive but no gesture is repeated exactly. I have also tried to avoid the "pleasant (one might say banal) diatonicism" characteristic of much minimal music; the language is highly chromatic and, at times, almost "Babbitt-like" in its precompositional complexity. The title is somewhat misleading. There is no real improvisation in this music but textures used are ones with which I have experimented while improvising. The interludes are miniatures which act both as transitions and reflections of the larger movements.This is a brutally difficult piece! I have been told that only clarinettists who have serious experience with 20th century music should attempt it. But it is strange and interesting and like nothing else you've ever heard. Notwithstanding the difficulty, it's one of my very favourite pieces. If you like new music that's tight but eclectic, you will like this piece. If you are an analyst, I challenge you to figure out how Improvisation 2 works!
Improvisations and Interludes was commissioned by Robert Riseling and Alan Torok and premiered Jan. 22, 1991, in the Recital Hall at the University of Western Ontario.
Vistas for flute and guitar was commissioned by Entr'acte with funds from the Ontario Arts Council. It is one of my most performed works. Premiered Nov. 24, 1983 at the Royal Conservatory Recital Hall in Toronto it was immediately taken on tour by Entr'acte under the auspices of Jeunesses Musicales du Canada. It has subsequently been played by a number of different performers in Canada and the United States. It is extremely accessible to all audiences and not terribly difficulty. It would be appropriate for advanced students of both flute and guitar.
Two Rags for Two Guitars is a set of Rags in the style of Scott Joplin. The impetus to write these arose from several sources: As as student of William Bolcom and William Albright at the University of Michigan, I was under the influence of two "serious" composers who composed and performed rags. Then in 1982, I did a short concert tour with William Beauvais, playing, among other music, two of his transcriptions of Joplin Rags. I felt the urge to try my hand at this compelling form and did so in the summer of 1983. These Rags have special significance in that they are my only complete pieces written with key signatures and in regular metres.Two Rags for Two Guitars was premiered by Duo Toccata (guitar and accordion, believe it or not) at Hart House in Toronto Jan. 25, 1984 and broadcast on C.B.C. Radio's Arts National May 25, 1984. They have since been performed by numerous guitar duos, both student and professional, throughout Canada.
Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects for Guitar '81 and premiered June, 1981 at the MacMillan Theatre, University of Toronto by Alan Torok and Douglas Perry. It is an attractive, accessible piece of varying difficulty showing the distinct influences of Olivier Messaien and George Crumb. It has been played a number of times by different performers including myself, William Beauvais Julian Knight and Rivka Golani. It requires the violist to be comfortable in the extreme high register at the end of the final movement.
Although I have written eight previous song cycles, each of those was a response, by me, to an essentially completed text. My task was to interpret and express, to the best of my abilities, the meaning of those texts. False Spring is my first collaboration with Ottawa poet Susan McMaster and our working premise was quite different. As a poet experienced with composition, improvisation and contemporary music, she was eager to play a more interactive role in the organization and construction of the piece. She encouraged my input, as she designed a set of texts specifically to suit my needs and the needs of the ensemble as I perceived them.The result is a set of seven songs, five long and two short, which are, in effect, a series of musical "snapshots," each with a seasonal association and each of which resonates with a sense of personal loss. The music is intended to reflect the poetry it expresses: simply and directly, with beauty and passion. False Spring was commissioned by Girigonza with the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council and given its première performance on March 26, 1996 at St. Luke's Anglican Church in Ottawa as part of the Open Score Series.
When Christopher Lewis was killed in an automobile accident in September, 1992, four of his closest friends -- myself, Gordon Sly and Janine Gaboury-Sly were living in the United States, close to each other but too far from Edmonton to attend Christopher's funeral. Instead, we got together in East Lansing for our own private memorial and Nightmusics was conceived -- a trio for tenor, horn and piano, to be composed by me and performed by Janine and her colleagues, tenor Keith Tonne and pianist Deborah Moriarty.In the words of Gordon Sly, "Christopher Lewis felt deep sympathy for the ideals and expression of Romantic and post-Romantic German art music, particularly as manifested in the music for voice: the Lieder tradition of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Strauss and early Schönberg; and the music-dramas of Wagner and great orchestral songs of Mahler and Richard Strauss. His passion above all was the musical world of Gustav Mahler . . ." I turned to my friend John Shreffler for the text and asked him to produce something that Mahler might have set. Using Rückert as a point of departure, Shreffler produced the poetry of Nightmusics evoking the sense of yearning and loss typical of the period using metaphors characteristically drawn from nature.
My setting follows the text closely and was written freely, without much precomposition. There are references to both Mahler (the opening horn flourish) and Wagner (the horn solo at the end) in the final movement.
Obviously this is a piece that carries a great deal of meaning for me. It's not easy, but it is powerful.
After the History was written for Dorothea Brinkmann, on texts by Chicago poet John Shreffler. The texts are a response to the events in Eastern Europe which culminated in the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reconciliation of East and West Germany. According to Shreffler:
Since Dorothea is a Berlinerin, I decided to write a set of texts meditating on the (then recent) events of 1989. The texts are a series of collages imbedded in a continuous discourse, not unlike the later works of Berndt Alois Zimmermann. The texts are impressionistic, drawn from a diverse array of sources, ranging from history to spy novels to the news. The third text proposes a dialog between images drawn from the recent history of the Germans vis a vis the Russians and images drawn from the history of the West since World War II. The fifth text is a set of geometric variations on the poem "Legende von Toten Soldaten" from Brecht's Hauspostille.The music, like the text, does not celebrate the historical events. Rather it reflects upon them using a variety of surface styles. The setting focuses on the first, third and fifth songs and treats the second and fourth as extended interludes. The conceit of the first song is that the voice enters when the music is essentially over and provides a commentary on what has already taken place. The third song, in the spirit of Shreffler's reference to Rilke, teeters on the edge of a syntax nostalgic for Mahler and Strauss. The final song is minimal in its repetitiveness, but harsh and stoic in its evocative intent.
After the History was premiered by Dorothea Brinkmann (contralto), William Malone (clarinet) and John MacDonald (piano) on Sept. 28, 1991 at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
This piece has only been performed by Dorothea Brinkmann, largely because it has such a low range (E-flat below middle C). Dorothea sang it beautifully but I have not found another contralto who thought she could do it the way it needs to be done. That's a shame because this is one of my favourite pieces; powerful, dense and evocative, terse without being dry, expressive without being banal. If you can sing that low E-flat or know someone who can, please let me know!
Night Songs: Three Songs for Children was commissioned by the Sherbourne McCurdy Foundation and Alberta Culture for the 1987 Alberta Music Festival syllabus. They asked me for one song for a boy soprano 10 or under. Since I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and it seemed like fun, I wrote three and let them choose their favourite. That turned out to be number 3: "Young Night Thought." Several years later, I was contacted by Roberta Stephen of Alberta Keys Music Publishing. She was taking over all of the Sherbourne McCurdy Commissions and wanted to know if I were interested in having these songs published. I said yes but that I would like to see the three songs together. Roberta's idea was that they could be used as solo pieces or by children's choirs. I think they would be very nice performed by an adult soprano as well. They are VERY accessible, lyrical and tonal. I have, in fact, never heard them, even though I know, lots of copies have been sold.For information contact: Alberta Keys Music Publishing co. ltd., 37 Hollyburn Rd., S.W., Calgary, Alberta T2V 3H2.
Wind ~ Earth ~ Sea for soprano, violin and harp was written for my friend Elizabeth Volpé, principal harp with the Vancouver Symphony. It was premiered on March 18, 1987: in the Recital Hall, University of British Columbia by Erica Northcott, soprano, Akira Nagai, violin, Elizabeth Volpé and on the same day in Boston at a chapter meeting of the College Music Society by Judith Kellock, soprano, Sharon Levanthal, violin (of Marimolin) and Judy Saiki, harp. This is one of the first pieces where I mixed long movements with epigrammatic interludes. It also mixes extremely lyrical movements with terse, atonal movements. I think it works well, though I was called a "touchy-feely" composer by a Harvard graduate student who heard it.
An die Musik II was written in 1985 for Eleanor Gang and Andrew MacDonald. Setting his own texts along with Shakespeare's "If music be the food of love . . . " from Twelfth Night, he deals with the problematic question: "What should serious music be like in 1985? Should it be profound and elusive or should it be accessible and entertaining?" The central song is a humourous lecture on the subject of the composer's relationship to both the entertainment world and to the great masters of the past, as exemplified by Mozart. Songs II and IV are straightforward settings which depict music, and composition, as entirely sensual, "non-intellectual" experiences. Song I is, in terms of pitch and phonetics, the retrograde of song V, which itself "inverts" the original meaning of the Shakespeare text by depicting love as a metaphor for music rather than music as a metaphor for love.Should serious music be profound or should it be entertaining? The answer is an unequivocal yes!
This piece gets played a lot! Most recently, I did it with Zacy Benner, a graduate student at the University of Ottawa. The audience reaction is always positive!
Songs for Lyra was commissioned by Lyra (Constance Newland, soprano, Fiona Wilkinson, flute, and Ray Sealey, guitar) with funds from the Ontario Arts Council. This is one of my most accessible pieces. I was obsessed with Mahler's Kindertotenlieder when I wrote it and even paraphrased the opening of Nun seh' Ich woll . . . in my third song. Needless to say, my cycle is much lighter than Mahler's! It has been performed many times by a number of different sopranos, including advanced students and the audience response has always been very positive.Songs for Lyra was premiered Dec. 2, 1984, in London, Ontario by Lyra.
In Three was written for Trio Fantasia (Sophie Rivard, Baroque Violin, Mary Cyr, Viola da Gamba and Sandra Mangsen, Harpsichord) in the Fall and Winter of 1991-92. It was the composer's second piece for Sandra Mangsen, the first being Crochets for solo harpsichord. In Three develops from a number of my continuing interests, the most striking being the combination of full-length movements with short interludes. "Prelude" is a slow, evocative movement which contrasts the long lines of the stringed instruments with the more characteristic nervous gestures of the harpsichord. "Diabolus in Musica" is a perverse dance which alternates 3/4 and 2/4 measures in an apparently unpredictable way. The final movement is a fugato, the composer's only allusion to the eighteenth century. The two interludes are for solo harpsichord and strings respectively. They are the most abstract and expressionistic parts of this score.In Three was premiered Feb. 17, 1995 at the MacDonald Art Gallery, Guelph University by Trio Fantasia.
Abstracts, written for, and dedicated to Robert Riseling, was given its premiere by the Wellington Trio in October of 1988. The original concept was to create a purely instrumental work which embodied the ideas first presented in my Wind ~ Earth ~ Sea for soprano, violin and harp; movements of several minutes duration would alternate with miniatures; all instrumental combinations within the ensemble would be used; the essential harmonic language would be grafted from one piece to the other. In the most general sense, these strictures were applied, but Abstracts developed into an ambitious work of 35' duration comprising ten full movements and one interlude. Each movement, in a different way, develops the central idea of the piece, a harmonic progression -- a microcosm of the piece's overall harmonic structure -- heard in it's simplest form at the end of the first movement. As Abstracts develops, its language and style changes; the brutal, astringency of the beginning gradually fades and is replaced by the more lyrical, romantic gestures of the final movement.Abstracts was premiered Oct. 28, 1988 in the Recital Hall at the University of Western Ontario by the Wellington Trio.
Night Scenes was commissioned by the Fisher-Oliphant Duo with funds from the Ontario Arts Council. Unfortunately, they split up before performing the piece and I had to wait 5 years for the premiere! Since that time, it has had numberous performances by professionals and students. Like other pieces written in the early 1980's, it is extremely accessible. The first two movements in particular are almost minimal -- very lyrical and very diatonic, while the last is more challenging, both technically and musically.Night Scenes was premiered Feb. 15, 1987 by Robert Riseling and Marion Miller-Wasse at the Recital Hall, Music Department, University of Western Ontario.
Prism is the only piece from my student days that I will still admit to! It was a prize winner in the 1980 Sir Ernest MacMillan Competition sponsored by C.A.P.A.C. (now SOCAN) and was subsequently read by the New Music Concerts Ensemble (Toronto) conducted by Robert Aitken in Oct. 1982. This is a classic graduate student piece: cut-out score, eclectic with quirky instrumentation and no compromises with respect to the performers or the audience! It has never been performed, but I keep hoping that someone pick it up, hence its inclusion here. I still think it's a very good piece, but my mother, if she ever gets a chance to hear it, definitely won't like it!
Three Scenes for Chorus was written in the summer of 1983, the same summer as Two Rags for Two Guitars and Vistas . It is a very lyrical, accessible cycle of songs whose texts and music evoke scenes in nature. They are also, unfortunately, much more difficult than I intended. Although they are "triadic," it is not easy for the singers to find their pitches! Even so, the first two songs were premiered with great success on April 13, 1986 by the University of Alberta Madrigal Singers -- Leonard Ratzlaff, dir. -- at All Saints Cathedral in Edmonton, Alberta. That performance was recorded and broadcast by the C.B.C.
Improvision was the name of a performance ensemble at the University of Michigan where I did my graduate studies in composition. That group, which gave me my first exposure to non-jazz improvisation disbanded soon after, but my interest in improvisation remained. ImproVisions is an open-ended set of pieces, each of which use improvisation in some way. Although the five current pieces are presented in a useful order, it is not my intent that they necessarily be performed as a suite. Any number of the pieces my be performed in any order. It is also my intent to continue adding to this collection. Like many historical composers, I find that writing solo music for my own intrument is the most direct and most satisfying creative act, my opportunity to have full control over the artisic expression. The solo guitar is the instrument that best allows me to discover new ideas, ideas which are often worked out fully through many subsequent pieces for other ensembles.Guitarists will not find these pieces very difficult technically. The challenge is, within the given parameters, to make musical choices that will express the vision of the composer and the performer.
ImproVisions was premiered on Sept. 30, 1995 by John Armstrong in Freiman Hall at the University of Ottawa.
. . . from Silence
(ImproVision #1)
dedicated to Christopher Lewis
". . . from silence" began with a practical purpose. I wanted to write a new piece which would be a good concert opener, reasonably easy to play and using techniques which would warm up the hands -- strumming, rasgueados, arpeggiated chords and lots of improvisation. Just at the time when I was finishing it, however, my friend, Christopher Lewis was killed in a tragic automobile accident. I could not think of a better tribute than to dedicate this piece to him, a piece with a haunting, poetic quality more suited to an elegy than to the technical exercise I had initially envisioned. Although Christopher would probably not have approved of the extensive use of improvisation, I imagine that he would have appreciated the rigour of the set relationships and the curious asymmetrical symmetry of the prime hexachord [012 569], which results from the piece's unusual scorditura; the A string is tuned to A-flat and the E string to E-flat. Moreover, as a musician and philosopher intensely drawn to nineteenth-century music and attitudes, he would, I hope, have welcomed the dedication of this piece to his memory by a composer and friend whose work and life he affected so deeply.
The Last Waltz in Boston was written for my friend, guitarist William Beauvais, with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. It is a free set of variations and "fantasies" on an original waltz in the style of Chopin. The waltz gradually emerges over the course of the piece but is never fully achieved. At the end of the piece, the waltz theme is shrouded by its own first variation. This is not necessarily a metaphor.This is my most extended single movement and, I think, a real compositional tour de force for guitar. I am the only guitarist who has ever played it, I think because the length and the unconventional form make it a real musical as well as technical challenge to learn. Audiences, on the other hand usually don't have any difficulty. It's an attractive, dramatic piece with a strong narrative thread. This piece will require commitment! Guitarists who want to test the waters with my music may be better to start with ImproVisions or Ghosts. On the other hand, if you want to show off, this is the piece for you!
Ghosts was commissioned by guitarist Norbert Kraft with the support of the Canada Council. It was designed to be used either as a set of individual studies (for intermediate to very advanced students) or as a virtuoso concert piece. Each study is dedicated to someone who has influenced my music in some way, as a teacher, a performer, a friend or, in one case, a former student. Each is prefaced with an epigraph in the form of a Haiku.These studies have been played a lot by a number of differents guitarists including me (of course), William Beauvais, Lynn Harting and Christopher Teves. They range in difficulty from easy (Reflections) to virtuoso (Ghost Dance and Desert Winds). They are eclectic in style and designed to be played singly or in any combination. They are designed, however, to be played in order as a unit. I have done them that way (it's tiring) or as two groups of five or in other combinations. They are versatile and good audience pleasers.
I premiered Ghosts on Nov. 13, 1988, in Paine Hall at Harvard University.
Jouissance! was written for Craig Sylvern and first performed Nov. 9, 1993 in Weigel Hall Auditorium at The Ohio State University. The formal structure Jouissance! is conventional ‹ three movements (fast-slow-fast) with some allusions to sonata principles. Each movement is, however, informed, in some way, by the idea of improvisation. The first movement, although traditionally notated, has a quick-moving principal idea (expressed in constantly changing metres) that is intended to "sound" free and improvised even though it is not. The second and third movements incorporate actual improvisation into the score; pitches are given with suggestions as to the style of performance, but the precise placement of those pitches is left to the performer.
Child's Play was written in Boston for Jill Dreeben, who was expecting her first child Simon at the time. It attempts, in five contrasting movements to explore the various shades of innocence evoked by children and, at the same time explore the capabilities of the solo flute. The contrasts, like a child's attentions, are deliberately capricious but intensly focussed. The piece uses all of the staples of the contemporary flute, multiphonics, alternate fingerings, pitch bends, whistle tones and fluttertongues but still manages to be attractive and accessible to a general audience. Child's Play was premiered in Boston in the Fall of 1991.
Crochets continues the composer's exploration -- begun in 1985 with Wind ~ Earth ~ Sea for soprano, violin and harp, and continued in 1988 with Abstracts for clarinet, violin and piano -- into the combination of movements of varying lengths. The work is framed by longer movements -- Anfang, An Fang and Enfin -- interrupted by shorter ones -- the interludes. The pitch material is derived from the name of the performer to whom the music is dedicated, Sandra Mangsen. The precise method of derivation as well as the mutiple meanings of the piece's mutliple titles, are left as puzzles for those musicians who are inclined to investigate.Crochets was premiered Jan. 19, 1990 in Pollack Hall, McGill University on McGill Alumni Series concert.