Catalogue of Works
John Carbon’s music is published primarily by JCcollections and Wehr’s Music House and Alea Publishing. Some works can be obtained directly by contacting the composer. All works are registered with BMI unless otherwise noted. His music is also available from Sheetmusicplus, J. W. Pepper and Lulu.
(All works published by JCcollections and registered with BMI unless otherwise stated)
Disappearing Act (2008; 180 minutes)
Full-length opera with libretto by Dorothy Louise about the Conan Doyle-Houdini spiritualist connection.
Soprano; 2 Mezzo-Sopranos; Contralto; 3 Tenors; 3 Baritones; SATB Chorus; Dancers.
Piano-vocal version only
Composed in 2008, Disappearing Act is a full-length opera based on the Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle spiritualist connection. Dorothy Louise's imaginative libretto reveals the transitory nature of human existence.
Presently the score exists in piano-vocal form only.
CHARACTERS
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, 63, lyric baritone
JEAN, his wife, 50, dramatic mezzo soprano
HARRY HOUDINI, 48, bass baritone (or lyric bass)
BESS, his wife, 45, lyric mezzo soprano
QUEEN VICTORIA, about 80, but often younger, dramatic soprano
DR. WATSON, 55, lyric tenor
SHERLOCK HOLMES, 50, bass baritone
WINIFRED, a New Woman, mid-20’s, soubrette soprano
PRESTON, mid-20’s, tutor to the Conan Doyle children, lyric tenor
KENNETH, Winifred’s brother, MIA, the Great War, late 20’s, lyric tenor
Extras: Chorus SATB (at least 12 singers); Mrs. Hudson, 60’s, contralto; the Conan Doyle children: Denis, 13 (boy soprano); Adrian, 12 (boy soprano); and Jean, 10 (immature soprano); Mamma, Houdini’s mother, 60’s, contralto (doubles with Mrs. Hudson)
SYNOPSIS
SCENE: Atlantic City, London, June 1922, earlier, and later – both time and place are fluid
Act I
Prolog on the Boardwalk: Stagehands visibly bring in the scenic elements – projections, turntable, cyclorama — as the Chorus sets the scene – “We are here for our health and to make money” — Harry Houdini and his wife, Bess, are welcomed by their hosts, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife, Jean. They agree not to argue about spiritualism, Sir Arthur’s passion and the subject of his current lecture tour, but to devote themselves to leisure.
Scene 1 – Houdini and Bess’s hotel suite: Harry awakens from a dream of his mother wearing the dress he bought for her made for Queen Victoria. He longs to contact her. Bess suggests that he enlist the Conan Doyles, but Harry refuses. Bess then begs Harry to drop his quest.
Scene 2 – Osborne House on the Isle of Wight: Queen Victoria in her pony cart looks out to sea, still mourning her dear Prince Albert, aware that she has neglected her responsibilities “from the collieries of Wales to the cloud-capped peaks of Africa.” She will tuck a message into a bottle – tomorrow.
Scene 3 – Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle’s hotel suite: At Houdini’s request, Arthur outlines his journey to spiritualism through a litany of brothers, sons, uncles, nephews dead in the Great War. Jean’s brother, Malcolm, appeared to Arthur, and Arthur believed. Preston, tutor to the Doyle children, interrupts: the children await their “underwater instruction” with Mr. Houdini, and the three men leave. Jean notices that Bess is preoccupied, and wonders if their spiritualist beliefs offend her. Bess says she just admires Jean’s role in her husband’s work. “I once shared Harry’s work, but vaudeville’s gone.” Not here, says Jean. “An absolutely smashing woman is getting up a benefit for that moldy old theater near the pier…Arthur’s appearing.… Why not Harry? And you, onstage?” Jean turns to her children’s antics, Bess recalls life onstage with Harry: “In the old days, it took two to play,” but eventually Harry abandoned vaudeville for daredevil feats. As Bess emerges from her reverie, Arthur returns to announce that Harry has asked for a séance to try to contact his mother.
Scene 4 – 221 Baker Street: Holmes is restless, bored, hoping for “an elusive trace of something behind the data of the commonplace.” Watson and he will shake the limits of Doyle’s characterization.
Scene 5 – Garden Pier Theater stage: Winifred, the “absolutely smashing woman,” leafs through actors’ resumes as Preston enters to offer technical services. He is immediately smitten, although she is all business: they must find a Holmes and a Watson for the benefit. Bess appears, costumed as a Baker Street Irregular, charming Winifred. Preston then ushers in two actors “in full rig,” and Holmes and Watson audition with Bess. Winifred is ecstatic: these actors seem born to the roles – maybe the theater can be saved. “The game,” says Watson, “is afoot.”
Act II
Prolog on the Beach: A shawl-wrapped invalid, binoculars focused, enters in a rolling chair pushed by his faithful valet (aka Holmes and Watson), and they take in the panorama of scenes from an unobtrusive vantage point. As Queen Victoria swims in her bathing machine, Winifred and Preston towel off, while the Doyle children “bury” Houdini in the sand. Tourists watch this display of prodigious lung power. Meanwhile, Winifred confides in Preston the secret of her commitment to restoring the theater, the legacy of her adored brother, Kenneth, a shellshocked soldier who has disappeared. Kenneth, on his lifeguard’s perch, and heard only by Holmes and Watson, emerges to consider the monster of his war experiences packed in his head. Encouraged by Winifred’s confiding in him, Preston lets her know that he is fond of her, but she brushes this off, and dashes to rehearsal. Houdini remains submerged in sand, finally sitting up, in complete command. Holmes and Watson swivel to comment on mortality and exercise.
Scene 1 – Garden Pier Theater stage: Kenneth appears in the ghost light, wracked with memories of war. As Holmes and Watson emerge arguing over changes in the script, Kenneth takes cover. Starting out, Holmes and Watson linger as Preston backs in testing the effects of his fog machine. Kenneth thinks he sees gas – “we’ve got no masks!” — and attacks Preston, who protests that he is only setting the London scene. “It’s not real – and we were on the same side! The war is over!” With Holmes and Watson still observing unobserved, Kenneth again withdraws as Winifred enters to announce the coup of having secured Houdini and his wife to perform, then dashes off to place a new advertisement to that effect. Needing now to replace Bess, Holmes and Watson invite Kenneth to join their ensemble in a new scene set in Atlantic City. Kenneth is interested, but, having decided to trust Preston, first must help with the fog.
Scene 2 – Osborne House on the Isle of Wight: Queen Victoria in her bedroom recalls spring’s awakening, and contrasts it to the winter in her heart. She wonders if Albert is listening, and asks him if she should “relinquish myself” to royal responsibilities. When her lady-in-waiting arrives to assist her in donning a formal costume, the Queen allows herself to be clothed for duty.
Scene 3 – Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle’s hotel suite: Before beginning the séance to contact Harry’s mother, Sir Arthur and Jean note the importance of converting the skeptic. Lights pick up the Queen’s dress, while Bess attends as Houdini imagines his mother as he saw her in his dream, and feels touched somehow – it is difficult to say exactly what has transpired, except that Houdini feels chastened and enlightened. The experience frees him of his obsession. Arthur thinks Houdini has been converted, ignoring Houdini’s ambivalence.
Scene 4 – Garden Pier Theater in the wings and onstage: As the audience gathers, Winifred gets ready to go on in a last-minute change for the Baker Street scene. After a dazzling opening from the local talent, Bess struts upon the stage, and Houdini conjures Homes and Watson, who stage the reuniting of Winifred and Kenneth. Houdini and Arthur agree to disagree re communication from beyond the grave. Preston and Winifred declare their love for one another.
Epilog: a series of telescoped scenes as Houdini and Arthur sing final farewells. The Chorus leave severally, thinning to absence and silence. The crew strikes whatever is left as Kenneth sets the ghost light. Ghostly images of the major characters flicker. Gulls, wind, horizon and the ghost light fade slowly. And the music ends.
Benjamin (1987; 150 minutes)
Operatic portrait of Benjamin Franklin, libretto by Sarah White.
Soprano; 2 Mezzo-sopranos; Baritone; Boy Soprano; SATB Chorus; Dancers.
Woodwind quintet; harp; harpsichord; piano; 1 percussionist; string quartet, bass.
Music by John Carbon; Libretto by Sarah White
The opera explores facets of the legend called Benjamin Franklin. A printer-publisher by trade, Franklin respected the written word, used it to achieve his goals, and worked industriously toward the creation of his own persona, keeping copious notes, writing thousands of letters, and composing an Autobiography.
Three of our five scenes emphasize verbal signs, and show them combining, like the composer’s musical phrases, to invent a character we name “Benjamin”. In two other sequences, the Prologue and the Paris scene, we highlight a different type of Franklin invention, the Glass Harmonica, to suggest those playful, non-verbal, less purely rational traits that he had in abundance but did not always sufficiently cherish. A pervasive theme, involving orchestra, principals, chorus and dancers, arias and ensembles, is that of the Gulf Stream. For us, its color, warmth and speed embody the best intellectual, aesthetic, political and personal currents of Benjamin’s life, and perhaps of our own lives as well.
The Franklin texts that most influenced libretto and score were: The Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanac, letters of Benjamin and Deborah Franklin, and the Bagatelles.
Synopsis
Prologue:
About 1715. A playful Child solves a problem and becomes Benjamin, while the Chorus explains his game and warms up for the opera. Grown-up Benjamin Baritone, impatient to proceed, puts a stop to the Child’s playfulness.
Act I, sc. 1:
Benjamin Baritone, in about 1730, begins his notebook. He tells what a serious young man he is, and reveals his plans to become a person of Prosperity and Civic Importance. With the help of his artisans, he founds the Pennsylvania Gazette. He meets a serious helpmate, Deborah, and meets Benjamin Younger, whose plans have more to do with pleasure than with Civic Importance. B. Baritone is as severe with him as he was the Child. He meets the Virtues and learns how difficult it is to attain Moral Perfection. We hear an evening prayer.
Act I, sc.2:
A decade or so later, having attained Prosperity and Civic Importance, if not Moral Perfection, B. Baritone reacquaints himself with B. Younger, and declares that together they will undertake a life of Philosophical Amusements, a change that Deborah fails to understand. During a storm, he discovers a novel purpose for lightning, and receives two invitations to London, which he accepts, to the joy of B. Younger, and the sorrow of Deborah. Philadelphia bids farewell to Dr. Franklin.
Intermission:
The Harpsichord plays Hide and Seek.
Act II, Introduction:
1757. The Atlantic voyage provides Benjamin with a new Philosophical Amusement, but sailing is not everyone’s Cup of Tea.
Act II, sc.1:
In London and Philadelphia, for nearly 15 years, B. Baritone and Deborah write each other faithfully. His life, though, is full of movement, while hers is “sort of hollow”. Seasons pass for them both, but not at the same speed. In 1774, Politics force B. to leave London; only it is too late to rejoin Deborah. B. Baritone, in a moment of despair, seeks to blame her death on somebody, and puts the lid on B. Younger, again.
Interlude:
1776. It seems the lid was not locked. B. Younger emerges, and finds he is on his way to Paris!
Act II, sc. 2:
In the salon of beautiful Madame Brillon, we meet the Mâitre de Musique; B. Younger enjoys translating, conducting and hypnotizing, while B. Baritone practices his French, expresses his love, hears a song of praise and a song of rebuff, which sends the Benjamins back to Philadelphia with sad resignation.
Interlude:
1785. The last Atlantic crossing.
Act II, sc. 3:
1790. Dying B. Baritone expresses his regrets and loneliness. He finds one of his letters to Deborah and regrets not having returned while she was still alive. B. Younger, failing to console him with words, stages two wordless encounters, each of which brings some reconciliation and peace to our hero. We hear the Epitaph he wrote for himself sung by all. A Childish hand closes Benjamin’s notebook.
Selected performances of Benjamin:
Premiere: April 23, 24 and 25, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA. Stephen Kalm (Benjamin Baritone), Constance Beavon (Benjamin Younger), Pamela King (Deborah), Kristin Samuelson (Madame Brillon). Musical Director, Steven Edwards, Stage Direction, Edward Brubaker, Choreography, Lynn Brooks, Stage Design, John Whiting, Lighting, Reid Downey, Costumes, Nancy Whiting, Vocal Coach, Joan Krueger
Concert version (unstaged): April 17, 1990, University of Pennsylvania 250th Celebration, Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Chamber Singers, William Parberry, Director. Concerto Soloists. Stephen Kalm, Tanya Courier, Constance Beavon and Kristin Samuelson.
Narrated Concert Version (unstaged): 2000, F&M College, Lancaster, PA. Stephen Kalm (Benjamin Baritone), Constance Beavon (Benjamin Younger), Pamela King (Deborah), Kristin Samuelson (Madame Brillon). Musical Director, Simon Andrews
Chamber Music Version (unstaged): 2001, Merkin Concert Hall, NYC, Stephen Kalm, Tanya Courier, Constance Beavon
Benjamin was fully staged once again in January 2006 at F&M College, as part of the Franklin Tercentenary Celebration.
A recording of the 2006 production can be found on the Zimbel label.
Reviews of Benjamin:
Daniel Webster, Philadelphia Enquirer:
“…glimpses, half-parodistic allegorical tableaux and brightly telescoped scenes of Franklin’s achievements. The intimacy of the vision of Franklin ….allowed the composer to equate a bassoon melody with a voice and to create transparent instrumental atmospheres to match the stage music. Pamela King made the letter scene telling…through its shadowed melody and the starkness of solo piano accompaniment. Carbon has even included a coloratura aria for the French woman who beguiled Franklin’s Paris stay. The aria sketches a bright, tempting character who appears only for a moment in this vignette. Her scene, however–set in a salon for a musical evening–is one of the opera’s wittiest. Franklin declares himself inventor of the glass harmonica and also composer of a string quartet. When the orchestra quotes the quartet, harpsichordist and all, the guests fall into hypnotized sleep, leaving Franklin and Mme. Brillon to wonder at their own feelings. Constance Beavon’s role [Benjamin Younger] was nervously active, urgent really. Kalm’s Franklin passed through moments of poignance and high comedy.”
Jon Ferguson, Lancaster Intelligencer Journal:
“…Soaring success…a charming opera that rings with an emotional resonance…carried along by a wonderful score containing many memorable melodies. It is a deft portrayal of a man both creative and pragmatic who often finds he’s at odds with himself. The opera is extremely moving throughout…the authors deserve nothing but plaudits. The tension between the [three main characters] gives the opera its movement and its great depth. [The letter writing scene] is an extremely poignant scene, made more so by the solo piano piece which accompanies Ms. Beavon’s aria. Especially effective was [Lynn Brook’s choreography in] the dance of the four seasons.”
Joe Byrne, Lancaster New Era:
“From the opening scene’s first pure notes of an oboe, “Benjamin: An Opera of Our Own Invention,” is less drama than it is a complex, entertaining and colorful portrait of the mind of a legendary man. The show is intriguing…Franklin is a kind of Everyman in the opera. Using three characters to portray various aspects of Franklin’s personality, the opera crisscrosses from his near-obsession with moral perfection to a boyish, irresponsible fascination with the mechanisms of nature. Franklin’s humanity, particularly his self-centeredness and eye for the ladies, provides tension and provides a needed contrast to his otherwise boring tendencies toward regimentation, civic responsibility and all personal virtues. Carbon’s music electrifies Ms. White’s libretto and carries the history from scene to scene. [The letter scene] is poignant….made more bittersweet by lovely arias. There are truly comic parts, too. In one scene, Ben returns home after experimenting during a fierce electrical storm–carrying aloft an electrocuted turkey.”
Marie Laveau (1983; 145 minutes)
Full-length Voodoo opera. Libretto by the composer.
Soprano; Mezzo-Soprano; Contralto; Tenor; Baritone; Bass.SATB Chorus; Dancers;
2.2.2.2; 2.2.1.1; celeste/toy piano; accordian; harp; 3 voodoo drummers;
Assorted African percussion (1-3 players); strings: 8.6.4.4.2.
Marie Laveau, completed in 1983, is a full-length (2 hours) Voodoo-Opera based on legends about Marie Laveau, the legendary Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Music and libretto are both by John Carbon who wrote the story as a play first. The play was produced at University of California (Santa Barbara) in 1981. A recording of selections (with piano reduction) was made in 1985 in New York City.
This opera tells the story of a woman forced to choose between love and power. Although the character Marie Laveau is based on an actual historical figure, the many legends that surround this amazing woman made it possible to create a new tale comprised of several local legends and folk tales gathered from street people of New Orleans and the rich stock of stories (plus a few facts) about the Voodoo world’s heroes and heroines. The opera is cast in the comic-tragic mold and is intended to be a surprising blend of humor, satire, melodrama and pathos.
Synopsis
The opera opens in a church at midnight where Marie invokes a death curse on her rival, Dr. John. She fears his ability to steal her Voodoo followers (her “business”). She also is torn in two because secretly she loves him. In the past she swindled him out of his fortune partly to dethrone him, but more exactly because he would not submit to her amorous designs. While in the process of casting the spell, Marie is interrupted by Euphrasine, a young Creole girl of the upper class, who appears to light a votive candle. Marie hides and overhears Euphrasine’s plight: she is going to be married off by her dying father to an ugly French dwarf who wants her father’s money. She asks St. Jude for a way out of this marriage. After she leaves, Marie makes it clear to St. Expedite (a patron Saint of the Voodoos) that she is going to use Euphrasine to snare Dr. John.
A month later Euphrasine shows up at Marie’s door. She has had a dream in which she fell through a mirror, surrounded by Marie and her Voodoo followers. Marie seizes the moment and reads Euphrasine’s Tarot cards, telling her everything she overheard in the Church a month earlier. She also tells Euphrasine to give Jules (now her husband) the potion she supplies on the night of St. John’s Eve and to come to her ceremony at Bayou St. John. Euphrasine protests but Marie tells her prophetically that she will be there.
Meanwhile, Blackhawk, Marie’s hired spy, has informed Saloppe, Marie’s older mentor, that Dr. John has returned to New Orleans. Blackhawk, who doesn’t believe in Voodoo, teases Saloppe, who in turn tries to scare Blackhawk. She scolds him for frittering away Marie’s time with all his gambling and womanizing. Saloppe takes off for Marie’s place to tell her the news about Dr. John.
When she arrives, Marie is involved in casting another spell, and Saloppe knows it is a love spell to try to snare Blackhawk. She warns Marie that she will lose Blackhawk if she uses her powers to entrap him–just like she lost Dr. John. She tells Marie Dr. John is back. Marie tells Saloppe about the nightmares she’s been having about Dr. John’s demise and doesn’t quite believe Saloppe but finally does as she once again reveals that she is still carrying a torch for Dr. John. Her desire for a lover’s revenge comes to the surface and the scene ends with a reluctant Saloppe helping Marie plot to use Euphrasine as a “fetch” to trap Dr. John.
After Saloppe leaves, Blackhawk shows up and Marie quarrels with him, telling him that he can only get back into her good graces by submitting to her advances. Blackhawk tactlessly hits the nail on the head by telling her she cannot use her power over people to win love but somehow ends up being undressed by Marie as the scene ends with the lovers in each other’s arms.
Sometime later we join Euphrasine and her husband, the French dwarf, Jules. Euphrasine is getting gussied up to go to the St. John’s Eve Ceremony. Jules wants to consummate their now month-old marriage–a condition of Euphrasine’s father’s will if Jules is to inherit the dough. The frustrated Jules pulls a revolver on the prepared Euphrasine who slips the potion Marie gave her (unseen) into a brandy snifter. Jules commands her to submit to his wishes but she persuades him to drink–but only after she suspensefully shoots the wrong brandy snifter out of Euphrasine’s grasp. He sings a “drunken worm” aria and collapses as Euphrasine sneaks away to the ceremony.
Act II opens with Marie leading the Devotees in a wild St. John’s Eve Carnival dance. She gives a powerful speech telling them that they must get rid of the “evil” Dr. John who will undoubtedly show later in the evening, trying to win them over. Euphrasine arrives and a series of possession dances begins. Several of the devotees are possessed by various Voodoo Gods. In Act One, Saloppe tells Marie that Dr. John’s Loa is Ghede, Baron of Cemeteries, who loves Erzulie, Goddess of Love. Shrewdly, Marie devises a scenario in which Euphrasine is possessed by Erzulie, knowing that this will prove to be the best bait for Dr. John. Dr. John arrives dressed as Ghede, and makes his own plea to the crowd, portraying his healing powers and defeating a possessed suitor of the now possessed Euphrasine. They dance together in a wildly sexual dance of possession and he carries her off to his shack in the woods. Marie laughs and tells the crowd to let her go…”people get what they ask for in this world!”
Act Three begins with Marie, who is now stabbing voodoo dolls of Dr. John and Euphrasine, in an effort to make Euphrasine crazy and turn against Dr. John. It is a spell of unrequited love–a mirror of her own situation with Dr. John. Meanwhile at Dr. John’s shack, John has Euphrasine tied to a bed in an effort to restrain her desires. He makes her promise “no more lovin,” unties her, then tells her his story which includes how Marie swindled him out of his fortune he made in Voodoo. He sudden;y gets the idea to use Euphrasine as a means of getting his fortune back and doing in Marie once and for good. He ties her back up and tells her he’s going to Jules to get a ransom and report Marie, the real culprit. As soon as he leaves, Blackhawk, sent by Marie to spy, jumps in the window and takes a liking to Euphrasine. He unties her an decides to steal her away with him and travel up north with his gambling money. He shows Euphrasine the voodoo dolls he has stolen from Marie and puts them on the table for Dr. John to see. Euphrasine is driven over the edge by the sight of the dolls and vows revenge on Dr. John. They leave for Blackhawk’s hideout.
Meanwhile, Marie discovers that the dolls are missing! She goes to Saloppe devastated by the loss of her powers. Dr. John shows up unexpectedly and grinds the dolls he found when he returned to his shack in the dirt at Marie’s feet. He tells Marie that he knows where Euphrasine is–he found Blackhawk’s handkerchief on the floor of his shack and knows he has her. Then he tells her that he sold Euphrasine back to Jules and he is a wealthy man again. He also cuts Marie to the quick by telling her that he knows why she has tried so hard to bring him to his knees for years and years: she wanted him but couldn’t admit it. She is devastated as he leaves and Saloppe has to pull her back together as Marie begins to reinfuse the dolls with her powers.
The final scene opens in a rented room in Josie Arlington’s Five Dollar House on Basin Street where Blackhawk and Euphrasine are in bed. Blackhawk comments on the sad strains of the Black Funeral procession which can be heard from the street in the distance. He tells Euphrasine that they will play uptempo on the way back. As he looks out the window, he sees Jules coming up the street and tells Euphrasine to hide. Euphrasine is crazed and responds by reciting lines at random that she has recited at other times and places. He hides behind a screen and gives Euphrasine his revolver. Jules storms in and quarrels with Euphrasine, who shoots him. They drag the body behind the screen and begin to plot their escape but again hear footsteps. This time Euphrasine hides behind the screen and Dr. John storms in looking for Euphrasine. he begins to strangle Blackhawk and they back out of sight onto the veranda. Meanwhile the funeral band has returned and is now playing “Oh Didn’t he Ramble” at a deafening pitch. Above the sound we hear shots ring out and Dr. John reemerges. He grabs the deranged Euphrasine and they fall oblivious on the bed wild with passion. Marie enters unseen with a knife and the dolls. Just as she places the knife in Euphrasine’s grasp (stabbing the dolls frantically) Dr. John turns around and sees her! He picks Euphrasine up and pushes her at Marie. Euphrasine stabs Marie to death. Euphrasine has a short mad scene. Saloppe arrives and falls hysterically on Marie, then asks about Blackhawk. Dr. John points to the veranda and Saloppe rushes out to find the body. Meanwhile, Voodoo drums are heard in the distance and Euphrasine is driven over the edge into possession once again and becomes Erzulie, Empress of the Voodoos. Saloppe brings the limping Blackhawk in (who has only been shot in his “seat ‘o learnin’”). Blackhawk looks upon the body of Marie. he places some money from his bankroll on her body and tearfully demands that she get a decent burial. Saloppe and Blackhawk decide to go to Port-au-Prince with the bankroll and leave Dr. John and Euphrasine alone in the gathering darkness. the lovers gaze into each other’s eyes hypnotically above the sound of the drums and Euphrasine, the new Voodoo Queen, commands him: “Come, my people call me.” The opera ends as they float off into the distance.
ORCHESTRAL WORKS WITHOUT SOLOISTS
But Soft… (2018; 4 minutes)
Alto Flute, English Horn, Bass Clarinet, Bassoon, F Horn, C Tumpet, Tenor Trombone, Percussion 1 player (sleigh bells, suspended cymbal, maracas), Marimba, Harp, Piano, Celesta, Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Bass
Spark (2010; 7 minutes)
4.4.3.2; 4.3.3.1; Timpani; 5 Percussionists; Harp; Strings.
Spark was written in the summer of 2010 to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Barshinger Concert Hall’s renovation. The title of this short work refers to the burst of energy and enthusiasm that the renovation created and the subsequent growth and activity that the F&M Music Department has experienced during the 10 years since the opening of this exceptional space. The opening music suggests that work on the hall has begun. An industrious texture is pushed along by an insistent knocking motive played on the taiko drum with marimba, harp and other busy ostinato passages supported by the full string section. The knocking suggests hammering on the door of the old hall when the time arrives for demolition, and the knocking sound continues periodically during construction as the piece progresses. The knocking returns near the end when the renovation is completed and the public demands to be admitted. After the initial buildup, the winds join gradually with solo lines and tutti interjections for the entire section. Once the brass interrupts with eager fanfare-like passages, the spark is truly ignited. Aside from a few more lyrical and reflective moments, the hectic pace continues to build toward a full and unbridled conclusion. This final section, in which everyone alternates virtuosic solo playing with forceful unison chords for the entire orchestra, reflects the idea that both before and after the opening of the hall, many individually talented voices have combined to create a vibrant musical community that expresses a dynamic whole.
Performances
November 8, 2011: Premiere, Franklin & Marshall College Orchestra, Barshnger Center, Brian Norcross conductor.
Carpe Diem (2006; 12 minutes)
3.2.2.2; 4.3.3.1; Timpani; 5 Percussionists; Harp; Strings.
Brian Norcross has been a dedicated conductor and my valued colleague at F&M College for about 25 years. One of the most challenging and poignant aspects of his job involves the never-ending four year cycle of freshman to senior student musicians that he shepherds through the musical ranks. Much like Haydn's seasonal experience with the departing orchestral musicians in Esterházy, that inspired the “Farewell” Symphony, Brian's yearly experience is to see F&M's students who are all to eager to depart at the beginning of each summer. In this case, the graduating seniors don't return; hence the title of the piece Carpe Diem, which of course is Latin for “Sieze the Day.” The piece begins with a solemn processional reminiscent of Convocation, one of the academically robed ceremonies celebrated each Fall to welcome the Freshman class. This music returns three more times in varied forms, suggesting the ongoing cycling through the four academic years and classes of students: freshman, sophomore, junior and senior. Rumbunctious music suggesting the harried pace of social life at F&M is interpolated between the refrains of the ceremonial music, and the fabric becomes more contrapuntal and scholarly as the years progress towards graduation. Once I siezed upon the idea of the work, the initial tongue-in-cheek stance I had adopted evolved into an appreciation of the pognancy of this ongoing welcome and farewell procession, and I hope the music captures a little bit of both moods.
Selected Performances
February 3, 2007: Carpe Diem was premiered by the Franklin & Marshall College Philharmonia, Brian Norcross conducting.
November 13, 2010: Carpe Diem was performed by the Franklin & Marshall College Orchestra, Brian Norcross, conductor, Barshinger Center for the Performing Arts, F&M College, Lancaster, PA.
Sinfonia (1997; 14 minutes)
2.2.2.2; 2.2.1; Timpani; 2 Percussionists; Strings.
Sinfonia for chamber orchestra was composed throughout 1996-1997. The title derives from the Greek syn (‘together’) and phone (‘sounding’). The term was used from the late Renaissance to the present for a wide variety of genres, mostly instrumental, and has also been used by twentieth-century composers (Britten, Berio) to describe a work that is lighter than a symphony. Mr. Carbon had in mind the Franklin & Marshall College Orchestra while composing the work. The way the group has grown both in numbers and ability is reflected in the music he composed for them. The use of solo and duet material juxtaposed with full orchestra was exploited out of a desire to feature some of the excellent individual musicians in the group.
Mr. Carbon was thinking more of a collection of short stories than a novel when he settled on the overall form of the work. The five short movements share motives but are separate worlds that hopefully compliment one another even though they tell different stories. The darker, more dramatic-abstract style employed in the Introduction and Twilight Piece gives way to a lighter, parodistic vein in the Rondo. The opening of the Passacaglia returns to the depths, but the mood modulates into a lighter more scherzo-like feeling towards the end, which provides a transition to the jubilant mood of the bustling moto perpetuo Finale.
(notes by Theodore Tzirimis)
Selected Performances of Sinfonia
Premiere: January 30, 1999, F&M Philharmonia, Brian Norcross, Director, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Inner Voices (1992; 18 minutes)
3.3.3.3; 4.3.3.1; Timpani; 3 Percussionists; Piano/Celeste; Harp; Strings.
This three-movement [orchestral] piece is the composer’s largest and most venturesome to date. It represents three states of mind and voices inside himself that he became aware of as he worked. Romanticism is expressed here as a voice in each movement that gives it an other-worldly character. The movements are not in a specific key as much as around a tonal center, each movement creating an exotic tension by being as far from the previous one’s tonal center as it can get.
Of his own piece, the composer writes: “the large-scale tonal architecture and fast-slow-fast structure of the three separate movements create a resemblance to a short three-movement symphony. Although the three movements and their different titles imply three separate worlds, the work is really through-composed as far as a progression of emotional and psychological states is concerned. That is, the voice of the first movement, Tigers, which opens ardente e feroce, also expresses the amorous and the heroic (as well as the two descriptive terms movement marking), and builds to a violento climax. This voice also delves into the regretful and mysterious, the powerful and the passionate, ending with a surge.
The voice of the second movement, Phantom, speaks of desolation and a relentless emptiness, which builds several times–again through a feeling of expectancy or inevitability–to several climaxes of intensity, only to fall back into the desolate mood of the opening. The last movement, Nightride, reveals a new inner strength, carried along by a macabre and sinister darkness, which alternates with a giocoso section, and music that is related emotionally (the notturno sections) to the first two movements.
Inner Voices was composed especially for the Warsaw Philharmonic and this recording between December and May of 1991-1992. It is an exploration of my inner spiritual world and the diverse, often competing voices that speak to me in a creative fashion. In that sense, the aesthetic, but not the harmonic language of the piece is probably closest to that of Robert Schumann’s fantasy pieces.” (Notes by Leslie Kandell)
Reviews of Inner Voices
Fanfare Magazine, William Zagorski
“It’s an otherworldly piece that swings between dream and nightmare. Each movement presents a symphonic synthesis…The second movement, Phantoms, is desolate…The third movement, Nightride, projects a sense of triumph. All is done in tonal yet highly convoluted language.”
Hommage à Trois (1989-91; 15 minutes)
3.3.3.3; 4.3.3.1; Timpani; 3 Percussionists; Piano/Celeste; Harp; Strings.
Hommage à Trois (1989-91) was the result of a three-year compositional struggle, an exception to my usual fluency. After an initial flurry of compositional activity, generating three times as much material as was finally used, I spent the balance of the time distilling out the remaining thirteen minutes of music. My aim was to present only that which is essential.
The work’s three movements, played without pause, are dedicated to my three composition teachers, Thea Musgrave, Paul Cooper and Peter Racine Fricker. I was very fortunate to have had three powerful mentors who influenced me greatly; but Hommage à Trois is about my misguided struggle to wrestle myself away from their influences. As I began the piece, I tried to accomplish this by wholeheartedly embracing their styles, to the point where I could wean myself away forever. Paradoxically, I found that when I stopped rebelling against these inner voices, what was uniquely “me” grew out of the tradition to which my teachers belonged. There was no need for the total break I had imagined was necessary. In the end, the piece was a search for my own voice which ended up both embracing my influences and celebrating my differences.
During the composition of Hommages à Trois Peter Racine Fricker, the teacher with whom I both began and finished my studies, died of cancer. This tragic incident inevitably shaped the tone and form of the work, and like the loss of a parent, left me feeling truly on my own in my work. it also explains the tragic outburst at the beginning of the third movement and why the piece begins and ends with similar music. The powerful and mysterious tone of the first movement reflects the influence of Thea Musgrave’s “dramatic abstract” style and my initiation into the use of intuitive and emotional creative modes of expression. The scherzo-like second movement shows the orchestrational and structural influences of my mentor, Paul Cooper. The coda-like resolution of the piece reflects the cyclical quality of beginning and ending with the same teacher, his passing on, leaving me to find my own way.
Hommage à Trois has been recorded on the VMM label by the Slovak Radio Orchestra under the direction of Szymon Kawalla.
ORCHESTRAL WORKS WITH SOLOISTS
Harlequinade (2015; 21 minutes)
Viola solo; 2.2.2.2; 2.2.1; Timpani; Strings
Popular in Italy and France from the 16th to 18th centuries, the commedia dell’arte featured stock characters identified by their masks. The related Harlequinade was a theatrical mime genre that developed in the mid 17th-19th centuries in England. This version contained a slapstick element in which Harlequin courted Columbine while Columbine’s father and a mischievous Clown plotted against the lovers. Pierrot, the servant, competed for Columbine’s love while being involved in chaotic escapes and chase scenes.
Although there is no specific plot suggested in my Harlequinade for viola and orchestra, the spirit of the tradition is retained. There are sections of work that suggest amorous liaisons, madcap chases and escapes. These events lead to the inevitably tragic outcome that is almost always the outcome of a love triangle.
Composed in 2014, Harlequinade was written for Todd Sullivan and Allegro, The Chamber Orchestra of Lancaster.
Fantasy-Nocturne (2013; 20 minutes)
Piano solo; 2.2.2.2; 2.2; Timpani; Strings.
Fantasy-Nocturne was composed in 2013 at the request of Brian Norcross for pianist Steven Graff and Allegro. Unlike my first piano concerto, written for the truly huge Czech Philharmonic, this work calls for a relatively small orchestra. The more intimate scoring allowed me to explore a different relationship between the piano and orchestra. Whereas my earlier work relies on the dramatic piano against orchestra idea, here I’m more interested in a collaborative relationship.
I was influenced by composer-pianist Frédéric Chopin in several ways. I particularly enjoy the few works Chopin wrote in hybrid forms (for example his Fantasie-Polonaise). In this piece I’ve embedded a series of nocturne-like sections within a single-movement fantasy based on a scherzo march. There are three different nocturnes that return in embellished incarnations throughout the piece. The idea of repeating sections in embellished form is something that Chopin relies on formally. As in Bellini’s bel canto arias, the returning melody is decorated in an improvised-sounding variation. I’ve always enjoyed the way in which Chopin uses nationalistic Polish airs and militaristic march-like music in a memory-laden way. In my piece there is something similar, but it is ironically stated. Finally, I was influenced by Chopin’s orchestration in his piano concertos. Often maligned, his approach was to amplify the piano in subtle ways with the orchestra. In addition to opposing the timbres, I’ve attempted to use the orchestra as an extension of the piano in several sections of the work.
Selected Performances
July 13, 2013: Pianist Steven Graff with the Allegro Chamber Orchestra, Brian Norcross conducting. Barshinger Center the the Musical Arts, Lancaster, PA.
Endangered Species (2001; 13 minutes)
Double Bass solo; 2.2.2.2; 4.2.1; Timpani; 2 Percussionists, Harp, Strings
John Carbon's previously recorded works for soloist and orchestra, which include highly successful concertos for clarinet, violin, trumpet and piano, are virtuoso showpieces with luminous orchestration and considerable emotional depth. Written for Richard Fredrickson, Endangered Species for double bass and chamber orchestra possesses all the above qualities, plus the idea of the concerto as a psychological journey through an energized landscape, in which the protagonist and audience are transformed. Whereas the numerous concerto models for piano, violin and clarinet are almost formulaic, the concerto for double bass and orchestra necessarily travels a much less beaten path. The unique solution for Endangered Species came to the composer when he was hiking in the Rockies:
“Once I had a concept in mind of the double bass as a large and wild creature, struggling but surviving, sometimes yearning, sometimes at war with the environment, but beautiful and lyrical in its power and grace, the piece began to flow.”
Indeed the opening mood of Endangered Species is yearning and lamenting.The “creature” is first heard alone, in a high register, evoking an other-worldly vastness. The evocative landscape, represented by muted string harmonics and harp, is dark and portentous. The bassoon answers the soloist in the same register. In response, the bass expresses an impassioned unaccompanied outpouring, which deepens the feeling of aloneness. After the outcry dies down, the landscape reappears, now cast in a shimmering transparent orchestration. The music becomes busier and more urgent, quickening to a second, more dramatic soliloquy by the soloist, one that is more decisive (as if calling out). The creature's call fades into a tranquil hovering punctuated by tremolando strings, harp harmonics and crotales. A final unaccompanied lament leads into a dance-like scherzo, punctuated by timbales and pizzicato strings. The playful mood soon collapses into a desolate interplay between the soloist and the lowest depths of the orchestra. The protagonist's mood switches between lamentoso and bravura displays of heroism before the playful scherzo returns more frenzied and a long accelerando to a Presto culminates in an overpowering tutti onslaught. The soloist delivers another soliloquy, this time amorous and lyrical. The love song becomes more urgent as the bass gradually climbs impossibly to the highest and most intense notes in the piece. The creature's heroic efforts summon a partner, the bassoon, who mirrors the bass, only to have the courtship interrupted by the sardonic muted trumpet. The orchestra snarls and snorts, driving the bass forward in what becomes a wild and savage hunt, punctuated by horn glissandi and the whip. The bass turns desperate as it flees the pursuers. A long diminuendo accompanies the accelerando as the hunt progresses, which creates the fantastic illusion of the chase disappearing into the distance. As the bass scampers deftly away from the chase, its mate (the bassoon) appears once again in duet, offering the hope that they will escape together.The bassoon and bass rush to the prestissimo edge and the attackers suddenly reappear fortissimo with a violent tutti. A pregnant silence ensues implying survival or extinction, aloneness or companionship. The bass emerges from the silence alone, calling for the bassoon, but instead of reconciliation, there is a final violent forte outburst from the orchestra. Says Carbon: “The ending is enigmatic. Does the beast survive? Or is it stomped out by the relentless advance of civilization?” (Notes by Jason Jones)
Recording
Richard Fredrickson has recorded Endangered Species on MMC2138, released in 2005, with the Slovak Radio Orchestra, Kirk Trevor conducting.
Concertino (2000;18 minutes)
Flute and Bass Clarinet solo; 3.0.2.0; 2 Percussionists; Harp; Harpsichord; Accordian; Strings
As a composer, I am lucky to teach at F&M where I have colleagues such as Susan Klick and Doris Hall-Gulati, who are both spectacular virtuoso soloists. When Brian Norcross asked me to compose a work for flute and bass clarinet with orchestra I was delighted to write for these two musicians. The work I wrote for them (played for the first time today) is less a concerto in the romantic sense (hero or heroines struggling against full orchestral forces) but instead more of an intimate piece of chamber music in which the soloists interact with smaller ensembles within the larger group. This is a more compact and Baroque conception of the concerto.
Each of the five movements features different chamber ensembles drawn from the full forces. The first and last movements employ full orchestra. The work begins Allegro frenetico, or fast and frenetic, and I was influenced by the cartoon music (particularly chase and sound effects) I grew up with. The second movement drops the winds and uses only strings and vibraphone to accompany the soloists. This slower, and darker second movement is a tombeau for Joaquín Rodrigo, who was a very important Spanish composer who died recently. He was blind and notated most of his much loved music by dictating the notes to his wife, including the guitar concerto, Conerto de Arranjuez, which I refer to here. The second movement of the Rodrigo has a rhythmic motive which I employ with two very short notes followed by a sustained lyrical line. The third movement is a bravura cadenza for the two soloists. It attempts to achieve a tyoe of heightened espressivo through a paradoxical mechanical cruelty. The two soloists are joined in very fast and somewhat relentless staccatissimo octave playing that evokes a feeling of considerable tension. The fourth movement is an ebullient and rhythmically tricky scherzo for five, for winds and percussion, no strings. The soloists are almost completely integrated into the chamber music fabric in this movement. The amplified harpsichord, accordion, marimba and drum kit are a small group unto themselves as they carry the thematic material in the majority of interludes. The work concludes with full orchestra, in a reference to Janizary music, or the military bodyguard of the Turkish sovereigns (1400-1826). This is a Turkish rondo, a genre Mozart was particularly fond of, and a type of music also referred to in the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
Performances
January 30, 2000: Doris Hall-Gulati, bass clarinet, Susan Klick, flute, with Brian Norcross conducting the F&M Philharmonia at the Super Bowl Cultural Warmup.
Piano Concerto (1999; 25 minutes)
Piano solo; 3.3.3.3; 4.3.3.1; Timpani; 3 Percussionists; Harp; Strings
The Piano Concerto for piano and large orchestra was written especially for William Koseluk and the Czech Radio Orchestra as part of their historic first American tour in 1998. Mr. Koseluk writes the following about the concerto:
“With an intensity and gestural language in the tradition of the Brahms D minor, the Liszt E-flat major and other notable works in the same genre, John Carbon’s Piano Concerto makes an effective new mark in a medium too long overburdened with the piano-as-noise. Indeed, this new work recognizes the piano as melodic and seeks to exploit this instrument in a manner that shows its many riches and colors. This is not to suggest that the work is a throwback to sentiment or a mere example of neo-romanticism. Rather, it is certainly new, with enough complex formal and harmonic constructs – disjunct in the romantic mold – to escape being seen as a return to a bygone era. Certainly, polychordal and dissonant dialogues between orchestra and piano bring this piece to the contemporary field. Serenity, though, and tender melodic consideration are also an important part of the compositional fabric and provide the listener with a rich, varied, experience.
It was the composer’s intent to vaguely imitate the compositional and performing temperament of the premiering pianist (William Koseluk). In fact, a key theme in the piece is a partial paraphrase of one of Koseluk’s early melodies, a composition dedicated to Mr. Carbon. In the Piano Concerto, though, the treatment is very new and different.
The theme is presented and developed, but it is actually encapsulated within a larger set of chordal and technical movements which treat this melody more as a harmonic element, rather than a specific melody to be played, repeated, developed, and sentimentalized.
The work is in one movement, with three sections. The first is grand and dynamic: the section demands decisive interaction and declamation between all forces. Many motives and thematic fragments are presented, all of which are recapitulated at different times for different purposes. The second section contrasts, with a lyric melody with a rather original sentiment very much in the character of Carbon’s lyric writing. The final section is whimsical, yet very technically demanding for the pianist. This movement certainly reveals the composer’s skill in writing for the instrument, allowing the performer to show much technique, in a manner appropriate to the instrument, while also showing the instrument’s lyric and harmonious side as well.”
The Piano Concerto has been recorded by William Koseluk for the MMC label.
Selected Performances of Piano Concerto
American Premiere: November 30, 1998, William Koseluk, pianist, with the Czech Radio Orchestra of Prague, Vladimír Válek, musical director, as part of their Boston-Prague Contemporary Music Festival, and first American Tour, Symphony Hall, Boston
European Premiere: May 3, 1999, William Koseluk, pianist, with the Czech Radio Orchestra of Prague, Vladimír Válek, musical director, as part of their Boston-Prague Contemporary Music Festival, Smetana Hall, Prague
Rhapsody (1997; 13 minutes)
Clarinet solo; 2.2.2.2; 4.2.1; Timpani; 2 Percussionists; Piano; Strings
Rhapsody for clarinet and chamber orchestra was composed in 1997 for Doris Hall-Gulati. It is cast in a single, rhapsodic movement tied together by several key motives punctuated by cadenzas by the soloist. The work alternates among four basic tempi and moods and represents a journey in which the soloist is “transformed” by the time the opening mood returns at the end of the piece. The opening (larghetto, tranquillo),portrays the soloist in a solitary mood surrounded by sparse orchestration and introspective figuration. The mood changes to a more capricious one and the surroundings become more dense as the clarinet explores “slap tongued” percussive moments, and the tempo begins a long accelerando, which is eventually halted by a new mood and texture (cantabile ed amabile; una memoria) in which the soloist is invited to display lyricism underscored by the strings and echoed by various winds. This cantabile mood increases in intensity and tempo, returning to the scherzo-like mood that preceded it. A transition leads to the fourth mood and tempo (allegro giocoso), dance-like music, displaying driving rhythms and hints of exoticism. The shifting meters of this section are interrupted by a sudden return of the earlier cantabile. However, this time, the soloist is accompanied by the two clarinets in the orchestra and xylophone and strings. The accelerando ends this time with a bravura solo cadenza, which leads, in turn, to a reprise of the allegro giocoso. The dance is driven forward by the soloist into a manic presto, ending suddenly fortissimo. The soloist continues, however, with another unaccompanied utterance bringing back the solitary music of the beginning. The work ends with a brief return to the larghetto, tranquillo mood of the very opening, scored even more sparsely with ethereal string harmonies and accompanying woodwind duets in the orchestra.
Rhapsody has been recorded by Doris Hall-Gulati with the New York Chamber Symphony, conducted by Gerard Schwarz, for the MMC label.
Selected Performances of Rhapsody
Premiere: April 27, 1997, Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, with Gerard Schwarz conducting the New York Chamber Symphony, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC
Performance: November 7, 2010, Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra was performed by Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinetist, at George Mason University Performing Arts Center, Fairfax, VA., American Youth Philharmonic, Daniel Spalding, conductor.
Review of Rhapsody
Allan Kozinn, New York Times:
“…only a few of the works made a lasting impression, on first hearing. The most striking was John Carbon’s Rhapsody for clarinet and chamber orchestra, in which a demandingly agile clarinet line, played with both virtuosity and nuance by Doris Hall-Gulati, wove its way through a variegated orchestral fabric. Except for a slow, dark-hued coda, the orchestral writing was brisk and vital, and rich in the coloristic effects of the sort that create depth rather than artificial glitter.
…..an essentially Neoromantic style with a modernist tinge…”
Violin Concerto (1995; 20 minutes)
Violin solo; 3.3.3.3; 4.3.3.1; Timpani; 3 Percussionists; Harp; Strings
Completed in 1995, for Peter Zazofsky, this concerto for violin and large orchestra has been recorded by the Warsaw Philharmonic with Gerhardt Zimmermann conducting. Cast in three movements, the plan is moderate, slow, fast. The first movement begins with soft flutterings in the strings and harp and progresses to a passionate first outburst from the violin in its highest register. The five-note motive that the soloist introduces is presented in many different moods and textures, and there is little extraneous material in the first movement. The mood is one of intense yearning with forceful outbursts. This movement ends with a serene coda that leads into the more amorous mood of the second movement.
Slower in tempo, the second movement is songlike and lyrical, with tragic undercurrents. The middle section is a barcarolle-like jazzy section with bluesy clarinet and flute obbligatos and string harmonics. After a return to the opening mood this movement ends with a cushion of string harmonics that supports a long prayer-like recitative in the solo violin part.
The utter calm at the end of the second movement is broken by the beginning of the third movement which is marked Allegro tumultuoso. The percussion and accented irregular note groupings lead into a rollicking perpetuo moto that gains speed as it progresses. Only one short passage of stasis above a walking bass slows the momentum as the soloist demonstrates more and more technical expertise, ending the movement with a coda taken at breakneck speed.
Reviews of Violin Concerto:
Fanfare Magazine:
“ John Carbon’s more traditionally structured, three-movement Violin Concerto, recorded n 1995, the year in which it appeared, ventures further harmonically and melodically, and offers the soloist more opportunities for technical display. Unlike so many works in which disjointed melodies leap capriciously among dissonant harmonies, Carbon’s showcases the solo violin in conjoint ones that brood (as in the ominous conclusions of the second movement) and soar, albeit in unfamiliar harmonic territory. The finale’s dazzling, kinetic virtuosity culminates a difficult but rewarding work. ”
American record Guide:
“ …many moments of genuine beauty ”
Clarinet Concerto (1994; 26 minutes)
Clarinet solo; 3.3.2.3; 4.3.3.1; Timpani; 3 Percussionists; Piano/Celeste; Harp; Strings
The Clarinet Concerto was composed especially for an MMC recording by Richard Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic, conducted by the American conductor George Manahan.
Notes by Mark L. Lehman from the CD jacket (MMC 2031):
None of this information prepares the listener for Carbon’s extraordinary Concerto — a huge (twenty-five minutes long) single-movement rhapsody of passionate, darkly voluptuous, chromatically intoxicated, endless melody teased and crooned and keened out by the solo clarinet amid a lush phantasmagoria of shimmering and flickering orchestral polyphony. Despite the wild diversity of mood–from ecstatic and rapturous to frenzied or desolate, from demonic to serene, from skittish to dreamlike, from the mysterious solenne e tenebroso opening to the lascivious and jazzy central scherzo-dance–everything is held together by the subtle but pervasive flowering into innumerable guises of a single five-note phrase given at the very beginning.
A few of the many ingenious devices that Carbon employs to create so much variety can be singled out. Notice, for instance, the way he extends the territory of his solo protagonist by echoing (and extending) its figurations with the shriller E flat clarinet on top and the deeper bass clarinet below. More obvious are the “blue” notes (from microtonal glissandos) in the solo part with their smoky, jazz-club ambiance. Carbon’s use of cadenzas in this concerto is also canny: instead of a single, extended showpiece for the soloist that might detract from the carefully sustained mood of nocturnal fantasy, he places several shorter cadenza-like solos at critical intervals that continue (and intensify) rather than disrupt the lyrical flow. The fluidity and expressiveness of these cadenzas –especially in Stoltzman’s performance–are astounding. There are moments of unearthly beauty that one would not have believed the instrument capable of.
But despite (and in a way because of) the sensuous beauty in this concerto, it is ultimately a deeply serious, even tragic work. Like a strange and wonderful dream-vision it begins and ends–as we all begin and end–in the soft darkness of a quietly heartbeating drum and the mystery of life emerging from and returning to nothingness.
The recording, on MMC, is performed by Richard Stoltzman with George Manahan conducting the Warsaw Philharmonic. There have been numerous international radio broadcasts of this work since the recording has been released.
Reviews of Clarinet Concerto:
Sonneck Society Bulletin:
“The flawless performance Richard Stoltzman’s admirers expect of him. John Carbon’s Clarinet Concerto provides some luscious atmospheric, introspective moments, supported by a thoughtful orchestral performance.”
Fanfare Magazine:
“Richard Stoltzman negotiates the demands …with remarkable aplomb and effectiveness. [The orchestra] also rises to levels of great virtuosity. The idea of the clarinet concerto as a work of immense power and drama is new to me. John Carbon (b. 1951) provides a Concerto in one long (25:34) movement. His score is … richly orchestrated, reminding me at different turns of Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, and Ottorino Respighi, though Carbon’s harmonic language and use of percussion are far more advanced that one finds in these masters of the early twentieth century. …The soloist is asked to both exhaust and extend the potential of his instrument to make all manner of sounds. The orchestra is put through similar strenuous exercises, pausing from time to time to allow bravura cadenzas from the clarinet. MMC’s gorgeously recorded disc is a winner in every respect, and decidedly material for the 1997 Want List.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Clarke Bustard:
“Just as attractive, maybe more accessible, is John Carbon's moody, sometimes bluesy Clarinet Concerto (1993).”
American Record Guide, Stephen D. Hicken:
“John Carbon's Concerto is also in one movement. Its structure is rhapsodic, episodes rapidly following one another. Its 25-minute length is held together by a clearly recognizable (and pregnant with possibility) five-note motive that appears in countless guises in contrasting episodes. George Manahan is the expert conductor on one of MMC's best releases.”
Notturno (1994; 13 minutes)
Trumpet solo; Harp; Strings
Notturno for Trumpet, Harp, and Strings, was composed for Jeffrey Silberschlag. The work has been recorded and released on Delos, performed by Mr. Silberschlag with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz.
While composing the work, I had in mind impressions of hot summer nights I once spent in Madrid, Spain. Cast as a single-movement fantasy, the music increases in complexity and excitement as the city wakes from its siesta and shopkeepers resume their posts in the early evening hours. Gradually, as the families with their elegantly dressed children begin their promenades, the orchestration becomes thicker and the music more agitated. Traffic noise increases and the city comes alive as students and young business people join each other in the outdoor cafes for drinks, cigarettes, and snacks. Finally, after the long dinner hour, the music begins to calm into a sensual serenade, as the only strollers left on the street are the lovers, embracing in front of the now-closed shop windows. The music ends quietly, as it began, with the city once again asleep.
There are several unifying motives throughout the piece. One is a violent flamenco-like stamping of repeated notes; another is reminiscent of the four-note descending ostinato that is repeated throughout Maurice Ravel’s tribute to Spain, Rhapsodie espagnole. The virtuoso solo trumpet plays the role of omnipresent observer, reacting to and commenting on the life of the city as it unfolds.
Selected Performances of Notturno
Premiere: April 28, 1999, Jeffrey Silberschlag, trumpet, New York Chamber Symphony, with George Manahan, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC
Notturno has been recorded by the Seattle Symphony with Jeffrey Silberschlag on the DELOS label.
Rasgos (1993; 15 minutes)
Violin solo; 2.2.2.2; 2.2.2; Timpani; Harp.
Rasgos (Sketches) for violin and chamber ensemble, was composed in the late summer and fall of 1992 at the request of Brian Norcross, who asked that I write a concerto for violinist Claire Chan and the Franklin & Marshall College Chamber Music Society. The idea behind the piece was to employ winds, harp and percussion, with the violin playing a prominent solo part, as in a concerto. Initially, I was stumped by the problems the instrumentation posed because I worried that the violin might be overpowered by the winds, and I couldn’t imagine a satisfying blend of the contrasting timbres.
It was only when I was in Madrid the summer of 1992 and had visited the Prado Museum several times, enjoying the sketches of Goya which were on exhibit, that I found a solution. I had just finished a large, thick, complex work for orchestra and I was fascinated by how much Goya conveyed in his often incomplete and always miniature sketches, which employed so few lines. Instead of a concerto, I decided to create a set of fourteen miniature rasgos (sketches) whose individual titles were borrowed from the poetry of Spanish poet Garcia-Lorca. These titles turned out to be more of a direct inspiration than the Goya sketches, because each movement or sketch was inspired not so much by an individual drawing by Goya, but more by the general style of his drawings. Like the music I composed, these drawings seemed to be incomplete studies. Only a small portion of each sketch is completed in any detail; the other portions are left with a few lines to suggest something vague and at times enigmatic. Also like the sketches of Goya, my pieces are very thin in texture, and remain intentionally terse in form and development.
Unlike the piano work Goyescas, by the Spanish composer Granados, which contains six pieces based on particular paintings by the artist, my piece differs in that there is no intended correspondence between each movement and the sketches I viewed. Even though the Spanish sound of Rasgos is sometimes only subliminally present, and may not be obvious to all listeners, I think the fascination and pleasure felt upon experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of Spain for the first time is reflected in the various moods of the work as a whole.
Rasgos has been recorded by violinist Claire Chan with the Concordia Orchestra of New York, conducted by Maron Alsop for the MMC label.
Selected Performances of Rasgos
Premiere: February 28, 1993, Claire Chan, violin, with the F&M Chamber Music Society, Brian Norcross, conductor, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
WIND ENSEMBLE WORKS
Echoes (2017; 14 minutes)
Piccolo, Flute, Oboe, English Horn, B-Flat Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Bassoon, Contrabassoon, Horns 1-2, C Trumpets 1-2, Tenor Trombone 1-2, Bass Trombone, Timpani.
Echoes was composed in 2017 for Allegro Orchestra. Each one of these eight short pieces explores a different type of echo. In “Off-Kilter Rag” the main melodic motive is echoed in imitative bursts featuring different sound colors, sometimes with the aid of mutes and other times changes of instrument, dynamics and register. Almost every other bar adds an “extra” beat, adding unexpected twists to the march rhythm. The second movement, “Hunt in the Hollow” alludes to a hunting call echoing from different hills and valleys. Distance is achieved by muting and call and response. “Fallen Heroes” alludes to memory as an echo of the past. The main melody wraps around itself in numerous “echoes.” “The Woodpecker’s Joke,” based on actual experience, depicts a perplexing early morning question. Is there just one woodpecker moving from the side of my house to the trees, or are there numerous woodpeckers waking me by creating echoes of themselves? “Pirate’s Hornpipe” swaggers in tipsy echo of the ocean’s pitching roll. “Proud Memories” weaves two echoing themes together, one evoking Civil War heroism, the other an echo of a Brahms Symphony melody. “Mouse Clock” plays with the idea of echoing time as a rodent-infested clock resets itself over and over. Finally, the set ends with “Spider’s Reflection,” a fugue inspired by the idea of the visual echo of a spider’s web. The zig-zag patterns are turned upside down as the imitative counterpoint unfolds.
Performances:
Allegro Orchestra of Lancaster, Music in the Round, November 17, 2017, Brian Norcross conductor
CCXXV (2012; 2.5 minutes)
Flutes 1-2; oboe; clarinets 1-2; bass clarinet; bassoon; alto sax; tenor sax; baritone sax; trumpets 1-2; horns 1-2; baritone horn; trombone; bass trombone; tuba; double bass; timpani; percussion 3-4 players.
CCXXV (225) is a short wind ensemble piece written in 2012 for the celebration of the bicenquasquigenary of the founding of Franklin & Marshall College. It has been performed by the Franklin & Marshall College Symphonic Winds on campus several times, including at Convocation and during Common Hour. A fanfare-like opening and closing surround a more introspective middle section that contains several musical references to the Alma Mater of the College, written by Garrett W. Thompson in 1908.
Katydid March (2008; 5 minutes)
Piccolo; flutes 1-2; oboe; bassoon; clarinets 1-3; bass clarinet; alto saxophone; tenor saxophone; baritone saxophone; trumpets 1-3; horns 1-4; trombones 1-3; baritone horn, tuba; timpani; percussion 3 players.
Katydid March is a short march composed in 2009 for my Mother Katie's 80th birthday. She is an active member in a “Prime Time 50” band. She first learned to read music and play the flute after she retired at age 65. So, the title reflects the idea that “Katie did” something inspiring. You might hear some strange insect sounds in the piece–the trombones have glissandi to represent Katydids rubbing their forewings (front wings) together to “sing” to each other.
Performances
April 13, 2012: Franklin & Marshall College Symphonic Winds, Barshinger Center for the Musical Arts, F&M College, Lancaster, PA.
Magic Circus Music (1994; 7 minutes)
Piccolo; flutes 1-2; oboe; bassoon; clarinets 1-3; bass clarinet; alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone; trumpets 1-3; horns 1-4; trombones 1-3; baritone; tuba; timpani; percussion 3 players.
Magic Circus Music, for wind ensemble, was composed in the summer of 1994 especially for the Commissioning Cooperative. My idea for the piece was to evoke feelings and memories of acrobats, parades, clowns, trapeze artists and other icons of the big top. The piece is intended to be impressionistic rather than programmatic.
Harmonically speaking, quartal harmonies, synthetic scales (particularly the octatonic) and tonal fragments (often juxtaposed in bitonal or polytonal strands) are featured in all three movements. Rhythmically, the second movement is challenging because of the shifting meters.
This is my 12th piece for wind ensemble. I played clarinet in high school bands, and my first piece for band – written when I was in high school – used evocations of circus band music in it, so I guess I’ve come full circle. This is meant to be a fun piece to learn, perform and hear.
Selected Performances of Magic Circus Music
Premiere: November 19, 1994, The F&M Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Brian Norcross, Director, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
1994, 12 performances by a consortium of 12 different high schools
Shadows and Echoes of Summer (1991;15 minutes)
Solo harp; flutes 1-2; oboes 1-2; clarinets 1-2; bassoons 1-2;
Horns 1-2; trumpets 1-2; tenor trombone; bass trombone; double bass.
Trumpets and trombones play tuned crystal glasses when offstage, bassoon 1 plays bells when offstage, bassoon 2 plays bowed and struck crotales when offstage.
Commissioned by Catholic University, this piece is a single movement Serenade for solo harp, double woodwind quintet, brass quartet and double bass. I composed the work as a more introverted “shadow” or “echo” of a previous work of mine, Dreams within Dreams, written for percussion with the same accompanying instruments. The extra-musical sparks that ignited my imagination in the present work were shadows and echoes, and particularly shadows of summery things such as roses. I was interested in the parallels between shadows and echoes and the way in which both of these images in turn generate memories. And then again, I was interested in the way a memory can be a type of echo or shadow or remembrance. The bell-like resonances that echo throughout the work are attempts to capture that unique luminosity characteristic of summer evenings and the memories of all such evenings that are superimposed upon the present.
Shadows and Echoes of Summer was jointly commissioned by Catholic University and Franklin and Marshall College, and composed during the early summer months of 1990 in Lancaster, PA.
Selected Performances of Shadows and Echoes of Summer
Premiere: February 23, 1991, Felicia Coppa, harp, and F&M Chamber Winds, Brian Norcross, Director, Miller Recital Hall, F&M College, Lancaster, PA.
January 27, 1996, Felicia Coppa, harp, and F&M Chamber Winds, Brian Norcross, Director, Miller Recital Hall, F&M College, Lancaster, PA.
Different Ghosts (1991;10 minutes)
Solo percussion; pre-recorded electronic percussion;
Piccolos 1-2; flutes 1-2; oboes 1-2; clarinets 1-3; bass clarinet; bassoon;
Alto saxophones 1-2; tenor saxes 1-2; baritone sax; horns 1-4; trumpets 1-3; trombones 1-3; bass trombone; baritone horn; tuba; percussion 5 players.
This work for solo percussionist, tape with synthesized sounds, and wind ensemble with five assistant percussionists was commissioned by Portland State University, for percussionist Joel Bluestone. The tape part contains “ghost sounds” that mimic the real percussion sounds heard in the ensemble and played by the soloist, as well as “voices” and other supernatural effects. These ghost sounds on the tape are notated in the score and parts in cue notes that are 75% of the size of the music which is to be played live. All taped sounds that are to be mimed are also identified by boxed names in the score. When the soloist, or any other player has “ghost notes,” in his or her part, and there are no full-size notes to be played at that time, it is expected that the player will “mime” these notes silently on his or her instrument in a visible, theatrical manner. In the solo percussion part, there are often several “ghost effects” happening at once. If there are full-sized notes, they must be played, however if free, the player may choose which instrument to mime the part on. That is, if it is a “ghost xylophone,” the solo percussionist could choose to mime it on the vibraphone, or even on the woodblocks. The tone should be cartoonish, wild, funny, but always with a serious undercurrent. Try to vary the moods of the miming and the actual playing as much as possible to create the mood of a haunted house or a camp silent horror film soundtrack. If at all possible, the speakers should be concealed, but monitors need to be provided near the conductor and soloist which are audible in the wind ensemble.
Selected performances of Different Ghosts
Premiere and three other performances: March 25-27, 1992, Joel Bluestone, percussion, Portland State University Wind Ensemble, Portland, OR
Dreams within Dreams (1989; (Duration 18 minutes)
Solo percussion (vibraphone, marimba, xylophone);
Flutes 1-2 (doubling piccolos); oboes 1-2; clarinets 1-2; bassoons 1-2;
Horns 1-2; trumpets 1-2; tenor trombone; bass trombone;
Chimes and crotales (1 player).
Dreams Within Dreams was composed in the summer of 1989 especially for percussionist Joel Bluestone and the Franklin and Marshall College Chamber Winds. Inspiration for the work was derived from my hobby of reading books about physics (for the non scientist!). In particular, several ideas are addressed in this single-movement concerto for solo percussionist and antiphonally-separated wind instruments. One such idea is that of an infinite number of parallel universes, reflected in both the multiple personalities of the soloist, who is required to play vibraphone, marimba and xylophone at various times, and in the use of a double woodwind quintet (also acoustically separated), which shares motives which mutate and revel in an atmosphere of surrealist déja-vu through transpositions, rhythmic permutations and other time distortions, such as the recapitulation of musical ideas in variant meters, or the juxtaposition of different musics from previously independent ‘universes’. Of course each player (except the soloist) has his or her double or phantom in the other group, as each instrument is doubled, including the pairs of brass instruments in the choir loft and the chimes which are echoed by the crotales.
There is also a literary association that I kept gravitating toward while composing the music, a certain quotation from Jorge Luis Borges’ The Garden of the Forking Paths, in which a world is described in which there are “an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times. This web of time–the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries –embrace every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words, but am an error, a phantom.” Perhaps the total reality of celestial mechanics is comprised of nothing less than a series of Chinese boxes, an infinite number inside each other, like dreams within dreams?
“If so, if I dream myself, and come upon myself dreaming, who is it dreaming?”
Selected Performances of Dreams within Dreams:
Premiere: September 10, 1989, Joel Bluestone, percussionist, F&M Chamber Winds Society, Brian Norcross, Director, Lancaster, PA.
September 24, 1989, Joel Bluestone, percussionist, F&M Chamber Winds Society, Brian Norcross, Director, Lancaster, PA.
January 27, 1996, Larry Reese, percussionist, F&M Chamber Winds Society, Brian Norcross, Director, Lancaster, PA.
Dreaming the Wild Spirit Dance (1989; 12 minutes)
Solo clarinet; piccolos 1-2; flutes 1-2; oboes 1-2; clarinets 1-3; bass clarinet; bassoon;
Horns 1-4; trumpets 1-3; trombones 1-3; bass trombone; baritone horn; tuba;
Piano/celesta (also plays police whistle and whip); timpani; percussion 4 players.
Many cultures have viewed the four winds as spirit forces, entities with power and grace, capable of entering the lives of human beings and changing their fates. Dreaming the Wild Spirit-Wind Dance is about wind with special powers, for example sorcerers, who may become the wind, merging their identities with natural forces, especially in lucid dreams that act as a bridge to the other world. During these lucid dreams–and I am thinking in particular of the type of lucid dreaming described by writer Carlos Castaneda in his Don Juan series–the ordinary preconceptions that imprison us in our sometimes narrow world of perception are suspended, and the dreamer is free to summon other wind spirits, thereby gathering the awesome energies of nature in a ritualistic “dance of creation.”
In Dreaming the Wild Spirit-Wind Dance, for solo clarinet and wind ensemble, the solo clarinet dreams the summoning and gathering of other spirit winds. The ritualistic drumming that drives the dance-like ending of the piece is perhaps unusual for a concerto. This is one of three concertos that Brian Norcross has asked me to compose in the last few years for soloists and winds, the previous two featuring a solo percussionist and saxophonist. The present concerto was written especially for Doris Hall-Gulati and the Franklin and Marshall Symphonic Winds and was composed in the fall of 1989.Selected Performances of Dreaming the Wild Spirit-Wind Dance
Premiere: April 22, 1990, Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, F&M Symphonic Winds, Brian Norcross, conductor, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Angels (1988, 15 minutes)
Solo alto saxophone; Piccolos 1-2; flutes 1-2; oboes 1-2; clarinets 1-3; bass clarinet; bassoon; alto saxophones 1-2; tenor saxes 1-2; baritone sax; horns 1-4;
Angels, for solo alto saxophone and wind ensemble, was commissioned by saxophonist Lynn Klock for performances by the Franklin & Marshall Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the Boston Metropolitan Winds. This ten-minute concerto features the saxophone section as a “consort of angels” that both physically and acoustically surrounds the solo alto saxophonist. The work was at least partly inspired by passages from Rilke’s Duino Elegies which contain numerous images about angels and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which describes both peaceful and wrathful deities in vast otherworldly realms of the heavens. Central to the aesthetic of the work is the juxtaposition of violent, cataclysmic musical events with moments of simplicity and serenity. The percussion section plays a substantial role (both acoustically and physically on stage) in painting this cosmic landscape. –Notes by the composer
Selected performances of Angels:
Premiere: April 23, 1989, Lynn Klock, saxophonist, Brian Norcross, Musical Director, F&M Symphonic Winds, Lancaster, PA.
2 Performances: April 28, 1990, Lynn Klock, saxophonist, with Malcolm Rowell, Musical Director, Metropolitan Wind Symphony, Norwell, MA, Boston, MA. Sponsored in part by the Selmer Corporation.
February 6, 1992, 40th Anniversary of Eastman Wind Ensemble, Jamie Kalyn, saxophone, Sydney Hodkinson, conductor, Eastman Wind Ensemble, Rochester, NY.
May 14, 1993, Jerry Luedders, saxophone, David Whitwell, conductor, the California State University, Northridge Wind Ensemble, Northridge, CA.
MUSIC FOR SMALL INSTRUMENTAL ENSEMBLE
Fai finta di niente (2023; 10 minutes)
Solo flute; piano
Five Ghost Tangos (2021; 10 minutes)
3 solo B-flat clarinets; B-flat bass clarinet; piano
1. Lima (July 23, 1951: waning gibbous moon)
2. Puerto Vallarta (November 24, 1968: waxing crescent moon)
3. Sevilla (December 31 , 1972: waning crescent moon)
4. Los Angeles (March 16, 1961 : new moon)
5. New York City (April 18, 2003: full moon)
The work exists in two different instrumentations. The earlier version is scored for soprano sax, viola, bass clarinet and piano and it was premiered at a Beyond Ourselves Benefit Concert in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania in 2007. The present version for clarinet quartet and piano was completed in 2021.
—John Carbon
Fantasy Sonata (2017; 22 minutes)
Violin; piano
Ragtime Tango Variations (2016; 11 minutes)
Violoncello; piano
Ragtime Tango Variations was composed in 2016 for Chiaroscuro. As the title suggests, both ragtime and tango elements help to determine the style of the piece. Five variations follow the theme without pause and there are several references to earlier variations after the beginning statement of variation 5. In this regard, this piece is somewhat like a rondo as well as a being a set of variations on an original theme.The constant elements are ragtime short-long-short rhythms along with the lilting habañera signature of the tango.
Theme (mm. 1-16)
Variation 1 (mm. 17-45)
Variation 2 (mm. 46-77)
Variation 3 (mm. 78–93)
Variation 4 (mm. 94-109)
Variation 5 (mm. 110-219)
Variation 4 (Reprise 1) (mm. 220-228)
Variation 5 (continued) (mm. 229-253)
Variation 3 (Reprise) (mm. 254-269)
Variation 4 (Reprise 2) (mm. 270-277)
Variation 5 (conclusion) (mm. 278-334)
Coda (mm. 335-338)
PERFORMANCE NOTE: Although there are no pedal indications in
variation 5, some light touches of pedal might be effective in this section.
Tunes from a Tree House (2015; 10 minutes)
B flat clarinet; piano
Three Fantasy Pieces (2015; 16 minutes)
Bass clarinet; piano
Available from Alea Publishing
Three Fantasy Pieces for bass clarinet and piano was composed in 2015 for clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati and pianist Steven Graff. These three pieces are études that explore mood and character as much as technical bravura. The first and third pieces, Night Piece and Rango, require the performers to move in and out of episodes of ironic expression. The virtuosity required of the performers has much to do with their ability to convey shifting nuances of emotional meaning. Night Piece contains melodrama and tragedy with dark undertones that are sometimes deadly serious and at other times playful and twisted. The numerous mood and character indications in the score are provided to suggest changes of tone, but they should not totally determine the narrative quality of the perfomers' interpretation. Night Piece is “rhapsodic and darkly mysterious.” In this piece the boundaries between drama and ironic melodrama are explored. Rango, a blend of tango and ragtime elements, requires the performers to evoke a twisted spookiness. The middle piece, Aria, is a sustained lyrical exploration of “restrained sensuality,” in which neo-Baroque elements are used to convey a polite but erotic courtship.
Harlequinade (2015; 18 minutes)
Viola; piano
Popular in Italy and France from the 16th to 18th centuries, the commedia dell’arte featured stock characters identified by their masks. The related Harlequinade was a theatrical mime genre that developed in the mid 17th-19th centuries in England. This version contained a slapstick element in which Harlequin courted Columbine while Columbine’s father and a mischievous Clown plotted against the lovers. Pierrot, the servant, competed for Columbine’s love while being involved in chaotic escapes and chase scenes.
Although there is no specific plot suggested in my Harlequinade for viola and piano, the spirit of the tradition is retained. There are sections of work that suggest amorous liaisons, madcap chases and escapes. These events lead to the inevitably tragic outcome that is almost always the outcome of a love triangle.
Composed in 2014, Harlequinade was written for Todd Sullivan.
John Carbon
When It Was Raining (2013; 10 minutes)
Tuba; piano.
Written for Matthew Brown and Maria Corley, When It Was Raining contains four short movements: Inside the Covered Bridge, A Tin Soldier's Life, Writing a Letter and Puddle Stomping:
What can a child do on a rainy day? Perhaps a visit to a covered bridge? Later, imagining the life of a tin soldier might be interesting. Writing a good letter would be something to do. Above all else, stomping in puddles might be just the thing. That's what this piece is about.
Performances
September 27, 2013: Matthew Brown, tuba with Maria Corley, piano, Sound Horizons Concert, Barshinger Center for the Performing Arts, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
Love Letters from the Lost Cause (2012; 10 minutes)
Violin; violoncello; piano.
Love Letters from the Lost Cause is my third piano trio, composed in the fall months of 2012, for violinist Michael Jamanis, ‘cellist Sara Male and pianist Steven Graff. While composing this piece I was inspired by images of haunted roads in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This year is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, and In particular I was thinking of the ghosts I’ve seen of Civil War soldiers repetitively crossing some of the dirt roads on the battlefield at dawn and dusk. While composing, I was imagining a composite of love letters written by soldiers recounting their encampment experiences in which lanterns created ghostly halos around music making and dancing that was undoubtedly designed to fend off the fear of impending battle. I also imagined some soldiers writing to those at home expressing hope, but all too often questioning their own motives for fighting in what so many were calling the “Great Lost Cause.”
Three contrasting sections, played without pause, reflect these persistent images. The first section, marked “haunted, melancholy,” explores the feelings of a particular soldier thinking of home as night falls. The music becomes warmer and more expansive before turning eerie as the soldier sees spectral versions of his dead comrades crossing the empty dirt road in front of him, over and over, trapped in a time loop of potent and melancholy memory. The middle section of the trio is a macabre dance. The ghost-like figures drink and dance in the campfires and become ghoulish phantasms. Witnessing the supernatural power of these lost souls, the soldier’s mood suddenly changes to one of pain and grief ending in resignation. Finally, with renewed hope, the third section becomes “expansively amorous,” as the soldier imagines returning home, finally released from what has become a living hell. While expressing his optimism in a love letter he writes, his mood finally returns to a more autumnal, solemn tone, as he reflects upon all that has been-and will be- lost, including his beloved comrades who have been fighting by his side.
Selected Performances
January 13, 2013: Premiere of Love Letters from the Lost Cause (piano trio) by Michael Jamanis, violin, Sara Male, violoncello and Steven Graff, piano, Music at Mid-Month, Lititz Chrurch of the Brethren, Lititz, PA.
Trio Kinetica (2011; 11 minutes)
B-flat clarinet (doubling E-flat and bass clarinets); violin (doubling viola); piano.
Trio Kinetica was composed in 2011 for Trio Clavino. My colleague, Doris Hall-Gulati, suggested that I compose a piece that featured piccolo, bass and soprano clarinets, violin and viola and piano. The title of the piece refers to the idea that dance steps are implied by the music. Each one of the three movements emphasizes different forms of syncopation and various degrees of “swing.” The first movement, “Bossalypso,” is an energetic hybrid dance with cross accents, syncopation and a rhythmic groove combining elements of Calypso and Bossa Nova without being faithful to either genre. This opening dance showcases the piano, along with the soprano clarinet and viola. Owl's Tango requires the clarinetist to switch to bass clarinet and the violist to switch to violin. The tango is based on a series of jazzed-up variations on a bass ostinato that I used in an earler piano piece I called The Owl's Lullaby. The last movement, Oh! Domenico, requires a switch to piccolo clarinet. This lively finale is also quite brisk, and employs some freely adapted allusions to the Baroque Italian composer and harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord music.
Selected Performances
October 19, 2012: Performance by Trio Clavino (Doria Hall-Gulati, Simon Mauer, Xun Pan) at Bulgarian Embassy, Washington, D. C.
June 25-30 2012: Performance in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China (Wuhan Conservatory of Music), by Trio Clavino.
May 30, 2012: Performance by Trio Clavino, (Doria Hall-Gulati, Simon Mauer, Xun Pan) Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg, Austria.
June 3, 2012: Performance by Trio Kinetica in Dreieich, Germany, as part of Burgfestspiele Dreieichenhain.
Bowings without Words, Book I (2009; 15 minutes)
Inspired by the poetry of Dorothy Louise
Violoncello; piano.
Written for cellist Stephen Balderston, Bowings without Words was completed in 2008. In 2004 I was invited to compose a new work for Stephen to be premiered at the Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival. I was working on an opera about Houdini at the time, and I selected one of the arias from this work and adapted it for cello and piano. Gradually I began to make transcriptions of several of my song cycles and operatic arias for cello and piano. These pieces now make up the three books of Bowings without Words that is altogether a sprawling 45-minute work. In my performer’s notes I suggested to Stephen that he feel free to play one book of pieces at a time, or even make up groups of pieces from the three books that fit together in contrasting and logical ways.
Book I is based on my opera about Houdini (words by Dorothy Louise), Book II is based on a song cycle originally based on the poetry of Robert Frost (the lyrics are now based on Civil War letters) and Book III is based on my 1994 song cycle, Six Spanish Songs, based on the poems of Federico García Lorca. The title of the entire work refers to Felix Mendelssohn’s solo piano pieces Lieder ohne Worte, first published in 1832. I was also inspired during the composition of these pieces by Franz Liszt’s solo piano transcriptions of lieder by Franz Schubert.
My aim was to make these pieces for cello and piano something more than literal transcriptions, so freedom was used in adapting the vocal line for the cello. I decided to incorporate idiomatic string writing, but only to the extent that it would not obscure the essentially lyrical nature of the solo part. My feeling is that the cello is particularly capable of imparting the emotional content of these songs.
Book I is adapted from Disappearing Act, my opera about Houdini with a libretto by Dorothy Louise. The five movements in this collection are:
I. We Are Here
II. From Beyind the Grave
III. Can an Echo?
IV. Don't Give Up!
V. Land's End
Selected Performances
June 11-13. 2004: Cellist Stephen Balderston and pianist Edith Orloff at the Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival, Santa Barbara, Ca.
Bowings without Words, Book II (2009; 15 minutes)
Inspired by the poetry of Robert Frost
Violoncello; piano.
Written for cellist Stephen Balderston, Bowings without Words was completed in 2008. In 2004 I was invited to compose a new work for Stephen to be premiered at the Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival. I was working on an opera about Houdini at the time, and I selected one of the arias from this work and adapted it for cello and piano. Gradually I began to make transcriptions of several of my song cycles and operatic arias for cello and piano. These pieces now make up the three books of Bowings without Words that is altogether a sprawling 45-minute work. In my performer’s notes I suggested to Stephen that he feel free to play one book of pieces at a time, or even make up groups of pieces from the three books that fit together in contrasting and logical ways.
Book I is based on my opera about Houdini (words by Dorothy Louise), Book II is based on a song cycle originally based on the poetry of Robert Frost (the lyrics are now based on Civil War letters) and Book III is based on my 1994 song cycle, Six Spanish Songs, based on the poems of Federico García Lorca. The title of the entire work refers to Felix Mendelssohn’s solo piano pieces Lieder ohne Worte, first published in 1832. I was also inspired during the composition of these pieces by Franz Liszt’s solo piano transcriptions of lieder by Franz Schubert.
My aim was to make these pieces for cello and piano something more than literal transcriptions, so freedom was used in adapting the vocal line for the cello. I decided to incorporate idiomatic string writing, but only to the extent that it would not obscure the essentially lyrical nature of the solo part. My feeling is that the cello is particularly capable of imparting the emotional content of these songs.
Book II is adapted from Letters from the Great Lost Cause, a song cycle I composed in 2009. The words to this song cycle were originally based on the poetry of Robert Frost. The song cycle is now based on letters from the Civil War, however the six movements in Bowings wihout Words II are still based on the original poems by Robert Frost:
I. Aquainted with the Night
II. The Flood
III. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
IV. Fireflies in the Garden
V. A Minor Bird
VI. To the Thawing Wind
Bowings without Words, Book III (2009; 16 minutes)
Inspired by the poetry of Federico García Lorca
Violoncello; piano.
Written for cellist Stephen Balderston, Bowings without Words was completed in 2008. In 2004 I was invited to compose a new work for Stephen to be premiered at the Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival. I was working on an opera about Houdini at the time, and I selected one of the arias from this work and adapted it for cello and piano. Gradually I began to make transcriptions of several of my song cycles and operatic arias for cello and piano. These pieces now make up the three books of Bowings without Words that is altogether a sprawling 45-minute work. In my performer’s notes I suggested to Stephen that he feel free to play one book of pieces at a time, or even make up groups of pieces from the three books that fit together in contrasting and logical ways. Tonight is the first performance of Book III, based on my 1994 song cycle, Six Spanish Songs, based on the poems of Federico García Lorca. Book I is based on my opera about Houdini (words by Dorothy Louise) and Book II is based on a song cycle originally based on the poetry of Robert Frost (the lyrics are now based on Civil War letters). The title of the entire work refers to Felix Mendelssohn’s solo piano pieces Lieder ohne Worte, first published in 1832. I was also inspired during the composition of these pieces by Franz Liszt’s solo piano transcriptions of lieder by Franz Schubert.
My aim was to make these pieces for cello and piano something more than literal transcriptions, so freedom was used in adapting the vocal line for the cello. I decided to incorporate idiomatic string writing, but only to the extent that it would not obscure the essentially lyrical nature of the solo part. My feeling is that the cello is particularly capable of imparting the emotional content of these songs. The poems remain as a subtext of course, and it might be helpful to have (in translation) a few lines selected from each poem:
La guitarra (The Guitar): “The weeping of the guitar begins…It weeps the way wind cries over the snowdrifts.”
Canción tonta (Silly Song): “Mama, I wish I were silver. Son, you’d be very cold.”
Media luna (Half Moon): “The moon goes over the water. How tranquil the sky is!”
Canción de jinete (Rider’s Song): “Little black horse, Whither with your dead rider?”
Danza-en el huerto de la Peternera (Flamenco Dance in the Garden): “In the garden’s night, six Gypsy girls, dressed in white are dancing.”
Alba (Dawn): “Bells of Córdoba before daybreak. Bells of dawn.”
Performances
November 6, 2010: Premiere of Bowings without Words III for cello and piano, Stephen Balderston, cellist, with Aglika Angelova, pianist, Barshinger Center for the Performing Arts, Sound Horizons Series, 8 P.M., Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
November 9, 2010: Performance of Bowings without Words III for cello and piano, Stephen Balderston, cellist, with Anglika Angelova, pianist, De Paul University Concert Hall, 8 PM, Chicago, ILL.
Woodwind Quintet (2008; 10 minutes)
Flute; oboe; clarinet; bassoon; horn.
This fifteen-minute woodwind quintet was written in 2008. The writing is both lyrical and whimsical. The moods painted in these five short movements range from poignant to manic. Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, the first movement, “March,” evokes a haunted carnival atmosphere In “Offering” a somber, chordal texture creates a ceremonial effect followed by “Scherzino,” a fluttering and scurrying piece that evokes a wry and witty conversation. “Little Serenade” is operatic in its tone, with lyrical solos for each of the instruments. The “Finale” is an “insect dance” with shifting meters and pungent harmonies.
Selected Performances:
November 4, 2012: The Susquehanna Wind Quintet, The Encore Concert Series, First Baptist Church, York, Pa.
October 11, 2012: Susquehanna Wind Quintet, performance of Woodwind Qunitet at Willow Valley North Cultural Theater, Willow Valley, PA.
Brass Quintet (2008; 15 minutes)
Trumpets (2); horn, trombone, tuba.
Although this work is not programmatic, there are extramusical ideas that might be interesting to some performers and listeners. The first of the four contrasting movements begins with a short fanfare-like section that is followed by a macabre haunted carnival or circus march. The music is quite contrapuntal but several distinctive motives tie things together in this movement. The second movement is a slow, inevitable canzona that builds to an intense, almost violent and snarling furioso climax. The music is lyrical but impersonal and mechanical until it breaks free near the end of the movement. The third movement is a scherzo in five, with a droll trio cast as a waltz. Precision and staccatissimo playing make this seem miniature in nature. The final movement begins with a galloping repeated-note figure that is used in imitation throughout this brisk rondo finale that ends with an unbridled chase to the finish.
Selected Performances
Nov. 3, 2008: Brass Quintet was presented at Lincoln Center in New York City by students from Juilliard in a master class taught by the American Brass Quintet. The class included a short lecture I presented about the work.
June 19, 2010: Premiere of Brass Quintet by New School Brass (Temple University), at Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA. (Final concert in a week-long brass quintet seminar led by Matthew Brown and the other members of the Rodney Mack Philadelphia Big Brass Quintet.
June 18, 2010: Master class with New School Brass Quintet (open rehearsal discussing and performing my Brass Quintet). Rodney Mack Philadelphia Big Brass Quintet Brass Conference at Curtis Institute, Philadelphia, PA
Duo Sonata (2008; 14 minutes)
Viola; doublebass.
Written for double bassist Robert Nairn and violist Heidi von Bernewitz, the Duo Sonata is cast in four contrasting movements. the first movement is rhapsodic and lyrical, the second a scherzo in triple meter, the third a lullaby over a rocking ostinato figure and the last movement is a fast and furious toccata.
Selected Performances
June 9, 2009: Robert Nairn, double bass, Heidi von Bernewitz, viola, International Society of Bassists Convention, Eisenhower Chapel, Penn State, PA.
Five Ghost Tangos (2006;10 minutes)
Soprano sax; viola; bass clarinet; piano.
Written for the unusual combination of soprano sax, viola, bass clarinet and piano, in this work I was inspired by old black and white photos of people dancing the tango in various locations. Each movement is set in a different location (for example Lima, Peru, and New York City) on a particular date. I wrote the piece for a benefit concert, Music Beyond Ourselves. The tangos also contain ragtime rhythms and other more international stylistic influences.
Selected Performances
February 11, 2007: Premiere at the Mount Joy Mennonite Church (Mount Joy, Pa.) as part of “Beyond Ourselves,” and performers included Doris Hall-Gulati, clainet and Rosemary Siegrist, piano.
Feb. 28, 2008: Performance of “Ghost Tangos” at Neffsville Community Church (benefit concert, Beyond Ourselves) including Doris Hall-Gulati, bass clarinet, Rosemary Siegrist, piano.
Feb. 8, 2009: Performance at St. James Episcopal Church, St. Cecilia Concerts, Lancaster, PA. (Performers included Doris Hall-Gulati, bass clarinet, Rosemary Siegrist, piano).
Tres Arullos (2005; 10 minutes)
Violin; viola.
Bess Houdini’s Vaudeville Act (2004; 12 minutes)
Trumpet; piano.
Land’s End (2004; 6 minutes)
Violoncello; piano.
Composed for cellist Stephen Balderston, Land's End is an adaptation of an aria (sung by Queen Victoria) from my Houdini opera Disappearing Act (2008) with a libretto by Dorothy Louise. In the aria, the Queen looks out over the ocean at Land's End, longing for her beloved Albert. This piece is also the final movement of Bowings without Words I.
Selected Performances
June 11-13: Stephen Balderston, cello, Edith Orloff, piano, Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival, Santa Barbara, CA.
In Early March (2004; 7 minutes)
Violin; piano.
A Winter’s Tale Suite (2002; 10 minutes)
Clarinet; violoncello; piano.
The music in this suite was composed at the request of director Dorothy Louise for a production of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. The music is modal, evoking a set of neo-Renaissance dances, with more contemporary rhythmic and harmonic twists.
Selected Performances
2002: Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, John Zurfluh, cello, Elizabeth Keller, piano, recorded the work for Dorothy Louise's production of the play at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster PA.
Crossing Over (2001; 11 minutes)
Violin; clarinet; piano.
Crossing Over was composed especially for a Network for New Music Concert (Philadelphia) at the request of clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati. Doris premiered my Dreamspiral for the same combination of instruments with Alaria in Carnegie Hall two years ago. It might seem odd that I should choose to compose two works for the same combination so close together, but my second work is quite different in intent.
Whereas Dreamspiral explores the boundaries between waking life, dreaming, memory and death (as many of my pieces do), I wanted to say something about crossing over the boundaries that we experience primarily during waking life in this work. Much of what I've written as a composer has had to do with that moment when things change and one realizes that the landscape (be it literal or psychic) shifts. The shift is interesting to me perhaps because of my interest in Tibetan Buddhism and related concepts of always being on unstable ground. We cling to certainty but things are changing all the time. I am interested in those moments when we somehow doubt whether there is a continuity of being other than what we try somewhat desperately to maintain through identity constructs and memory evocation. In reflecting I have realized that my music exists more for the transition or shift than the shift exists for the music, which I feel certain is not true of much of the music I have encountered. In this piece the boundaries crossed are stylistic, harmonic, emotional and nationalistic. The justaposition of memory as opposed to being in the present (which I've written about many times) finds its way into the section right before the coda.
Selected Performances
October 21, 2001: At the Trinity Center for Urban Life, 22nd and Spruce St., Philadelphia, Network for New Music presented the world premiere of Crossing Over, for clarinet, violin and piano, with clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati, violinist Hirona Oka and pianist Linda Reichert.
October 28, 2001: Crossing Over was performed by Network for New Music in the Barshinger Center for the Musical Arts in Hensel Hall at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa.
Berceuse (2000; 4 minutes)
Violin; violas 1 and 2; violoncello.
Bestiary (1999; 8 minutes)
Clarinet duo.
Bestiary was composed for clarinetists Doris Hall-Gulati and Harry Jepson. The individual movements, Squirrels, Harbor Seals, Hedgehogs, Pelicans and Lovebirds are quite contrapuntal. In fact, these are a set of inventions, and some are canonic.
Selected Performances
1999: Performance by Doris Hall-Gulati and Harry Jepson in Lancaster, Pa. at an Art Gallery on Prince Street.
Dream Spiral (1999; 18 minutes)
Violin; clarinet; piano.
I composed Dream Spiral in 1999 especially for Alaria Chamber Ensemble (Yuri Yodovoz, violin, and Nancy Garneiz, piano with guest artist Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet) . I had heard the three musicians rehearse together, and had their particular sound and personalities in mind when I began to compose. The diverse moods of the piece intertwine the pianist’s considerable gift for creating color and nuance, the violinist’s intensely poetic side, and the clarinetist’s mercurial personality with its virtuosic changes of mood. After the work was completed I realized that its episodic structure recalled the return to familiar physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychic landscapes after being transformed by life experiences. Each return seems to be at a different level, and each has the quality of a memory or a parallel universe. The piece as a whole seems like a large dream which builds in intensity as it goes deeper, with the characters changing as a result of their unexpected arrivals in different times and places.
Selected Performances of Dream Spiral:
Premiere: May 6, 1999, Alaria Chamber Ensemble, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, NYC
Fantasy Impromptu (1998; 12 minutes)
Flute (or violin); violoncello; piano.
Fantasy-Impromptu was composed especially for Susan Klick, whose playing I admire greatly. It is a one-movement trio for flute, cello and piano, intended to showcase all three instrumentalists as equal soloists. A little in form like the Chopin piano work of the same name, it is basically a rondo.
The lively principal idea or refrain isn’t introduced at the very beginning, rather there is a slower, more lyrical section that builds in intensity and increases in tempo up to the first statement of the refrain, which is introduced by the flutist, accompanied by pizzicato cello. This lively refrain section is interrupted suddenly by a darker, more somber and slower episode featuring a varied ostinato (repeating melodic pattern) introduced by the piano, joined by the cello playing a dramatic oration punctuated by quadruple stops and recitative-like fragments. It is a nocturnal mood, which is to return later. But first, like the opening of the work, this section also gradually builds in intensity and increases in tempo until it is also interrupted by the lively refrain, again introduced by the flute and pizzicato cello, but joined this time immediately by the piano. The contrasting, slower nocturnal mood returns, this time with the ostinato in the cello, traded off to the flute. Once again the tempo increases, as does the intensity, until yet another variation of the refrain is reprised. This time the refrain itself increases in tempo and virtuosity until the music deserves the indication Presto energico. After several furioso outbursts accompanied by fortissimo chords in the piano part, the music slows and the final variant of the nocturnal ostinato begins, also in the piano. This time the piano extends the idea with a fuller chordal accompaniment that builds to a maestoso mood which subsides after a fiery outburst by the flute. The music subsides to pianississimo after a ghostly melody played by the cello in harmonics. Suddenly the piano reintroduces the lively refrain, and the trio concludes Presto e fieramente, with a flashy coda.
In order to capture a variety of moods and characters, I employed a tonal language which is highly chromatic in many sections, uses synthetic modes, and also features large tonal areas with materials as varied as triads and clusters. Frequently shifting meters and precision ensemble playing make it a piece of challenging, but hopefully rewarding to play, piece of chamber music.
Selected performances of Fantasy-Impromptu
Premiere: March 13, 1999, Susan Klick, flute, Matthew Herren, ‘cello, Steven Graff, piano, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA
Performance: October 19, 2003: Trio Fedele. F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA
Wisteria (1997; 5 minutes)
E Shakuhachi; guitar; viola; violoncello.
This short piece was composed for a CD, Waterlilies: Visions of Monet, released by Moonbridge Recordings, and a concert at the Portland Art Museum in conjuncion with an exhibition of the paintings of Claude Monet. This particular piece was inspired by a Monet painting of the same name.
Selcted Performances
1997: Premiere by Ensemble Giverny at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon.
Recording
Ensemble Giverny on the Moonbridge Recording Waterlilies: Visions of Monet.
Do Not Go Gentle (1996; 13 minutes)
Violin; violoncello; piano.
The piano trio, Do Not Go Gentle… was composed at the request of the Philadelphia Trio in the summer and fall months of 1995. The title refers to the poem by Dylan Thomas, written on the death of the poet’s father. The lines from the poem that struck me as particularly meaningful at the time of the composition were:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage, until the dying of the light…
At the time, several of my good friends and colleagues, some facing cancer and some AIDS, were exhibiting extraordinary courage and dignity in their struggles. I was also being made aware of the different stages of the dying and the grieving processes. The piece, cast in a single movement, begins with anger and denial, and then after a building intensity gradually moves into a transcendental dissolving, a peaceful surrender.
Selected Performances of …Do Not Go Gentle:
Premiere: March 10, 1996, The Philadelphia Trio, F&M Sound Horizons Series,
Lancaster, PA.
April 14, 1996, The Philadelphia Trio,
Friends of Chamber Music in the Delaware Valley,
Devon, PA.
October 6, 1998, The Philadelphia Trio, Temple University,
Philadelphia, Pa.
March 24, 2001, The Philadelphia Trio, Weiss Center, Bucknell University,
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Felix (1996; 6 minutes)
Soprano saxophone; alto saxophone; tenor saxophone; baritone saxophone.
Paseos (1995; 9 minutes)
Flute; guitar.
Paseos for flute and guitar was written at the request of guitarist James Hontz. These short pieces were inspired by a vacation I took in Spain. Each little excursion is intended to be a miniature evocation of a particular setting I visited. The pieces are meant to capture the spirit of a stroll or walk, sometimes along a cloudy beach, or at other times (as the titles suggest), in the solitude of the moonlit mountains. The work has been recorded by the Hontz-McDermott Duo on the CGS label and was used as a fund-raising gift in the WITF Harrisburg pledge drive in 1996.
Selected Performances of Paseos
Premiere: March 10, 1996, Hontz-McDermott Duo, Fine Arts at First, Monroe, MI.
March 31, 1996, Hontz-McDermott Duo, Flute Society of Greater Philadelphia, Perkins Center for the Arts, Philadelphia
April 16, 1996, Hontz-McDermott Duo, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA.
May 2, 1996, Radio Broadcast, WITF, Hontz-McDermott Duo, and numerous other radio broadcasts of recording during fund-raising drive of 1996.
August 27, 1996, Live Radio Broadcast, WNYC, NYC, Hontz-McDermott, Duo
Review of Paseos
American Record Guide, Elaine Fine
“John Carbon’s Paseos, with its harmonically and rhythmically interesting interchanges and unusual guitar writing, is the most challenging music here. It has five playful, light, soft and sweet sections. The rest of the contemporary music is all harmless and very tonal.”
Ghost Town Sketches (1995; 15 minutes)
English horn (or clarinet); viola; piano.
Ghost Town Sketches was composed in 1993 at the request of English hornist Tamara Field, and was premiered in Boston in 1994. It has been recorded by members of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble for an upcoming release on the MMC recording label. The following quote by Edward Abbey from The Brave Cowboy served as inspiration:
There is a valley in the West where
phantoms brood and mourn,
pale phantoms dying of nostalgia and bitterness.
You can hear them, shivering and chattering
among the leaves of the old dry mortal cottonwoods
down by the river…whispering and moaning
and hissing with the wind…whining their past away
with the wild dove and the mockingbird… and you
may see one, touch one, in the silences and space
and mute terror of the desert.
I have incorporated some cowboy songs taken from the collection by Alan Lomax to help create a ghostly western mood.
I was able to visit several ghost towns as a child, and some of the less commercial ones made quite an impression on me. Each movement is intended to capture the haunted memories of a particular date and time (around a holiday, or in the case of III, an equinox) in a different ghost town.
I. October 31st, 1888, midnight
II. February 14th, 1888, afternoon
III. July 4th, 1889, noon
IV. March 21st, 1852, daybreak
V. November 25th, 1889, sundown
VI. December 24th, 1892, 5:38 p.m.
Selected performances of Ghost Town Sketches
Premiere: October 9, 1994, Sad Trio, Old Deerfield Sunday Afternoon Concert Series,
Deerfield, MI.
September 23, 1995, Sad Trio, First Presbyterian Church Chamber Music Series,
Crystal Falls, MI.
August 23, 1995, Sad Trio, Newton School of Music, Boston.
November 17, 1995, Triptych, Society of Composers Region III Conference, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA. (also broadcast on WITF: Harrisburg).
June 11-13, 2004: David Peck, clarinet, Edith Orloff, piano and Roxanna Patterson, viola, at the Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival, Santa Barbara, CA.
October 8, 2011, Trio Clavino, Barshinger Center, Sound Horizons Series, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
New Moon Music (1994; 15 minutes)
String quartet.
My second string quartet, New Moon Music, was composed especially for the Essex Quartet as a companion piece to my first string quartet, Quartetto spettrale, which is a primarily dark and macabre piece. New Moon Music is intended to evoke the entire lunar cycle by its form which waxes in mood and texture up to the golden section and then wanes until it disappears. Astrologically the new moon symbolizes growth, renewal and enthusiastic rebirth, and certain parts of the piece attempt to capture the urgency of the new growth around the vernal equinox.
Selected performances of New Moon Music
Premiere: July 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1994, by the Essex Quartet, At the Arcady Music Festival at four locations in Maine: Belfast, Bar Harbour, Bangor and Dover Foxcroft; all four performances broadcast on Maine Public Radio
Review of New Moon Music
The Ellsworth American, Ellsworth, ME, Win Pusey
“The opening work, a world premiere of New Moon Music, by John Carbon, written for this [Arcady Music] festival, began with Yuhsik Andrew Kim’s haunting cello solo. Kim counts Yo-Yo Ma as one of his coaches and there were moments of uncanny resemblance.
Carbon’s music projected dissonant piquancy without losing a certain semblance of tonal structure and each player made the most of it. Violist Amy Dulsy-Little brought dynamic warmth as the intensity increased and the violins, Claire Chan and Zoran Jakovcic, added symmetrical brilliance. The music itself dissolved into joyous cacophony before a powerful unison theme again brought focus.
Although no movements were indicated there was a clear separation into two parts, the second being a marvelous first violin solo accompanied by the other three voices. Jakovcic displayed the charisma of a pied piper in the bird-song like cadenza, sublimating his first-class technical skill to creativity. When he finally descended into a g-string rhapsody at the end, it sent shivers into the room.”
Quartetto spettrale (1993; 13 minutes)
String quartet.
My first string quartet, Quartetto spettrale, was composed especially for the Essex Quartet. Cast in a single 15-minute movement, the piece unfolds from a series of juxtaposed vignettes which are of strongly contrasting moods. A violent opening gesture is followed by a more elegant mood, which gives way to a lyric intensity. The overall topic is that of the “spectral” or haunted and macabre, and the vignettes are extended and developed into a long crescendo and accelerando of increasing intensity near the climax of the work. While composing the quartet I was influenced by Janacek, Ligeti, Szymanowski, Bartók, Poe and Baudelaire.
Selected Performances of Quartetto spettrale
September 17, 1993, Essex Quartet, F&M Sound Horizon Series, Miller Recital Hall,
Lancaster, PA.
September 21, 1993, Essex Quartet, Nicholas Music Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Music for Two Clarinets (1993; 9 minutes)
Clarinet duo.
Music for Two Clarinets was written for clarinetists Doris Hall-Gulati and Harry Jepson in 1993. It is a set of miniature character pieces which combine to create a 9-minute work.
Selected Performances of Music for Two Clarinets
Premiere: May 12, 1993, Doris Hall-Gulati and Harry Jepson, New Art Voices Opening, Lancaster, PA
June 9, 1995, Harry Jepson and Bernie Schwartz at the New Settlement Art School, NYC
Fantasy (1991; 10 minutes)
Harpsichord and string quartet.
Fantasy for solo harpsichord and string quartet was composed in 1991 at the request of harpsichordist Bruce Gustafson, for the dedication of Miller Recital Hall at Franklin and Marshall College. It is a 10-minute work in rondo form, with a dark, foreboding beginning section that is contrasted with joyous, more dance-like episodes that eventually triumph over the haunted, macabre mood of the beginning and middle of the piece. The two moods of the work depict the old chapel before restoration, and then the new recital hall with its more cheerful demeanor. Even though short, the piece has aspects of a mini-concerto, especially the cadenza-like runs and flourishes near the end, which might remind one of Bach’s Brandenburg 5.
Selected Performances of Fantasy
Premiere: February 11, 1992, Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
March 24, 2003: Presented as part of “Musicos del Norte,” Fantasy for Harpsichord and String Quartet was performed by harpsichordist María Teresa Chenlo at Casa de Américas-Palacio de Linares in Madrid.
Troika (1989; 15 minutes)
English horn; clarinet; violoncello; piano.
Much of my recent music is intended as a ticket to a psychological journey. Often taken without pause, these journeys are meant to come full circle, paradoxically ending in the same place but seen from a different perspective.
Troika, was composed in the Fall of 1989 (completed on Halloween) at the special request of Tamara Field. The unusual combination of English horn, clarinet, cello and piano, suggested a rather dark, wintry landscape to me. In fact, the image that first came to mind–and that which I attempted to convey throughout the work–was of a dark snowy night spent in a horse-drawn sleigh. From this image I fantasized a story of sorts that put me as a child in a troika (horse-drawn sleigh) crossing a frozen winter lake somewhere in the mountains of Europe during the second World War. I had a vision of being held-safe and protected-in my father’s arms as we crossed the lake. The allusion to Schubert’s Erlkönig came to mind, as the journey crystallized in my consciousness. As in the Schubert, while we traveled into the snowy night something dark and frightening surrounded and threatened us (an allusion to the time period perhaps), but unlike the outcome in Goethe’s poem, we managed to travel through the danger to the safety of a warm and welcoming hotel on the other side of the lake. These images were much in my mind as I worked on the piece. Although the opening, more comforting, music returns near the end of the work, there is a subtle change in tone that suggests a shift in consciousness. We’re back where we started, but our perspective is different because of what we’ve been through.
Cast in a single movement, the piece calls for virtuosic chamber-music expertise from all four players, and is dedicated to Tamara Field.
Selected Performances of Troika
Preview: Tamara Field and Chicago Lyric Players, L’Anse, MI
Premiere: September 17, 1989, Tamara Field, with players from Chicago Lyric Opera, The Chicago Temple, Chicago, IL
April 28, 1991, Tamara Field with the Timberland Chamber Players, Crystal Falls, MI
November 3, 1991, Tamara Field, English horn, Frank Corliss, piano, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cello, and Richard Shaughnessy, clarinet, on the 1991-1992 Parlor Recital Series at the United Parish in Brookline, MA
Ballade (1987; 13 minutes)
Violoncello, piano.
Yearning after the unattainable soulmate, the paradox of perfect love–unrealized except as a frozen moment in time–and the inexorable progress of change (as reflected in the transitory nature of romantic striving) were all much on my mind as I composed Ballade for cello and piano.
Cast in a single movement, the work is rhapsodic in character, and compresses a contrasting multi-movement scheme into a single movement fantasy. The serenely peaceful opening is meant to capture the spirit of the Alba, a medieval genre of poetry that revolves around the idea of lovers parting at dawn, the most famous example by a later writer being that of the dawn scene (“It is the lark”, etc.) in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Quasi bird song writing iand resonant chords in the piano join the yearning solo cello line, which builds to an impassioned outburst. The fantasy flows into a scherzo-like section filled with colorful scurrying pizzicati notes, jeté glissandi, and muted notes in the piano. The scherzo mood opens out into a return of the opening material, now even more anguished and haunting, which builds to a high point in both range and tension. The mood then turns darker, perhaps more cynical, as a demonic dance rhythm takes over and pushes ahead full steam into a virtuoso cadenza for the cello. The macabre dance rhythms survive the cadenza, and emerge in the piano, joined by cello accompaniment to make up the coda which ends the piece.
Dedicated to and written for Cellist Jan Pfeiffer, Ballade, was composed in 1987 and premiered by Ms. Pfeiffer that same year.
Selected performances of Ballade:
Premiere: April 24, 1987, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Andrew Bonner, pianist, Belmont Music School, Belmont, MA.
March 10, 1992, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, Music at Holy Cross, Boston
May 30, 1992, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, University of Missouri, Kansas City
November 1, 1995, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA.
November 5, 1995, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA.
Night Music (1987; 9 minutes)
Violin; piano.
Night Music, for violin and piano, was composed in the late spring of 1987, at the request of Marta Jurjevich and Steven Edwards. The piece is a “Fantasy-Nocturne,” cast in a single movement, lasting about nine minutes. In the tradition of Bartók and Crumb’s “night music,” my piece features nocturnal sounds reminiscent of natural phenomena, obtained by the performers through the use of “special effects” ranging from string harmonics, glissandi and pizzicati, to inside the piano playing. This sound world is intended to evoke the magical perceptions of night that we feel as children (and sometimes as adults) that can be scary, playful, or peaceful in the course of a single night of existence (both in dreaming and in insomnia).
Selected Performances of Night Music
Premiere: October 12, 1987, Marta Jurjevich, violin, Steven Edwards, piano, St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, IN.
November 30, 1987, Marta Jurjevich, violin, Steven Edwards, piano, F&M Sunday Concert Series, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
PIANO
Zodiac Cats (2023; 60 minutes)
Zodiac Cats (2023) is a sequel to Astro Dogs composed in 2019. I composed an earlier piece titled Astro Cats (2004) for guitar but the pieces in that collection are very short and therefore I’ve chosen the present title in this case to make way for what I hope cat lovers and pianists will feel is a worthy companion to Astro Dogs. Since the world is at times polarized regarding dog and cat lovers I found that as soon as Astro Dogs for piano was released people started asking me “Why not Astro Cats?” The premise in this oft-requested sequel is slightly different. Whereas each sign of the zodiac is represented by a different domestic dog breed in Astro Dogs, the present collection only features three domestic cat breeds: American Shorthair, Siamese and Maine Coon. The other cats included (each assigned to a different zodiacal sign) are wild felids, such as Lions, Tigers, Leopards and other wild cats. There is a parallel to Astro Dogs regarding the inclusion of one fanciful creature, the Werewolf in the previous collection and the Cheshire Cat in the present work. In this set, these are more substantial pieces. The entire work lasts one hour, whereas Astro Dogs lasts half that long. One controversial choice I made was to include the Hyena in the present collection. According to José E. Castello, writing in The Princeton Field Guide to Felids and Hyenas of the World (2020), “Despite their dog-like appearance, these animals [Hyenas] are more closely related to cats and other feliform taxa than to carnivores, such as dogs or bears.”
As in Astro Dogs, in which a different dog breed is assigned to each zodiac sign, in the present collection I again assign a different felid to each sign. My choices are based on popular sun-sign astrology, although some of the choices are also based on more esoteric astrology and my associations with people I have been close to who share the sign of the zodiac in question or the personalities (more imagined than scientific) of the cat chosen to represent the sign. For example, for Pisces I chose the Siamese Cat. I wrote this piece shortly after my Mother passed away. She was a great cat lover, in fact the dedication at the beginning of the work, “Think Cats!” Is a reference to a sign she had on her screen door for decades meant to remind us about her indoor cats and their attempts to venture out into an unsafe world filled with coyotes and other dangers. Perhaps her favorite cat was a Siamese named Sam, and Mom’s sun sign was Pisces, hence the pairing of these two categories. I draw upon my feelings about the sign Pisces, the Siamese Cat and my Mother’s passing in this piece. Other pieces share similar creative catalysts.
As in Astro Dogs, where I have owned a few of the breeds included in the collection, various members of our family have had several of the cat types included in the present collection, notably the Maine Coon (one of our favorites) and American Shorthair. In the case of the latter, my Father’s piano is “played” (as in real life) by an American Shorthair. The ascending theme from composer Domenico Scarlatti’s “Fuga del gatto” (Sonata in G minor, K. 30) acts as a recurring motive and harmonic underpinning for this piece. There is a legend regarding Scarlatti’s cat, Pulcinella, who supposedly walked across the composer’s keyboard, suggesting the subject of the fugal exposition in the piece, which was published in 1739. The composer never used the title “Cat’s Fugue” but the story, true or not, persisted, as did the theme, used by other composers such as Handel and Reicha.
Other inspirations drawn from cats include their kinetic behaviors. At times I’ve indicated articulations such as “with little cat feet.” Pouncing, crouching and sprinting are all alluded to, maybe not so consciously, but in the composition I found myself drawing on elements of the hunt and the more mysterious, crafty nature of both domestic and wild cats. The predator cats inspired a wide range of expression from the cuddly and cute to the ferocious. As mentioned above, I included the Cheshire Cat in this collection. Although most of what we associate with this entirely fictional breed of cat is due to its appearance in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, where the cat can disappear, grin enigmatically, and give frustrating non answers to Alice’s pointed questions, the literary invention of this imaginary cat and its various qualities dates back to as early as 1788. One other influence the listener might hear would be the nationalistic qualities associated with the cat types due to their habitats, for example the Peruvian Pampas Cat or Saharan Cheetah, in which I was only very subtly inspired by thoughts of the habitat and how the cat interacts with that environment. This is perhaps most apparent in the case of the Snow Leopard, which favors steep terrain, which I think influenced some of the figuration in this more agile piece.
-John Carbon
Astro Dogs (2019; 31 minutes)
Astro Dogs is the sequel to my guitar piece Astro Cats (1992). As in Astro Cats, the twelve pieces in Astro Dogs are based on the twelve astrological signs of the zodiac. In Astro Cats the specific type of cat was not specified for each piece, however in Astro Dogs, each piece is not only associated with a specific zodiac sign, it is also associated with a specific dog breed.
1. Beagle (Aquarius)
2. Basset Hound (Taurus)
3. Bichon Frise (Gemini)
4. Saint Bernard (Leo)
5. Standard Poodle (Libra)
6. Piera Canario (Scorpio)
7. Labrador Retriever (Sagittarius)
8. Chihuahua (Pisces)
9. Toy Boston Bull Terrier (Virgo)
10. Pekingese (Cancer)
11. Werewolf (Capricorn)
12. Irish Wolfhound (Aries).
–John Carbon
Short Stories (2018; 50 minutes)
The 24 pieces contained in my Short Stories for piano were composed between 2013-2018. I had originally grouped the pieces into a collection titled The Well-Blended Primer (subsequently withdrawn). I substantially revised, in some cases reconceived, the entire collection in 2017-18. Because my original intention was to include pieces that exhibited pitch centricity around each of the 24 possible major and minor keys, the earlier title, refering to J. S. Bach's 2-volume Das wohltemperierte Klavier, seemed to fit. As in Bach's work, some of the pieces in my collection exhibited a pronounced contrapuntal attitude. During the development of the work I had planned to alternate prelude and fugue-like pieces, but the end result was more of a hybrid collection that could be thought of as being influenced by Bach, but even more so by Chopin's group of 24 one-of-each-key Preludes, and systematically key-centered contrapuntal collections by Hindemith and Shostakovich. I was also influenced by shorter character pieces by composers such as Schumann, Debussy and Prokofiev that exhibit a more lyrical, narrative nature, to name only a few composers.
In Short Stories, my plan to alternate preludes and fugues, or at least to systematically vary the degree of contrapuntal density, isn't readily perceived. There is certainly enforced variety in pitch centricity, but this feature isn't arranged symmetrically, and there is a range of tonal, modal, chromatic and atonal languages explored in the collection. Stylistically, there are many influences to be heard here. In fact, some of the titles of the individual pieces refer to other piano composers (for example Tea with Claude and Maurice, Czerny's Id, George Sand's Dream and Joplin's Tick). The name of the present work, Short Stories, describes these modest narratives better than the original title and the revised collection is less abstract than the 2013 version. From a pianist's standpoint, I would venture to say, these reconceived pieces are more concerned with color, register and voicings particular to the instrument. Some of the more extensive revisions I made to the original pieces were stylistic ones involving changes in the harmonic language and articulation. In other cases I fleshed out sketch-like miniatures into more substantially developed portraits, or conversely, I deleted what I thought might be considered to be extraneous material that obscured the abbreviated sketch-like nature of the narration.
John Carbon
Five Snapshots (2018; 18 minutes)
Madeleines (2016; 13 minutes)
PERFORMANCE NOTES
Madeleines (2016)
I. Mémoire triste dans un café
II. Il pleut à Brest
III. François et ses yeux dangereux
IV. Promenade dans la ménagerie de Versailles
V. Madeleine déteste les devoirs
Composed in 2016, Madeleines is similar to my two sets of Spanish Lessons (1988 and 2001) which are both suites of character pieces for piano inspired by my admittedly limited travel in Spain. Madeleines is inspired by a much earlier hairbrained trip I took to France (and the rest of the Grand Tour) with my sister when I was in college. The title refers to Proust’s “episode of the madeleine,” in which involuntary memory overwhelms the protagonist when he bites into one of these small cakes. I also sometimes experience poignant memories from our fondly remembered trip triggered by various catalysts.The five episodes in this set of pieces attempt to capture the essence of some of these memories. The first piece, Mémoire triste dans un café (sad memory in a café) serves the purpose of a prélude. One might conclude that the madeleine is sampled in this location. Il pleut á Brest (It is raining in Brest) evokes memories of the wet weather in Brest, a city in Brittany near the coast. I was curious about this area because, during our travels, we met a boy in Paris with dark and dangerous eyes named François (François et ses yeux dangereux) who was from that area. In Il pleut the sound of rain alternates with church bells and fog horns (one of the poetic sensations I remember vividly about Brest). The third piece (François) is a blend of a barcarolle and a funeral march. I continued to send one-way letters to François after we returned and one day the French police called to tell me that he was dead and that they had found one of my letters on his body, which had been tossed into the Seine. They wanted more information, and they revealed that he had been smuggling drugs out of Turkey. I think the next piece, Promenade dans la ménagerie deVersailles (Walk in the zoo atVersailles), is tempered by later memories of a trip I took to the zoo at Schönbrunn palace near Vienna, the oldest Baroque zoo, which was in a terrible state of decay when I saw it, hence the wistful air. The finale of the set, Madeleine déteste les devoirs (Madeleine hates homework) is a bow to the French primer I grew up with, which had as one of its main characters a little girl who I think may have been named Madeleine. I know her father was named François. My memories are mixed up, the actual François Thibaud is remembered as the inventor of the fast-track method of learning French, which was in vogue when I first studied it in 6th grade. The idea here is that Madeleine, the daughter of François, is having a tantrum and playing with her hoops or a bike rather than doing her English homework.
John Carbon
Three Impromptus (2014; 17 minutes)
Small Town Memories (2010; 14 minutes)
Small Town Memories was written at the request of my colleague, pianist Elizabeth Keller. These eight preludes were designed to be playable by students in her master class. Although each piece has a seasonal and diurnal or nocturnal title (for example, “Summer Evening”), the memories in each prelude are as much about growing up playing the piano as they are about Spring bike riding in the ravines above Lake Michigan, or star gazing on a clear, sub-zero winter night.
Selected Performances
April 9, 2011: Premiere of “Small Town Memories, Eight Preludes for Piano” by Steven Graff, Hudson River Music Hall, Hudson Falls, New York.
November 10, 2011: Performance of “Small Town Memories” by pianist Steven Graff at Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College, NYC.
Recording
Recorded on the Zimbel label by Steven Graff, John Carbon: Piano Music Played By Steven Graff.
Piano Sonata (2009; 24 minutes)
Composed in 2009, the Piano Sonata was written for pianist Steven Graff. It is a challenging work that places considerable technical demands on the player. I see it as a synthesis of several different musical languages I've favored in the last thirty years. Diminished harmonies (juxtaposed octatonic scales) contrast with more tonal/modal pockets of color. There is no extra-musical idea, but instead a progression of varied emotional states and themes cast in conventional forms.
The first movement is a modified sonata form and it begins with a plaintive, yearning idea, followed by a second, more amorous contrasting section. Fragments of the opening material return and become ever more brooding, insistent and turbulent until a dynamic and textural climax is reached. A nocturnal section recasts the material, only to return to a dark restatement of the opening theme in a low register in invertible counterpoint. A slower and darker coda includes a reminiscence of the gentle second theme.
The second movement is a very fast scherzo with jagged, at times jazzy, harmonies and cross rhythms. The material here is derived from small intervallic sets (including quartal hamonies and clusters of smaller intervals). There is no let up in tempo, and in fact there is a gradual and relentless increase in tempo that ends full tilt with a bang.
The slow movement that follows is a set of variations based on a chord progression adapted from American composer Paul Cooper's 4th Symphony. He was one of my most influential teachers. His harmonies are designed to reflect the overtone series in a “luminous” fashion. The presentation of the “theme” is marked solenne and it presents the harmonic framework both linearly and vertically in a solemn and introspective setting. Five continuous variations follow: maestoso, grandiosamente, cantabile, giocoso, piacevole, concluding with a coda marked serenamente.
The brisk final movement is a rondo, with a playful minor-mode theme that is at times mischievous, demonic and mysterious. One episode that returns in various guises is a tonally more colorful, soaring and expansive melody. Near the end the main theme becomes barbaric before a cadenza-like prestissimo coda. There is a brief and interrupted restatement of the more sentimental second theme before the sonata ends with an explosive cadence.
Recording
Steven Graff has recorded the Piano Sonata on a Zimbel release, John Carbon: Piano Music Played by Steven Graff.
Ghostly Flickerings (2006; 3 minutes)
This short, atmospheric work was composed in 2006, originally as the final music in my Houdini opera, Disappearing Act. The opera, with a libretto by Dorothy Louise, centers on the debate that Doyle and Houdini had about life beyond the grave. Other images and characters, including the ghost of Queen Victoria, and a shell-shocked soldier from World War I are projected as “ghostly flickerings” at the very close of the opera. The undulating, arpeggiated chords allude to the ocean music used at the beginning of Act II, which sets the scene at the boardwalk in Atlantic City.
Selected Performances
May 17, 2005: Premiere of Ghostly Flickerings, Carson Cooman, pianist, at the Maxwell Davies tribute program, May 17, 2005, in Pittsburgh at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Sept. 25, 2005: Ghostly Flickerings was given its UK premiere by pianist Trey Hargrove at the Peter Maxwell Davies Tribute Concerts, St. Paul's, Ealing, outside London.
Recording
Recorded by pianist Steven Graff on the Zimbel label, John Carbon: Piano Music Played by Steven Graff.
Tarantulatella (2005; 3 minutes)
Sonatina (2002; 13 minutes)
Six More Spanish Lessons (2001; 14 minutes)
Six More Spanish Lessons (the sequel to the 1990 set) was composed twelve years later at the request of pianist William Wright. The location and characters for this suite of character pieces is the ranch Tierra Alta. It was written shortly after my father and his wife established a vineyard with this name and built a Peruvian horse farm with a Columbian-flavored hacienda. Muy suave (very soft and gentle) acts as a prologue, reflecting the pastel colors of a sunset looking down a long valley, past the coast range, towards the Pacific. These are colors I often use, having spent my early adult years in this area of the world. As in the first set of lessons there are three zoological references. The first, Jaranera y su potra Primavera, is a snapshot of a Peruvian mare and her filly. The piece opens with the proud and elegant paso llano (even footfall) of the mare, Jaranera, which alternates with the freely running filly (Primavera). The abrupt contrasts and alternation between these two gaits reflects the dynamic rhythmic counterpoint the equine duo performs on the rolling pastures. El Portillo del emperrado (the little door in the vineyard wall) was inspired by a grand stucco wall. Debussy’s Spanish-flavored prélude La Puerta del vino (the wine gate) is the subtext. The Debussy piece is marked Mouvement de Habanera. I have integrated that rhythm and similarly pungent harmonic language in my bow to the original. Los Patos en el estanque draws on the undulating and colliding patterns of pond water whipped up by ducks and the hot late afternoon Santa Ana winds. Canción de cuna del buho para los ciervitos (the owl’s lullaby for the little deer) is cast in the form of a slow and poignant folia (in this case continuous variations based on a descending bass ostinato (i- bVII-vi-V) centered on Bb minor (same key as the dream in the first set of lessons) that migrates gradually to the other side of the circle of fifths (E minor). The suite concludes with the rollicking Jabalinas en las uvas (wild boar in the grapes). These marauders are often found on ranches in the southwest, and they can wreak havoc. There is a hunt through the hilly vineyard and down into Jabalina Hollow in this piece that accelerates to a furious pace as the hogs are chased away.
Selected Performances
Feb. 23, 2003: Pianist William Wright performed the premiere of Six More Spanish Lessons at a Sound Horizons Concert in Barshinger Center for the Performing Arts, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
Recording
Steven Graff has recorded Six More Spanish Lessons on a Zimbel release, John Carbon: Piano Music Played by Steven Graff.
Time Out of Mind (2001; 8 minutes)
Time Out Of Mind was composed in 2001. the middle piece, Elegy for Peg, was composed after my Grandmother's passing at age 99. This movement has subsequently been used in dramatic contexts (Dorothy Louise's production of The Winter's Tale and dance concerts choreographed by Julie Brodie). The outer movements of this three-movement set were both composed specifically for dancers. The central thread that permeates the work is that of time passing. In the case of the central movement, death signifies the ultimate cessation of one type of time and the generation of memories for those left behind. This movement contains a cataclysmic and shattering epiphany, and then closes down to a deafening silence at the final unison cadence. The first movement, Time Passing, Passing Time, is about the inevitable forward motion of time (its fluidity). the pianist should spin a dream-like atmosphere (achieved through rubato and liberal use of the damper pedal). Crazy Time, the frenetic third movement, should be played crisply and quite percussively sempre non rubato. It suggests the unexpected twists of fate that hurl us, sometimes unwillingly, through time.
Selected Performances
October 15, 2003: Elizabeth Keller, pianist, choreography by Julie Brodie, Roeschel Center for the Performing Arts, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
September 25, 2011: Elizabeth Keller, Barshinger Center for the Performing Arts
Recording
Recorded in 2012 by Steven Graff on Zimbel Recordings (ZR121), John Carbon: Piano Music Played by Steven Graff.
Six Spanish Lessons (1988; 18 minutes)
Six Spanish Lessons, originally written for solo harpsichord, but piano as well, was composed in the summer of 1988 during a period when I was enjoying beginning Spanish lessons along with my friend and colleague harpsichordist Bruce Gustafson. The lessons were given to us by another colleague and friend, Ana Börger-Reese, and took place in her garden. The piece was subsequently premiered by Mr. Gustafson at Franklin and Marshall College that fall.
The titles need a bit of explanation, even for those who have more than a passing knowledge of the language. After a Prólogo, which sets the mood with a reference to a well-known folk tune, the suite begins with the depiction of the manic La perra Marysol, the very small hyperactive dog of our teacher, who was always present at these gatherings. In the following piece, La siesta de Domenico Scarlatti, the famous harpsichordist/composer is depicted during his sojourn in Spain with hand-crossings (one of his trademarks) perhaps in the middle of a dream (indicated in the score by the words “el sueño”). Because Ana used to always take a siesta before, during and after our lessons, this piece is necessary. Next we have Siempre elegante, (always elegant), a reference to the extravagant meals Ana served in her garden. The absurdist piece, Y de niño? (and as a child?) refers to the terrifying drills in the imperfect tense we performed as students. The teacher is depicted in the faster parts of the piece and the students more slowly. The suite concludes with El trabajo del gato (the cat’s work), which refers to Blanche, Bruce’s cat, yet another resident of the garden who was always occupied with afternoon chores.
The piano version has been recorded on the Zimbel label by pianist Steven Graff
Selected Performances of Six Spanish Lessons
Premiere: Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Franklin and Marshall College Sunday Concert Series, Lancaster, PA
September 28, 1991, Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Society of Composers Region III Conference at Radford University, Radford, VA
March 31, 2012: Pianist Steven Graff performed Six Spanish Lessons for piano at Hudson River Music Hall, Hudson Falls, NY
Sphinx (1990; 5 minutes)
The title of this work, a word that generally connotes the awe-inspiring mystery and majesty of the ancient Egyptians, is something of an irony, as it is really a very light-hearted and playful tune for solo piano. To add to this playful effect, the ostinato played on five “prepared” notes is heard throughout. As a further irony, Dr. Carbon wrote this piece soon after celebrating his 39th birthday and, evidently beginning to feel his own mortality, included musical excerpts that dealt with death and passing: the traditional Gregorian chant “Dies Irae”. a theme from the Les Adieux Sonata by Beethoven, a leitmotif from the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheinhold with clock chimes which symbolize the passage of time. (notes by Peter Smith)
Selected Performances of Sphinx
Premiere: January 27, 1991, Peter Smith, piano, senior recital at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Icarus (1989; 11 minutes)
Icarus, for piano solo, was composed in the summer of 1988 at the request of pianist William Koseluk. The title refers to the Greek myth about Daedalus, an inventor and builder of the labyrinth, and his son, Icarus, who were punished by King Minos of Crete by being placed in the labyrinth. So difficult was the labyrinth that not even its inventor could discover the way out. Daedalus, however, made two pairs of wings as a means of escape. Before the flight, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, as the wax that held the wings together might melt and he would be killed. Icarus, however, was so thrilled by the joy of flight that he disobeyed his father and soared higher and higher, only to fall into the sea when the wax melted.
The mood of the piece reflects the youthful enthusiasm and heroism of the flight of Daedalus and his son and evokes the romantic spirit of the “wanderer.” The work is cast as a one-movement rondo lasting thirteen minutes and is intended as a brilliant showcase for the pianist, who at times might seem to be struggling against impossible odds.
Selected Performances of Icarus
Premiere: November 15, 1988: William Koseluk, pianist, Artists in Concert, Franklin & Marshall College
May 2, 1989: William Koseluk, pianist, Prisms New Music Ensemble, University of California, Santa Barbara
December 8, 1990: Broadcast on BBC New Music program, Rolf Hind, Piano
April 5, 1993: Jon Hendrickson, pianist, Rice University, Houston
June 11-13, 2004: Edith Orloff, Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival
Metaphysical Études, Book I (2004; 12 minutes)
John Carbon’s Metaphysical Études, Book I, contains four meditations inspired by the ancients’ quaternity of elements: air, earth, fire, and water. “Ariel’s Invention” turns into an upward spiral of counterpoint that vanishes into thin air at the end of this brief but difficult étude. The mugwumps in the second movement are “persons of great importance,” rather than specific political creatures, and their dance is earthy and barbaric.
“Fireflies,” written ppp throughout, builds in intensity as the fireflies appear over a dark passacaglia. This movement was the most difficult one to write. The composer’s problem was how to portray fire. He found the answer one spring evening outside the Herman Arts Center (on the Franklin and Marshall College campus) when he stopped to watch the fireflies come out. The “Rainmaker’s Song” suggests drops of water by means of a continual flurry of notes that gradually change color as they evolve into new patterns. (notes by Courtney Adams)
Selected Performances of Metaphysical Études, Book I
Premiere: February 15, 1985, Betty Oberacker, piano, Sunday Concert Series, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
March 23, 1986, Marian Bucklew, piano, Catonsville Community College, Catonsville, MD
January-March 1986, Betty Oberacker, piano, People’s Republic of China (3 performances)
March 25, 1986, Betty Oberacker, piano, Prisms Concert, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
February 7, 1988, Silvia Glickman, piano, Millennium Concert, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Reviews of Metaphysical Études Book I
LIP (Lancaster Independent Press) by Ross Care
”Carbon’s work was not the academic exercise in worn-out serialism one might have expected a few years ago, but rather a vital, appealing work, by turns lyrical, flowing, technically challenging (as the performer pointed out) and even humorous, as in the clever, cynical “Earth Dance of the Mugwumps” movement. … most effective was the third étude, ‘Fireflies,’ a sustained movement in the Bartókian night-music mood, but one in which the composer’s originality seemed most apparent. A remarkable piece of keyboard writing, a kind of endless melody in the piano’s middle register wound its way through the entire movement amidst pointillistic dabs of color from both extremes of the keyboard, and even from the interior of the instrument when the performer was called upon to strum the lower strings to add a soft shimmer of vibrating color.”
Cadenza Ingannata (1979; 18 minutes)
Composed in 1978 for pianist William Koseluk, Cadenza Ingannata (12 erotic pieces after titles by Rip Cohen) is a set of 12 variations on a 12-tone row. Poet Rip Cohen gave me 12 erotic titles before I composed the pieces (for example “Straining Thighs,” and “The Rhythm of Your Pride”). The row is created so that-when it is used strictly-rising and falling tritones and perfect fourths create a rugged sound (as in the variation “Jagged Splendor”). When the row is used in permutation (every other note) a series of stepwise modes emerge that are seperated into all white notes and all black notes. When these modes are jaxtaposed, a bitonal, luminous effect creates resonance (as in the variation “Softer than the Mist”). There is no theme before variation one, rather the row is presented in a melody and accompaniment texture at the very beginning of the piece.
Selected Performances
Pianist William Koseluk has performed Cadenza Ingannata several times. The premiere was in 1978 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on a Prisms concert.
TWO PIANOS
Marumba (1984; 5 minutes)
Written in 1985, Marumba features a setting of one actual Puerto-Rican folk melody with several other newly created folktune-like melodies surrounding it. The work is light-hearted, but builds to a dramatic cadenza before returning to the carefree opening. Marumba was created with the Whitney-Alvarado Duo's love for flashy Carribean dance music in mind.
Performances
The Whitney-Alvarado Duo has performed Marumba throughout the Carribean. They also have performed the piece in several locations in the United States.
ORGAN
Autumn Landscapes (2004; 17 minutes)
Pentacles (1988; 10 minutes)
Pentacles, my second work for organ, was composed in January of 1988 for the dedication of Kalamazoo College’s new organ at Bruce Gustafson’s request. In a single movement, the work alternates between introverted, lyrical refrains and more extroverted episodes of figuration. These two characterizations develop as the rondo progresses; the episodes become increasingly demonic, but the refrains respond with ever-increasing lyricism and warmth. Although developmental in form, the piece evolves out of minimal material based on fifths (hence the title) and seconds.
Selected Performances of Pentacles
Premiere: March 4, 1988, Bruce Gustafson, Organ, at the Dedicatory Concert for the Stetson Chapel Organ, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI
December 6, 1990, Karl Moyer, organ, Chadron State College, Chadron, NE
January 13, 1991, Karl Moyer, organ, Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity, Lancaster, PA
March 22, 1992, Sam Porter, organ, at the Society of Composers 26th National Conference, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL
HARPSICHORD
Six Spanish Lessons (1988; 18 minutes)
Six Spanish Lessons, originally written for solo harpsichord, but piano as well, was composed in the summer of 1988 during a period when I was enjoying beginning Spanish lessons along with my friend and colleague harpsichordist Bruce Gustafson. The lessons were given to us by another colleague and friend, Ana Börger-Reese, and took place in her garden. The piece was subsequently premiered by Mr. Gustafson at Franklin and Marshall College that fall.
The titles need a bit of explanation, even for those who have more than a passing knowledge of the language. After a Prólogo, which sets the mood with a reference to a well-known folk tune, the suite begins with the depiction of the manic La perra Marysol, the very small hyperactive dog of our teacher, who was always present at these gatherings. In the following piece, La siesta de Domenico Scarlatti, the famous harpsichordist/composer is depicted during his sojourn in Spain with hand-crossings (one of his trademarks) perhaps in the middle of a dream (indicated in the score by the words “el sueño”). Because Ana used to always take a siesta before, during and after our lessons, this piece is necessary. Next we have Siempre elegante, (always elegant), a reference to the extravagant meals Ana served in her garden. The absurdist piece, Y de niño? (and as a child?) refers to the terrifying drills in the imperfect tense we performed as students. The teacher is depicted in the faster parts of the piece and the students more slowly. The suite concludes with El trabajo del gato (the cat’s work), which refers to Blanche, Bruce’s cat, yet another resident of the garden who was always occupied with afternoon chores.
The piano version has been recorded on the Zimbel label by pianist Steven Graff.
Selected Performances of Six Spanish Lessons
Premiere: Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Franklin and Marshall College Sunday Concert Series, Lancaster, PA
September 28, 1991, Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Society of Composers Region III Conference at Radford University, Radford, VA
March 31, 2012: Pianist Steven Graff performed Six Spanish Lessons for piano at Hudson River Music Hall, Hudson Falls, NY
Night Faeries (1984; 7 minutes)
Notes by Bruce Gustafson:
“John Carbon wrote Night Faeries last year at my request for a solo harpsichord work that avoided the series of miniatures that are all too common in the harpsichord's repertory. In this first work for harpsichord, he evokes the mystery, playfulness, irascibleness and other-worldliness inherent in those little supernatural beings cited in the title. Very visual in its inspiration, it encourages the listener also to conjure up visual images.”
Selected Performances
November 4, 2004: Bruce Gustafson, harpsichordist. Church of the Good Shepherd, Lancater,PA.
May 4, 1984: Performed by Bruce Gustafson at a Network for New Music Concert, Philadelphia, PA.
January 27, 1985: Sunday Concert Series, Nevin Chapel, Bruce Gustafson, harpsichordist, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
TWO HARPSICHORDS
Dreaming (1985; 15 minutes)
With self-prepared recording of two harpsichords
Cast in a single large movement, it could be thought of as a latter-day fantasy on the “Queen Mab” speech from Romeo and Juliet, in which Mercutio describes the “fairies’ midwife” whose little wagon is drawn “athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep” to bring them dreams. In this, his second work using harpsichord, the composer shows himself to be completely comfortable with the idiosyncrasies of the instrument, able to create new sounds and textures with amazing fluency. (Notes by Bruce Gustafson)
Performances of Dreaming
Premiere: June 2, 1985, Bruce Gustafson and Arthur Lawrence, harpsichordists, Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC
May 30, 1985, Bruce Gustafson and Arthur Lawrence, harpsichordists, Davidson College, NC
February 2, 1986, Bruce Gustafson and Arthur Lawrence, harpsichordists, Nevin Chapel, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Reviews of Dreaming
The Evening Post, Charleston, Vincent C. Schwerin Jr.
“Dreaming”, a new piece by John Carbon, was given its world premiere at this concert. Without benefit of score, this reviewer found the piece highly enjoyable and stimulating. There was a gradual buildup of dissonance that was truly awesome in its use of polychords and complex rhythms. Near the end, a third [actually a third and fourth] harpsichord was introduced via tape and added to the general picture of the unreal world of dreams.
CHORAL MUSIC
Soldiers of Remembrance (2015; 72 minutes)
Text by Sarah White
Vocal soloists: soprano, alto (mezzo soprano), tenor, bass,
mixed chorus (SATB)
Orchestra 2.2.2.1.2; 4.2.1.1; timpani, percussion, piano, strings.
In Soldiers of Remembrance, chorus and soloists sing the roles of people in our own time who are reviving experiences from a hundred years ago. One of the soloists (the tenor) is a soldier-archeologist sifting remains at the site where a fighter plane was downed in a field near the Somme River. Three travelers arrive, looking for information about a downed airman. A mysterious box of old songs has been found in a farmhouse. The lyrics express the bitterness, sorrow, bravery, and bewilderment of air and ground combatants, bereaved lovers and fiancées, patients and nurses in a field hospital, and a mother foreseeing the death of her son. Although it is impossible for any work of art to reproduce the actual anguish of a past war, we hope the performance of this dramatic oratorio will open new sensibilities to history.
Note: A number of musical quotations and transformations are used. There is a brief motivic reference to sources 1 and 3 (see below) in movement 2 (Music Hall). Movement 5 (The Yanks Are Coming) is a quodlibet that contains fragments of most of the source materials listed below (often morphed and combined with original material). Movement 7 (Delirium) refers to some of the sources already quoted in movement 5 plus a few new ones. Sources 4 and 12 are distorted so as to sound like they are being played on an old Victrola that is either winding down or in a few cases winding up. In all cases the music is in the public domain (first published in the U. S. 1915-1918). The songs that are woven into the fabric are identified below. The source numbers (found in the full score), identify the title, composer and lyricist, year of composition and publisher. Some of these sources have been used multiple times and changed substantially. Not all uses of each source are identified. Special thanks to Wilbur Vroegh who provided a large library of WWI sheet music that proved to be invaluable during the composition of the work.
Source 1: The Rose Of No Man's Land, Jack Caddigan (music), James A. Brennan and Louis Delamarre, ©1918 New York: Leo-Feist, Inc.
Source 2: Over There, George M. Cohan, © 1917 New York: Leo-Feist, Inc.
Source 3: Johnny Get Your Gun And Be A Soldier, Jack Glogau (music), Jack Yellen (words), ©1917 Philadelphia: Emmett G. Walsh pub.
Source 4: When We Wind Up The Watch On The Rhine, Gordon Thompson and William Davis, ©1917 New York: Leo-Feist, Inc.
Source 5: When Old Glory Floats Over the Rhine, Leone Driscol, ©1918 Omaha: Driscol-Jones
Source 6: The Ragtime Volunteers Are Off To War, James F. Hanley (music), Ballard Macdonald (words), ©1917 New York: Shapiro, Bernstein.
Source 7: Wee Wee Marie (Will You Do This For Me), Fred Fisher (music), Joe McCarthy (words), ©1918, New York: McCarthy and Fisher Inc.
Source 8: Where Do We Go From Here, Howard Johnson and Percy Wenrich, ©1917 New York: Leo-Feist, Inc.
Source 9: America, Here's My Boy, Arthur Lange (music), Andrew B. Sterling (words), ©1917 New York: Joe Morris Music Inc.
Source 10: Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning, Irving Berlin, ©1918 New York: Waterson, Berlin and Snyder.
Source 11: I Don't Want To Get Well, Harry Jentes (music), Howard Johnson and Harry Pease (words), ©1918 New York: Leo-Feist Inc.
Source 12: I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier, Al Piantadosi (music), Alfred Bryan (words), ©1915 New York: Leo-Feist Inc.
Performance Note: Although this work is an oratorio, if desired, the vocal soloists could each wear a costume. The tenor soloist (the soldier) might wear some military clothing that identifies him as a present-day soldier. The soprano, alto and baritone soloists could be dressed as present-day travelers. One suggested prop might be a box of different pieces of sheet music. The soldier could hand sheet music to the soloists at various points in the action. A more elaborately staged version in which the singers have room to interact and move about would be also a possibility, but it is understood that the number of performers on stage might seriously limit this approach. Stage directions in the score (for example, “the travelers enter,”) are to be modified when necessary.
Adam and Eve and the Animals (1990; 27 minutes)
Text by Sarah White, Orchestration by Harry Jepson
Vocal soloists: 2 tenors, baritone, soprano, mezzo soprano,
mixed chorus (SATB)
Orchestra: 2.2.2.2; timpani; 2 percussionists; piano/celeste; harp; strings.
The cantata, Adam and Eve and the Animals, was composed in the late spring and early summer of 1987 at the request of the choral conductor Steven Edwards. Mr. Edwards suggested I compose a companion piece to Honegger’s King David.
What emerged is a four-movement cantata, for large mixed chorus, four vocal soloists and an instrumentation of winds, brass, percussion, keyboards and double bass. The instrumentation and the Biblical setting are the only real similarities to the Honegger work. Later Harry Jepson orchestrated the work for strings, woodwinds, harp, percussion and keyboards, without brass. Both versions have been performed, but I have withdrawn the first version in favor of the second which is the one now available for performance.
Adam and Eve was the first work to follow the composition of my second opera, Benjamin, and the two have both a similarity of style and the same librettist, Sarah White. According to Ms. White:
Our story is influenced by numerous painters, sculptors and poets who have elaborated their own versions of the Creation, Temptation, Fall and Expulsion. The text is borrowed from chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis (New English Bible) and from the anonymous Old French “Play of Adam,” written in the late twelfth century. However, these rich sources fail to credit the Animals for the redemptive role they play, consoling Adam and Eve and ourselves for the loss of Paradise. I have tried to repair that oversight.
The quickly shifting moods and tone of this sometimes dramatic, sometimes touching, and sometimes coyly amusing blend of several versions of the creation story caught my fancy right away, and the actual composition of the 27-minute work that resulted all took place within the compressed period of six weeks. Of course the orchestration, piano-vocal score construction and part editing took much longer. Fortunately I had the help of composer Jeffrey Nytch, who at that time was my composition student at Franklin and Marshall College.
The cantata is at times operatic in tone, with accompanied “recitative” and “aria” sections for the four soloists, God, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, alternating with ensemble singing, both with the chorus and without. This operatic quality is perhaps best exemplified by the dramatic arias of the Serpent and Eve in the third movement during the “temptation scene” and in God’s “fury aria,” also in the third movement. There is considerable a cappella writing for the chorus itself, which, though challenging for the performers, is a sound of which I am particularly fond.
The short, introductory, first movement begins a cappella, and depicts the creation of paradise with the resolution of a suitably exotic quasi–”French Sixth Chord” and a mixture of wholetone scale figurations. It closes with the accompanied recitative of God, in which He warns Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
After a short a cappella section for the chorus, reminiscent of the opening of the work, the second movement begins a scherzo-like canonic middle section in which the animals are introduced and named. The movement closes with the “paradise music,” which contains a prominent ostinato above an F# Major pedal point, the tonality toward which the entire work eventually gravitates.
The third and most complex movement contains the creation of Eve, the temptation, the fall of Adam and Eve, and the wrath of God. After another a cappella beginning, the creation of Eve and the Fall are both accompanied by swirling orchestration that builds in both cases toward the same explosive climax. These events frame God’s mysterious and ominous warning, accompanied by an f# minor drone, complete with English Horn snake -like music and a water gong glissandoing in the orchestration, a restatement of the “paradise music,” and the Serpent’s powerful aria, which was accompanied by brass in the smaller orchestration, now strings in the larger. After the fall, Eve’s transformation is depicted, as she ironically recapitulates the Serpent’s aria in a new orchestration. God’s fury is accompanied by the same meandering ostinato that depicted paradise, now transformed into a dissonant atonal parody of the original.
The last movement is an expanded version of the “paradise music” first heard at the end of the second movement. The tonal plan takes us entirely through the circle of fifths during the various episodes recounting the expulsion of Adam and Eve, but returns to F# Major as God proclaims, “Dust you are and to dust you will return.” The movement builds many layers previously heard separately into a resonant and fully joyous conclusion, as the animals choose to join Adam and Eve in leaving the Garden of Eden. The ending of the smaller orchestration was more bombastic than the serene diminuendo of the full orchestral version. –notes by the composer
Selected Performances of
Adam and Eve and the Animals:
Premiere: April 17, 1988, Lancaster, PA. Steven Edwards, Musical Director, F&M Choral Society, with guest artists Stephen Kalm (Adam), Karin Calabro (Eve), James Longacre (God), and Darrell Lauer (Serpent). This was a performance of the smaller orchestration, without strings.
May 2, 1999, Harrisburg, PA. Harrisburg Choral Society, Simon Andrews, Musical Director. This was a performance of the larger orchestration with strings.
Lullabies for the Infant Jesus (1989; 12 minutes)
Two Nativity carols.
SATB; Harp.
John Carbon’s Lullabies for the Infant Jesus for harp and small chorus sets two sixteenth century Christmas texts: the well known “Coventry Carol” from the Pageant of the Shearman and Tailors (1591) and the Scottish “Balulalow” (Wedderburn, 1567). Deceptively simple in style, chordal sections containing subtle harmonic inflections are contrasted with more contrapuntal sections whose lines often soar free of the harp accompaniment.
The nuances of the poetry are beautifully portrayed, from Herod’s raging in the Coventry Carol to Balulalow’s ‘I shall rock thee in my hert’. While contemporary in style, both pieces succeed in suggesting a medieval atmosphere of devotion and serenity. (Program Note by Simon Andrews)
Selected Performances of Lullabies for the Infant Jesus
Premiere: December 8, 1989, Franklin and Marshall Chamber Chorus, Steven Edwards, Director, Nevin Chapel, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
December 24, 1989, Church of the Good Shepherd Choir, Arthur Lawrence, Director, NYC
April 9, 1995, The Franklin and Marshall Chamber Chorus, Simon Andrews, director, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall, Lancaster, PA
Jabberwocky (1989; 6 minutes)
Text by Lewis Carroll
SATB; flute; bassoon.
Jabberwocky is an SATB choral setting with flute and bassoon of the Lewis Carroll poem from Alice in Wonderland. The piece is cast in a lyrical neo-classical vein.
Selected Performances
Jabberwocky was commissioned by and first performed at Millersville University, Millersville PA. and then subsequently performed several times by the Franklin and Marshall Chamber Singers.
Fern Hill (1971, revised 2008; 12 minutes)
Poem by Dylan Thomas
SATB; piano.
Fern Hill is an SATB with piano choral setting of the Dylan Thomas poem by the same name. Cast in a neoclassical vein with hints of bitonality and modal writing, the writing is melodically lyrical.
Selected Performances
November 22, 1973: Performed as part of “Kennedy Remembered,” at the Santa Barbara Mission in Santa Barbara, California. Dan Kepl was the conductor.
The revised version has been performed by the F&M Chamber Singers.
MUSIC FOR SOLO INSTRUMENT
Bagatelles (2007; 5 minutes)
Bassoon
Four Impromptus (2007; 6 minutes)
English horn
Weeping Willow (1998; 2 minutes)
1.6 Shakuhachi
This miniature for shakuhachi solo was inspired by a painting with the same name by Monet.
Selected Performances of Weeping Willow
This short work has been performed by Larry Tyrrell in Portland, Oregon.
Mr. Tyrell has recorded the piece for Moonbridge Recordings.
Astro Cats (1994; 12 minutes)
Guitar
Astro Cats, for solo guitar, was composed especially for Jim Hontz. These miniatures are intended to be zodiacal sketches of 12 types of cats. Each brief movement has a mood indication. The Libra cat is elegant and whimsical, Cancer cat is moody, Aries cat is tempestuous, Pisces cat is sensual, Gemini cat is nervous, Capricorn cat is sleepy, Taurus cat is mock heroic, Scorpio cat is macabre, Sagittarius cat is dreaming of distant lands, Leo cat is in love, Virgo cat is a meticulous workaholic, and finally, Aquarius cat waxes from coldly cerebral to eccentric.
Selected performances of Astro Cats:
Premiere: March 27, 1994, James Hontz, Classical Guitar Society, Philadelphia
January 29, 1995, James Hontz, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA
February 24, 1995, James Hontz, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA.
Six Twilight Pieces (1992; 12 minutes)
Clarinet
John Carbon, of the Franklin & Marshall College Music Department, allows the solo clarinetist to select both the number of works to play and their order from the complete set of six. A clarinetist himself, Professor Carbon knows the instrument well. “The Conjurer” has to do with the casting of a spell and introduces moods of sensuousness, agitation, grandeur, fury, and mystery. “It Burbled As It Came…” refers to Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, a dragon-like creature from Alice in Wonderland. The movement calls for performance “as fast as possible” and ends with an explosive rush. “Finches” was drawn from a real-life situation in which an owner was driven wild by her birds. The music makes the outcome clear. (notes by Doris Hall-Gulati)
Selected Performances of Six Twilight Pieces
Premiere: Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, Sound Horizons Series, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Niobe’s Tears (1991; 2 minutes)
Flute
This is a lyrical and short 2 -minute work for solo flute that is based on the Ovid myth. I was influenced by Britten’s Metamorphoses for solo oboe in the modal and neoclassical style that is employed here.
Selected Performances of Niobe’s Tears
Premiere: November 3, 1991, Lucy Stimson, flute, Sundays at Eight, St. Mary’s Church High Pavement, Nottingham, England
Suite Trouvères (1983; 12 minutes)
Guitar
Composing for any instrument that you do not play is a challenge, but guitar poses particularly thorny problems for many composers. Fortunately, I was able to work closely with an excellent guitarist who literally played each few measures as they emerged, often suggesting revisions that were more idiomatic or effective.
What emerged from this process was a set of five miniatures. Each movement is either song-like or dance-derived. Canto – to be played slowly, with ancient yearning – is meant to serve as an extemporaneous, bard-like introduction to the rest of the Suite. Sogno (dream), enigmatic and stoic, relies on harmonics and ringing notes that stand out against a stark staccato background to evoke the feeling of a fading dream memory. Burlesque is a dance-like account of the adventures of a knight errant; the performer is instructed to play “with parody” to create a mock-heroic effect in the irregular subdivisions of the beat, abrupt cadences, sudden accelerandos, and quivering tremolos. Aubade is a waltz-like song of lovers parting at daybreak. The fast and furious Toccata is a study in lombardic and iambic rhythms (short-long and long-short). This short virtuosic movement employs quartal harmonies (chords built on fourths) and explores the entire range of the guitar, from the lowest notes to the very top of the fingerboard.
Premiere: September 30, 1984, Allen Krantz, Sunday Concert Series, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
1985-1986, 3 broadcasts on WPEB FM (Philadelphia) of Allen Krantz, guitarist, discussing and performing on Guitaromania by Michael Wright, Philadelphia
April 2, 1991, James Hontz, Temple University, Philadelphia
May 26, 1991, James Hontz, at a Classical Guitar Society Concert, Philadelphia
MUSIC FOR VOICE
Letters from the Great Lost Cause (2009; 14 minutes)
Six songs for high voice and piano
Text drawn from American Civil War letters by the composer
Composed in 2009, at the request of soprano Lorraine Ernest, this song cycle has an interesting history. Ms. Ernest asked me to compose something that made a statement against war. I was already working on the first of a series of settings of Robert Frost’s poetry at that time. I looked for Frost poems that expressed an anti-war sentiment. One poem I came upon, The Flood, could be interpreted as being about war. I set that particular poem along with five other Frost poems that I thought made an interesting cycle. Some of the poems were more about peace than war, which I felt was one of the best ways to express what the commissioner of the work was after.
Soon after completing the cycle, I was distressed to learn that, after many years of allowing composers access to these poems, the Frost Estate is now demanding that the poems not be set to music. I decided to make medicine out of poison and I set about finding new words to my already existent songs. I decided to try to give Ms. Ernest what she originally asked for and looked for Civil War letters and poems that I could make into a song cycle. This was something I had wanted to do for a long time, so the groundwork was already in place. I finally decided that many of the original rhyme schemes and rhythms that were already fused with my notes were not easily discarded. I took phrases and ideas from existing Civil War poems and letters and adapted them into a fictional series of letters between two lovers that cover three years. The letters tell a story, and the entire cycle is unified by the anti-war sentiment. Some remnants of the Frost poems were impossible to erase (whose rhymes these are I think you’ll know), but they are certainly different enough to be considered reborn in quite a different way. The tone is deliberately sentimental and romantic, as is the case in the original Civil War material. Many letters and poems from this period were written by minimally educated writers who pledged their love, anger, faith and hope in simple poems and letters.
The dates and locations of the individual letters suggest a plausible story, but may not bear the scrutiny of a real Civil War enthusiast. The role of the woman and the man can be realized by a soprano, a tenor, or by alternating according to the viewpoint of the letter. In the case of a single performer, it would make dramatic sense if the singer were appearing to be both reading and writing letters. In the case of the two-performer option, they could each be writing, or they could each be reading, although if reading, if would have to be assumed that the last letter was sent by mistake. Perhaps the writing or reading posturing need not be discreet. I could imagine a performance in which it is ambiguous or changing throughout each letter.
TEXT
Letters from the Lost Cause
1. October 10, 1862, Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia
I am alone and frightened in the night.
I have cried when hearing your name,
in anguish and pain.
War has outlasted our last summer’s light.
I have prayed for you
in the coldest rain.
I have stopped by the graveyard
in Autumn’s heat,
and closed my eyes
with no one left to blame.
I have longed to hear
the sound of your feet.
If you had your way,
“No man would ever die.”
Yet you write that you are so certain
“We will never retreat.”
I want to ask you how you live a lie.
I pray for you and your useless “noble” fight.
A woman dare not speak against the war.
And yet, this cause is neither new nor right.
I cannot see a reason you must fight.
2. July 2, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Blood in the moonlight
glows red in the water.
Just when I think the cannon
have pounded fear from my mind,
some new onslaught makes clear
that our flank is not safe!
Daybreak gives way
to a round of slaughter.
My soul is lost.
I am owned now by the devil.
The Bringer of War himself
commands more blood.
My fear is rising like a flood.
Heads held high,
bullets fly, held high,
they fight a supernatural evil.
My comrades fall now,
those we cannot save.
If there was war
without death and blood
there would be no peace.
These are the “laws”
that imprison us,
without release.
It is now upon us,
the final wave!
But when it has swept by,
no more is gained.
My resolve is in doubt.
Fear cannot be contained.
3. November 10, 1863, Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia
Whose paw prints these are I think I know.
His owner is in the graveyard now.
He will not feel the evening fire.
Instead, his coat fills up with snow.
This little friend will never hear
his master’s voice
nor feel his warm hands near.
Between the fallen trees
his home he makes.
He will be gone soon
without a tear.
He gives his collar bells a shake
to tell the world he’s now awake.
His only friends are sounds
of Snow Geese and the waves
down by the lake.
His nights are lonely,
so cold and hungry.
But I made a promise to a soldier:
I’ll keep this fallen hero’s friend.
His paws will warm me while I sleep.
4. February 14, 1864, Brandy Station, Virginia
I write to tell you
your locket never lies.
Inside I see our trust
will last us all our lives.
Unlike poor soldiers,
our love never dies.
But when I seek you
in the stars at night,
they cast, most times,
such cold and distant light.
I open the locket
so you remain in my sight.
5. May 8, 1864, Spotsylvania, Virginia
War is cruel,
the birds must fly away.
They dare not sing their songs today.
At dawn the blazing rifles roar.
The little birds cannot stay
in the nest anymore.
One bird is screaming,
clearly mad at me.
My weapon rests now,
mute on my knees.
But of course I can’t be quiet long
to listen to nature’s scolding song.
6. February 10, 1865, Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia
End my sorrow,
spare me more misery!
Bring the final darkness.
Grant me oblivion!
Give my buried hero his rest.
Give to us an endless peace.
Pardon the sinners.
War is a crime that cannot be confessed.
We’ll find our peace now,
beneath the melting snow.
Now together,
my trust I will show.
But, whatever you do,
repent!
Vow not to spill more blood,
stop its flow now.
But whatever you do,
repent!
End the flow.
Tonight make it so!
Peace is what we now must sow!
Dead now by the devil’s tricks,
above his head a crucifix.
Take me to our wedding grave,
this fateful letter I’ll not save.
Burn, horrible pages I have read.
We will be reunited soon,
when I am dead.
Our endless nightmare
will live no more.
Selected Performances
April 25, 2010: Premiere, (with the original text), Lorraine Ernest, soprano, Gerald Steichen, piano, Margaret E. Petree College of the Performing Arts, Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma City, OK
Feb. 5, 2010: Performance of songs 2, 4 and 5 (with original text), Lorraine Ernest, soprano and Anne Weger, piano, Linda Holland and Friends Concert, Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, Ca.
Feb. 20, 2010: Performance of songs 1, 3 and 6 (with original text), Lorraine Ernest, soprano, Gerald Steichen, piano, Montclair State University, John J. Cali School of Music, Montclair, NJ.
Queen Victoria’s Journey (2006; 20 minutes)
Poetry by Dorothy Louise
Soprano; piano.
This song cycle is drawn from my opera, Disappearing Act (2008), with a libretto by Dorothy Louise. The opera centers on the Houdini and Conan Doyle connection and Houdini's quest to reach his dead mother courtesy of the mediumship of believer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Partly because Queen Victoria longed to reach her dead Albert beyond the grave, partly because Houdini gave his mother an unworn dress made for the queen, Victoria inhabits the opera as a model and a caution.
Selected Performances
May 11, 2007: Premiere at Diller-Quaile School of Music in New York City by Kathleen Yiannoudes, soprano and Steven Graff, pianist.
Letters from Abigail (2002; 12 minutes)
Seven songs for high voice, violoncello and piano
Text drawn from the letters of Abigail Adams by Sarah White
Letters from Abigail was composed in 2001 at the request of soprano Kristin Samuelson. The texts are drawn from the letters of Abigail Adams and they were edited and reshaped to form a song cycle by Sarah White. The words of Abigail Adams reveal a woman both sentimental and proud, defiant and brave, a real American hero.
The cycle is constructed as an emotional circle, symbolized by the heart, and the enduring friendship and love between Abigail and John Adams. The yearning to be reunited with her husband, John, that Abigail expresses in the first song, “Dear Friend,” and the open expression of her affection is captured in the lyrical melodic outpouring beginning with the ascending major 6th introduced by the piano (measure 1), answered by the soprano and cello in a free point of imitation (measures 4 and 7). This cell of notes [0,2,4,7], introduced in the R. H. of the piano in measures 1-2, permeates the first song, “Dear Friend.” The intervallic potential of this cell, yields triadic, quartal and added-note sonorities, and the pitch class field expands to outline B flat mixolydian (measures 1-3), with excursions into A flat lydian (measure 9), D flat lydian (measure 13) and F lydian (measure 15). There is also a brief excursion into A lydian (bar 23). The song ends back with a pitch centricity of B flat, narrowing down to the opening cell of notes (Bb, C, D, F). This widely ranging exploration of different tonal centers is a premonition of the chromatic circle of fifths progression that closes the song cycle in the final song.
Text painting in the first song includes the rippling triplet figure that descends at the line “The idea plays about my heart,” which is repeated in varied form in the soprano line, now accompanied by the cello playing agitated triplet tremolos at the line “May the like sensations enter thy breast.”
The emotional tone shifts in the second song, “Our Barbarous Foes,” which opens in an agitated manner in 5/8, with short syncopated added-note 7th chords, that are repeated at lines such as “Armed cutters fired upon our men” (measure 56-60). Syncopations and shifting cross accents between the cello and piano, along with scurrying triplet-embellished scales in the cello and piano (for example measure 43), help to paint a picture of a skirmish with the Red Coats. At measure 67, the arching and jagged vocal line paints a picture of “bullets flying in every direction.” This effect is accompanied by an erratic and unpredictable peppering of added note staccato chords in the piano.
This second song in the cycle belongs to the genre of through-composed songs that have a bipartite shift of mood and tone reflected in the formal structure itself. At measure 84, and following, Abigail reveals her horror and grief “Every week produces some horrid scene.” The meter changes to a steady 4/4 after a ritardando into this contrasting, slower, section that ends the second song. The mood shift from agitation to shock and despair is supported by a tonal shift to a pandiatonic greyness (all white notes at first), which becomes D mixolydian (measure 85) and then eventually at the end of the song, a somber F# aeolian.
Two short “interludes” follow. A somber cello solo with triple stops and a twisting chromatic line gravely introduces the lamenting recitative of a drought and the plight of the neglected cows, which becomes ironic and sardonic. Abigail seems to be mildly chastising her absent husband in this tongue-in-cheek vignette. The mock serious mood of the first interlude changes to a tone of parody and humor in the second interlude, which is on the topic of shortages due to the war. The boom-chick accompaniment of the piano makes this into an ironic drinking song “their Malt and Cider all gone.” This song is more tonal, but with unexpected harmonic twists, making it more of a “song” than a letter. The humorous mood of this second interlude is followed by a dramatic change of tone.
The third song, “Victory,” opens with the clangorous sound of bells announcing the end of the Revolution. The opening motive of the cycle, that emphasized the leap of a seventh, is now consolidated in a series of open 7ths, that descend, bell-like in the piano, along with triplets reminiscent of the scurrying in song number 2, “Our Barbarous Foes.” The compound meter (12/8) moves Abigail’s patriotic declamation “I could not exchange my country for the wealth of the Indies” along in an exciting and cacophonous manner, ending with an abrupt crash on an added-note seventh chord on D. This song contains one of the climactic moments emotionally, in measure 177, where Abigail proclaims her love of the newly born nation.
Song 4, “Remember the Ladies,” shows the more stalwart and feminist side of Abigail Adams. She urges her husband, now that victory has been won, to not forget the rights of “the wives” and to not subjugate women, in effect, demanding equal rights. This is an extraordinary letter coming at this time, and it shows an interesting shift from the other, more devoted, loving letters that precede it in this cycle. Abigail is tightly wound, and the open motive of a seventh, denoting the heart-felt friendship with her spouse in the first letter, and the joyous bells or victory in the previous song, is now contracted into dissonant and tense seconds (inverted sevenths) that expand tightly into thirds in a wedge-like manner reminiscent of Debussy’s Prelude “Footsteps in the Snow.” The trudging here is more of a stamping and fuming. The 5/4 meter increases the tension.
Echoes of the bell motive (open sevenths with added 4ths and 2nds) interrupt Abigail’s tirade (measure 187 etc.). Measure 228 contains the point of maximum tension in the song cycle, in which Abigail informs her husband that if women are not granted their due rights they will “foment a rebellion.” The clashing harmonies based on the expanding and gradually ascending seconds that open into thirds is accompanied by the added-note seventh chords in the most dissonant and tense section of the cycle. A slower tempo and calmer presentation of the same motivic material ends the song on a conciliatory note: “Give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender one of friend.” The idea of spouse as true friend brings us full circle, reopening the way to the last song, which recapitulates the loving feelings expressed in the opening of the cycle.
In the last song, “My Heart,” Abigail reflects on the fact that even though they were often separated, by space and idea, she still retains a perfect and beautiful reflection of the man she married and still loves in her heart. The heart idea is now represented by the opening motive contracted to a rising 5th, that announces the cycle of descending 5ths in the accompanying harmony. The song begins in C, but the tonalities keep circling down, passing the central tonality of Bb that opens the cycle twice, in 2 complete circles of fifths before finally resting reposefully on B flat in the final measure. Thus, the central idea of the cycle, the circulating heart, that purifies the emotions, is reflected in the harmonic structure that is hinted at in the first song, only to be fully stated in the last song.
Selected Performances
March 5, 2009: Letters from Abigail was premiered at University of Southern Illinois by soprano Sarah Wiggins, with David Lyons, piano, and Alex Francois, cello. I attended the performance and rehearsals, and gave a pre-concert lecture about the work. I also assisted Sarah Wiggins in the preparation of a theoretical analysis of the work, which became part of her Master's Thesis.
Le Bestiare (2002; 6 minutes)
Three songs for soprano, horn and piano
Poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire
A setting of poems by Apollinaire, Le Bestiare was written at the request of a talented soprano for her Senior Recital. She was a double major in music as well as French, so she wanted the text to be in that language. I had set some of the poetry of Apollinaire when I was a graduate student and I particularly love his collection of poems about animals. I chose Orphee, Le Cheval, and La Chèvre from Le Bestiare. The unusual instrumentation for soprano, horn, cello and piano was chosen at the request of the singer, who wanted to include some of her closest friends in her recital. The settings employ shifting modality and lyrical writing that underscores the neoclassical style of the poetry.
Performances:
April 2003: Senior vocal recital at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
Winter’s Tale Songs (2002; 10 minutes)
Five songs for medium voice and piano
Poetry by William Shakespeare
A Benjamin Songbook (2000; 20 minutes)
Arias and a trio from the composer’s opera Benjamin (1987)
Arranged for baritone, mezzo-soprano, soprano, B-flat clarinet and piano
These concert arias, arranged for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone, clarinet and piano, were composed for a concert in Merkin Concert Hall (May 24, 2001). The arias are from my comic opera Benjamin (1987), with libretto by Sarah White. The topic is Benjamin Franklin and his many facets. An unusual feature of the opera is the splitting of the Franklin persona into a child's voice, a mezzo-soprano (pants role) and a baritone. The mezzo-soprano role is called “Benjamin Younger,” and the more conventional Franklin “Benjamin-Baritone.” Although the child is not heard in this songbook, Franklin's wife, Deborah, is represented by a soprano. One additional character, Madame Brillon, is not heard in this arrangement. The original 150-minute opera is scored for 15 instruments, chorus, soloists and dancers. These arrangements are in some cases “new pieces,” meaning that I have gone so far as to combine two arias (in the Dear Child Reprise) that are sung separately in the opera. I also have added new melodies for the clarinet. The piano part is more than a reduction of the score here. The order of the arias has also been changed for dramatic and tonal considerations, so the sequence of events depicted in the story is not always preserved.
The following comments may help the listener understand a few elements of the story of the opera:
To Be Frugal:
Benjamin-Baritone, his own task master, laments the fact that discipline requires sacrifice.
Gulf Stream Aria:
Benjamin-Younger, Franklin's more playful, spontaneous self, decides that he will explore the Gulf Stream.
Dear Child:
Franklin's faithful helpmate Deborah reads a letter from her husband, who has been overseas for many years.
Our Bell:
Franklin reassures Deborah that the electrocution of a turkey caused by his electrical experiments will not be the only product of his risky investigations.
Your Ship Will Roll:
Deborah warns Franklin of the dangers of the high seas in an effort to convince him to remain in America.
Dear Child Reprise:
Franklin, returning from England, many years later, finds the Dear Child letter and laments that he did not return before Deborah died. In a new duet setting, heard here for the first time, Deborah (as a ghost) reads the letter, haunting Benjamin while he grieves.
Gulf Stream Trio:
Franklin is torn in two by conflicting desires. Deborah urges him to stay in Philadelphia (Your Ship Will Roll), Benjamin-Younger advocates ocean travel (Gulf Stream Aria), and Franklin tries to reassure Deborah that his inventions will keep her safe and remind her of his love while he is gone (Our Bell). –Notes by the Composer
Selected Performances
May 24, 2001: Constance Beavon, mezzo-soprano, Tonya Currier, mezzo-soprano, Stephen Kalm, baritone, Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, Steven Graff, piano.
Six Spanish Songs (1994; 15 minutes)
Six songs (in Spanish) for soprano and piano
Poems by Federico García Lorca
These songs were composed for Kristin Samuelson in 1990, and join a number of works that are characterized by lyricism and a warmly chromatic tonal idiom. The poems (in spanish) are by the passionate Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, whose life was cut short in the Spanish Revolution (1936). The musical settings evoke but do not imitate the florid and intense style of Flamenco song, as they also stir memories of the spiced harmonies so associated with Spanish music in general. This is the composer’s second essay in this vocabulary, following his Six Spanish Lessons for harpsichord (1986).
Selected Performances of Six Spanish Songs
Premiere: Kristin Samuelson, soprano, Joan Krueger, piano, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA
September 16, 2006: Six Spanish Songs for soprano and piano, settings of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, were performed at the CMS National Conference, San Antonio, Texas, by Colleen Gray, soprano and Nanette Solomon, piano.
January 22, 2006: Six Spanish Songs for soprano and piano, settings of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, were performed by the Front Range Chamber Players in Fort Collins, Colorado, by Karen Lauer-Anderson, soprano and Roberta Mielke, pianist.
June 13-17, 2005: Six Spanish Songs for soprano and piano, settings of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, were performed at the College Music Society International Conference in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, by Colleen Neubert, soprano, and Nanette Solomon, piano.
Wind Shadows (1991; 18 minutes)
Six songs for high voice, clarinet and piano
Poems by D. H. Lawrence
Wind Shadows is a song cycle for soprano, clarinet and piano, which I composed for soprano Kristin Samuelson in 1990. The cycle is a setting of four poems by D.H. Lawrence. The first song, Mystic Blue, juxtaposes large tonal areas in a moderate tempo with some forward momentum created by rocking motion in the piano. All three instruments are equally involved in the first song. The second song, for voice and piano only, Piano, is about a man who remembers sitting at his mother’s feet when he was a child while she played the piano. The piano in this case plays something that sounds like a solo in the background more than an accompaniment while the voice floats above it, evoking the quality of reminiscence and nostalgia. The third song, for voice and clarinet only, is a dryly humorous setting of Lawrence’s ironic poem The English Are So Nice! The capricious figuration of the clarinet is in stark contrast to the rather terse vocal declamations. It should be sung with a British accent if possible. The mood indication is “Nice, but not too nice…,” which is a bit of advice from the poem as to how the English should be handled. The last song, A Baby Running Barefoot, again for all three instruments, has a background of rippling moto perpetuo arpeggiations in the piano, while the clarinet and voice sustain more lyrical lines above and through the transparent wash of color the piano provides. The soft, yet rhythmic quality of the first line of this fourth poem was the impetus for the entire cycle: “When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass…”
Selected Performances of Wind Shadows
Premiere: December 13, 1992 Kristin Samuelson, soprano, Ed Gilmore, clarinet, Richard Duncan, piano, Nicholas Roerich Museum, NYC
Two Concert Arias (1990; 12 minutes)
Baritone and piano
Text from Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac
These arias were composed in the spring months of 1990, especially for baritone Stephen Kalm, who requested a new work which could be presented on voice recitals. Together, the two texts, taken from Edmond Rostand’s ‘Heroic Comedy’ of 1898, Cyrano de Bergerac, adapted here and translated from the original French by Sarah White, make a short scene which shows the depth of Cyrano, a poet with a grotesquely large nose, and a wit, ego and heart to match it.
The second aria, A Modicum of Wit, is a catalog aria in which Cyrano lists a variety of improvements on his detractor’s blunt comment that his nose is “rather large.” This aria calls for a virtuosic mercuriality of mood and lightning-fast impersonations of various characterizations. Cyrano is at his wittiest and most flippantly sarcastic here. The first aria, I Have No Illusions, shows the underlying pathos of Cyrano’s plight. He betrays his longing for a normal life and the comfort of a lover’s acceptance while confiding to a friend.
Selected Performances of Two Concert Arias
Premiere: October 11, 1990, Sound Horizons Series, Franklin and Marshall College,
Lancaster, PA
November 8, 1990, Stephen Kalm, baritone, Greenwich House, NYC
November 21, 1990, Stephen Kalm, baritone, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia