Design by Kaela Kennedy
Read our program notes below ahead of the Symmetry & Tradition series. The notes are written by artistic director Sam Hollister, with the notes for Antonio Forte's newly commissioned work Ratios I written by the composer himself.
Suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (Darius Milhaud; notes by Sam Hollister)
Milhaud was a critical member of “Les Six,” a French composers’ alliance taking their inspiration from their Russian counterpart, “The Five.” In Milhaud’s account of the group’s origination, he comments that the collection of composers was not entirely logical. He remarks that “Auric and Poulenc followed ideas of Cocteau, Honegger followed German Romanticism, and myself, Mediterranean lyricism!” All united in a multifaceted approach to creating a French folk sound.
In pursuit of that sound, Milhaud incorporated much beyond the Mediterranean palette. Several years prior to composing this sprightly suite, Milhaud served as secretary to Paul Claudel, the French ambassador to Brazil. During this period in South America (1917-1919), Milhaud was immersed in Brazilian musical styles. Ultimately, he brought these styles to his compositional voice in works such as Le boeuf sur le toit (1920), and, further down the road, the present suite. In particular, listen for the Latin-inspired rhythms in the first movement, the incessant dance rhythm of the third movement, and the delightfully simple, parlor-tune folk song that closes the suite.
Spiegel im Spiegel (Arvo Pärt; notes by Sam Hollister)
Originally for piano and violin, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s 1978 work Spiegel im Spiegel (“mirrors in the mirror”) has been rearranged countless times. The present performance, replacing the piano with harp and violin with cello, is unheard of—perhaps a first. Pärt uses a proprietary compositional technique known as tintinnabuli (“bells”) in which melody and accompaniment unite as one. To achieve the effect, the melody is always accompanied by a single member of the three-note tonic triad—in this piece, F Major. Harmony thus underpins melody, but only by melding with it directly. Inventor of the method, Pärt has professed “the certain feeling that everything outside this [unity] has no meaning.”
(See if you can spot the 3-pitch tintinnabuli—it’s in the left hand of the harp part!)
While clearly driven by this mystic minimalism, Pärt’s compositional style is anything but bland. In fact, the structure of the work paints an incredibly clear picture of an “infinity mirror,” a pair of mirrors set to face each other perfectly and reflect each other’s image back and forth endlessly. Note the manner in which the melodic figure continually “bounces” back and forth, changing direction phrase by phrase—and getting longer and longer as the mirrors compound the image ad infinitum.
A Gaelic Offering (Catherine McMichael; notes by Sam Hollister)
Composer Catherine McMichael is a prolific composer based in Saginaw, Michigan. She has been commissioned by institutions ranging from New England Conservatory to Flûtée, who commissioned the present suite for flute quartet. The suite, whose movements reflect four different sides to traditional Irish culture, contains two vivacious folk dances (a reel and a jig) as well as two somber reflections on the beauty of the landscape and the aches of remorse and longing. Whereas the somber first and third movements reflect the intimacy with the countryside that is so evident in traditional tunes such as “Danny Boy,” the second and fourth movements depict a fiery defiance familiar from Irish step dance.
Ratios I (Antonio Forte; notes by the composer)
When I sit at the piano to practice, I begin with a meditation to clear and prepare my mind and fingers: the left hand plays an ostinato pattern in rhythmic groups of 3 while the right hand is free to phase in and out of synch using patterns of opposing numbers. Left to right, respectively, it may be 3:1, 3:2, 3:3, 3:4, etc. This piece, Ratios I, evolved from these piano meditations into a larger composition for string ensemble and piano. It utilizes Serialist processes (i.e. tone matrices) applied to a Minimalist tone-pallet (i.e. rhythmic and melodic structures). One may think of it as scenery viewed from the window of a moving train: the piano’s driving ostinato (sempre forte) as a constant horizon off in the distance, sometimes obscured by hills and valleys; foreground, midground, and background created by the different string sections.
The Last Leaf (Traditional, arr. Danish String Quartet; notes by Sam Hollister)
The folk traditions in the Nordic lands of Denmark, Sweden, and the Faroe and Shetland islands are as varied and rich as they are ancient. The centuries-old folk tunes still heard throughout their modern cultures seem to reflect and elicit the fundamental human emotions in a way that only wise and storied melodies can. There is nevertheless irony in the suite’s genesis: the Danish String Quartet found its inspiration in collecting and arranging these tunes only by discovering a somber German Christmas carol, Now Found Is the Fairest of Roses, which opens our performance of the suite. From here, the ensemble’s members decided to explore the myriad of Nordic folk tunes, arriving at this suite.
The suite represents a multifarious trek through the Nordic states and their respective traditions. In Stædelil, we soar over a bouncing, dancing, living Faroese village, while the Danish Drømte mig en drøm echoes the pale origins of the oldest Nordic secular music. Polska and The Dromer illustrate Swedish and Danish versions of a defiant, drone-accompanied public dance, while Æ Rømeser and Unst Boat Song feature introspective and personal themes, from Denmark and Shetland, that ebb and flow like ripples of water on the shore. To round out the suite, Danish String Quartet member Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen wrote his own tune, Shine You No More, channeling the entire ensemble of attitudes and traditions through a ubiquitous, defiantly ecstatic jam.
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