EMERGE Coalition Presents Tear Down These Walls

String Quartet No. 2, “White Wall”………………………………Scott Wollschleger

I. Part I

Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout………… Gabriela Lena Frank

I. Toyo

II. Tarqueada

III. Himno de Zampoñas

IV. Chasqui

V. Canto De Velorio

VI. Coqueteos

The Monarch Migration (World Premiere)…….…………….……… Jesus J. Martinez

String Quartet in G Minor, Op.10…….………Claude Debussy

I. Animé et très décidé

II. Assez vif et bien rythmé

III. Andantino, doucement expressif

IV. Très modéré

Scott Wollschleger: String Quartet No. 2, “White Wall” (Part I)

White Wall is an austere yet playful sound world which is based around white noise and fragments of sound. The central image of combing through a cultural landscape-turned-desert occupied my mind as I wrote the work. It is music written at the end of the world, i.e., today. White Wall also invokes a sense of touching and breathing. In shaping the white noise, I tried to turn the quartet into a breathing apparatus that would always imply (concurrently and somewhat paradoxically) both a moving pattern and a simultaneous erasure of that pattern. For a long time, there is no pitched music, just shimmering whispers from the strings, rising and falling like the breath of sleepers in the dark. Gradually, pitches appear and disappear briefly, with a bow stroke or a sharp pluck, like particles bubbling into reality out of the quantum haze of interstellar space.

“[White Wall] definitely represented a break in my own work, or in myself, or in my approach to art, where I wanted to see how you could start from nothing, and pull from within itself something. . . . If you were to drain music from itself, what would be left over?”

−Scott Wollschleger

Gabriela L. Frank: Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout

Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (2001) mixes elements from the western classical and Andean folk music traditions, drawing inspiration from the idea of mestizaje as envisioned by the Peruvian writer Jose María Arguedas, wherein cultures co-exist without the subjugation of one by the other. “Toyos” depicts one of the most recognizable instruments of the Andes, the panpipe. The largest kind is the breathy toyo, which requires great stamina and lungpower and is typically played in parallel fourths. “Tarqueada” is a forceful and fast number suggestive of the tarka, a heavy wooden duct flute that is blown harshly in order to split the tone. Tarka ensembles typically play in casually tuned fourths, fifths, and octaves. “Himno de Zampoñas” takes its cue from a particular type of panpipe ensemble that divides up melodies through a technique known as hocketing. The characteristic sound of the zampoña panpipe is that of a fundamental tone blown flatly so that overtones ring out on top. “Chasqui” depicts the chasqui, a legendary runner from the Inca times who sprinted great distances to deliver messages between towns separated from one another by the Andean peaks. The chasqui needed to travel light, so I imagine his choice of instruments to be the charango, a high-pitched cousin of the guitar, and the lightweight bamboo quena flute, both of which influence this movement. “Canto de Velorio” portrays another wellknown Andean personality, a professional crying woman known as llorona. Hired to render funeral rituals (known as velorio) even sadder, the llorona is accompanied here by a second llorona and an additional chorus of mourning women (coro de mujeres). The chant Dies Irae is quoted as a reflection of the llorona’s penchant for blending verses from Quechua Indian folklore and western religious rites. “Coqueteos” is a flirtatious love song sung by men known as romanceros and is direct in its harmonic expression, bold, and festive. The romanceros sang in harmony with one another against a backdrop of guitars, which I think of as a vendaval de guitarras (storm of guitars).

� Gabriela L. Frank