Mike Svoboda 2021
Snare Drum Concerto Partitur
Movement 1
Wilted recitatives revitalized
Movement 2
A Kotsuzumi and Kagkegoe sandwich dipped in cultural appropriation
Movement 3
John Lennon thunderclouds with Yoko Ono lighting bolts
Each of the three movements draws from a historical recording of a violin, a violinist, or an attempt to mechanically imitate both:
1. The first recording of a violin with a performance by Josef Joachim playing Hungarian Dance No. 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKK5iFFPKxM&t=3s (accessed Nov. 2020)
2. An excerpt of a Carnegie Hall interview given by Isaac Stern in 1999
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ-z2JWaGvg (accessed Nov. 2020, ca. minute 9:00 to 12:30, slightly edited)
3. The Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina, a music cabinet with three selfplaying violins and a self-playing piana called as the „8th wonder of the world“ at the 1920 World Fair playing Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2 in E flat major
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzaSVbCWxM
(accessed Nov. 2020)
Instrumentation
Violin
Soprano Sax in Bb
Accordion
Solo Percussion
Snare Drum with soft mallet, sticks, two super ball mallets (half-spheres) and 20 ad lib. such as brushes, a carrot, a banana, a plastic rose, a sock, a shoe, a rubber chicken, etc.)
Composer’s note
Growth II – Snare Drum Concerto (2021)
written for the Concept Store Quartet
It is said that Oliver Messiaen and Jean Sibelius were synaesthetes who saw colors while listening to music. I myself see geometric, undulating, wa ing forms, and when I look at ne art, I o en hear sounds in return. In my Growth series, I compose music imagining that it is seen, smelled, felt, or touched. e basic rule for Growth is that each work consists of three movements, and for each movement a found sound object serves as a point of departure – a kind of sourdough starter – from which the conceptual, rhythmic, harmonic, or structural substructure of a movement can ferment or sprout. e sound object can be a historical music recording, a eld recording, or an interview and it may be partially audible in some form or entirely not at all.
e weight of the instrument’s tradition was decisive for the selection of objects in Growth I - Violin Concerto. But in the case of the Snare Drum Concerto, the non-European origin and the military role of the snare drum were decisive for the selection. e movements are called Wilted recitatives revitalized, a nod to the underdeveloped parlando qualities of the snare drum; A Kotsuzumi and Kagkegoe sandwich dipped in cultural appropriation; and lastly John Lennon thunderclouds with Yoko Ono lighting bolts with Yoko Ono's Ono-Chord message serving as a click track only the soloist can hear: „I love you“.
Mike Svoboda in February 2022
