Music of Chris Theofanidis

FACULTY ARTIST SERIES

CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS COMPOSER HENSCHEL QUARTET MUNICH Christoph Henschel and Daniel Bell, violins Monika Henschel, viola Mathias Beyer-Karlshøj, cello

WITH Donald Berman piano

FEB 28, 2013 Sprague Memorial Hall Thursday at 8 pm

Robert Blocker, Dean

PROGRAM

CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS b. 1967

Visions and Miracles (1997) I. All joy wills eternity II. Peace Love Light YOUMEONE III. I add brilliance to the sun Henschel Quartet Munich Christoph Henschel and Daniel Bell, violins Monika Henschel, viola Mathias Beyer-Karlshøj, cello

Summer Verse II (2009) for violin and cello Summer Verse III (2009) for violin and cello Daniel Bell, violin Mathias Beyer-Karlshøj, cello

Ariel Ascending (1995) for string quartet I. begins with a breath, lines intertwined II. fleeting, delicate III. exuberant, brilliant Henschel Quartet Munich

intermission

FACULTY ARTIST SERIES

CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS

Allegory of the Cave (2012) for piano quintet I. Shadows on the wall II. Prisoner III. Realization IV. For we are free Henschel Quartet Munich Donald Berman, piano

Summer Verse V (2009) for violin and cello Christoph Henschel, violin Mathias Beyer-Karlshøj, cello

At the Still Point (2012) for string quartet and piano I. In my beginning is my end II. A condition of complete simplicity

(costing not less than everything) III. Knowledge imposes a pattern IV. The world beomes stranger, the pattern

more complicated Henschel Quartet Munich Donald Berman, piano

As a courtesy to others, please silence all phones and devices.

Photography of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

Visions and Miracles (1997) for string quartet I. All joy wills eternity II. Peace Love Light YOUMEONE III. I add brilliance to the sun During the period I was writing Visions and Miracles, I was listening regularly to the medieval Spanish work, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, performed by the wonderful early music group, Ensemble Alcatraz. This music struck me as both joyous and artful, and its asymmetric melodic and rhythmic character became a major inspiration for me in composing this work.

The first movement, All joy wills eternity, takes its title from a line of Friedrich Nietzsche, and features the quartet in the very fast tempo of quarter note equals 232 beats per minute, alternating groupings of 2s and 3s. Melodies ride over this erratic and unpredictable pulse.

The second movement’s title, Peace Love Light YOUMEONE, comes from a poetic fragment of the 1960’s counterculture figure, Timothy Leary. The movement proceeds as a kaleidoscopic presentation of ascending scales over a drone note which is finally released toward the end of the movement.

Strands of melodies momentarily form out of and submerge into these scales.

I add brilliance to the sun is a line from a medieval troubadour song, and like the first movement, it has an unusually fast tempo.

The melodies here come from descending lines of differing lengths in rapid succession.

Visions and Miracles was commissioned in 1997 by the Barlow Endowment for the Cassatt,

Muir, and Cuartetto Latinoamericano string quartets, and lasts approximately 17 minutes.

Summer Verse II, III, and V (2009) for violin and cello Given the prominence of both the violin and cello throughout history, the actual duo repertory is remarkably small. I think part of the reason for this is that both instruments have such a strong tradition as solo instruments, and putting them together might seem more like ‘the battle of the wills’ than collaborative chamber music. I tried to take certain aspects of this soloistic identity and weave them into the fabric of the piece, but at other times, I thought of the players as coming together for a common cause, creating an almost Baroque sense of harmony and timbre to try to give balance to these soloistic tendencies.

Summer Verses II is all pizzicato (plucked, without a bow) and is extremely fast with mercurial pauses and phrasing.

Summer Verses III uses double-stops (playing two notes at once) to create a thicker sense of sonority. Although this movement moves quite deliberately, there are many crossrhythms between the two parts that hopefully create a sense of internal flow.

Summer Verses V is earnest in character but with a hopeful outlook, inspired by the personal plight of a dear friend of mine, who was and still is dealing with some very serious health issues.

Summer Verses was written for the Seattle Chamber Music Society for James Ehnes and Robert DeMaine.

Ariel Ascending (1995) for string quartet I. begins with a breath, lines intertwined II. fleeting, delicate III. exuberant, brilliant I started Ariel Ascending after reading Sylvia Plath’s poem, Ariel, which conjured in me a feeling of the beautiful mingled with the nightmarish. I was struck by the sense of motion Plath created in this work–one can almost feel the wind moving through the words and imagery as the poem progresses.

The first movement of my quartet tries to pick up on this, by having each of the four players contribute to a single, ephemeral line that ebbs and flows gesturally. It is the longest of the three movements at 7 ½ minutes, and is the most narrative in its structure. Thin lyrical strands emerge from delicate surfaces.

The second movement is a kind of transition out of the spirit world of the first movement.

It is a true miniature, at 2 ½ minutes, and starts and stops as it goes, trying to establish its own identity. Eventually a melody emerges, but it is eventually subsumed back into the more brittle environment around it.

The third movement moves into the realm of the earth, and has a very fast, folk-like quality to it. The melodic material is harmonized in a rather strident fashion, often in intervals of 2nds and 9ths. The

rhythmic base rides over a very quick eighth note pulse of twos and threes, creating a locally unstable flow.

Ariel Ascending is approximately 15 minutes in duration and was written for my very dear friends, The Henschel Quartet. This work remains one of my most difficult pieces to perform, and I would not have been able to write such a work had it not been for their incredible dedication to whatever I could dream up.

Allegory of the Cave (2012) for piano quintet I. II. III. IV.

Shadows on the wall Prisoner Realization For we are free

Allegory of the Cave was written for the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro as part of an evening length cultural celebration featuring the works of ten composers called ‘Dances of Enlightenment.’ Although this event unfortunately never ultimately took place, each of the pieces was supposed to pay tribute to a literary work which promoted the ideas of individual and collective human evolution.

The work that I was asked to write on was Plato’s famous “Allegory of the Cave” from The Republic, in which Plato metaphorically traces humankind’s evolution from a claustrophobic prison of the mind to higher awareness of reality based on understanding and knowledge. ‘Dances of Enlightenment’ was the brainchild of an extraordinary woman, Marilyn Wilhelm, whose Wilhelm Schole

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

Foundation has been at the forefront of progressive early arts learning for decades.

Allegory of the Cave is in four miniature movements and is approximately 12 minutes in duration.

At the Still Point (2012) for piano quintet I. II.

III. IV.

In my beginning is my end A condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything) Knowledge imposes a pattern The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

At the Still Point is part of a collaboration with visual artists Bruce Herman and Makoto Fujimura responding to T.S. Eliot’s great work, Four Quartets. Each of us tried to pick up on the major themes of that magnificent set of poems and let them resonate in our work.

Meaningful to me in this project was Eliot’s journey toward and ultimate harmony with the ideas of time and decay, something that can be found in his description of “the still point.” The reconciling of the eternal with the transitory in his poem became the foundation for the structure of my piece, a slow unfolding of the deeper meaning and relationships of the opening materials of the music to the greater form of the work.

In writing At the Still Point I found a strong artistic connection with Bruce and Mako’s decaying sense of “the grid”—a kind of representation of linear time. In both of their sets of paintings it appears in various states as a literal but only partially exposed background to the “life” of the image. In my work, it is the relationship of the surface music

to the background pulse and tempo of each of the movements, which—like Bruce and Mako’s grid—is constantly being challenged as the work progresses. In the first movement of At the Still Point the varied refrain in Eliot’s work, “In my beginning is my end,” sets the large structural ideas into play. The musical figure which inaugurates the piece becomes a kind of “Ur-pattern” for the work—a generative shape permeating all of the subsequent material. It is a group of four notes: a single note followed by a lower note, then reversed lower–upper. To me, this figure has implicit in it a kind of balance and an evocation of a central paradox of Eliot’s poem: “And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”

The melodic idea that grows organically out of this sounds like a Gregorian chant. And since Gregorian chant has a sense of being “outside” of time (it is not locked to a grid of pulse, but sung freely), it also acts as a freeing agent to take us outside of our local sense of time at any given moment. This melody presents the intervals that are essential to both the melodic and harmonic fabric of the entire piece, a third and a second, and is then infringed upon by dismantling, temporal actors. The first of these is a dramatically widening vibrato, which seems to literally disrupt the pitch stability of the materials.

This material appears as a kind of existential threat to what we feel we know about the harmonic and melodic language of the work.

The second is a confrontation of pulse, putting a different speed of line on top of another one to challenge our understanding of the flow of time— first heard in the chant-like

melody, but then taking many other forms.

In some small way, these actors for me represented the idea of opposites to the basic material, and in this, responded to the way opposites seem to confront and collide with each other in the Eliot.

Over the course of the four movements, another metaphor guided my thinking as well: the idea of wave-particle duality in physics. It was this concept that provided me with a key to try and reconcile all of these opposing elements. In physics wave-particle duality is the paradox that light can act as both a particle and a wave—physical states which seem not to be possible by the same particle. To this end, in the music, the disrupting forces of the widening vibrato and the layering of speed play the essential role in actually redeeming their own disruptive natures. By the fourth movement the vibrato softens to become a slowed-down version of itself: pulsation without pitch variance: a kind of breathing. This is also the gradual effect of the layering of speeds: a freed pulse.

Hopefully the end result of these transformations reveal a kind of unity of purpose.

At the Still Point was made possible by the Fujimura Institute through the generosity of Denise and Stephen Adams. The piece lasts approximately 30 minutes.

CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS COMPOSER

Christopher Theofanidis (b. 1967) is one of the more widely performed American composers of his generation. He regularly writes for a variety of musical genres, from orchestral and chamber music to opera and ballet. Mr. Theofanidis’ works have been played by such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Moscow Soloists, and his work, Rainbow Body, has been programmed by over 120 orchestras internationally. He has written a violin concerto for Sarah Chang and the Pittsburgh Symphony and has a longstanding relationship with the Atlanta Symphony and Maestro Robert Spano, with whom he has recorded many works.

Mr. Theofanidis has composed widely for the stage, from a work for Lar Lubovitch and the American Ballet Theatre, to operas for the San Francisco and Houston Grand Opera companies. His large-scale piece, The Here and Now, for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, based on poetry of Rumi, was nominated for a Grammy award in 2007.

Mr. Theofanidis is currently on the faculty of Yale University and has taught at the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School. Âť www.theofanidismusic.com

Photo Credit: Pilar Timpane

DONALD BERMAN PIANO

Pianist Donald Berman is recognized as a chief exponent of new works by living composers, overlooked music by twentiethcentury masters, and recitals that link classical and modern repertoires. His two-volume The Unknown Ives and The Uncovered Ruggles represents the only recordings of the complete short piano works of Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles extant. His recordings also include the four-CD set Americans in Rome: Music by Fellows of the American Academy in Rome, The Light That Is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives (with Susan Narucki, soprano), and Wasting the Night: Songs of Scott Wheeler.

Recent concerts include premieres of Christopher Theofanidis’s Piano Concerto with orchestras of Belgrade, Columbus, Ohio, and Hartford, CT, and an electroacoustic program When Brahma Sleeps presented by (le) Poisson Rouge (New York City). He is the recipient of the 2010 Classical Recording Foundation’s Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artist Award and the Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University.

Berman teaches at Tufts University and is Treasurer of the Charles Ives Society. A prizewinner of the 1991 Schubert International Competition, Berman studied with Leonard Shure, John Kirkpatrick, George Barth, and Mildred Victor. » www.donaldbermanpiano.com

Photo Credit: Alonso Nichols for Tufts University

HENSCHEL QUARTET MUNICH

From their prizes and top honors at the prestigious quartet competitions of Evian, Osaka, Banff, and Salzburg, to their many performances in the major halls of the world, the Henschel Quartet Munich is considered to be one of the leading string quartets performing today. They were recently invited to be the first European quartet in over twenty years to play the complete Beethoven cycle in Suntory Hall in Tokyo. They have also played for Pope Benedict at the Vatican and were recently asked to represent Germany as cultural ambassadors at the European Union. They are recorded on SonyBMG, EMI, and Deutsche Gramophone. www.henschel-quartett.de

Photo Credit: Marco Borggreve

UPCOMING EVENTS yale school of music Robert Blocker, Dean

Paul Lewis, piano concert office 203 432-4158 concerts@yale.edu

concert programs & box office Krista Johnson Carol Jackson Julie Blindauer

communications Dana Astmann Monica Ong Reed Austin Kase

march 6 Morse Recital Hall | Wed | 8 pm Horowitz Piano Series Paul Lewis, “arguably the finest Schubert interpreter of his generation” (Gramophone), performs Schubert’s three last sonatas: No. 19 in C minor, D. 958; No. 20 in A major, D. 959; and No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960.

Tickets $12–$22, Students $6–$9 New Music New Haven march 7

operations Tara Deming Christopher Melillo

piano curators Brian Daley William Harold

recording studio Eugene Kimball

Morse Recital Hall | Thu | 8 pm Featuring music by guest composer Michael Daugherty. With Thomas C. Duffy, conductor.

Plus music of Yale School of Music graduate composers.

Free Admission New Music New Haven march 28 Morse Recital Hall | Thu | 8 pm Featuring music of Yale School of Music’s faculty composers including Martin Bresnick, Ingram Marshall, David Lang, Jack Vees, and Hannah Lash.

Free Admission