Music by Ted Hearne

ted hearne ¡ composition Doctor of Musical Arts Recital

Morse Recital Hall • Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 8 pm

Robert Blocker, Dean

Doctor of Musical Arts Recital

ted hearne · composition September 26, 2013 • Morse Recital Hall

Ted Hearne b. 1982

Intimacy and Resistance (2010) Ted Hearne, voice Timo Andres, piano

Ted Hearne Philip White b. 1981

The Weight (2012) Ted Hearne, voice Philip White, mixer feedback

Hearne

Nobody’s (2010) Miki-Sophia Cloud, violin

Hearne & White

Mia (2011) Ted Hearne, voice Philip White, mixer feedback

Hearne

Interlude from Severance Octet (2012) Garrett Arney and Mari Yoshinaga, vibraphones Protection (2010) Ted Hearne, voice Miki-Sophia Cloud, violin Timo Andres, piano

Hearne & White

R WE WHO R WE (2011) Ted Hearne, voice Philip White, mixer feedback

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, turn off cell phones and pagers.

Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

Ted Hearne, composition

Hearne

Parlor Diplomacy (2011) 1.

Five 2.

Intermezzo 3.

Broms 4.

Center left 5.

Ambiguation Timo Andres, piano intermission Stem (2013)* a.

Turn back the clock b. Fugue state c.

Shadow of Billy the Kid d. The Kid’s kids e.

Shadow of Gwendolyn Brooks f.

Distractor g.

All retch no vomit Performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Joshua Weilerstein, conductor *Recorded live at Walt Disney Hall, Los Angeles, 4/18/13

This performance is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

Ted Hearne • composition

Composer, performer, singer, and bandleader Ted Hearne (b. 1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music’s full terrain, to create intense, personal, and multidimensional works. “No single artist embodies the post-genre Brooklyn scene, but Hearne may be its most zealous auteur” (The Los Angeles Times, April 2013).

In the past season, Hearne has written new works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the European Contemporary Orchestra, A Far Cry, and the Albany Symphony. In the coming season he will write a chamber work for eighth blackbird, a cantata for Philadelphia’s The Crossing, and an opera to be premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). His Katrina Ballads, a modernday oratorio with a primary source libretto, was awarded the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize, and subsequently named one of the best classical albums of 2010 by several publications including The Washington Post.

Hearne’s most recent collaboration paired him with hiphop/soul icon Erykah Badu, for whom he wrote an evening-length work combining new music with arrangements of songs from Badu’s 2008 record New Amerykah: Part One. Premiered by Badu with Alan Pierson and the Brooklyn Philharmonic in two sold-out performances at BAM, the work was met with instant acclaim. The New York Times praised the “rich harmony and tonal range and pulsation” of the music, while The L Magazine called the show “a real triumph… together, it was a masterpiece of performance — a singer, orchestra and arranger not only at their bests but also perfectly fused.”

Active as a conductor of contemporary music, Hearne has recently worked with the Red Light Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, TILT Brass, Ensemble Pamplemousse, and the International

Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Deemed a “vocal hellion” by Time Out Chicago, Hearne’s work as a singer ranges from the many techniques explored in his own music to roles in avant-garde operas such as Jacob Cooper’s Timberbrit and James Ilgenfritz’s The Ticket that Exploded. His electronic/vocal duo with Philip White, R WE WHO R WE, has earned praise for its radical deconstructions of music from the pop landscape, and his first album of indierock songs will be released on New Focus Recordings this fall.

Ted Hearne attended Manhattan School of Music and Yale School of Music, and next year will be joining the composition faculty at the University of Southern California. He has received fellowships from the Barlow Endowment, the Fromm Music Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP, and two residencies at The MacDowell Colony. He lives with his family in Brooklyn. » www.tedhearne.com

Texts

Intimacy and Resistance Familiar as the back wall of a cat’s eye Familiar as the eyesight of the gentle fish in the fish fountain and its orange perception of the sky The rope that chafes hangs from real stomach to real stomach My expectations of knowing are scaling back scaling back My expectations of making love are scaling back scaling back My expectations of speaking out are scaling back scaling back My expectations for dreaming are fading to black fading to black from “Intimacy, These Days,” by Allison Carter, 2010

The Weight My brain’s dead weight.

I lay awake and strap myself in bed.

from My Name Is, by Eminem, 1999

Texts

Mia

Protection

Fighting for the smallest goal To get a little self control I know how hard you try I see it in your eyes.

the outlanders circled around with sleds it gets warmer when it snows bracing for all the mistakes they would make I prayed while the sunset froze I kissed the cracks underneath their feet breaking waves shadowing the glass bracing against the thinning ground and prayed their souls to pass sometimes I just prefer the company of drowning two entire teams of horses a bottleneck of moldy ropes rusty clamps heavy chains and bullets sleeping cased in their guns as though protection could protect you as though protection could protect you the skid had none and the water was clean just below the surface I breathed a ripple of anticipation it snowed it snowed sometimes I just prefer the company of drowning sometimes I just prefer the muted sounds of bodies sunk into my back la, la-la, la-la, la-la the ice was weak but now they’re home

text by Meghan Deans, 2010

Fighting for the smallest goal To get a little self control I see it in your eyes I see it in your spine.

All the bourgeois social angels Telling you you’ve got to change Don’t have any idea They’ve never seen so clear.

Call your friends cause they forgot What it’s like to eat what’s rotten What’s eating you alive Might help you to survive.

Fighting for the smallest goal To get a little self control Won’t anybody here Just let you disappear?

All the bourgeois social angels Telling you you’ve got to change Don’t have any idea They’ve never seen so clear.

from Me and Mia, by Ted Leo, 2004

Texts

R WE WHO R WE And hot.

One of us if you’re ‘-er-ous if danger the hipst-uz we make ‘thus then roll with our hot we ‘gin love -sters fall of and yes enough pants on this town we runnin’ we duz’ we course you don’t and no a club just like sus on got Je- with us wanna mess ‘luz Got luz - a-luce, my neck-a Eyes on my ter that glit stock Eyes the side up the ‘pdall -kings rip look (‘Ide) -i-fied Sex-i and king sick so (‘Ide) - oh-oh let’s go we’re go tonight Let’s go! ar-ar-ar- ing har The world just like ar-ard our-our-our-our Is our in’ it we’re tear- our-ours ar-ar-ar a-parWe’re sup-you know ar-art Who we are we ‘per-stars -cin’ Like we’re dan- are dum-dum-dum We’re dum -dies go our bo- dum-dumb num-num-num In num for ev- we’ll be num-numb young young young ver- young We’re sup - you know - young young Who we are we ‘per starts J.D. are damn time it’s about it up (ay) Turn sick of being I’m so it up To live my brain it’s makin’ ri-ous So seee- just I’m ri-ous de-liYou about I’m tellin’ ‘kin’ truth ‘Ust talk our clothes, we’re sellin’ we do The shit it dowwwwn (rrrs) Dressin’ in carrrs Sleepin’ hard got

Texts

On dudes hittin’ Eyes on my ter that glit stock Eyes the side up the ‘pdall -kings rip look (‘Ide) -i-fied Sex-i and king sick so (‘Ide) - oh-oh let’s go we’re go tonight Let’s go! ar-ar-ar- ing har The world just like ar-ard our-our-our-our Is our in’ it we’re tear- our-ours ar-ar-ar a-parWe’re sup-you know ar-art Who we are we ‘per-stars -cin’ Like we’re dan- are dum-dum-dum We’re dum -dies go our bo- dum-dumb num-num-num In num for ev- we’ll be num-numb young young young ver- young We’re sup - you know - young young Who we are we ‘per starts J.D. are up up up up it up i-turn it J.D. are up up up up it up i-turn it J.D. are up up up up it up i-turn it J.D. are up up up up it up i-turn it The world just like ar-ard our-our-our-our Is our in’ it we’re tear- our-ours ar-ar-ar a-parWe’re sup-you know ar-art Who we are we ‘per-stars -cin’ Like we’re dan- are dum-dum-dum We’re dum -dies go our bo- dum-dumb num-num-num In num for ev- we’ll be num-numb young young young ver- young We’re sup - you know - young young Who we are we ‘per starts Ow!

from Ke$ha, WE R WHO WE R, 2010.

Notes on the Program

Tonight’s program is in three sets.

The first is a collection of songs and interludes.

Intimacy and Resistance was commissioned by Music at the Anthology (MATA) for the singerpianist Gabriel Kahane to perform at a salon concert alongside Schumann’s Dichterliebe.

Protection, with lyrics by my longtime collaborator Meghan Deans, is part of a song cycle called “Delusion Story.” The text is the confession of a lonely and murderous lake.

Nobody’s is a solo violin work originally composed for Nicholas diEugenio to be premiered for newly returned veterans at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. This piece appropriates a fragment of Appalachian fiddle music and superimposes a series of grids and transformations from the world of notated music.

A short Interlude for two vibraphones is excerpted from Severance Octet, a work for six percussionists, violin and viola, premiered last year by Mantra Percussion.

The Weight, Mia, and R WE WHO R WE are part of my ongoing collaboration with Philip White; together we released our first album on New Focus Recordings this year, under the name R WE WHO R WE. The challenge to overcome the differences in our individual compositional aesthetics, as well as the seeming incongruity of our instruments, has led to a musical result that surprised and excited both of us. Each song we write starts with one piece of source material from the pop music world that we then seek to distort, reimagine or otherwise repurpose. Our model is to use pop the way graffiti uses public space.

A note about the technical aspect of what we do: Philip White performs on a collection of custom electronic instruments and a standard mixer, through which he generates and steers

feedback. Pitched and rhythmic grids are imposed upon the feedback through external circuits and custom software, but the sounds themselves are pure feedback. I perform using live vocal processing that is similar to “auto tune,” although in some pieces my unprocessed voice is amplified as well, allowing for the possibility to sing a duet with myself.

--When my good friend Timo asked me to write him a piece, I wanted to create something that would not only challenge him and show off his incredible technical ability, but also somehow honor his lifetime of performing, absorbing and living classical music. What I came up with was Parlor Diplomacy, a piece whose material is at odds with its organization.

Gestures, harmonies and rhythms from Parlor Diplomacy are extracted from the context that might have once given them a different meaning.

What could have been an incidental trill is isolated and stuck under stage lights, or a series of falling figures is divorced from its historicallyappropriate sequence. The result is a familiar yet unsettling landscape of fragments and echoes.

The first movement is a rhythmically-challenging and somewhat schizophrenic “trill-tactic” barnburner.

The second movement is a homage to Brahms’ stunning Intermezzo, Op. 119 in B minor, portraying an echo of a ripple of a wave from the heart-breaking motif of a descending line, or perhaps imagining how Brahms might have heard each note falling at its own rate in its own universe, unencumbered by 19th-century rules of harmony.

Notes on the Program

The third movement seeks to recreate the experience of an intermediate piano student (or not-particularly-good classical pianist such as myself ) discovering a piece of music for the first time, very slowly, almost awkwardly, separated from many musical parameters necessary for a successful performance yet somehow still uncovering and preserving some of music’s essential beauty, for the ears of only the performer.

The fourth movement comes closest to respecting classical rules of form and development, beginning with a ground bass and later developing material in a style that owes much to a typical theme-and-variations. While dissonances in harmony and rhythm firmly place this music in a contemporary historical context, its method of presenting itself -- that is, the preservation of the grammar as well as the sounds of classical music -- makes it the most traditional of all the movements.

As Wikipedia creates a “disambiguation” page to help sort similar-sounding entries into a meaningful catalog, the final movement “ambiguizes” gestures by separating them from any grid or hierarchy that might help clarify their musical role. A pithy collection of cadences going nowhere.

--Stem is a constellation of movements. Each gazes from a different angle at the network of relationships (real and made up, historical and spontaneous) between music, education and violence. We live at or around the intersection of these forces, where teenagers kill one another, where kids die soon.

- (v.) To arise or originate.

The form of the piece is a multiple choice problem. The stem is the beginning part of the item that presents the problem to be solved. The options are the possible answers that the examiner

can choose from, with the correct answer called the key and incorrect answers called distractors.

While educational testing takes place in countries around the world, the multiple choice test is uniquely American. It is both the most economical and most limited form of standardized test. Ambiguity is a contaminant. The multiple choice test allows no space for partial knowledge. It is a sanctuary to the objective.

- (n.) The main part of a word to which affixes are added. a.) Turn back the clock starts the piece as it will end. It is made of the same music as the final measures of the piece, but slowed down enough to linger or even freeze on individual moments.

This is inspired by the idea of returning to the scene of a traumatic event, replaying it over and over in your memory, dismembering each moment as if you could find and remove the one that made the crucial difference. b.) Fugue state is made from tiny samples of the Fugue from Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, cut out from their original context and reordered into a new piece. The musical traits that traditionally define a ‘fugue’ – including the ordered sequence of subjects and countersubjects in imitative counterpoint, presented so clearly and educationally by Britten – are no longer audible. Instead, other qualities of the material are emphasized (including the texture, if not the functional logic, of his counterpoint).

- (n.) In musical notation, the vertical line extending from the note head (indicating pitch) to the flag (indicating rhythm). c.) Shadow of Billy the Kid is a poetic autopsy of a violent child. The music comes from shards of a pretty chorale, each run backwards and forwards, as if dissected for examination.

Notes on the Program

d.) The Kid’s kids scrawls on the score of the final scene of Aaron Copland’s 1938 ballet Billy the Kid. The iconic/heroic/melancholic French horn “open prairie” theme is left as the centerpiece, while other elements of Copland’s score reverberate as distant echoes or rot entirely. This movement imagines a legacy left for future generations by the famous outlaw and by music that romanticizes vigilantism. e.) Shadow of Gwendolyn Brooks is a filtered, microscopic view of Brooks’ poem, We Real Cool. The poet’s own reading is the source material: the rhythm is preserved exactly, but only the very lowest and very highest audible pitches are extracted and amplified. It is a closeup on the fringes of sound, or the fleeting atmosphere in the room. It is a futile attempt to contain something that cannot be captured, and a tribute to the voice that vividly portrayed seven kids that die soon.

- (n.) The main line of descent of a family. f.) Distractor superimposes noisy transcriptions drawn from contemporary electronic music with samples from Morton Feldman’s 1986 orchestral work Coptic Light. Like many of Feldman’s works, Coptic Light obscures an audible pulse and maintains an extremely soft dynamic (ppp) throughout. Here, Feldman samples are heard in their original orchestration, at different rates of speed, atop a blunt beat. g.) All retch and no vomit returns to the same pretty chorale we’ve heard before, lifted from an older piece of music where it once occupied a structurally important and emotionally powerful position. At first this source material is completely frozen and we only hear it in shards.

Gradually it thaws, becomes richer, and nearly regains its original form before liquefying completely and slipping away like water. While this process is heard in the strings, the rest of

the orchestra plays a series of chords reiterated from earlier movements: moments of Britten and Copland haphazardly layered on top of each other and violently struck in a repeated pattern. Meaning is only ever produced by friction between things. It is the space between stars in a constellation, the adjacency of tiles in a mosaic, the ambiguity of simultaneous correct answers.

- (v.) To restrain or stop.

Upcoming Events

Peter Frankl plays Schubert

Takács String Quartet

october 2 Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 8 pm Horowitz Piano Series Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke and Winterreise, with Randall Scarlata, baritone.

Tickets start at $12, Students $6

october 15 Morse Recital Hall | Tuesday | 8 pm Oneppo Chamber Music Series Beethoven: Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4 Janácek: Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters” Smetana: Quartet No. 1, “From My Life” Tickets start at $25, Students $12

Homegrown on Common Ground

Wendy Sharp, violin with Joel Wizansky, piano

october 4 Morse Recital Hall | Friday | 7 pm Ellington Jazz Series Featuring jazz, blues, and art songs from the James Weldon Johnson collection housed at the Beinecke Library, in celebration of the Beinecke’s 50 th anniversary.

Tickets start at $12, Students $6

october 20 Morse Recital Hall | Sunday | 4 pm Faculty Artist Series Mozart: Violin Sonata in A major, K. 526; Ives: Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano; Kreisler: Aubade provençale and Caprice viennois; de Falla: Danse Espagnole; Ingram Marshall: September Canons Free Admission

Concert Programs & Box Office: Krista Johnson, Carol Jackson Communications: Dana Astmann, Monica Ong Reed, Austin Kase Operations: Tara Deming, Chris Melillo Piano Curators: Brian Daley, William Harold Recording Studio: Eugene Kimball P.O. Box 208246, New Haven, CT · 203 432-4158

music.yale.edu

Robert Blocker, Dean