Robert Blocker, Dean
doctor of musical arts recital
Trevor Babb guitar
September 14, 2017 • Thursday at 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
Yale School of Music
Trevor Babb guitar September 14, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall
Chris Cretella b. 1977
AB:BA:B (2016)
Leoš Janáček 1854–1928 arr. Martin Bresnick
Excerpts from On an Overgrown Path (1911) I. “Naše večery” (“Our Evenings”) II. “Lístek odvanutý” (“A Blown-Away Leaf ”) IX. “V pláči” (“In Tears”) X. “Sýček neodletěl!” (“The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!”)
Juan Trigos b. 1965
Twelve Variations and Fugue on the “Folia de España” (2015) intermission
Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750
Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro, BWV 998
Paul Kerekes b. 1988
trail (2015)
Giel Vleggaar b. 1974
Aiming for Ecstasy (2005)
This performance is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
Artist Profile
Trevor Babb, guitar Trevor Babb has devoted the majority of his professional energy to contemporary music and performs on classical guitar, electric guitar, and other plucked instruments. His several awards and recognitions include a Fulbright Award and multiple competition prizes. He has performed throughout the United States and internationally as a soloist and chamber musician with the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra, Caution Tape Sound Collective, New England Chamber Players, and Aeon Ensemble. A passionate advocate of new music, Trevor has given countless premieres by established and emerging composers. His debut recording on Innova Recordings features original music for multiple electric guitars along with several premiere recordings by emerging composers. Many contemporary music festivals have hosted him as a fellow including the Nief-Norf Summer Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival New Music Workshop. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Yale School of Music.
Notes on the Program
chris cretella AB:BA:B Chris Cretella wrote AB:BA:B for me after we had a conversation at an electronic music show in New Haven about a year and a half ago. The cryptic title is an acronym for a mildly obscene quote in Thomas Pynchon’s encyclopedic novel Gravity’s Rainbow. Cretella’s musical language takes its cues from cartoon music as much as from the complex musical language of 20th century modernist composition. While Cretella is a guitarist himself, his performance activities are primarily in the realm of free improvised music. He described his compositional process to me as “slowed down improvising” and my learning process for the piece has aimed to preserve idiomatic fingerings and physical gestures to simulate a spontaneous musical performance. leoš janáček On an Overgrown Path (1911) Martin Bresnick’s arrangements of the first series of Leoš Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path are a wonderful contribution to the solo guitar repertoire. Though Janáček composed these character pieces for solo piano in his fifties, they are considered to be his early work, as he was a compositional late bloomer. While not as experimental as his late work, these pieces still exhibit Janáček’s idiosyncratic approach to rhythm and phrasing and modal folk-like melodies. Janáček’s preference for flat-heavy keys has necessitated the arranger to transpose many of the movements to better suit the guitar, an instrument that favors keys with sharps
over flats. Aside from the extended passage of artificial harmonics in the contrasting section of “In Tears,” I have left Bresnick’s arrangements unchanged. juan trigos Twelve Variations and Fugue on the “Folia de España” (2015) A consortium of myself and five other guitarists jointly commissioned Juan Trigos to compose his XII Variaciones y fuga sobre la folìa de España. Manuel María Ponce’s monumental variation set on the same theme written for Andrés Segovia is the clear model for Trigos’ piece both in scope and form. As in Ponce’s piece, Trigos’ statement of the theme is something of a variation in itself as the composer has injected his own musical language into the theme rather than using a traditional statement of the ground bass. Trigos’ variations aim to fuse ancient and modern compositional techniques while frequently alluding to dance music from his native Mexico in addition to traditional European dance forms. Many of the more abstract variations use the melody of the theme as a cantus firmus. The final toccata-like variation is followed by a relatively traditional fugue in which the folia melody is pitted against a syncopated countersubject in a fusion of old world and new world dance.
Notes on the Program
johann sebastian bach Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro, BWV 998
giel vleggaar Aiming for Ecstasy (2005)
J.S. Bach’s Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro Giel Vleggaar writes the following about BWV 998 is something of a peculiar his Aiming for Ecstasy for solo electric guitar: outlier in his suites for unaccompanied “Aiming for Ecstasy draws from a wide array instruments. The three-movement struc- of influences. Whether it is a chord proture is rarely found in other unaccompanied gression from an unreleased Prince song suites by Bach. Furthermore, the da capo called ‘Wonderful Ass,’ an early Renaissance structure of the fugue is seldom found in fauxbourdon harmonization technique, or the composer’s other fugues. The general a palindromic number series (543212345), scholarly consensus of Bach’s lute suites this piece presents a distinct sound world is that they were written for the lautenwerk, that emphasises a recurrent theme in the a keyboard instrument designed to sound composer’s work: bringing together like the lute. Nevertheless, Bach’s lute suites seemingly unrelated musical scenarios. have become mainstays of the modern solo Repetition also plays a central role in Aiming guitar repertoire. for Ecstasy: getting stuck in repeating patterns and trying to break free through development, but always being controlled paul kerekes by the invisible pull of the palindrome. trail (2015) Allowed to wander off every once in awhile into an alien fauxbourdon landscape, the Paul Kerekes’ trail was written for me guitarist finally submits to the iron rule with support from the Jerome Fund for of the number with full abandon,aiming New Music, a program of the American to find a sense of bliss in a highly Composers Forum. Taking its cue from regulated environment.” Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, a busier —Trevor Babb solo part is played against six other guitar parts on a backing track. The piece begins with arpeggios shifting harmonies against the heterophonic texture of the supporting parts. A middle section gives way to a more fragmented texture and a short lead guitar solo before the opening material returns in a different key. The piece ends in a different key from where it began, challenging traditional tonal models and giving the listener a sense of open-endedness and unpredictability comparable to what lies ahead on the “trail” before them.
Robert Blocker, Dean
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