NOTES
Snoqualmie Passages Patrick Houlihan
This single-movement work derives its title from the Snoqualmie Pass, a route through the Cascade Mountains in Washington. The opening alternates between the piano’s bold chords and the saxophone’s melodic declarations, material that is presented throughout. Just as a visitor to the Snoqualmie area experiences rugged mountains, powerful waterfalls, and serene valleys, the piece travels through rigorous as well as tranquil passages.
Snoqualmie Passages is dedicated to saxophonist Caroline Taylor, who premiered it at Ouachita Baptist University with pianist Lei Cai.
Vexatious Joungmin Lee
Embark was composed for the marriage of Stacey Mastrian and Richard Bond in 2015. The 5-bell chime functions as the backbone and, in line with the practice of mindfulness meditation, focuses on a single action. This action, the striking of the chime, is ever-present and broadly unchanging. Over this, the egg shaker moves amongst three different performance modes, establishing a middle ground between the meditative bells and the more active kalimba. The kalimba plays melodic fragments with only tangential relationships to one another. Taken as a whole the three instruments represent three simultaneous ways of being present in the world.
Shining Through Cracks Paul SanGregory
This piece is based on harmonic colors and instrumental textures. A series of chords is used both as a unifying structure and to produce harmonic colors. For the most part, selected pitch classes from those chords are used by the strings to produce textures, while the complete chords are consistently played by the piano. Many of the string textures appear as freely melodic atmospheres of “controlled aleatory” (playing out of time) while the oboe and piano play in strict tempo. In such cases, the results are cloudy string atmospheres that the oboe shines through with color added by the piano’s chords. Although the same series of chords repeats throughout the piece, their inversions and spacings are always changing, thus creating a wider variety of colors and contrasts. While the oboe’s melodies usually use notes of those chords, microtonal pitch bends are sometimes also added. These microtones help the oboe stand out from the ensemble and “shine through” while playing “in the cracks” between conventional notes. They also add musical stresses that might even remind some people of traditional “blue” notes. Finally, because the oboe functions as a soloist, there are also instances of dramatic concerto-like dialogues between the strings and the oboe.
If You Walked a Mile Mike McFerron
“We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.” – Dorothy Day
If You Walked a Mile for marimba and computer was written in 2015 for acclaimed percussionist, Andrew Spencer. Texts in this work are excerpted from George Miller’s eponymous social justice poem, which was written specifically for this composition.
Fantasia Justin Writer
Fantasia was written for the talented clarinetist David Carter. This highly chromatic, seemingly meterless work is held together by an Eb major triad where individual chord tones mark specific points in the architecture of the piece. Although this feature may not be aurally perceptible, it was an important means for organizing the three main sections of the work. A serious attempt was made to adhere to the true spirit of a fantasia; an instrumental work that gives the impression of music flowing spontaneously from the player’s imagination.
Dulce Et Decorum Est Aaron Alon
As one of the most powerful anti-war poems in the English language, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” reminds us of what is truly at stake in war, of the true horrors that are hidden in the daily statistics. The text challenges the call to arms from Horace’s Odes, which is quoted in Latin as the last two lines of the text: “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” A slow opening, depicting the soldiers’ weary return to their campsite, gives way to a sudden, rhythmically charged section as the speaker is launched into a flashback of a WWI gas explosion. Quotations of the rally tune, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” appear with increasing clarity in the piece. Dulce et Decorum Est was supported by a grant from the Mu Phi Epsilon foundation. It is also available in a version for baritone and piano.
The text by Wilfred Owen was written in 1917 and published posthumously in 1921.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
GAS! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Breathing 2: Re/Inspiration Michael Pounds
Breathing 2: Re/Inspiration has its origins in a piece I composed roughly 20 years ago entitled Breathing. That was a very early work for me, and I have wanted to revisit the idea for a long time. This new work uses some of the original source recordings of toys and whistles (which I have been using for teaching demonstrations for years), combined with breath sounds made by my wife that I recorded nearly 10 years ago, and just a few small portions of the original piece. The composition is inspired by various aspects of breath: breath as necessary for the functioning of the body, breath as related to life force/energy, breath as meditation, breath as rhythm, and breath as self-expression.
Bombinate Jeffrey Loeffert
Bombinate is scored for three soprano saxophones and singing bowl. The singing bowl is performed by the third soprano saxophonist. The word “bombinate” is a literary device, which means to make a humming or buzzing noise. The work is largely centered on concert D, which is initially sounded by the singing bowl. The saxophone parts weave in and out of this center pitch through microtonal fluctuations, tone distortions, and articulative techniques. The buzzing noise comes from this constant sounding of a center pitch, which is at times very faint and at other times only inferred. Though the work is a meditation, it also showcases the wide range of emotions from frenetic energy to anger when we close our eyes and reflect on our surroundings.
Embark Stephen F. Lilly
Embark was composed for the marriage of Stacey Mastrian and Richard Bond in 2015. The 5-bell chime functions as the backbone and, in line with the practice of mindfulness meditation, focuses on a single action. This action, the striking of the chime, is ever-present and broadly unchanging. Over this, the egg shaker moves amongst three different performance modes, establishing a middle ground between the meditative bells and the more active kalimba. The kalimba plays melodic fragments with only tangential relationships to one another. Taken as a whole the three instruments represent three simultaneous ways of being present in the world.
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