Je Me Délace

Jenece Gerber, student participant of the Summer in Sombor workshop, will have a new work premiered by the New York Virtuoso Singers under the direction of Harold Rosenbaum. The concert is October 28, 2007 in New York City. More information can be found here.

I was lucky enough to have a preview of the work during the workshop and this definitely qualifies as a “must see performance”. Enjoy.

the power of 5

In preparation for the Summer in Sombor course, I decided that it would be good to write a new work–my second string quartet. And in the spirit of the blogosphere, I thought Eddy’s second entry about Sombor should be small glimpse into the compositional process.

As I’m primarily a theatrical composer, I find that concrete images or stories are great staring points even for concert works like a string quartet. I started with an image, a line of text that came to me from some hidden corner of my mind(s): “belief emerges from the cynic”. I must have been in a particularly Zen state of mind—which was good since I had a daunting task before me. So the story of the piece is this: first step “cynical”; second step “immersed” (in what, not exactly sure, so you’ll have to decide for yourself); third step transformation to “belief” which is to me the opposite of cynicism. These states of mind are presented in three short movements.

For harmonic material I decided to stay in a mostly pentatonic world. I chose several 5-note scales and harmonies based on them to serve as the “background” to the “foreground” of three different, but related, motivic ideas. For the first movement I highlighted the “angular” feel which emphasizes the cynical nature of our protagonist’s first state of mind. Not too angular, of course, because these also serve, in softer guise, for the second and third movements and allow for the final transformation of the cynicism into belief in the third movement. Pentatonic scales have an openness and malleability that makes all these transformations possible while maintaining an economy of musical material.

As a side note, I’d like to mention a useful source of harmonic ideas: Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns by Nicolas Slonimsky. The genesis of my pentatonic scales came from one in this book. I’ve found it useful for other pieces as well, and, when really stuck, I find it helpful to open it up and pick a scale or pattern at random at start improvising–a great idea generator.

Care for a listen? You’ll find the recording of the premiere here:
http://edwardficklin.com/?q=audio
as played by the ably gifted and dedicated Season Quartet of Novi Sad.

echoes

Ciao, Eddy here. While you might think my first blog entry about Summer in Sombor and our other Serbian performances would be about music, composition, or other artistic matters, I’m rather going to touch on matters more humanitarian. Throughout my two weeks here I have, almost daily, been given minute anecdotes about the wars of the 90’s and the NATO bombings that were in a way the culmination of a decade of horror. The echoes of times past are faint, but when I stop to contemplate and put myself in their place for just a moment or two the horror becomes all too real.

Here are some examples and I encourage you to contemplate each for moment as I did and imagine yourself in their shoes.

• Phobia of thunderstorms because they remind you too much of the bombings
• 8 years and counting and your municipal airport, destroyed by NATO bombs, is still waiting to be rebuilt.
• Driving on the highway and a building is pointed out to you. It’s in ruins and in a spirit of irony and dark humor, you’re told: “That used to be our local TV station. You did this to us.”
• Imagine commuting across the Danube in Novi Sad on a daily basis using improvised “ferries” that were little better than rafts because all the bridges that the city depended on were destroyed. Only recently have they all been reconstructed.
• Not knowing from day to day how much your money is worth because you’re stuck in the worst hyperinflation on record. In 24 hours you can go, literally, from riches to rags.
• Being in a night club that’s being raided by the army to “draft” more soldiers. Men were shipped off into the army with no notice and little more than a single phone call to their families to tell them where they are.
• Imagine being a liberal American in a country where Clinton is vilified as much as Bush—and for good reason. Are there any good guys left?

This list isn’t meant to be an historical record, but rather an attempt to capture the lightning quick and informal conversational moments–moments that are only faint echoes of a terrible time, but worth remembering so that maybe, just maybe, history might not repeat itself.

I promise I’ll write more about music (and lighter things) soon. Zdravo!