POSTCARDS FROM THE SKY

Joseph Schwantner is one of America's most decorated composers, with an instantly recognizable style that unites tonal and nontonal music through a compositional practice known as serialism. Schwantner describes his music as "preoccup[ied] with color," and though he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1979 for his orchestral work Aftertones of Infinity, his music is also considered to be core repertoire for wind and percussion ensembles.

This compositional versatility is on display in Sparrows, where allusions to the renaissance, baroque, romantic, and contemporary music create an ever-shifting series of "dream states." These dream states are a musical response to the text - 15 haiku selected from The Autumn Wind by Issa, a Japanese poet and Buddhist priest known as one of "the Great Four" masters of haiku.

These 15 haiku are arranged to suggest a cyclic pattern of daytime (the music of which is more tonal) moving to nighttime (which is more nontonal) and back again. This process begins with an introduction of both the tonal and nontonal elements that will be present throughout the piece, using the word "Sparrows" and the text of the first haiku.

The second and third haiku mark the true beginning of day, and the fourth and fifth haiku echo them by using the same musical materials in canon - a technique where different voices play the same music, but starting at different times.

The next three haiku (#6-8) herald the arrival of night, with which comes the most starkly nontonal music in the piece. Just prior to the ninth haiku, a lengthy ostinato in the piano announces that we are unquestionably in a new dream state than just moments before. This ostinato is repeated in canon, much like what occurred earlier during the daytime, before the 13th and 14th haiku bring us back to familiar day. The instrumentalists sing - an effect that, earlier, exuded an air of mystery, but which here closes the work with a sense of gentle hope.

One could say that Ottorino Respighi made a career out of regretting the fact that he hadn’t been born earlier. Without a doubt, he is best known for his symphonic works, including The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals, but he was also a distinguished scholar of early music, with a passion for obscure music of the 16th-18th centuries, particularly neglected treasures from his Italian heritage. Ottorino was born on July 9, 1879, in Bologna. He came from a musical family; his father was a piano teacher, and his grandparents were musicians. He studied violin, viola, and composition in his hometown through his youth and then traveled to St. Petersburg to tutor under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and accept an appointment as principal violist for the Russian Imperial Theatre. Respighi's sumptuous orchestral colors are a direct result of his time in Russia. Born too late to be a true Romantic but too early to be a modernist, Respighi found his voice combining the modal techniques of Renaissance and Baroque masters with modern instrumental and harmonic language. In addition to composing original works that imitated earlier styles, he also made numerous arrangements of actual early works, such as this 1928 suite for small orchestra, Gli uccelli (The Birds).

Creatives throughout the centuries have been captivated by our fine-feathered friends, using their songs, colors, and skills as a source of inspiration. Classical composers are no exception. The aviary is vast; from 17th century’s Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber to 20th century’s Oliver Messiaen and a flock of audience favorites in-between: Vivaldi, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Saint-Saëns, Delius, Vaughan Williams, and more.

The core of Gli uccelli is five 17th- and 18th-century compositions for harpsichord or lute, transformed into a shimmering new orchestral work for an intimate chamber collective, augmented by delicate splashes of harp and celesta.

Gli uccelli opens with a “Prelude” of birds in flight, the fluttering of wings, based on a harpsichord piece by the Italian composer and virtuoso keyboardist, Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710). The second movement, “La colomba”, is a lush depiction of a dove, the oboe representing its mournful cry, taken from a lute piece by the French lutenist and composer, Jacques Gallot (1625–1695). A harpsichord piece by great French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) brings us the clucking and pecking of the hen, “La gallina”, with interjections by the clarinet, oboe, and bassoon, and a final trumpet rooster. The mystical, magical, nocturnal soundscape of the nightingale, “L’usignuolo”, is based on anonymous folksong transcribed by the blind Dutch recorder virtuoso Jacob van Eyck (1590-1657).

The final movement returns to the music of Pasquini with the call of the cuckoo, “Il cucù”, from one of his harpsichord pieces. The cuckoo’s rhythmic, persistently repeated song echoes throughout the orchestra (have we all gone cuckoo?!) as the concluding coda reprises both the introductory music and the bird songs we heard through the work. Respighi was probably born at the wrong time, taking comfort in music from another century entirely. When he combined his mastery of past styles with a child-like allure to birds, he left us a delightful aviary, imbued with the atmospheric charm of a time gone by, brilliantly orchestrated with great care and love.

Postcards from the Sky by Marjan Mozetich are three short pieces commissioned through the assistance of the Canada Council, and premiered by the Thirteen Strings of Ottawa conducted by Paul Andreas Mahr in April, 1996. Since then these evocative works have become the composer’s most popular, performed and broadcast extensively. They first recorded on CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) Records with the Vancouver Chamber Orchestra. For further information, see: www.mozetich.com or YouTube.

"Unfolding Sky" is the a gradual unfolding of the opening melodic theme and the rising bass arpeggio simultaneously being accompanied by a perpetual mobile pattern. The climax is akin to the burst of sunlight through the parting of clouds, or the gradual rising of the sun into its full morning glory.

"Weeping Clouds" musically entails a descending melodic line of a lamenting nature which is passed from one section of strings to another. Only at the very end does the line move upwards. The accompaniment consists of a constant seesawing of two notes giving an ethereal floating motion, and the descending pizzicato symbolising falling rain.

“A Messenger" is the revelation of a hauntingly simple melody gliding over a hypnotic accompaniment. The beauty of this enigmatic musical message briefly reflects on the infinite beyond our worldly concerns.

Renowned Chinese composer He Zhanhao grew up immersed in his country’s folk songs and the popular Yue genre of Chinese opera that originated in his native city of Shaoxing. He spent much of the 1950s performing on traditional Chinese instruments with a rural Yue opera troupe before entering the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1957 as a student of violin and composition. The conservatory students would travel to the countryside to perform, and He observed that their audiences struggled to connect with Western art music. “What they wanted to hear, we didn’t know how to play. And what we played, they didn’t understand,” he explained. He was inspired to form an experimental ensemble at the conservatory to begin applying the techniques of Chinese folk music to the practice of Western instruments, and it was there that he met fellow Shanghai Conservatory composition student Chen Gang.

He and Chen collaborated to produce The Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto. They began by transcribing melodies from the traditional Yue opera Liang Zhu for the Western violin. Unlike other genres of Chinese opera which feature elaborate martial arts and acrobatic dancing, Yue opera is singularly focused on the singing of sweet, lively melodies. Because all of the roles in Yue opera are traditionally performed by women, it is considered to be a highly feminine genre and is used almost exclusively to tell love stories. The two young composers combined these delicate Yue melodies with Western orchestral sonorities, classical violin pyrotechnics, and Chinese string instrument techniques, resulting in an innovative blend of Eastern and Western tastes. The work was premiered in 1959 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, but was banned shortly thereafter due to the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. Rediscovered with the reopening of the Shanghai Conservatory in the late 1970s, The Butterfly Lovers has since become a staple of the Western violin repertoire.

The programmatic concerto illustrates the tale of Zhu Yingtai, who is represented in the music by the solo violin. The daughter of a wealthy family during the Jin Dynasty (265-420), it is said that Zhu disguised herself as a boy in order to obtain an education. At school, she met and fell in love with fellow student Liang Shanbo, represented by the principal cello. They were close friends, but she never revealed her true identity before returning home to her family. When Liang later visited, he discovered Zhu’s secret, and the two planned to wed. Tragically, Zhu’s parents had promised her to another, and they sent Liang Shanbo away; he returned to his home, where he died of a broken heart. On her wedding day, Zhu learned of Liang’s death and went immediately to his grave. She cried so hard that the earth shook and his grave cracked open, and, overcome with grief, she threw herself inside. Miraculously, the two lovers were transformed into butterflies that flew away together, never to be separated again.