Lois V Vierk

for orchestra

ca. 11'30"

This piece was inspired by the twisted sandstone canyon in the southern California high desert in Angeles National Park called "Devil's Punchbowl". At this exquisite site you are always aware of both extreme beauty and also danger. Descending into the canyon the trail is rugged, rocky, and treacherous, and the heat is scorching. But rising up from the deep gorge are steep, magnificent mountains with their cold streams and sweet-smelling pine trees. The vistas are grand. Far in the distance, soft shapes and hues of the landscape melt into one another. 

Devil's Punchbowl unfolds slowly. Musical materials are constantly developed, pushing the work forward from a relatively simple beginning to its dynamic and colorful climax. The piece opens with languorous brass slides downward. String phrases answer the brass, and woodwinds add color and wisps of melody. Gradually the strings begin their long ascending glissando, sweeping the woodwinds up to their highest register, ending the first section.

Immediately strings and low woodwinds enter with agitated multi-color, ever-changing trills and tremolos. Various instruments combine to form sinewy melodic shapes which creep slowly upward. Percussion becomes more pronounced. Brass adds rhythm and harmony. Each phrase builds on the one before as, little by little, the music becomes faster, louder, and rhythmically emphatic. Trombones and celli playing fortissimo glissandi in the lowest register propel the piece to its full orchestral climax. After the high energy of the climax the music returns briefly to the lyrical mood of the opening, ending gently. 

Devil's Punchbowl was commissioned by the Bang On A Can Festival and the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. The commissioning of this work was made possible by a grant from the Meet The Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. 

The recording of Devil's Punchbowl is of the premiere, given by Victoria Bond conducting the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra on March 21, 1994. They performed the piece beautifully. 

Below are two versions of the score. First is the final version, incorporating several sets of edits to the orchestration made after the premiere and over subsequent years, and which is dated 2009. The major changes to orchestration, emphasizing an expanded role for trombones, etc., are marked above the staves of the score. 

The second is the original score as used by Victoria Bond in 1994 (with numerous indications marked for my first set of edits).

Click here to view the revised score and listen to the recording.

Click here to view the original score and listen to the recording.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Lois V Vierk

for three clarinets

ca. 4'43"

In this short work, the three clarinets act together to produce what I call one "sound shape". The elements of the sound shapes in this piece include dynamic gissandi and held notes, crescendo/decrescendo patterns, and fast moving notes. Over the course of the work, sound shapes flow from the extreme high register down through the mid range to the low register. Material is presented in imitative passages. Because the instruments are of the same timbre, all melodic nuances are clearly audible.

This work was influenced by certain pieces of Gagaku, Japanese court music, which I was studying and performing at the time in ensembles led by Gagaku master and UCLA professor Suenobu Tõgi. In these particular pieces, several ryuteki flutes (my instrument) or several hickiriki double reeds play canons in free rhythm. A sound at once massive and transparent is produced.

As for the title of my composition, the intensity of the sound of three clarinets, especially playing loudly in the high register, reminds me of the unrelenting heat of the southern California desert. 

Recording info:

Recorded live, April 16, 1978, at a concert of the Independent Composers Association in their "Second Second Storey Series" at Larchmont Center, Los Angeles.

Clarinetists - Alan Solomon, Dave Ocker, Laurel Hall

For more information about this concert check out the excellent blog Mixed Meters by Dave Ocker:

http://mixedmeters.com/2008/05/second-second-story-series-concert-one.html

The present work was originally the first movement of my composition Song for Three Clarinets, which went through yet another renaming, Desert Heat.  Finally I settled on using the first movement only, with the title Small Shadow in the Desert.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Lois V Vierk

for piano/synthesizer, flute, clarinet, bassoon, viola, contrabass, and percussion

ca. 16'14"

Hiking a trail to high altitudes takes you through an ever changing landscape. The dark closeness of the forest gradually gives way to increasing spaciousness. Light shimmers in as hints of the grandeur ahead draw you up the mountain. Arriving at the timberline and then at the mountain top gives you a spectacular view of the land below and the sky all around you.

This work is in two continuous sections. The first section begins with winds and strings in the mid range, playing held notes and slow glissandi. Simple grace notes are added. Little by little a dense texture is built as grace notes are transformed into ascending pentatonic scale passages in winds and strings. This is overlaid contrapuntally with a piano texture of ornate grace notes, tremolos and trills, gradually moving up over the full range of the keyboard. Cymbals roll at the climax.

The second section begins under the ringing cymbals with slow, open fifths in the lowest register of the winds and strings. The sounds are dark and languid, with many sliding tones. Very gradually more percussive sounds are added. Phrases are becoming shorter, notes are getting faster, shifting from whole notes to half notes to quarters. The piano begins a bright and rhythmic punctuation of the phrase, introducing 16th notes. The development of this rhythmic and harmonic figure gradually moves the piece to its climactic conclusion. Finally all the instruments combine to form one texture--dynamic, rhythmic, covering the entire instrumental range.

Timberline was commissioned for the Relâche Ensemble of Philadelphia by Kobrand, Inc., importer of Champagne Taittinger.

A CD recording was released on New World Records -- Lois V Vierk: Words Fail Me, New World 80766.

Recording is by the Relâche Ensemble of Philadelphia, conducted by Lloyd Shorter, from CD:

New World Records 80766 "Lois V Vierk: Words Fail Me"

Click here to view the CD on New World Records.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Click here to download all performance materials.