- Leaning Into and Away
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Eleanor Hovda
for soprano, contrabass, and percussion
- Journey Music (1981)
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Eleanor Hovda
for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, contrabass, piano, and percussion
ca. 8'03"
Click here to see the Performance Notes.
- Crossings (1983)
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Eleanor Hovda
for dancer, clarinet, double bass, percussion, and Audubon birdcall chorus
Crossings was made in 1983 for dancer Shron Friedler and clarinetist Loius friedler for my Perspectives VIII concert at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in March of that year. The piece also uses double bass, laid flat like a koto as well as bowed metal temple bells. Audubon birdcalls are played by the dancer, the musicians, and members of the audience.
Crossings takes its structural content from three sources simultaneously: Zeno's Paradox, that says that destinations (or "center") can be approached but never reached; "alternating currents" of energy, concepts - in this case, use of alternating ideas of measuring/passing time in increments ("clock" time) with "the time it takes to do something" ("process" time); and the activity of body crossings used as a physical aid to integrating right/left side of the brain functioning.
Thus, Crossings is a way to approach a center as well as to move away from a center. Crossings explores extents and limits, boundaries. Repetition is used introspectively, to probe gently, to excavate carefully.
- Cheetah (1992)
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Eleanor Hovda
for flute, oboe, Bb clarinet, bassoon, viola, electric bass, percussion
Cheetah is written for Relache, and was completed on December 24, 1992. I have used the image of cheetahs for several reasons. I wanted to work with extremes of energy (from relaxed to intense-but-inward to most extroverted, flung energy). I also wanted to work with the idea of excavating sounds from the bone and sinew of acoustic instruments: the expansions of single pitches, either fingered or bowed, which can happen when extremes of breath control, additions of auxillary keys and alternative fingerings (winds) and larger spectra of bowing techniques and placements (strings) are used. Cheetahs are said to be the fastest animals on earth when they run, but their sprints are very short. The rest of the time they spend recovering from their runs or preparing for the next dash by scoping out the landscape with intense focus, from stationary positions or by prowling. I imagine an enormous amount of energy and motion in the stillness flowing from them during these periods of intense focus.
- Borealis Music (1987)
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Eleanor Hovda
for flute, oboe, bassoon, piano
For the Sylmar Chamber Ensemble
Commissioned by the MCF/CCP Program funded by the Jerome Foundation
Borealis Music suggests energy which moves but doesn't go anywhere. The Aurora Borealis is seen as curtains or ribbons of actice energy, but not a travelling form. There is also the perception of the aurora being a series of super-imposed"after-images" - the idea that what is seen is the resultant of a field of reflected/refracted electrical impulses.
The energy fields are achieved by introspective probings of the "sound around the sound" of strings and winds. Sonic ribbons emerge, and lengths of time taken to excavate and articulate resonance fields.
An important aspect of performance is to be able to work with very soft dynamic levels with intense concentration and energy. A theatrical metaphor is the Noh drama of Japan, where the slow unfolding of infinitesimally distilled material serves to heighten and sustain focus and attention.
- Waveschart (1970)
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Eleanor Hovda
for flute, B-flat clarinet, percussion, piano, and bass
- Mountain Goat File (1992)
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Eleanor Hovda
for clarinet, electric guitar, cello, doublebass, and percussion
"Mountain Goat File is made for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. It is a piece from other pieces, because BOAC All-Stars wanted to perfrom an already-extant piece, and I decided to make a piece where the new ideas would be the combination of instruments and the overall form, but the specific music for each instrument would be borrowed from other pieces. My task was to work with already-extant material in a new format. Mountain Goat File, as a title, comes from a file I have in my computer for things that relate tangentally or, only if one makes a huge conceptual leaps from one place to another. I have been interested for some time in "journey music" - music that deals with testing boundaries, traversing shifiting landscapes and projecting evolving fields of energy. Mountain Goat File leaps, rather than shifts, from pinnacle to pinnacle. Sometimes it is isolated and slippery there, and sometimes it is a sociable plateau."
- If Tigers Were Clouds (1994)
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Eleanor Hovda
for B-flat clarinet, marimba, temple blocks, vibraphone, and piano
ca. 15'15"
...then reverberating, they would create all songs.
For Zeitgeist, developed during Music in Motion Project