- New Baroque Fugues and Postludes for Piano (2011)
-
Rahilia Hasanova
for solo piano
ca. 1hr 7'00"
New Baroque Fugues and Postludes is a cycle of 22 polyphonic piece for solo piano. This cycle consists 11 Fugues and accompanying to each fugue 11 Postludes. Each pair of Fugues and Postludes has to be regarded as a unit that expresses individual characters, forms and structures, and emotional states.
Why the forgotten fugue form? Because I found inside of this ancient antique composition form a great and maybe not seen potential for the future development, reconstruction, and kind of rehabilitation. By my new vision I was trying to bring this baroque form to a new level of an unconventional contemporary approach. Therefore, I named my piano cycle New Baroque Fugues and Postludes.
Why not traditional preludes? Because concluding each fugue by its own Postlude I was highlighted my idea and my new vision of updated polyphonic cycling. Why not 24 or 48? And again, because, not regarding to their colorfulness and rhythmical differences, compositional techniques, representation of different feelings and conditions between them, I wanted all of them to be performed during the one concert event. Because... New Baroque Fugues and Postludes would speak with an audience in new undivided mixed classical, neoclassical, polyphonic, harmonic but contemporary language.
The piece was recorded by Ruth Rose and Francesca Hurst, and can be heard when viewing the score.
Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.
- Ariadnemusic (1984)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, viola, violoncello, piano, and percussion
ca. 14'42"
For the Boston Musica Viva, Richard Pittman, music director
Click here to view revised performance notes.
Click here to hear a recording by the Prism Players on the Eleanor Hovda Collection CD on Spotify.
- Leaning Into and Away (1994)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, oboe, clarinet in Bb, percussion, piano, and string quartet
ca. 12'51"
Commissioned by the Cuicani Orchestra Project, with support from the US/Mexico Fund for Culture
Dedicated to the memory of Manuel Enriquez
I use the title Leaning Into and Away because the piece grew out of many thoughts about and experiences dancing and making music for dancers. I found myself focussing particularly on the energies of running on the ground and leaping into space, and the flow of energy involved in any physical moves from balance to suspension. I also wanted to work with the idea of excavating sounds from the bone and sinew of piano, wind, string, and percussion instruments – as dancers draw energy from deep inside their bodies.
Click here to view the performance notes.
Click here to hear a recording by the Prism Players on Spotify.
- Regions (1971, rev. 1997)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, grand piano, and crotales
ca. 12'40"
Commissioned by the Atlanta Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, California EAR Unit, and Boston Musica Viva through the Meet the Composer/Readers Digest Commissioning Program
Click here to view an addendum related to pages 4 - 11.
Click here to hear a recording by the California EAR Unit on Spotify.
- Spring Music with Wind (1973)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for solo piano
ca. 11'45"
Piano piece for Carla Hübner
This piece uses seven areas of the inside of a grand piano. These seven areas are played by five different mallets and a glass bottle. Voice sounds ("air" sounds, humming, whistling) are used to amplify or extend piano textures.
Click here to view the performance notes.
Click here to listen to the recording by Lee Humphries on the Eleanor Hovda Collection CD (Spotify).
Click here to listen on Innova Recordings.
- Strings (1989)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for violin and piano
For Stephanie Chase, commissioned by the Schubert Club
Strings was commissioned by the Schubert Club for violinist Stephanie Chase. I used metaphors from multidimensional string theories, where energy is conceived as infinite "strings" in space/time, and the Universe is said to have extra hidden dimensions. I have been working, for some time, on articulating lemniscates (figure-of-eight ribbons) as sonic sculptur. I'm also intrigued by an often unexplored timbral resource of stringed instruments: the "sound around the sound" of overtones, harmonics.
I visualize the piece as sound choreography, where the violin spins sonic "strings" and the piano is resonator, afterimage, or "shadow universe." The pitch structures in the piece derive from the harmonic series, and are shaped by bending, twisting and stretching those basic pitch relationships as much as possible without "breaking" them, or turning them into something else. The piano functions as an accumulating resonance field throughout the piece.
- Journeymusic (1981)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, contrabass, piano, and percussion
ca. 8'00"
Commisioned by the Jerome Foundation for the Orchestra of Our Time, Joel Thome, music director
Click here to view the performance notes.
- Folios (1980)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for concrète tape, voice, glass harmonica, bells, bird call, toy piano, piano, clarinet, recorders, and double plastic pipes, dancer
- Borealis Music (1987)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, oboe, bassoon, piano
ca. 10'30"
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 active 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)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, B-flat clarinet, percussion, piano, and bass
- If Tigers Were Clouds (1994)
-
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
- Embermusic (1978)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for voice and piano
- Yeah Yeah Yeah (1991)
-
Lois V Vierk
for solo piano
ca. 4'30"
When pianist Aki Takahashi talked to me in 1990 about commissioning a short piece inspired by a Beatles tune, I enthusiastically began going through all my old favorites from teenage years. I chose "She Loves You" and got to work. The first phrase of this tune, an ascending scale, is stretched out with tremolos and arpeggiated embellishments over the beginning 43 measures of my piece. After that, my composition follows the harmonic structure of "She Loves You", with melodic fragments woven in. At the very end of the piece the musical phrase "yeah yeah yeah" is whispered briefly by the piano.
This recording is by pianist Sachiko Kato, recorded live in concert on Aug. 20, 2008 at the Phoenix Hall in Osaka, Japan.
Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.
Click here to download all performance materials.
- Red Shift 4 (1991)
-
Lois V Vierk
for trumpet, cello, electric guitar, percussion, and piano/synthesizer
ca. 12'25"
The title of this piece refers to the way in which astronomers and physicists measure movement and distances of distant celestial bodies. Briefly, characteristic lines and patterns made by different elements found in the stars, etc., as observed through a spectrometer, are shifted in one direction or the other, towards the red or towards the blue end of the spectrum, depending on whether the body is moving away from us or towards us. This shift is called the "red shift".
When I wrote this work, I had the feeling of something of great mass and motion, far away, like a comet. It first seemed to move slowly, then gradually began accelerating toward us, faster and faster, until finally at great speed I felt it sweeping down upon us, through us, and back out into the heavens.
During the 1980s and into the '90s I worked on developing principles of "Exponential Structure", in which elements such as time, harmonic motion, rhythmic and timbral development, sound density, etc. are controlled mathematically by exponential factors. These are not meant to be abstract constructs, but formal ideas based on the emotional thrust of the sounds and of the piece as a whole. The harmonic motion (movement from one pitch center to another), with its ever-decreasing time segments, is the clearest expression of Exponential Structure in this work.
The original 1989 version of Red Shift (cello, electric guitar, percussion, synthesizer) was commissioned by the Experimental Intermedia Foundation with support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and is available on CD from Tzadik Records. In 1991 the piece was reorchestrated as Red Shift 4 for A Cloud Nine Consort and again for Ensemble Modern.
This recording does not totally match the score. The recording is of a 1991 orchestration of this piece for the New York ensemble A Cloud Nine Consort, without cello. Performers are:
Gary Trosclair, trumpet/synthesizer
Mark Stewart, electric guitar
Alan Moverman, synthesizer/piano
Tigger Benford, percussion
from CD:
New World Records NWCR646 "Bang On A Can Live, Vol. 2, Emergency Music"
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 performance materials.
- Words Fail Me (2005)
-
Lois V Vierk
for cello and piano
ca. 7'19"
I wrote the melody for the first movement of Words Fail Me soon after September 11, 2001. My family and I had watched horrid events of that day "live" out of our apartment window, as thousands of people were murdered before our eyes and the World Trade Center was shot down. It was just across the Hudson River from where we live. It is an image I will never ever forget of smoke and dust drenching lower Manhattan in a horrible white cloud of debris that used to be a building vibrant with the energy of many living, breathing people.
After spending some weeks in a kind of daze I eventually picked up musical sketches I had been working on before 9/11. The materials in those sketches seemed so irrelevant that I threw them away. Then I wrote simple music. There is room for some improvisation. This is the first movement.
The second movement is made up of dense instrumental textures. It is dynamic and rhythmic. It builds relatively simple phrases into more complex statements, which develop into a high energy climax. This piece is meant as a tribute to the victims and to all the people of greater New York City, as well as to all people anywhere who survive tragedy and disaster and go on with life with great resolve.
Recording is by:
Theodore Mook, cello
Margaret Kampmeier, piano
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.
- Spin 2 (1995)
-
Lois V Vierk
for two pianos
ca. 14'30"
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking describes a "spin 2" subatomic particle as one which has the same orientation in space after it is spun through 180 degrees, half a rotation. An arrow with an arrowhead at each end illustrates this ideas, as does the visual image of two grand pianos pacing each other with a pianist at each keyboard. As far as this piece is concerned, the concept of "spin 2" also has to do with the sounds themselves. For example, the middle section of the work contains phrases made up of many single, fast, high-pitched and high energy notes. The sounds are reiterated into symmetrical musical phrases. I hear these little pieces of sound as spinning through space, flying from one instrument to the other, combining and recombining with each other to gain new shape and direction.
My work Spin 2 begins almost as a piece for 2 percussion instruments, first completely inside the pianos, hitting and strumming the strings, and then moving on to the lowest pitches of the keyboard, playing them loudly and broadly. Gradually pitch content and harmonic movement become apparent as the interlocking piano phrases sweep upward to the highest keys, and to a lyric middle section. The work ends with dynamic trills and tremolos, expanding the instrumental register.
Recording is by Claudia Rüegg and Petra Ronner, pianists.
CD - Vexer Verlag CHF 45 "Celestial Ballroom"
or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.
Click here to download all performance materials.
- To Stare Astonished at the Sea (1994)
-
Lois V Vierk
for piano played entirely on the strings
ca. 6'36"
When it is calm the ocean is gentle and inviting. It can be mysteriously majestic or humblingly powerful. Sometimes it thrashes about frighteningly. The title of my piece was inspired by the W. B. Yeats poem "Her Triumph". Yeats' words say to me that the energy of life itself is untamed and often wilder and more beautiful than what shows on the surface.
The piece is played entirely inside the piano on the strings. It is composed in three sections, beginning percussively in the lowest register, adding "tremolos" and "trills" (no pitches here are notated exactly). The music moves to higher strings and develops tonally with plucked string phrases and dynamic glissandos. lt ends with a flurry on the highest strings.
To Stare Astonished at the Sea was commissioned for pianist Margaret Leng Tan by Barry Goldberg on the occasion of Gayle Morgan's birthday.
Recording is by Claudia Rüegg, pianist
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.
- Timberline (1991)
-
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.