- Music from "The Proclamation" (1966, rev. 1968)
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Eleanor Hovda
for solo flute
- Boundaries (1989)
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Eleanor Hovda
for four flutes and four double basses
ca. 7'11"
Click here to listen to the recording on the Eleanor Hovda Collection CD on Spotify.
- A Quartet (1971)
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Eleanor Hovda
for voice, flute, and Flexitone
- Spring Music with Wind (1973)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for solo piano
ca. 11'45"
This piece uses seven areas of the inside of a grand piano. These seven areas are played by five different mallents and a glass bottle. Voice sounds ("air" sounds, humming, whistling) are used to amplify or extend piano textures.
Click here to see 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.
- Leaning Into and Away
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Eleanor Hovda
for soprano, contrabass, and percussion
- Traces (1990)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for english horn/oboe and contrabass
- Strings (1989)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for violin and piano
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.
- Song in High Grasses (1985)
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Eleanor Hovda
for soprano, flute, cello, and bowed piano
ca. 12'14"
- Piece for Flute Alone (1963)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for solo flute
- Ondes Doubles (1971)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, viola, harp, and Ondes Martenot
- No Snow (1990)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for violin, guitar, clarinet, and bowed piano
- Movement for String Quartet (1963)
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Eleanor Hovda
for string quartet
- Journey Music (1981)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, contrabass, piano, and percussion
ca. 8'03"
Click here to see the Performance Notes.
- Iki Ma (1985)
-
Eleanor Hovda
for shakuhachi
ca. 4'35"
- Folios (1980)
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Eleanor Hovda
for concrète tape, voice, glass harmonica, bells, bird call, toy piano, piano, clarinet, recorders, and double plastic pipes, dancer
- Firefall (1974)
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Eleanor Hovda
for flute, voice, double bass, and dancer
- Cymbalmusic (1982 - 1985)
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Eleanor Hovda
for double-mounted cymbals, bass bows, and friction mallets
I. Centerflow/Trail I
II. Centerflow/Trail II
III. Lemniscates with Breath
IV. Ecce
V. Montemarte
The Cymbalmusic Series developed out of ensemble music that I've been making since 1972. The various pieces are made for a cymbal soloist who elicits sounds from the metal using bass bows and superball friction mallets. The cymbal player also uses voice sounds, such as whistles, hums, and vowel/consonant "breath" sound shapes as extension and counterpoint to the metal sounds. The player always works collaboratively with the space in which the pieces are performed, and in several of the pieces there are collaborations with dancers and audiences.
- 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)
-
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.