Lois V Vierk

for cello and marimba

ca. 14'13"

The demon star is Algol in the constellation Perseus. Algol (literally "the demon's head") was observed for over a century to periodically get bright, then suddenly dim, but no one knew why. It wasn't until 1782 that the astronomer John Goodricke offered the explanation that Algol is really a pair of stars orbiting around a common center. Approximately every 69 hours the dimmer star passes in front of the brighter star, partially blocking its light, to someone watching on earth. About 100 years later Goodricke's explanation was confirmed by more sophisticated scientific observation. He had made the first identification of an "eclipsing binary" star. Astronomers now know of over 50 eclipsing binaries. This is the imagery that inspired my piece Demon Star.

This work sometimes brings one or the other of the instruments to the foreground, eclipsing the other, as it were, contrasting their sounds. At other times it blends and intertwines the instruments to form new timbres. In places I've asked the two players to make the cello sound more like a marimba and the marimba more like a cello – no easy task! I've asked them to be extremely sensitive to attacks of notes, to the sound envelopes, to the way in which sounds are accented, articulated or sustained, to the way dynamics are played, and so on. Throughout the piece, dynamic patterns, pitch slides in the cello, and harmonic and rhythmic materials are constantly being developed. As the work progresses, it changes from highly energetic, rhythmic, dynamic music, to a gentler, lyrical ending.

Recording is by:

Theodore Mook, cello

Matthew Gold, marimba

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.

Lois V Vierk

 for 8 cellos

ca. 20'34"

"Simoom" is an Arabic word and refers to a hot, dry, violent wind. The piece uses high energy musical materials. It unfolds slowly and is very directional. It develops from relatively simple sound shapes and sound relationships, through continuously transforming textural structures to a climactic conclusion.

During the 1980's I often worked with ensembles of like-instruments. Like- instruments create a kind of transparency which allows instrumental lines and a wide spectrum of timbral nuance to be easily heard. Two or more instruments act together to form one voice or "sound shape". Sound shapes interact then with each other, forming textures which can be described as a counterpoint of counterpoints.

I think of these works as creating one huge instrument from the sound of the entire ensemble together--in this case a giant cello made up of 8 parts.

The textures, and the musical materials and phrases comprising the, are ever developing according to principles of what I call "Exponential Structure". Rates of change of the materials are constantly increasing by an exponential factor throughout this work.

Recording is by Ted Mook, cello, from CD:

XI Records, XI 102 "Lois  V Vierk: Simoom"

The composer has approved this work for performance by a soloist with a recorded track for the other parts.

Click here to view the CD on XI Records.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

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"

Click here to view the CD.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Lois V Vierk

for cello, electric guitar, percussion, and synthesizer

ca. 12'15"

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 sornething of great mass and motion, far away, accelerating toward us 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.

Red Shift was commissioned by the Experimental Intermedia Foundation with support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

Recording is by:

Ted Mook, cello

David Seidel, electric guitar

Jim Pugliese, percussion

Lois V Vierk, synthesizer

from CD:

Tzadik 7056 "Lois V Vierk: River Beneath the River"

Click here to view the CD on Tzadik.

Click here to view the score with analysis, and listen to the recording.

Click here to download performance materials.

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.

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.

Lois V Vierk

for six trumpets

ca. 18'49"

Cirrus (1988) is a work for virtuoso trumpet players. It unfolds slowly and is directional and developmental. The work begins on one pitch in the trumpet's middle register, a held tone with crescendo and decrescendo. Very soon a punctuating 16th note is added at the top of the crescendo, and soon after that a slow glissando (played with the trumpet slide) is added to the phrase. These are the materials that are developed for the rest of the piece. Pitches are added to the phrase. The register expands as does the dynamic range. The 16th note figure is developed, first alternating between two pitches at a time and creating rhythmical phrases, and eventually becoming scalar passages. These passages get longer and longer, eventually moving up to the high register of the instrument, at the loudest and most articulated and fastest moving part of the piece, the climactic section. Then the scalar passages reverse their direction, coming down to the lowest register, where the glissando material has become faster, alternating back and forth between two tones. The scalar passages become shorter, dying out as the glissando again slows down. The work ends lyrically, reminding me of graceful cirrus clouds.

This is one of my pieces for ensembles of like-instruments from the 1980's. Some of my other works from this time are for 5 electric guitars, 18 trombones, 8 cellos, and 4 accordions. I consider each of these ensembles to be one "big instrument". In all of these pieces I used principles of what I call "exponential structure", in which elements such as time, harmonic motion, rhythmic and timbral development, sound density, etc. are controlled by exponential factors. These are not abstract constructs, but formal ideas based on the emotional thrust of the sounds and of the piece as a whole.

Recording is by Gary Trosclair, trumpet, from CD:

XI Records, XI 102 "Lois V Vierk: Simoom"

The composer has approved this work for performance by a soloist with a recorded track for the other parts.

Click here to view the CD on XI Records.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Lois V Vierk

for five electric guitars

ca. 12'54"

This piece is for 5 electric guitars. The symbol on the title page means "five" and is pronounced "go" in Japanese. Guitars strings are all tuned to E and microtonal variants of E. I think of the 5 guitars as acting together to form one massive instrument.

Go Guitars is concerned with sound, with expression, and with musical structure. It begins with relatively simple musical materials – strums, repeated pitches, and pulled string glissandi. These sounds are continuously developed in slow unfolding patterns. The sounds and phrases become more complex, finally developing into dynamic slide glissandi on all 6 strings, covering the entire range of the instrument.

This work utilizes principles of what I call “exponential structure”, in which time and rates of change of musical materials are governed by application of exponential factors. The piece builds in intensity, moving from a high volume opening to a frenzied finale.

I composed Go Guitars in Los Angeles in 1981 for John Scnheider. A CD of this piece performed by David Seidel is available on XI Records.

The composer has approved this work for performance by a soloist with a recorded track for the other parts.

Click here to view the CD on XI Records.

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

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anita Feldman

Anita Feldman, one of a new breed of tap dancers in the early 1980s who expanded the parameters of the art, and one of the earliest to articulate her tap aesthetic, was raised in the suburbs of Chicago. Her mother was an accountant and her father an engineer; both encouraged her to become a mathematician. She began her tap training at age five in Chicago with tap master Jimmy Payne and continued classes with him until she graduated from high school. She also studied ballet and jazz dance, and piano, and learned the rudiments of music theory, becoming attracted to the rhythm section's instruments (bass, drum, and piano) of a jazz combo. When she entered the University of Illinois she studied percussion and African drumming while settling on a major in dance. Modern dance's value as an art form and as a physical outlet was appealing to her, and after graduation she moved to New York where her aesthetic of percussive performance began to evolve. She enrolled in the Dance Education Program of Teacher's College at Columbia University, studying musical composition with Robert Dunn, a John Cage associate who fostered the Judson Dance Theater in the early 1960s. Dunn exposed her to new methods and tools of choreographic experimentation. Still working in the modern dance mode, her choreography was rhythm-oriented and extremely complex, requiring accurate and technically proficient performers. Feldman's early partner was Carol Hess.

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Lois V Vierk

Lois V Vierk (www.loisvvierk.com) from Lansing, Illinois, in suburban Chicago, was born in 1951. She has spent most of her career in New York City. Vierk's music has also received an impressive international reputation. She has been active in Europe and Asia, and her music has been presented in Portrait Concerts at German Radio Cologne and in Switzerland. 

Among the many performers and presenters who have commissioned her music are pianists Ursula Oppens, Frederic Rzewski, Claudia Rüegg, Margaret Leng Tan, Aki Takahashi, accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek, the Kronos Quartet, Lincoln Center Festival, Bang on a Can Festival, Ensemble Modern, Music from Japan, the Relâche Ensemble of Philadelphia. 

Co-creations with tap-dance choreographer Anita Feldman have been performed at major dance venues in the US and Europe and also at music venues. Modern dance choreographers Elise Monte and Karole Armitage have choreographed new dances to Vierk's music and have presented them in concerts in New York City, Chicago and elsewhere. Filmmaker Holly Fisher has featured her compositions in films Out of the Blue; Ruffled Feathers; Goldfish Variations; and others). 

Vierk has composed for many types of performing forces, from solo piano and also inside-the-piano (Yeah Yeah Yeah; To Stare Astonished at the Sea) to string quartet (River Beneath the River; Into the Brightening Air) to chamber ensemble (Timberline; Red Shift; Io; etc.) to ensembles of the same instrument (Simoom for 8 cellos; Go Guitars for 5 electric guitars; Cirrus for 6 trumpets; Manhattan Cascade for 4 accordions; Tusk for 18 trombones; etc.) to orchestra (Devil's Punchbowl).

Vierk's music has been recorded by various labels including XI Records, Tzadik, New World Music, Starkland, and Vexer Verlag. Her scores are available from Frog Peak Music.

"I think of myself as a composer from the generation after the minimalists, both chronologically and artistically. The concentration on sheer sensuous beauty of sound in the "long tone" works of minimalist composers in the 70's and 80's, especially the work of Phill Niblock, has always been arresting for me. In my own music, striving for this kind of pure sensuous beauty has often been a starting point. I work with emotional expressiveness and with many kinds of sound relationships as well, to build form and structure. 

"My works are developmental, often slowly unfolding, sometimes reaching high energy climaxes. In the 1980s I started developing principles of what I call Exponential Structure, in which elements such as time, harmonic motion, rhythmic and timbral development, sound density, etc. are controlled by mathematical exponential factors. These are not abstract constructs to me, but formal ideas based on the emotional thrust of the sounds and of the piece as a whole.

"I'm influenced by a rigorous analytical study of Western music with my composition teachers Mel Powell, Leonard Stein, and Morton Subotnick, at California Institute of the Arts, and also by 12 years of study of Gagaku, Japanese court music. For ten years I studied Gagaku (Japanese Court Music) with Suenobu Togi in Los Angeles, and for two years I studied in Tokyo with Sukeyasu Shiba of the emperor's Gagaku Orchestra."

Click here to visit Lois V Vierk's website.