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Envoi (1995)
| composer |
Christopher Rouse (b. 1949) |
| performers |
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Stefan Asbury, conductor |
| publisher |
Boosey & Hawkes (BMI)http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr
|
| recording |
Live concert performance at Tanglewood Music Center, Lenox, Massachusetts, July 24, 2002 |
| duration |
24:09 |
Christopher Rouse:
"Though long an admirer of Richard Strauss' music, I have always been more attracted to the twenty-five-year-old composer's program for Death and Transfiguration (1888-1889) than to his actual musical realization of it. In the five years preceding the composition of Envoi, I lost a number of dear friends -- Stephen Albert, William Schuman, Andrzej Panufnik, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein, for example -- and they were memorialized in a variety of scores I composed between 1990 and 1995. A blow of a different sort occurred with the death of my mother in the summer of 1993, and to remember her I found myself returning to Strauss' program from a century before.
"The French word 'envoi' is somewhat difficult to translate into English. Obviously, our word 'envoy' is related to it, but it also implies concepts ranging from the conclusion of a book or other work of art (or perhaps a life) to the 'sending out' of something, much as a space probe is sent out to explore the cosmos. In conceiving this twenty-minute work, I decided to dispense with one important aspect of Strauss' program; in Death and Transfiguration, the hero on his deathbed struggles violently against his fate before his spiritual transfiguration at the moment of death. In planning Envoi, I recalled that those whose deaths I have witnessed (including my mother) did not struggle but rather, in effect, seemed to slowly recede from life, much as a ship sails ever more far away until it disappears over the horizon. I thus elected to avoid the use of any sort of 'struggle music' and in the process found myself eschewing the presence of fast-tempo material; resultantly, Envoi, like my Symphony No. 1 (1986) and Iscariot (1989), is a single-movement adagio.
"This work, it seems to me, almost cries out not to be subjected to musical analysis. If the listener finds hearing it a rewarding experience, I believe it will be for reasons other than the techincal. I would only say that Envoi is not a piece 'about' my mother's death, nor is it intended as a pictorial narrative of any specific death. Instead, I think of it more as an examination of what death is -- or at least might be -- and in this sense it is closely related in spirit to my Violoncello Concerto of 1992, although the final pages of Envoi bespeak a very different expressive goal than those of the concerto. I also believe that this work will set the seal, for a time at least, on my scores which have been composed as a response to death -- I hope so, at any rate.
"Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Envoi was commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Yoel Levi, music director, through a generous grant from Thurmond Smithgall. It was completed on July 4, 1995 in Fairport, New York."
Christopher Rouse is known both for his mythology-inspired works such as Gorgon (1984) and Phaethon (1986) and his concertos for solo instruments and orchestra. Winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto (1991), Rouse writes music that emphasizes the use of percussion and coloristic effects to achieve a rhythmic drive and often brutal intensity. More recently, his large-scale works have taken on a more elegiac nature, influenced in part by the orchestral adagios of Hector Berlioz and Anton Bruckner.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1949, Rouse developed an early interest in both classical and popular music. He studied composition with Richard Hoffmann at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, Karel Husa at Cornell University in New York, and privately with George Crumb. After teaching for three years at the University of Michigan, Rouse in 1981 joined the faculty of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he introduced one of the first courses on the history of rock music in a US music conservatory. He currently teaches at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City and serves as composer-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado.
Rouse's music has been played by major orchestras in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Over the past decade he has gained particular notice for his concertos; his most recent include Concert de Gaudí (1999), written for guitarist Sharon Isbin (winner of a 2002 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition) and Clarinet Concerto (2001), commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with clarinetist Larry Combs. Rouse's work has been recorded on the Albany, Bis, Equilibrium, First Edition, Gasparo, Koch International Classics, New World, Ondine, Sony Classical, Telarc, and Teldec labels.
related websites
http://www.christopherrouse.com
The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra is comprised of students of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Symphony's summer institute for young professional musicians based in Lenox, Massachusetts. Founded in 1940 as the Berkshire Music Center under the leadership of conductor Serge Koussevitzky, the center invites advanced musicians of at least 18 years of age to participate in an eight-week session of intensive work in orchestral and chamber music, coached by Tanglewood faculty, members of the Boston Symphony, and visiting artists. Students perform in chamber recitals throughout the summer as well as in the weeklong Festival of Contemporary Music. Conductor and new music exponent Stefan Asbury has been on faculty at Tanglewood since 1995, and is currently music director of Remix Ensemble Casa da Musica Porto, Portugal, and chief conductor of Bit 20 Ensemble, Norway.
related websites
http://www.tanglewood.org
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