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Five Etudes (1997-2001)
David Rakowski:
"I've been writing piano etudes since 1988. At first they were respites from longer compositional projects -- little recreational pieces that distracted me when I came to an impasse in a bigger piece, so that I could return to the bigger piece refreshed. Eventually they have also become projects to fill up compositional time when I know I only have a brief amount of composing time between professional or academic obligations. My rules are that an etude must be written in six days or fewer, that it cannot be revised (only restarted), and that there is no great a priori thinking that goes into any of them. As such, I have enjoyed the obsessive nature of writing an etude, and have learned a great deal about the simple act of invention from being forced, quickly, to come up with as much variation I can, given that I am writing pieces about only one thing. I have especially found the etudes of [Frédéric] Chopin and [Claude] Debussy very useful as models. The collection is constantly growing, and as of September 2004, there are 64 of them.
"The Third, Man is an etude that uses only thirds to evoke a little of the odor of Debussy -- even going so far as to quote, distorted, Clair de lune (1905) in the final bar. It's a simple piece that starts with one voice in parallel thirds, adds a second and third voice, also in thirds, and a bass line that descends in thirds until it reaches the lowest C on the piano, over which alternating C major and minor triads form the backdrop of the ending.
"Twelve-Step Program was written in memory of [composer] Earl Kim, using a chromatic wedge figure typical of the vocal cadenza in Kim's Exercises en Route (1963-1970) as its stepping-off point. Here almost all the notes are derived from figures in which intervals contract or expand gradually by half-steps. [...]
"Fists of Fury was written for [pianist] Marilyn Nonken, using the same name that Miller Theatre gave to a recital she played there. The conceit here is that many of the attacks call for the use of fists (either white-note clusters or black-note clusters), and of course call for a level of virtuosity that one can when writing for Marilyn.
"I wrote Roll Your Own because [composer] Jay Eckardt, Marilyn Nonken's husband, suggested the etude and the title -- the title alone made the piece worth writing. It's a very simple and slow piece in which a middle-register melody is accompanied by slow rolled chords that expand, eventually, to cover the entire range of the piano.
"Sliding Scales was the first piece I wrote after a hernia operation, as if you cared. Again, I wrote it for Marilyn Nonken, and endeavored to write the craziest, most ridiculous scale etude ever, with as many ways of playing scales as was feasible at this fast tempo -- diatonic, octatonic, in as many as four voices at different speeds, in arpeggiated octaves, syncopated, and as middle voices inside repeated octaves. This one is totally crazy, and that's what I intended."
David Rakowski (b. 1958) was raised in St. Albans, Vermont, a former railroad hub near the Canadian border. As a youth he taught himself piano, played trombone and keyboards in local bands, and began composing in high school. He went on to study composition with Robert Ceely and John Heiss at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts; Milton Babbitt, Paul Lansky, and Peter Westergaard at Princeton University in New Jersey; and Luciano Berio at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.
A founder of the Griffin Music Ensemble of Boston, Rakowski has taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford Universities, and the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1995 he joined the faculty of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has also been composer-in-residence at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival and guest composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference.
Rakowski has received commissions from numerous organizations and ensembles including Boston Musica Viva, Ensemble 21, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, Kettle's Yard at Cambridge University, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Parnassus, Riverside Symphony, Speculum Musicae, United States Marine Band, and many others. His honors include the Rome Prize, Stoeger Prize, and awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, National Endowment for the Arts, International Horn Society, and various artist colonies. Rakowski's music is recorded on the Albany, Americus, Bridge, CRI, and innova labels.
related websites
http://home.earthlink.net/~ziodavino/album1_001.htm
Marilyn Nonken is a New York-based pianist dedicated to contemporary music, which she has performed throughout the United States and Europe, Canada, Australia, and at universities and conservatories around the world. Composers who have written for her include Milton Babbitt, Chris Dench, Mario Davidovsky, Michael Finnissy, Tristan Murail, and David Rakowski; she has also collaborated with Alvin Lucier, Jonathan Harvey, and Christian Wolff. Nonken is co-founder and artistic director of the new music group Ensemble 21, and also performs with Elision, the Group for Contemporary Music, and as a guest with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her discography includes recordings on the Albany, CRI, Koch International Classics, Lovely Music, Metier, mode, and New World labels. Nonken studied piano with David Burge at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York and musicology at Columbia University in New York City. Her writings have been published in Agni, Current Musicology, Journal of the Institute for Studies in American Music, and Perspectives of New Music.
related websites
http://www.ensemble21.com/nonken
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