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Echoes from the Silent Call of Girona (1998)
| composer |
Morton Subotnick (b. 1933) |
| performers |
Southwest Chamber Music:
Christine Frank, violin
Agnes Gottschewski, violin
Jan Karlin, viola
Maggie Edmondson, cello |
| publisher |
European American Music Distributors (ASCAP)http://www.eamdllc.com
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| label |
Cambria Master Recordings 8811http://www.cambriamus.com
|
| duration |
27:01 |
Echoes from the Silent Call of Girona was commissioned by Meet the Composer for Southwest Chamber Music, the Blair, Chester, and Montclair String Quartets, and the New Music Consort in New York City.
Morton Subotnick:
"Echoes from the Silent Call of Girona is in three movements played without pause. The instrumental music is based on a symmetrical motif comprised of a rising and falling melodic figure over a pizzicato repeated-note rhythm, like an isosceles triangle unfolding in time. Most of the material of the work is based on this motif, ... although its original form is not heard until the opening of the second movement.
"Just as the music is made of two kinds of material, all the instrumental music is paired with a sound environment. The quartet music speaks from the inner world of musical gesture while the sound environment springs from this inner musical narrative like abstract 'echoes' from the objective world.
"The district where Jews lived in the town of Girona [in northeast Catalonia, Spain] was known as the Call; Jews were there for centuries before the Spanish Inquisition. The Call, as many communities of its kind, was prosperous and a center of learning and intellectual inquiry. Among other things, it was one of the seats of development of the Kabala. As time went on, persecution came and went, and finally came and didn't go. Some of the details of the persecution are tragically mirrored in the methods of persecution leading to the holocaust in Germany. In the last years, the people were actually sealed, walled into their district. They were only allowed out with armed guards and were forced to wear special clothing so that they could be identified and not confused with the rest of the population. The once prosperous and self-contained community became a prison even to the extent that food had to be brought in. And finally came the Inquisition and the end of the life of the Call.
"When my family and I visited Spain, we were struck by the emptiness and the silence of the Call. It, for me, resonated with the inner feeling of the dark and brooding quality of my string quartet. On returning home I reworked the computer accompaniment to include 'echoes' of human sounds.
"The melodic and harmonic material comes from a series of invented seven-note scales. The source for all the sound accompanying the quartet is from recorded cello sounds played by Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick and spoken and intoned phrases recorded by Joan La Barbara and I Nyoman Wenten."
Morton Subotnick (b. 1933) is a pioneer of electronic music in the United States and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part or live electronic processing. He was the first composer to be commissioned to write an electronic composition for the phonograph medium, Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch Records, 1967; re-released on Wergo).
Born in Los Angeles, California, Subotnick attended the University of Denver in Colorado and Mills College in Oakland, California, studying composition under Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. While in San Francisco he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now at Mills College) and was music director of the Ann Halprin Dance Company and the San Francisco Actors' Workshop. Later, in New York City, he was music director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre, Electric Circus, and artist-in-residence at the New York University School of the Arts. Subotnick has taught at Mills College, the Universities of Maryland and Pittsburgh, Yale University, and since 1969, the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where he is chairman of the composition department. He has also toured extensively throughout the US and Europe as a lecturer and composer/performer.
Subotnick's numerous honors include those from the Fromm, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Kunstlerprogramm Award for a residency in West Berlin. His music has been performed by such groups as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Minnesota Opera, Buffalo and Los Angeles Philharmonics, Oregon Symphony, Kronos and Juilliard Quartets, Electric Orchestra, and at festivals in Santa Fe, Ojai, Aspen, Los Angeles, and Lincoln Center in New York. Subotnick's works can be heard on the Cambria, Centaur, CRI, Crystal, Neuma, New Albion, New World, and Wergo labels.
related websites
http://www.mortonsubotnick.com
Founded in 1987, Southwest Chamber Music is among the most active chamber music ensembles in the United States, presenting year-round concert series in Pasadena, Los Angeles, and San Marino, California. The ensemble also offers a regularly-scheduled open rehearsal series entitled Open Rehearsal: Breaking the Code. Taking its name from the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, the oldest cultural institution in southern California, Southwest Chamber Music has commissioned and/or premiered works by Morton Subotnick, Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen L. Mosko, Ernst Krenek, Hans Werner Henze, Pierre Boulez, William Kraft, György Ligeti, and Charles Wuorinen, among others. The group's current season is entitled The Universe, a major festival with eight Pasadena organizations celebrating the beginning of the third millennium through the history of music, art, and science. The ensemble has recently released a 12-CD box set on Cambria Master Recordings entitled Composer Portrait Series; other recordings may be found on the Orfeo label. Recent performances include a Koussevitsky Foundation commission of An American Decameron by Richard Felciano.
related websites
http://www.swmusic.org
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