Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, John Cage, and Morton Feldman, New York City, ca. 1962

On January 31 or February 1 you’ll have the chance to hear music you may have never heard before and may never hear again: CMW presents the third installment of Ars Subtilior, a series on subtlety in experimental music curated by yours truly.

This concert will feature music by three icons of twentieth century experimental classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff. My guess is that you’ve definitely heard of one of these guys (Cage), might have heard of the other guy (Feldman), and probably never heard of the other (Wolff). Funny thing is, both Cage and Feldman were greatly influenced by Wolff and no wonder, he is quite the Renaissance man: a mostly self-taught composer, an organic farmer, a philosopher, and an expert on Euripedes (among other things). Also, I drank beer with him in Montreal just last year!

According to Wikipedia, Wolff recently said of his work that it is motivated by his desire “to turn the making of music into a collaborative and transforming activity (performer into composer into listener into composer into performer, etc.), the cooperative character of the activity to the exact source of the music. To stir up, through the production of the music, a sense of social conditions in which we live and of how these might be changed.”

In Wolff’s work Stones, performers are instructed to make various sounds with stones for an indefinite amount of time. There is some humor there (he asks the performers to not break anything) but all jokes aside, Wolff is asking all of us to just listen, to open our ears, and hopefully, our minds. It’s more than just the sound of stones you’ll be taking away from this experience.

Feldman is really one of my most favorite composers, gorgeous ethereal stuff. It’s a total honor to perform his music. I originally wanted to program his final chamber work,
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (1987), an 80+ minute tour de force, but I had a baby in the meantime and was advised to not take on any more endurance challenges by a much wiser co-worker (Chloe). I’m glad I listened to her because I then came across his much shorter, but equally beautiful work, Four Instruments.

The other composition of Feldman’s on this program, Durations 2 for cello and piano, is an all time favorite and was actually my first introduction to his work. I took part in a modern music cello seminar one summer and each of the participants played through the piece, one person each day, and it never sounded the same. It’s not that we each made the piece our own, it’s not about the personality of the performer coming out, it’s about the aural memory of the listener. He directs the performers to choose the duration of each sound and this in turn confuses the listener’s musical awareness of what had come before. A sort of musical drunkeness, but no hangover.

And who doesn’t like Cage? Ok…lots of people, but I think everyone will enjoy Six Melodies because there are actual melodies and they will be tenderly played by Jesse and Sakiko. Music for Amplified Toy Pianos will be fun.

And yes, it’s okay to have fun at these events. Hope to see you there!

–Laura Cetilia, CMW resident musician and curator, Ars Subtilior

Check our calendar for event details

“You picked two pieces that rely heavily on color!” remarked Lucia Lin (violinist of the Muir Quartet and my former teacher). She had generously spent her Sunday morning listening to Jeff Louie and me play Sergei Prokofiev’s “Five Melodies” and César Franck’s Sonata and offering us her feedback. One of the things I love about Luci’s teaching is that she asks questions that get my mind churning. My brain tends to exhaust itself worrying about technical details—this tempo still too fast for my fingers, these notes still out of tune, this spot not loud enough, etc.—but Luci will ask me a question that forces me to step back and see the big picture. She’ll help me remember why I was drawn to a piece of music in the first place, and what kind of story I want the piece to tell.

“What do you like about Prokofiev?” was Sunday’s first question.

“Well, that’s easy!” I thought to myself at first. Prokofiev has always been one of my favorite composers. When I was a kid I would listen to the music from his ballet Romeo & Juliet over and over and sing the themes while producing small dramas with my Barbie dolls.

Putting my lifelong love for Prokofiev into words, however, wasn’t particularly easy. When I think of Prokofiev’s music, I think of drama, dance, evocative harmonies, vocal melodies, and color. Jeff was able to articulate his thoughts a little better than I, pointing out the “rich harmonic language, which even when it’s very dissonant is still lyrical.” We realized that even though Five Melodies is a short work (about 13 minutes), it contains a striking range of moods, characters, and landscapes, and its dimensions expand from intimate duet to quasi-orchestral at times. In a way, the piece is the perfect little capsule of all the things we love about Prokofiev.

Though I’m less familiar with other examples of César Franck’s work, his Sonata for violin and piano evokes many of the same things for me as Prokofiev. This magnificent work, my personal favorite of the Sonata repertoire, is filled with singing melodies, lush harmonies, drama, and of course color. The piece often takes on the quality of a fantasy rather than a formal sonata, as various thematic material recurs throughout the different movements. These melodies could be seen as motifs for a story. Whatever the story is, it’s full of fire, passion, introspection, and love. Just as Prokofiev’s Melodies, it carries us through a full spectrum of textures, colors, and feelings.

So if you need a break from all the dreary gray and white outside, we hope you can come bask in the colors of Prokofiev and Franck this evening at the RISD Museum!

-Lisa Barksdale

Sonata Series Event 
RISD Museum Grand Gallery
Thursday, February 6
7pm
Free with Museum admission

As Community MusicWorks students prepare for this Friday’s Performance Party and Potluck (5 pm at the Calvary Baptist Church at 747 Broad Street in Providence, bring a dish to share!), we thought we’d take a look at a few captured moments of Performance Parties of past years:

Most of these photos taken by the fabulous Jori Ketten.

CMW student Paul (left) won the arm wrestling contest against his teacher, Jesse Holstein.