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"Music for Strings
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(TROY986)
Borromeo String Quartet
John Muratore, guitar
Tarab Cello Ensemble
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About
the Music
String Quartet No. 3 (Homage
to Beethoven), op. 71, was commissioned by
artist Fay Chandler for the Borromeo String Quartet, who premiered
the work
December 11, 2005. For a few years first violinist Nicholas Kitchen
and I had
had informal discussions about my writing a new piece for the Quartet.
Always
in agreement about we did not want in a new work, we shared a fanatical
obsession
with the quartets of Beethoven. After hearing the Borromeo Quartet
perform
three late Beethoven quartets in the fall of 2004 at the Gardner Museum,
I began this new work with a fresh sense of purpose.
As the subtitle Homage to Beethoven suggests, my quartet owes a great
debt to
Beethoven’s last five quartets, in particular Opp. 131 and 132. My
seven-movement,
arch-like structure, with its opening fugue and central variations
flanked by two
scherzi, mirrors the structure of Beethoven’s Op. 131. The use of
double variations
and two brief cadenzas, first for cello and later for violin, resembles
the Lydian-mode
movement (III) and the virtuosic solo violin writing in Op. 132. Unlike
Beethoven’s
characteristic confrontation with fate, however, a sense of lightness
and humor
pervades this work. No attempt at quotation is made here. Instead,
I wished to pay
tribute, in my own way, to the music that has continually sustained
me as a listener
and that has always inspired me to a higher level of compositional
achievement.
The character of the music represents my own particular synthesis
of tonality,
lyricism, and polyphony that grew out of a love for both string instruments
and
the human voice. Writing a string quartet (or a symphony) brings enormous
challenges because of inevitable comparisons between works of the
present and
the great string quartet repertoire of the past. Unlike some composers
of the
post-World War II generation, however, I have never sought to break
with the
past and its compositional and performance traditions. In fact, it
became both
relatively easy and a joy to write this work once I realized that
I could, in effect,
write music outside recent avant-garde traditions.
I wrote String Quartet No. 3 in October of 2004. Over twenty years
had
elapsed since the composition of my String Quartet No. 2 (premiered
by the
Columbia Quartet in New York in 1982) and thirty years since my String
Quartet No. 1 (premiered by the Juilliard String Quartet in 1976).
By the fall
of 2004 a unique convergence of time, people, and place made the composition
of a new quartet feel inevitable. To have performers such as the Borromeo
String Quartet, who play with
such verve, passion, commitment, and attention to detail, would inspire
any
composer. They certainly inspired me. In performance, their seriousness
of
intent–in this most serious of all chamber music genres–was an impetus
to compose
a work that for over a generation I had imagined writing.
CELESTIAL REFRAIN FOR GUITAR, OP. 24, was commissioned
by Russell
Southcott and Steven Walter and was completed, with the aid of a grant
from
the Rockefeller Foundation, in July 1985 at the Rockefeller Foundation’s
Study
and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. The work is a double variation
based
on two different themes; one is slow and dramatic and the other fast
and
dance-like. The centerpiece is a song drawn from my Sacred Symphonies
based
on the words “Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart.” As the piece unfolds
these themes become more alike in shape and character.
Guitar Review described the piece as “eleven pages of great music…
folk-like,
at times almost primitive, yet always rich in ideas and inventiveness…
[it] will
haunt both your mind and your heart.”
TARAB FOR 8 CELLOS,
OP. 66, WAS COMMISSIONED for the Tarab Cello
Ensemble in 2003 by its founder, Florent Renard-Payen. In three large
sections,
the work was conceived as a concertino for two cello quartets. Tarab
is one of
my most experimental pieces of recent years. Here I combine my interest
in
using high-ratio polyrhythms to articulate the background phrase structure
with a new emphasis on working with a large harmonic vocabulary. Two
quartets
begin by sharing similar characteristics. By the second section the
quartets
operate entirely in opposition; while one quartet plays slowly and
expressively,
the other plays resolute and dance-like music. The antiphonal call-andresponse
between the two quartets reaches its climax at the end of the second
section, where all eight cellos play one phrase in unison. In the
third
section each cello plays a short cadenza. Little by little these solos
form duets,
then trios, and, finally, the initial quartet juxtaposition of sharing
similar
characteristics is reestablished. The overall shape of the work is
one of growing
tension, catharsis, and resolution leading the listener–it is hoped–to
a state of
ecstasy, or ‘tarab.’
–Liner notes by Larry Bell
Music
for Strings CD Review
Larry Thomas Bell: String Quartet No. 3 (Homage to Beethoven); Celestial
Refrain; Tarab;
Albany TROY986; Borromeo Quartet, John Muratore, Tarab Cello Ensemble
(60:01)
A number of recordings are available of the chamber and orchestral
music of American
composer Larry Bell (b. 1952). However, this new Albany disc, containing
three works, is
the best single-disc introduction to his work currently available.
It is a magnificent release
that displays well the vitality and creativity of Bell’s music. Resident
for many years in
Boston, Larry Thomas Bell is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory
and the
Berklee College of Music and taught for a number of the years both
at Boston Conservatory
and the Juilliard School. A student of Vincent Persichetti and Roger
Sessions, Bell has been
awarded the Rome Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller
Foundations.
Though he has composed a number of orchestral works, he is best known
for his personal
and compelling works for chamber ensemble and solo forces (particularly
his own instrument,
the piano), some of which such as his Mahler in Blue Light, op. 43
(1996) have become
modern classics.
Each of the three works on this Albany release represents one of the
musical “strains” that
runs throughout the composer’s entire catalogue and comprise the elements
of Bell’s personal
style. String Quartet No. 3 (Homage to Beethoven), op. 71 (2004) showcases
the stylistic
connection that Bell’s music makes with the past, particularly the
music of the Romantic
period. Celestial Refrain, op. 24 (1985) for solo guitar, draws upon
the sounds and idiom
American folk hymnody, particularly those hymns of the South that
Bell heard as a child and
began incorporating into his music (both through direct quotation
and through original
material in a similar style) in the 1980’s. Finally, Tarab, op. 66
(2003) for double cello
quartet, draws upon the complexities of rhythm and temporal proportions
(inspired, in Bell’s
case, by the music of Elliott Carter, but presented within a more
accessible, and largely
diatonic musical language than Carter uses). Nearly every one of Bell’s
compositions draws
upon these different elements to greater and lesser extents, and this
single release showcases
three of Bell’s pieces in which these elements are each presented
clearly and synthesized into
Bell’s stylistic voice.
The extended String Quartet No. 3 (Homage to Beethoven) pays tribute
to Beethoven’s
music (particularly the late string quartets) in its structural and
developmental complexities.
The seven movements of the work, however, explore a very different
emotional terrain from
Beethoven’s own late quarters. In his notes on the work, Bell remarks
on the sense of
“lightness and humor” that pervades the work. It is a piece full of
rich, beautiful textures that
is performed exquisitely by the Borromeo Quartet.
Celestial Refrain, performed by guitarist John Muratore, is a set
of “double” variations upon
folk-like hymn material (two contrasting ideas, one slow and one fast),
originally from the
composer’s orchestral work Sacred Symphonies. In this work, Bell achieves
a perfect balance
between stasis and activity and presents musical material that is
tuneful and memorable.
Tarab is named after its commissioners, the Tarab Cello Ensemble,
and takes its title from
the term within Islamic music implying a sense of ecstasy, usually
derived from the rhythmic
experience of music. Bell describes the piece as articulating his
interest in “high-ratio
polyrhythms”, which he exploits by setting up a contrasting and referential
textures between
the two cello quartets. As is true with the best of Bell’s “rhythmic
experiments”, they are
deployed in service of an exceptionally musical impulse; the listener
needs to know nothing
about polyrhythms to enjoy the “sacred space” that Bell creates.
These three superlative works are representative of what this reviewer
believes is the best sort
of new music being written today—accessible, yet sophisticated. On
a first listen, the listener
is seduced by the beauty of sounds and melodies and clarity of textures.
On subsequent
listens, one continues to discover further treasures in the unfolding
of internal references and
the organic sense of musical development that Bell employs.
This disc was a highlight of the myriad new discs of American released
in 2007 and certainly
the best new release of chamber music that I heard all year. Strongly
and urgently
recommended.
– Carson Cooman,
Vol. 22 / No. 2 the journal of the Living Music Foundation Spring
2008
