“Whether or not it may lead to a revolt in the academies, Bell’s Reminiscences and Reflections would appeal to a remarkably wide swath of the the audience ranging from enterprising casual listeners to experienced, intrepid souls looking for a way out of the serial ghetto.
Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music. com
Genere: Unitartian/Universalist Hymn
Instrumentation: Congregational singing and organ
Date of composition: 2019
text: Issac Watts
Commissioned: by Robert August for First Church Boston
Genere: Unitartian/Universalist Hymn
Instrumentation: Congregational singing and organ
Date of composition: 2019
text: Issac Watts
Commissioned: by Robert August for First Church Boston
Program note: This is a new musical version of the well known hymn, St. Anne, also known as O God Our Help in Ages Past.
Genere: Unitartian/Universalist Hymn
Instrumentation: Congregational singing and organ
Date of composition: 2019
text: Issac Watts
Commissioned: by Robert August for First Church Boston
Program note: The second version of a hymn with the same text by Isaac Watts, this version is slower, more diatonic, and clearly centered in d minor.
instrumentation: Soprano, ‘Cello, and Piano
duration: ca. 5’
text: by the composer
commissioned: Save the Music, Inc.
dedication: written in memory of Rosalie Calabrese
Genere: Unitartian/Universalist Hymn
Instrumentation: Congregational singing and organ
Date of composition: 2019
text: Issac Watts
Commissioned: by Robert August for First Church Boston
Piano Sonata no. 4: in two movements
second movement: 6 Variations on Thou God of Love an original hymn based on a text of Isaac Watts
Instrumentation: solo piano (optional soprano solo)
composition: 2020
dedication: to Carmen Rodriguez-Peralta
performance time: ca. 16 minutes
progam notes: Larry Bell Piano Sonata no. 5, A Landscape of Small Ruins, Op. 166
Piano Sonatas nos. 4, 5, and 6 were written in 2020 specifically for three pianists: Carmen Rodríguez-Peralta, Jennifer Elowsky-Fox, and Maja Tremiszewska. These three sonatas are based on original hymn tunes included in Bell’s A Hymnbook for Congregational Singing, op. 169. Sonatas 4 and 5 are based on two versions of the same hymn tune text, “Thou God of Love” by Isaac Watts (1674–1748). In Sonata No. 4 the version uses a sixteen-note series harmonically and two verses of the text are included at the end of the second and final movement with an optional vocal part.
The second version of “Thou God of Love, Thou Ever Blessed,” the basis for Sonata No. 5, is more diatonic and tonally centered in D minor. The one-movement Sonata No. 5 alternates between slow, meditative music and faster, more animated music. Fragments of the hymn tune are suggested from the beginning, but not until the end does one hear a complete statement of the melody.
The subtitle of Piano Sonata No. 5, A Landscape of Small Ruins, is taken from V.S. Naipaul’s book A Turn in the South. Although Naipaul was from Trinidad, his book begins with a prologue entitled “Down Home: A Landscape of Small Ruins.” Here he beautifully describes the county in North Carolina where Bell was reared. The “Small Ruins” are discarded farm equipment and rusted tobacco barns, part of the cultural landscape of the past.
Piano Sonata No. 4 is dedicated to Carmen Rodgiguez-Peralta in gratitude for her premiere performance of six of Bell’s Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 156, on March 8, 2020, in Boston.
12 Variations on Awake our Souls, Away our Fears, op. 164
12 Variations on an original hymn tune based on texts by Isaac Watts
instrumentation: solo piano
dedication: to Geoffrey Burleson
performance time: about 11 minutes
composition date: 2020
Title: 24 Preludes and Fugues op. 156
Date of composition: Prelude and Fugue in f minor (2018) Prelude and Fugue in F major (2018)
All others written in January 2019 at the Virgina Center for the Creative Arts
First performers: Carmen Rodriquez-Peralta nos. 1-6; Maja Tremiszweska nos. 7-12; Jennifer Elowsky-Fox nos. 13-18; John Macdonald nos. 19-24
Performance time: ca. 135 minutes
