Opus number: 73

Title: Caprice No. 6

Instrumentation: clarinet

Date written: February 2005

Length: five minutes

Dedication: Megan Ankuda

Performances: Megan Ankuda, May 2, 2005, St. Cecilia’s Church, Boston, MA.

Program notes: Caprice No. 6, op. 73, was written in Febraury 2005 for my former student Megan Ankuka. This brief five-minute piece calls for the performer to interact with the audience by asking them to “Tap your feet,” “Snap your fingers,” and “Clap your hands.” (It will be useful for an addtional person to play a percussion instrument on these back beats to keep the pulse steady.) Although “Caprice” no. 6 is designed for a concert-music recital, the inspiration for it is drawn from the interactive world of rock and gospel music.

Opus number: 57

Title:  Caprice No. 5

Instrumentation:  alto saxophone

Date written:  February 14, 2001

Length:  four minutes

Dedication: Russell Peterson

Performances: Russell Peterson, September 25, 2002, Moorehead, MN.

Program notes:  “Caprice no. 5” was completed on February 14, 2000, and was written especially for Russell Peterson. Peterson’s remarkable recording of my work “Mahler in Blue Light” inspired me to write a virtuosic solo piece that would further explore his command of the altissimo register.

As in the other works in this series of solo Cparices (for cello, flute, alto recorder, marimba) “Caprice No. 5” is non-programmatic and formallly experimental. This work not only explores the “whole” alto saxophone, it also in an improvisation on the twenty-nine possible four-note chords. Here the chords are linked by interval and played as a melodic cadenza. –Notes by the composer

Opus number: 56

Title: Caprice No. 4

Instrumentation:  marimba

Date written: January 2001

Length: ca. five minutes

Dedication: Mike Williams

Performances: Mike Williams, the Boston Conservatory

Program notes: This work is a continuation of a series of short solo instrumental works that are experimental in nature. It was written for a large marimba whose contra “C” forms the lowest note of the last chord.

Opus number: 54

Title: Caprice No. 3 for alto recorder

Instrumentation: solo recorder

Date written: June 2000

Length: three minutes

Dedication: Daphna Mor

Performances:  Daphna Mor, Trinity Church in New York City, December 10, 2001

Program notes:  The Caprice for alto recorder was written on request for my former student Daphna Mor. In this piece I tried to capture the brilliance and the expressiveness that I have often heard in  Daphna’s playing. The work is in two parts: the second part is much like the first part in inversion. The second part, however, brings the ironic playfulness of the work to a lyrical conclusion.

Opus number: 51

Title: Caprice

Instrumentation: solo flute

Date written: summer 1999, Boston

Length: ca. four minutes

Commissioner and dedicatee: Liz Muir

Premiere performance: April 7 and 9, 2000, Andrea LaRose, flutist, Just in Time Composers and Players, The Boston Conservatory.

Program notes: “Caprice” for solo flute was written in May 1999 in exchange for an oil portrail by the composer’s friend Liz Muir. It can be heard as a very subtle two-part canon compressed into a single line. The title of the piece comes from the whimsical character of the piece–much like a flute being chased by its own shadow.

Opus number: 29

Title: In Memory of Roger Sessions

Instrumentation: solo violin

Date written: 1987, Boston; Wilson, North Carolina; St. Maarten Netherlands Antilles

Length: eight minutes

Premiere performance: Ayano Ninomiya, violinist, Harvard Musical Association, May 16, 1997

Important subsequent performances: Ayano Ninomiya, violinist, Boston Conservatory, April 10, 1998; Cheri Markward, The Boston Conservatory

Recordings: tape at Boston Conservatory library of Ninomiya; CD recording in progress with Ninomiya

Program notes: “In Memory of Roger Sessions” for solo violin was written during Christmas in 1986. The work consists of three short movements: “Elegy,” “Parody,” and “Dialogue.” “Elegy,” based on a theme from Sessions’s most ambitious work, the opera Montezuma, is a slow rhapsodic movement with implied counterpoint. “Parody” refers to the mocking character of the second movement as well as to its Renaissance definition, a form of homage paid by quoting the music of another composer. Ten of Sessions’s works, from the Black Maskers for orchestra to the Sonata for solo violin, all identified in the score, are quoted in a seamless set of sarcastic variations. “Dialogue” is an imagined conversation between myself and Sessions much like our actual conversations. Our names are spelled as musical themes that are presented antiphonally and simultaneously, and, as in reality always, Sessions has the last word.

Opus number: 27

Title: A Sacred Harp

Instrumentation: solo harp

Date written: November–December 1986, Boston

Length: eleven minutes

Commissioner: Ellen Ritsher, harpist

Premiere performance: May 18 and 19, 1988, Ellen Ritsher, harpist, Tsai Performance Center, Boston University

Important subsequent performances: Ellen Ritsher, harpist, February  1990, Bruno Walter Auditorium, Lincoln Center, New York City; February 13, 1990, The Boston Conservatory

Recording: tape of Ritsher performance 1990 at The Boston Conservatory

Program notes: A Sacred Harp is a set of variations based on a hymn tune from the mid-19th century, found in a collection called The Sacred Harp. The original hymn tune was written in shape-notes, and the melody was found in the tenor voice, which is typical of music composed in the school of Sacred Harp singing. The song is nick-named Idumea, and the first line of its text is “And am I born to die?” In this piece, Bell has incorporated several of the coloristic effects found in Carlos Salzedo’s Modern Study of the Harp, such as “thunder,” which is produced by forcefully setting the bass wire strings in motion, thus causing the strings to rattle against each other; “falling hail,” descending glissandos played with the fingernails;  and the “pedal slide,” which alters the pitch of a string by a half-step while the sound is decaying, without playing the string again. A  Sacred Harpwas commissioned by Ellen Ritscher with funds obtained from the Kahn Career Entry Award Fund.

Reviews: “Far and away, this was the most interesting selection on the program and although [Ellen] Ritscher said she loves all the pieces she played equally well, ‘A Sacred Harp’ seemed to be her favorite. She told the audience of about 100 Wednesday this was the work’s premiere.

“The Bell composition is a set of variations based on a hymn tune from the mid-19th century, found in a collection of the same name. Bell, 36, is a composer and pianist Ritscher commissioned to write ‘A Sacred Harp’ with funds obtained from the Kahn Career Entry Fund. Ritshcer received a $10,000 grant from that fund in 1986.

“The work is a smooth line of strong melody punctuated by dissonance. At times the melodic line is so rhythmic one’s head starts to nod with the beat. At other times, it is quietly lyrical–only to be disrupted by resounding thunderclaps that slowly reverberate into the distance.

“Ritscher was able to generate from the seemingly-staid harp sounds that were complete surprises. At one point, she strummed the ancient classical instrument like a guitar. She tapped on the sound-board with her fingertips; created the sound of falling hail with a sharp glissando.

“‘A Sacred Harp’ conjured up images of urban America in the 1980s and created an expectancy. Something’s coming, the music seemed to say, and unequivocal joy was prefigured.

“The work seemed to echo the 25-year-old harpist’s personality: strong, vivacious and independent. Ritshcer is an assistant professor of the harp at the University of North Texas and a staff member at the Breckenridge Music Institute, a summer festival in Colorado.” ­Valerie Barna, Mesquite News (Texas) October 14, 1988

Opus number: 24

Title: Celestial Refrain

Instrumentation: guitar

Date written: July, 1985, Bellagio, Italy

Length: fourteen minutes

Commissioners and dedicatees: Russell Southcott and Steven Walter

Premiere performances: Bell-Bartlett Concerts, March 1986, Russell Southcott, Steven Walter, guitarists (each played the work on the series)

Important subsequent performances:  John Muratore, MIT, April 4, 1996; Steven Walter, The Boston Conservatory, April 23, 1986; Russell Southcott, Conservatory, April 17, 1991; John Muratore, April 23, 1997, Conservatory; John Muratore, Museum of Fine Arts, January 2001. (?)

Recording: John Muratore, guitarist, recorded 1999;  not yet released; Walter, Southcott, and Muratore tapes all at The Boston Conservatory

Program notes: Celestial Refrain for solo guitar 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 Foundations 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 Bell’s 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.

Reviews: “Larry Bell’s ‘Celestial Refrain’ consists of eleven pages of great music Bell has come up with a composition that is folk-like, at times almost primitive, yet always incredibly rich in ideas and inventiveness . . . invigorating, fascinating . . . [It] will haunt both your mind and your heart.” –John Minahan, Guitar Review

            “Pianist Larry Bell teaches at the Boston Conservatory; his Celestial Refrain is unusual in that it has not one but two separate commissioners, Russell Southcott and Steven Walter (not to be confused with our reviewer), who each gave a ‘first’ performance on 3 and 10 March 1986 respectively. Some 14 minutes long, it revolves around an essential ingredient of driving dance rhythms, insistent and throbbing in their relentlessness, pushed inexorably on by pedals and syncopations, often redolent of rock and pop. These sections are interspersed, and given relief by, quieter interludes; in fact, this principle of alternation pertains throughout the structure for the work. The introduction is violent while the conclusion is found in gentle harmonies. A fairly short and peaceful pivotal point is the passage entitled Song:  Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart, a quote from the composer’s own Sacred Symphonies, in turn based upon his Four Sacred Songs. The overall texture of this composition definitely makes it guitaristic, with a performer requiring an innate sense of rhythm to sustain the momentum, as well as a decent set of fingers. This could be fun to play, and exciting too, with just enough variety to avoid a charge of excessive sytlistic repetition in the vigourous dance sections. Music with a difference, then, and of our times, produced in a neat and clear edition.” Chris Kilvington, Classical Review (UK)