Robert Blocker, Dean
Aaron Jay Kernis, Artistic Director
Martin Bresnick & Christopher Theofanidis
faculty composers
Thursday, April 20, 2023 | 7:30 p.m.
Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
new music new haven
Program
Matīss Čudars
b. 1991
Thread
Arseniy Gusev, harpsichord
Aaron Israel Levin
b. 1995
In Prayer
Elana Bell, voice
Brian Isaacs, viola
Matīss Čudars, guitar
Makana Medeiros, percussion
Emily Liushen
b. 1999
Every ascending minor third in my Breitkopf 3765 book
Lloyd Van’t Hoff, clarinet
Amer Hasan, clarinet intermission
Tianyi Shen, basset horn
Jonathan López, bass clarinet
Christopher
Theofanidis
b. 1967
Fragile Autumn (2020)
Chaewon Kim, violin
Kenneth Naito, violin
Miranda Werner, viola
Ga Eun Lee, cello
Harriet Steinke
b. 1994
Hymnal
VIII. Forbidden to ask questions
IX. God & this circus
X. I am the dreamer
Molly McGuire, alto
Jeein Kim, violin
Thomas Hung, cello
Hyeonjeong Choi, flute
Kean Xiong, clarinet
Sungu Kang, piano
Samuel Hollister, conductor
Martin Bresnick
b. 1946
Prayers Remain Forever (2011)
Ashley Bathgate, cello
Lisa Moore, piano
Hymnal
harriet steinke Excerpt of Alessandra Lynch’s “Hymnal”VIII. Forbidden to ask questions
Forbidden to ask questions of his own father, asleep on a bench in a child-park, my father forbidden to help him,
but a heart could gallop through widening streets and fields where clouds & asters & fire hydrants & wheels & snails meant—in the moment they were noticed—
something holy.
~
air & flowers not heavy above me—
IX. God & this circus
God & this circus. God glittering, faltering on the trapeze.
God in clownpaint. No one looking at him, but god center ring, drifting down in confetti.
The elephant with the fierce squint— nipped by barhook—heaves his body onto a drum, raises his trunk. God in that trunk.
Hundred of doves rush out of a black hat, god rushes into it. Fumbling in velvet curtain-folds, god breathing heavily from a mouth.
God rising in faint snores.
God messing with ropes. God hanging a human body from a wire. God in that wire.
God dazzling himself to oblivion.
No matter the sugarlump, no matter the lace, god refusing to look up. No matter the acid-tipped rods at the tiger’s throat. In the bluish-green lights, god sawing himself in half. God as gold dust.
God in that elephant’s enormous brain. God in the father and daughter seating in this corner of the arena, watchful, detached.
The elephant has been detusked. His face pitted, caved in. One eye is rageful. One is weeping. He is looking right through us.
X. I am the dreamer
Elephants wordlessly circling at the hook’s behest. God in that hook.
God and his tidy tricks. The red dogs rise in unison, raise their paws, bark. God, the eye of the bullfrog in a box…
Now the father’s face like the king’s from the ancient story is wrenched— half in tears, half in laughter. And I have no face. I am the dreamer
Text
Artist Profiles
Christopher Theofanidis, faculty composerChristopher Theofanidis’ music has been performed by many of the world’s leading performing arts organizations, from the London Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic to the San Francisco Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and the American Ballet Theatre. He is a two-time Grammy nominee for best composition, and his Viola Concerto, recorded with David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony with Richard O’Neill as soloist, won the 2021 Grammy for Best Instrumental Solo. Mr. Theofanidis’ work Rainbow Body is one of the most performed works in recent decades, having been performed by over 150 orchestras worldwide. Mr. Theofanidis is currently on the faculties of Yale University and the Aspen Music Festival, and has taught at the Juilliard School and the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University.
Martin Bresnick, faculty composer
Martin Bresnick’s compositions, from opera, chamber and symphonic music to film scores and computer music, are performed throughout the world. Bresnick delights in reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, bringing together repetitive gestures derived from minimalism with a harmonic palette that encompasses both highly chromatic sounds and more open, consonant harmonies and a raw power reminiscent of rock. At times his musical ideas spring from hardscrabble sources, often with a very real political import. But his compositions never descend into agitprop; one gains their meaning by the way the music itself unfolds, and always on its own terms.
Besides having received many prizes and commissions, the first Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Koussevitzky Commission, among many others, Martin Bresnick is also recognized as an influential teacher of composition. Students from every part of the globe and of virtually every musical inclination have been inspired by his critical encouragement.
Martin Bresnick’s compositions are published by Carl Fischer Music Publishers, New York; Bote & Bock, Berlin; CommonMuse Music Publishers, New Haven; and have been recorded by Cantaloupe Records, New World Records, Albany Records, Bridge Records, Composers Recordings Incorporated, Centaur, Starkland Records, and Artifact Music.
Ashley Bathgate, cello
American cellist Ashley Bathgate has been described as an “eloquent new music interpreter”(The New York Times) and “a glorious cellist”(The Washington Post) who combines “bittersweet lyricism along with ferocious chops”(New York Magazine). Her “impish ferocity”, “rich tone” and “imaginative phrasing” (The New York Times) have made her one of the most sought after performers of her time. Bathgate was a member of the acclaimed sextet Bang on a Can All-Stars from 2009–2019. She is currently a member of the chamber music group Eighth Blackbird, TwoSense, The Mammoth Trio, and Anzu Quartet. As a soloist she has collaborated with, commissioned, and recorded works by some of today’s leading voices in
contemporary music, including Kate Moore, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Steve Reich, and the Sleeping Giant composer collective. In 2022 Bathgate was appointed as the Artistic and Executive Director of Avaloch Farm Music Institute, a creative arts residency program located in Boscawen, NH.
Lisa Moore, piano
Lisa Moore is a multifaceted Australian pianist, recording artist, and avid collaborator. The New York Times has described her as “brilliant and searching...beautiful and impassioned...lustrous at the keyboard.” Given a special passion for the music of our time, Moore has performed hundreds of commissioned works and world premieres – having worked with more than two hundred living composers while residing and collaborating in the vibrant new music scene of New York City since 1985. Moore has released 12 solo albums and more than thirty collaborative discs (labels: Cantaloupe, Tall Poppies, Orange Mountain, Irreverence Group Music, Bandcamp, Sony, Nonesuch, DG, BMG, New World, ABC Classics, Albany, New Albion, Starkland, Harmonia Mundi). She has performed throughout Europe, the UK, USA, and Asia on many of the world’s great stages including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Sydney Opera House, La Scala, Royal Albert Hall, and the Musikverein.
Student Profiles
Aaron Israel Levin ’19MM ’27DMA Student of Katherine Balch
» aaronisraellevin.com
Harriet Steinke ’22MM Student of Katherine Balch
» harrietsteinke.com
Emily Liushen, ’24MM Student of Christopher Theofanidis
» lilameretzky.com
Matīss Čudars ’23MM Student of David Lang
» matisscudars.com
Staff
manager
Jeffrey M. Mistri
music librarian
Samuel Bobinski
office assistant
Marty Tung
Program Notes
by the composersThread matīss Čudars
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.
William StaffordIn Prayer
aaron israel levinIn Prayer takes its text from a moment of heightened drama in the Old Testament in which Miriam is suddenly struck with a fatal sickness. In desperation, Miriam’s brother Moses pleads to God with a humble, one-sentence prayer for healing, reciting the phrase “el na refa na la” (please God, heal her). I decided to set this text in three different ways in order to explore a myriad of approaches one might take to appeal to God at such an urgent moment. The outer movements are more solemn and ritualistic, calling God forth with reverence and respect. The middle movement, on the other hand, is agitated, frustrated, and cynical, riddled with desperation and disbelief. I’d like to dedicate this work to my mother, Mia Nosanow, who is the greatest healer I know, and who also introduced me to this poignant text.
Every ascending minor third in my Breitkopf 3765 book emily liushen
Catalogues do not go on forever. They are exhaustive, and then they end. Someone has decided, according to some conviction, upon a perimeter of boundaries, which are made known, and has cast off many more objects in order to present only the things which belong in the catalogue. Here, they say, “I can promise you this. Only this, but nothing else.”
Edition Breitkopf Nr. 3765 is a collection of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Choralgesänge. On the back cover of the book are printed four sentences in German and English: “The present edition contains all the chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach with and without obbligato instruments. The greater part stems from Bach’s cantatas, passions, oratorios, and motets. The only source for the remaining was the edition of four-part chorale hymns which Carl Philip Emanuel Bach published during the years 1784–1787. The chorales are listed alphabetically after the melody.” These sentences are paraphrases, in modern German and English, taken from the preface written in 1912 by the editor, Bernhard Friedrich Richter. Richter’s preface, which is printed at the start of the collection, is at pains to make transparent the decisions that went behind the inclusion of certain chorales (“Der einzige figurierte Choral, Nr. 199, “Weg, weg mit allen Schätzen”, wurde wegen seiner Zusammengehörigkeit mit den übrigen Chorälen der Motette “Jesu meine Freude” aufgenommen, ebenso Nr. 259
“Nun danket alle Gott” trotz seiner übrigens kurzen Zwischenspiele wegen seiner
bequemen Verwendbarkeit”) as well as the people who made his labor easier (Johannes Zahn, Ludwig Erk). The verbose anxiety arising from his confrontation with finitude touched me.
What follows is a catalogue of all the ascending minor thirds between consecutive printed noteheads in each of the four or five voices printed in the Richter edition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Choralgesänge. Five-part chorales have been reduced to four voices by means of tremolos or consolidation (Nr. 198. “Jesu, meine Freude”, Nr. 350. “Welt, ade! ich bin dein müde”). For the most part each ascending third, consisting of two notes, is lifted from its context, and the rest of the voices of the chorales are truncated according to the length of the two notes of the ascending minor third. In the rare cases when the occurence of one ascending third in one voice dovetails with an ascending third in another voice, these ascending minor thirds are kept together to avoid redundancy.
Fragile Autumn
christopher theofanidis
I wrote Fragile Autumn in the winter of 2020 for the Jasper String Quartet, a former graduate quartet in residence at the Yale School of Music, as part of their Four Seasons / Four Composers project, and that trying period had a particular cast to it which I think comes out in this seven-minute, single-movement work.
The poet Melissa Studdard wrote a poem to accompany this work:
Fragile Autumn
Falling into the green as if entering a mist, we suffered love and its broken insistence. In the underbrush, onyx eyes, startled as bells, rang out—for the beauty, for the beauty, for the pain.
steinkeHymnal is a song cycle of ten movements for voice and chamber ensemble. The work is a setting of the poem “Hymnal” by the American poet Alessandra Lynch, published in Lynch’s 2021 book Pretty Tripwire. Tonight’s performance will feature the final three movements: VIII, IX, and X. When I read Lynch’s poem for the first time in 2021, I was immediately inspired by the text’s intense musicality. While the poem begins with seemingly direct religious and historical references, it quickly transforms into a spiritual and deeply personal liturgy that operates entirely in the world of the poem. Lynch’s poetic speaker embodies and explores the contradictions of reconciling one’s spiritual self with their worldly one. The poem, which spans several pages of Lynch’s book, is organized into smaller sections, which are divided by some iteration of the text “Once I loved my father when he said God was air and flowers.” While my work omits several lines and phrases in the poem, the work sticks closely to Lynch’s structure and attempts to reflect the poem’s emotional and affective trajectories through analogous musical ones. This work was deeply inspired
Hymnal harrietProgram Notes, cont.
by my collaboration with the vocalist Molly McGuire through the development and performance of all ten movements.
Prayers Remain Forever
martin bresnickWhen I first read the poem “Gods Come and Go, Prayers Remain Forever” by the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, I was deeply moved. Although Amichai surely meant to calm and console us by the gentle wisdom and beauty of his words, I now also hear a strain of existential reproach:
Tombstones crumble, words come and go, words are forgotten, The lips that uttered them turned to dust, Tongues die like people, other tongues come to life, Gods in the sky change, gods come and go, Prayers remain forever.
In my work, Prayers Remain Forever, I join my prayer to his.
Commissioned by Ashley Bathgate and Lisa Moore for TwoSense. Dedicated to Aldo Parisot.
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