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Four Songs from the Caucasian Chalk Circle
@ UMKC Composers Guild Concert III
Tuesday, February 16, 7:30pm, Grant Hall

@ University of Iowa Festival of Contemporary Music
Saturday, March 27, time TBA
Katherine Crawford, mezzo-soprano; fixed-media electronics

Four songs from The Caucasian Chalk Circle are scheduled for their concert premiere by mezzo-soprano Katherine Crawford on KcEMA’s December 5 program, at La Esquina in Kansas City.

Rondo alla Smirk will be premiered December 14 by violinist Piotr Szewczyk as part of his second Violin Futura program. More details when I have them.

While I don’t have an exact count, all told I ended up with somewhere just over half an hour of music for the play. I intend to excerpt four or five numbers as a song cycle of sorts (all from the main character, Grusha), which are scheduled for a performance in December here in Kansas City on a KcEMA concert.

These are a few notes I wrote for a lobby display at the college:

Although he called for singing throughout The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Brecht provided no music for its production, instead making just a few limited and rather broad comments about what it should seek to accomplish in the context of the story. This allows for a great deal of freedom on the part of the composer, but also requires a substantial investment in the story and characters themselves. It was an investment of time and care that has been deeply rewarding for me, and I thank Teresa for providing me the opportunity to work with her and her cast in this production.

The audience will hopefully notice that there is one major distinction that organizes the music here. Throughout the whole play save one moment, the music of The Singer is performed with accompaniment by live instruments, while that of Grusha is accompanied by prerecorded, electronically generated music. The only other music sung as part of the story itself (rather than as narrative or commentary, as in Azdak’s music) is that of the sore-footed soldier, and is unaccompanied. This division serves a dual purpose: first, to set off music about the story from music in the story by making the former “real” and the latter somewhat less so (something like the imaginary harp glissandi used in television to signal a switch to a dreamlike scene); second, setting only Grusha’s music with electronic accompaniment unifies her music, underscoring her character’s centrality and that of the texts and themes of the songs she sings. There are other aspects of the music that reinforce this duality, and the attentive ear might discern distinctive harmonic and melodic qualities in the musics of the different characters.

The text I set for this production is from an adaptation/translation by Frank McGuiness, and I hope to make it available to other directors who may be performing that version. It’s always nice to be able to have something performed more than once, and there’s a lot of music in this play!

Tango-Passacaglia is for flute, violin, cello, and piano, written for my friend Elizabeth Robinson, a doctoral student flutist at Ball State University. The goal with this piece was an unpolished, raw sort of feel, with a focus more on driving rhythmic interplay than lyricism.

Rondo alla Smirk is a solo violin work for violinist/composer Piotr Szewcsyk’s Violin Futura project. It is a play on the well-known final movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata K311 (the Rondo “alla Turca”), borrowing the Mozart rondo’s form to serve its own energetic, rock guitar-inspired material. You can learn more about Piotr and his fantastic work here.

On the docket for summer work remain settings of the song portions of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle (for a fall production at Dordt College), a work for electric guitar and piano, and a setting of one of my wife’s poems for soprano and computer. Still in process, although without a deadline, is my Sinfonia, the first movement of which (Monument) can be heard on my listening page.

A lot to do, but it’s only June 1.

Movements 2 though 4 are in the works, and the whole Sinfonia should be completed in the spring.

Details here.