Dr. BrownNewMusic’s Sacred Music Concert

Friday, Nov 12 | 8 PM
Grant Recital Hall
Brown University

Program with Recordings

Fire Announcement Chant – by Stephen Higa

Tuning Piece – by Dylan Nelson – 2010
Preformed by BNM and the audience.

One person in the room begins to produce A440 with their voice (or as close as they can get) without the aid of a mechanical device. This will be the bass tone.

Every person in the room joins by producing the bass tone (including the tone-deaf/untrained). Once everyone is sonically active, they may either: 1. hold the bass tone 2. produce harmonic drone tones of any tonal or microtonal amount above or below the bass tone Once an overwhelming sound is created, everyone should gradually move back to the bass tone. People may only stop singing when 1. the overwhelming point has been reached and 2. everyone is producing the bass tone.

Everyone should close their eyes unless it makes them uncomfortable. Trained musicians should support untrained musicians. The pitch difference between the fist note and the last note will be considered progress. Listen to these instructions.

Microtonal Raga #11 – by John Cage – 1970
Stephen Higa – Voice, Steve Schwartz – Percussion, Arvid Tomayko-Peters – Drone, Alex Yuly – Percussion

As his 58th Solo for Voice, John Cage composed 18 “microtonal ragas” (a raga is a form from Indian classical music). Each of Cage’s ‘ragas’ consists of a microtonal mode (an ascending part and a descending part that reaches deep into the bass clef and soars high above the treble) and a ‘tala’ (rhythmic cycle). For each raga, the performers are instructed to create a piece using any portion of the depicted mode and structure it around the given tala. The vocalist is also instructed to “think either of the morning, the afternoon or the evening, [and give] a description or account of recent pleasures or beauties noticed. Free vocalise also.”

For raga #11, we think of the evening and incorporate observations written during the hailstorm last Sunday night. From Cage’s notation, we have extracted a 7-note mode from the middle of the ascending line and cues for characteristic melodic formulae. Although we have taken some performance hints from traditional Indian music (as well as other modal musics like that of medieval Europe and the Near East), it is clear that Cage has exploded the musical conventions of India just as he exploded those of the West. In doing so, he creates a fertile space for creativity and exploration. These are not the East-West fusions of people like Philip Glass or George Harrison; rather, these go straight for the jugular of Indian music, for the essential foundations that can be used to create something completely new.

Who Am I? (Music for Meditation) – by Mason McGill - 2010
Emily Fuang – Mind, Mason McGill – Body, Tim Rovinelli – Soul

Once I asked a Zen teacher who he was and he clapped his hands in my face. This is for him.

Ave Maria – by Igor Stravinsky (Russian, 1882 –1971)

This was first written in 1934 as “Bogoroditse Dyevo” in Slavonic. Stravinsky was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Slavonic is the language of that church, and what he used in his nightly prayers as a small child in St. Petersburg. He later admitted “I do not know how to say it in Russian.” He re-arranged it in March 1949, to the Ave Maria Latin setting we are performing. He lengthened it from 20 to 35 bars, made some adjustments to fit the different text, and added the final “Amen.”, which gets its own very cool final chord.

YiYuh LeRotsohn (from “Sacred Service”) – by Ernest Bloch (Swiss-born American, 1880 – 1959)

Bloch finished the Sacred Service in 1934, and some think of it as the first major effort to create a large scale classical “symphonic” piece similar to a Mass or Oratorio, but for the Hebrew liturgy. Commissioned by Temple Emanu-El in NYC (a well know Reform Jewish congregation, who didn”t get to perform it until 1938), he took liberties with text and order, and so it does not fit any traditional service, and so is not generally used for that purpose. The piece we are performing is used pretty regularly in many services as a standalone. While the harmony gives it away as 20th century music, it has an odd sense of sounding very much like a lovely piece of counterpoint from the Renaissance.

Hosianna Mantra – by Florian Fricke (Popol Vuh) – 1972
Emily Fuang – Voice, Arthur Adams – Piano, Alex Yuly – Acoustic Guitar, Tim Rovinelli – Oboe, Josh Marshall – Electric Guitar

Florian Fricke’s Popol Vuh is thought to be one of the progenitors of Krautrock, a German movement which synthesized the acid-rock sensibilities of psychedelia with otherworldly avantmus textures made possible by the emergence of the Moog Synthesizer (and machines of its ilk). Fricke famously gave his Moog III to Krautrock megalith Klaus Schulze following a spiritual awakening which led Popol Vuh’s chief innovator to reject electronic music altogether. 1972′s Hosianna Mantra is amongst the most moving of Popol Vuh’s post-Moog sacred works, the piece played being that album’s eponymous track. Since his death in 2001, some popular myths have maintained that the Spectre of Florian Fricke alights upon leftist Cyborgs who have lost their way, teaching them to cast off the shackles of circuit and software in favor of flesh and blood.

Altissima Luce – by Gavin Bryars
Stephen Higa, Steve Schwartz, Jeremy Wagner – Voice

This is a setting of a 13th-century Italian “lauda” (religious poem) for the Virgin Mary. Gavin Bryars composed many such laude, and almost all are written for one or three unaccompanied voices: “I relish the challenge,” he wrote, “of writing something so exposed, so naked and unadorned, where I cannot hide behind, say, an orchestrated accompaniment or rich harmonies.” In these laude, he turns to the ancient aesthetic of Gregorian chant, with its emphasis on the power of vocal line alone. But his settings aren”t like the shimmering, fluid lines of the original medieval melodies. Rather, they reflect our modern age: his melodies are more pixellated and angular, and they have an uneasy, restless modality and an affection for awkward intervals that leave the songs slightly off balance. Nevertheless, they possess a surprising inner vitality and grace, and achieve the simple clarity that much contemporary music lacks.