Holter - Variations: Go Rin No Sho

Years ago, in my studies of kenjutsu (Japanese fencing), I was instructed to read Go Rin No Sho, a classic sword-fighting text by Miyamoto Musashi whose title translates to A Book of Five Rings. The text, which was written in 1645, explicates a number of sword maneuvers that the reader should practice and ultimately master. However, each maneuver can be interpreted abstractly and put to use in any kind of conflict, not just a duel.

The first time I read Go Rin No Sho, I found it almost impossible to understand. Even after numerous re-readings I didn_t feel that I had really absorbed Musashi_s teachings. In practice duels, then, I was faced with two opponents-I fought not only my actual human adversary but also my inability to grasp and apply the content of Go Rin No Sho.

This piece of music grew out of that frustration. Each movement is based on a particular maneuver described in the text and reflects the frustration of a young American kenjutsu student trying (and failing) to perform that maneuver. - CH

Colin Holter, composer and baritone, is a music major at UMBC. He currently studies voice with Joyce Hubbard and composition with Linda Dusman.

Yuasa - Calling Together

Language naturally conveys verbal information. However, once language is articulated in sound a nonverbal communication emerges: a meta communication in the spoken language. As each language is different, so each means of meta communication is different.

Two aspects of meta communication have interested me. One is the distinction between verbal information and the information carried by a speaker's tone of voice. For example, one cannot say `pardon me' arrogantly without undercutting the original meaning of the phrase. This aspect is closest to musical information carried by the speed and intensity of pitches. The second aspect which I have explored is closest to timbre (color) in music. It is found in onomatopoeia. For example, the term `ping-pong' carries sonic information, and most listeners hear the word as high-low in pitch.

My Observations on Weather Forecasts demonstrates one example of exploration of meta communication. In this piece, intense emotional expression is superimposed on what is usually understood to be dry and objective verbal description.

In his book, Hidden Dimensions, Edward T. Hall defines four different communicative distances for human discourse: intimate (as lovers), personal (one-on-one), social (three or four, as at a party), and that of public address (giving a speech). To these four I have added a fifth - that which addresses the infinite (to God, for example). Calling Together is a theater piece for mixed voices which improvisationally explores the meta communication induced at these distances; that is, the performer's tone of voice is specified according to one of these five distances, but the verbal information, in any language, is freely improvised.

Calling Together is a musical and verbal activity which, without regard for answer of response, evokes a communication-space through the medium of calling with sounds or words. It is a musical space as well as a kind of poetic space. - JY

Students of Music 227 and Music 480

Ryan Bridgland										Samuel Hedemann
Derrick Collins										Nicholas Hileman
Adam Corpora										Colin Holter
Justin Crown												Christopher James
Melanie Lardiero							Scott Liss
Ryan Lemig														Greg Pardew
Ann Lentz																Richard Sigwald
Christopher Mackie		Patrick Wohlfarth
Evan Madden												David Marshall		
Chris Parent												Amber Reamy
Leigh Rose															Ashante Saunders
Daniel Smith													Kresimir Tokic
Bryson Young

Ichiyanagi - Music for Electric Metronomes Strongly influence by the music and ideas of John Cage and Fluxus leading up to this time, the score of this work (written for 3-8 performers) consists of a map, allowing the performers to choose their path through a number of metronome tempo changes and sounds made by the voice or body (or another object), in addition to theatrical actions. The tempo and duration of all metronome markings is precisely indicated, whereas the other sounds and actions are left to the choice of the performers.

The UMBC Chamber Players is a scholarship ensemble comprised of 20 students who represent a variety of academic majors. Founded in 2001, the ensemble is coached by director E. Michael Richards, Lisa Cella, Franklin Cox, and Wayne Cameron.

Yuasa - Observations on Weather Forecasts

This work continues in the vein of a number of works by the composer (including Voices Coming - 1969; Calling Together - 1971; Questions - 1971) that examine the meaning of language (when the analysis of language goes in a certain sense beyond language). These elements include pronunciation, the voice, sound, meaning and nonmeaning, physical space, and psychological space - in other words, the nonlogical aspect of communication and language and the nonspoken aspect of communication.

In Observations on Weather Forecasts, the trumpet player not only plays but speaks and sings. The baritone delivers relatively mundane weather forecasts with exaggerated, and illogical emotions. Both musicians engage in theatrical motions (especially standing and sitting) that "suggest intensities of internal (mental-physical) states." Yuasa includes a subtitle to the work in the score - Observations on meta-message as non verbal communication, intrinsic to the human activity in language.

This work was written for "THE" (Philip Larson and Ed Harkins), and first performed at the `Music Today Festival' in Tokyo, June 1983.

Ichiyanagi - Music For Piano No. 7

In 1952, Toshi Ichiyanagi went to America, where from 1954 to 1957 he studied composition with Vincent Persichetti and piano with Beveridge Webster at the Juilliard School. He won various prizes, including the Coolidge prize with Sonata for Violin and Piano and the Koussevitzky prize with Trio for two flutes and harp. In 1957, Ichiyanagi attended a concert in New York given to celebrate the first twenty-five years of John Cage's musical career, and he immediately fell in love with Cage's music. He moved to New York, where he studied with, among others, Aaron Copland and lived in the downtown area with La Monte Young and Noguchi Isamu. In 1958, he attended the course given by Cage at the New School for Social Research of New York University and became an ardent disciple of Cage. Ichiyanagi took part in happenings; he began to compose piano pieces that used aleatoric techniques and required the player to use theatrical gestures (including Music for Piano 1-7); and both he and his wife Yoko Ono joined the avant-garde group Fluxus. His piano pieces were to become some of the best-known examples of Japanese aleatoric composition, and David Tudor incorporated them into his repertoire and even performed them in Darmstadt. (notes adapted from Yougaku by Luciana Galliano)

Music for Piano No. 7 is written in graphic notation, allowing the player choices (within limits) of pitch, rhythm, articulation, color (including harmonics), and texture. It also calls for sounds off the keyboard, and off the piano completely (performed here by a percussionist).

Takemitsu - Toward the Sea for alto flute and guitar

This piece consists of three parts: `The Night,' `Moby Dick,' and `Cape Cod.' `The Night' was written in 1981 for alto flute and guitar at the request of the Green Peace Foundation for its Save the Whales campaign and premiered by Robert Aitken on the flute and Leo Brouwer on the guitar in Toronto in the same year. The other two parts, which recall the history and scenery of New England, USA, were combined in later times.

In this pastoral, picture-like piece, the three notes E-flat, E, and A, which coincide with the letters of SEA, motivate the melody. - TT

Yuasa - Territory

OSSIA is a student-run ensemble at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, dedicated to the performance of contemporary music. The word "ossia" is a score marking which indicates a musical alternative. We have produced about six concerts a year for the past six years, with notable acclaim from the Rochester press, and we are beginning to perform in other areas. In 2002, Ossia premiered a piece by La Monte Young in New York City and performed a concert of new African music in Toronto. We invite you to visit our website for more information: www.ossianewmusic.org.

Yuasa - Mutterings Composed in 1988 (and revised in 1992), Mutterings is a setting of five brief texts taken from Do You Love Me? (1976), R. D. Laing's second foray into poetry. Laing (1927-89) is best known for his controversial work in psychiatry, particularly regarding the understanding of schizophrenia. His literary work aims at conveying a direct sense of schizophrenic "reality," and is often indistinguishable from the real mutterings of schizophrenic patients. This approach is clearly rooted in Laing's belief that schizophrenia represents a gifted and creative state of consciousness.

According to Italian musicologist Luciana Galliano, Yuasa's interest in Laing's poetry is in line with his longstanding preoccupation with the meta significance of words, which had already attracted him to the poetry of Basho (1644-94). However, the choice of Laing's texts is also indicative of changing concerns in Yuasa's shift of perspective from global structure to small gesture as the primary focus of his musical narrative. In Mutterings, the obsessive repetition and re-arrangement of limited sets of words of Laing's text is reflected most audibly in the melodic construction and constant permutation of minute musical figures. - Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon