ecarroll

TMers,

A good friend and colleague at Dartmouth, Christian Wolff, slipped his new DUO 6 for trumpet in C and violin (Editions Peters, 2007) into my box today and I've asked Brian McWhorter, for whom it was written, to tell us a bit about it.

A legandary composer, Christian Wolff (b. 1934) became associated with John Cage, Earle Brown and Morton Feldman in New York. He studied classics at Harvard (BA, PhD), remaining there as a teacher until 1970 when he was appointed professor of classics and music at Dartmouth College. His Pulse (1998) for trumpet and percussion has been played by Stephen Altoft (an occasional visitor at TM) and was recently recorded by Reinhold Friederich.

Best and watching here with great interest,
EC

mahaberio

I'm looking forward to this...

Khora

EC

(Having set aside the Plato for a practice session) I would love to see and hear this! Hope Brian speaks up soon.

__________________
Sandy

ecarroll

Sandy and Matthew,

Brian e-mailed to say that he's working on something for us. Watch this space...

Best,
EC

boiledjar

Duo 6, by Christian Wolff, is the 7th piece that Lisa McWhorter (my wife) and I have commissioned for violin and trumpet.

Christian Wolff writes:

The music, made for Lisa and Brian McWhorter, the unlikely combination of violin and trumpet (though Gabrieli has pieces with a dozen sackbuts and 2 violins), sets side by side 7 patches of material, variously made (e.g. specifically notated coordinations, both metrically conventional and hocket-like with indeterminate durations; independent procedure of each player - by ear and choice, sometimes each using the same material in free sequence, sometimes using independent material; using kinds of tablature - indicating only strings of violin (open or fingered) and valve positions of trumpet, specifying only rhythms and dynamics, or melodic direction, but not particular pitches). All this, though I've used these various procedures before, is here, in the light of the instrumental and structural combinations, exploratory.

Some background might be useful here.

For much of my musical life, I have been enamored with the so-called “experimental music period” in New York and composers that were at the forefront of the movement – John Cage, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, and Christian Wolff. These were composers that were breaking a lot of rules and forming new, exciting ways to think about sound. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here by supposing I know what they were all after generally, but whatever it was, I agreed.

If nothing else, it is clear that these formidable composers were trying to put fundamental elements of a piece’s creative formation square on the shoulders of the performer. They gave creative power to the performers and that drew me in.

The first piece that I encountered from this movement was Earle Brown’s famous Dec. 1952. The work could be described as a white canvas with black rectangles of varying size (and one perfect square) scattered about. Brown alludes to the representation of a three-dimensional space and the influence of master mobile artist Alexander Calder.

While living in NYC, I had to take these 1 & 1/2 hour train rides to and from Princeton University while I was teaching trumpet there and I remember pouring over the piece with tons of caffeinated thoughts whirling around about possible interpretations. I loved it. I would even query some of my colleagues in the art department or other fields to see what they thought. Was it post-modern? Or was it some romantic modernism? How could this be a piece? Brown’s own instructions were hardly useful, but nevertheless, I took them to heart and constructed a highly complicated system of interpreting the black rectangles in a way that would take the guess-work out of it. I knew that Cage despised improvisation and I figured that Brown probably did as well.

My percussionist friend Aaron Trant and I then put it on a recital. We called ourselves endy emby and had a bunch of works written for us for this show. We called Earle Brown up and invited him to the show. To all of our surprise, he showed up. He came up to us after the concert and after peering over my shoulder at my highly marked up score said: “boys, you’ve got it all wrong – this piece should just sound like two jazz players on the corner having a conversation!” Don’t forget that my overly-complicated version was based on his instructions. His comments really threw me for a loop, but taught me a very valuable lesson about this music.

After some time, I settled on a theory of possible interpretations. I don’t need to go into it too much now, but basically, the idea revolutionized my playing and opened up a lot of interesting music for me.

I had the pleasure of recording all of Brown’s Folio for Mode Records (due out April 17th, 2007) with a groups called Ne(x)tworks. I was thrilled to find out that our conductor would be Christian Wolff, another seminal figure from the period that I adored. I took the opportunity to approach him about a piece and was lucky that he was interested.

The result is Duo 6. Nearly every second of the piece depends on decisions that Lisa and I have to make either prior to the performance or in the moment. Some of the piece is beautifully drawn as peculiar graphics that symbolize valves, strings and even volume. It is as much a challenge to interpret what Wolff might want, as it is to realize the technical difficulties of the work. Additionally, the balance problems that are inherent to the instrumentation are enough to scare away more competent players….but I’ve always enjoyed those kinds of challenges. There are some truly beautiful moments that complement very random sounds, microtonal harmonies and aggressive sensibilities. All in all, the piece is probably the most important work for the instrumentation yet.

Lisa and I have been trying to get pieces written for us for some time now. We have works by David Loeb, Jeffrey Perry, Pauline Oliveros, Brett Dietz, and now, Christian Wolff. We recently played Duo 6 at my Sound-Bytes recital series at the University of Oregon and are eager to perform it more, although, now that she is pregnant (!), it might be some time. Nevertheless, we will record it this summer and probably release it on 8bells.

Thanks for asking Ed – I hope I answered any questions out there…..

Brian McWhorter
boiledjar