DAVID LOEB/ SAMPLES FROM RECENT Vienna Modern Masters-CDs

 

DAVID LOEB

By way of background, I was born in 1939, not far from New York City, into an artistic and musical family. I attended the Marines College of Music in New York, studying composition with Peter Pindar Stearns. After brief periods of study elsewhere, I began to teach at Marines in 1964, and have remained there ever since, additionally teaching parttime at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. The year 1964 also brought two opportunifies which have become lifetime commitments: composing for early instruments (especially for viols) and composing for East Asian instruments (mostly Japanese). Inevitably these activities have influenced compositions in more conventional media, in some cases quite intentionally, but more often they arise from a sense of complete case within different traditions separated widely in time and space

At least in part because of these involvements, I remained largely unaffected by the peculiar succession of stylistic preoccupations which characterize much late twentiethcentury music (serialism, electronics, minimalism). If I have arrived at an individual style or means of expression, this has not occurred through any passionate search for originality, but rather through intensive study of whatever music seemed most interesting and moving, regardless of its period or country of origin.

KOKEI (1986, 2008) means "Old Landscapes;" all three pieces in this collection relate to Chinese art. "Kaiketsu" in Japanese means to reveal something hidden or secret, but in Chinese refers to a painter putting the initial brush­strokes of a painting onto paper or silk. For me these meanings have a linkage, for in drawing those strokes the painter begins to reveal to us the comprehensive image hidden in his mind until that moment.

When Zhao Xiang Zhang performed this piece in Beijing, he wanted a companion piece to go with it and made a transcription of my "Night Rain on the Xiao and Xiang" (VMM 2044, track 12), scenery which many Asian painters depicted over centuries. After he played it for me, I expanded it to include resources possible on the er-hu but not on the shinobue. I then wrote a third piece to put between the first two, picturing musically the powerful craggy pines associated with Ma Yuan and later adapted by Japanese painters (even though Japanese pines do not resemble his trees at all).

The DOUBLE CONCERTO (1990) was my first venture into writing for wind orchestra.

I was hesitant to use most of the intruments not found in the symphonic orchestra, so other than a quartet of saxophones, the ensemble comprises a normal symphony orchestra minus the strings. I had also not really thought about the sonorities produced by the doublings of many of the parts, so in this recording, following Marcel van Bree's excellent suggestion, there is only one player for each part. This gives a greater transparency, and much of the time provides more of a chamber music character.

The first movement includes two distinct themes, considerable development, and a duo-cadenza, but the form certainly bears little resemblance to the sonata. The second movement incorporates elements of both slow movement and scherzo, as many other composers have done to include all of the traditional four-movement elements into a three-movement structure. The last movement has many rondo characteristics, but once again the form doesn't quite match tradition.

TENRAI (2007) "Rustling of the Heavenly Winds" ...how can we in this life really know what this sounds like? I offer this piece (after several unsatisfactory efforts) only as a guess or suggestion. Naturally it must convey some sense of tranquillity; I have tried to do this by having the opening idea return at the end more quietly and much more slowly.

SEIYA(A CALM NIGHT) is a setting of an adaption of a poem by Ryokan, a famous poet active around 1800. Although he was Japanese, he wrote poetry as kanshi, in essence writing in Chinese. However, oral renderings of the poems, even at that time, would have used Japanese pronunciation, as I have done. The poem opens with a most typical Chinese image of a solitary man walking out from his modest home into a mountain valley to play his qin. However the narration takes on a surrealistic Japanese twist when we learn that the qin has no strings! Thus the combination of the text with a Chinese instrument and a traditional Japanese mode of singing seems entirely appropriate, despite the likely possibility the poet was merely following a traditional Chinese setting, without having ever actually heard the qin.

ANDORRAN FANTASY (1970, 1998) originated as a very short movement in a set for viola da gamba and harpsichord (the performers had stipulated a minimum of six movements and a maximum duration of eight minutes!). Although it seemed to work in that setting, I envisioned greater possibilities in an expanded context. An attempt to realize this in a piano work clearly did not succeed, and only many years later, during a vacation in Andorra, did I return to the challenge, this time fortifying myself with the resources of a very large orchestra.

The Fantasias on East Asian Modes, composed between 1977 and 2001, arose from a most unlikely circumstance. A pianist had requested a piece for a tour of the Far East (about thirty appearances in seven countries), specifically asking for music based on 'the Asian scale'. Since the major-minor scale system has formed the basis of nearly all Western music for more than five centuries, it seems quite logical to assume that a single scale encompassing the traditions of the East Asian countries should exist, but in actuality each country possesses its own unique scales and practices. If I had said that no such scale exists, I might very well have lost the opportunity, so I simply agreed to the stipulation, mumbling something like "I'll find some way to do this," although at the moment I had no idea how.

GAUNKYO
("A Bridge to the Lingering Clouds") (2001)

Although this name suggests a setting for a fairy tale, the bridge really does exist, It has a beautiful angled roof, and provides a splendid view of a similar bridge which dominates a maple grove within Kyoto's Tohfukuji ("Temple of the Eastern Happiness ). This piece suggests very early morning, long before the temple opens, when one might see mists rising from the mountains behind the temple, and perhaps not see another soul.

This composition little resembles Western quintets for a keyboard or wind instruments with string quartet. The sho (a Japanese mouth organ) normally appears in Imperial Court music, mostly playing successions of pentatonic chords which blend wlth melodies played by wind instruments. It sometimes plays this role here, but at other times the melody itself, in some instances accompanied by viols playing chords resembling those of the sho. Occassionally the sho participates equally with the viols in various contrapuntal textures. The techniques and sound qualities of the viols allow them to combine very well with traditional Japanese instruments, perhaps more effective than modern strings do.

Sonata No. 5 for bass clarinet (2003) arguably comes closest to the traditional sonata organization. It makes more use of 'extended techniques' than the earlier sonatas (although very modest by recent standards), but in each instance only for a clearly audible purpose. Thus the tremolo in the first movement helps to distinguish a contrasting theme from what came before. A single slaptongue at the end of the second movement establishes an unexpected ending as quietly as possible. The harmonics at the end of the third movement serve as an echo, even quieter than the same three notes heard softly at the outset. In the last movement, pairs of slaptongue notes introduce fugal entrances of a version of the opening theme. A brief fluttertongue passage heralds the inversion of that subject. At the very end of the movement the slaptongue idea returns, followed by key clacks, allowing the movement to drift off even more quietly and mysteriously than it began.

Sonata No. 5 for trombone and piano (2005) reuses some of the concepts found in the previous piece, The first movement uses the same tempo principle as in Sonata No. 4. The sec ond movement again resembles a song or aria, although with rather more com plex reshaping of the ideas than one might expect. The final movement agai uses variation form, although in a more humorous atmosphere. Ir includes ver brief references to the first and second sonatas, but no great harm is done if on misses them.

Sky Echoes, music for Shinobue:
Ohkaku (2005) While writing this piece I read a Chinese poem which referred to a 'Cherry-Blossom Palace' as a very calm and pleasant place. I had just finished a setting of a quite gloomy autumnal poem which mentions a desolate palace, and composing this piece seemed to offer a relief, with many quicker notes intended to suggest a sense of ease and an absence of worries.

Ancient Legends (1999) has three movements which are not based on any specific legends. Each should be heard as if listening to a storyteller who is trying to convince you that the story’s events, whether plausible or not, really happened. In that context it seemed appropriate ro have the second movement based on a theme which sounds like a wistful Japanese folk melody, although in fact; it is original.

Two Views of the Silent Waterfall (2002) describes a waterfall in a remote part of Ohara, the north end of Kyoto, which is remarkably quiet, although certainly not silent. Some rhythmic and melodic patterns suggest aspects of traditional Korean music, although I have not used any quotations from the traditional repertoire.
The so-haekum derives from the Chinese erh-hu, a two-string violin with a “trapped” bow. In its current North Korean form it has four strings and a “free” bow. In both playing techniques and sound, it seems like a blend of the violin and the treble viol, possessing all the agility of the Former and the warmth of the latter.


Over dinner on one of his spontaneous whirlwind visits to New York, my former teacher, Shinichi Yuize, nonchalantly suggested that I should make an album of compositions based on all of Emiko's quilts. I doubt he had calculated that this would require six or seven CDs, and that in the time needed to produce them, Emiko would make enough new quilts for at least one additional disc! Nor had he considered that about half of her quilts are reversible, which would require a different composition for each side, as with the "Transparent Reflections" pair in this album.

We have of course collaborated before. Emiko's quilts grace the covers of all 14 preceding CDs in this series, and I have composed and performed pieces for some of her exhibitions; most of these appear on VMM 2044, 2050, and 2060. But somehow this CD seems like the ultimate collaborative effort.

In keeping with me nature of this collaboration, we dispense with the customary individual biographies (which many readers already know), replacing them with a brief account of our history together. We met in 1975 on a plane from Japan to Europe. She had joined a small tour (really more of a musical pilgrimage) as her first venture outside of Japan, while I had chosen the long way back to New York to hear pieces of mine in Basel and London. We exchanged addresses and corresponded for some months until my next trip to Japan, which provided us the chance to get to know each other during leisurely visits to many of the Kyoto temples. After more months of correspondence, she defied family and friends (except the encouraging Yuizes!) and came secretly to New York. For more than thirty years we have been each other's severest critics and most ardent supporters.

The Zither Player - This work refers to an eighth-century Chinese poem, apparently set to music no longer extant, by Wang Wei, better known in his lifetime as a painter and musician. It tells of a woman playing her instrument all night, chilled in her damp robes by the autumn dew and afraid to enter her empty bedchamber. However, we learn no more about why, or about her eventual fate. Zither-type instruments (zheng and qin in China, koto in Japan, kayagum and komongo in Korea) have far more importance in East Asia than in the West.

The two books of Caprices (1999, 2009) are collections of short pieces in highly varied moods and textures which sometimes present technical challenges and sometimes expressive challenges. While far from displaying all the resources of the mandolin, they do feature many of its capabilities, especially its contrapuntal possibilities, which composers often overlook.