thirteen ways

Here’s my blurb about our forthcoming concerts with students from our old alma mater, Oberlin College (pictured above, conducted by Tim Weiss, in a photo from the NY Times) in Oberlin and at the Kitchen in New York, American Mavericks:

Steve Reich Cello Counterpoint (2003)
Frederic Rzewski Knight, Death and the Devil (2008) WORLD PREMIERE
Rzewski Les Moutons de Panurge (1968)
Reich Double Sextet (2007) WORLD PREMIERE OF LIVE VERSION

Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird joins forces with Oberlin College’s renowned Contemporary Music Ensemble to form an unconducted “super-group” in important world premieres by two legendary American mavericks. Commissioned for this collaboration, Fred Rzewski’s Knight, Death and the Devil, inspired by Dürer’s haunting engraving of the same name, is a bizarre fantasia on songs associated with war. Steve Reich’s engaging, funky Double Sextet will receive its first performance in a version for twelve live musicians. eighth blackbird will walk Rzewski’s grueling musical tightrope, Les Moutons de Panurge, and two Oberlin students will present their moving, unique multimedia interpretation of Reich’s Cello Counterpoint.

This collaboration was already set in stone by the time I joined the group in August 2006. Oberlin had pledged the money to commission Fred Rzewski, a name that 8bb put up for the project, to write a work for sextet (8bb) and string quartet (Oberlin students). Reich’s Double Sextet joined it on the program in 2007, when we received Reich’s piece and were sure it would work effectively in a live version for twelve musicians.

In asking Rzewski to write a piece for string quartet and sextet, 8bb requested that the composer keep the quartet and sextet parts musically “separate” so that the two groups could rehearse apart extensively, only coming together shortly before the performance.

Above, the engraving that inspired Rzewski’s composition. You can read more about this amazing work of art here. During the early stages of composition, in an email from January 2008, Rzewski shared with 8bb his fascinating ideas about the structure of the piece:

There will be, I think, 12 or 13 numbers, ranging in duration from 30 seconds or so to 3 minutes.  But I’m probably underestimating.  All of them use six different songs associated with war: “L’Homme Armé” [YouTube], “Siùl A Ruin” [YouTube], “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye” [YouTube], “Le Départ du Conscrit” ["The Conscript's Departure"], “Die Moorsoldaten” [or "The Peat Bog Soldiers"; [YouTube with Paul Robeson], and “Taps” [YouTube]. They appear in six different tonalities. These songs represent the “Knight on horseback” [from the above engraving] (string quartet is the “Horse,” actually the star of the show). 

The songs interrupted by “stills”, where nothing happens.  That’s “Death”.  And periodically there are interruptions of irrelevant material.  That’s the “Devil”.

This is all based on an idea I had almost 20 years ago. I wanted to write a piece for solo cello based on this same engraving. I wrote the first part, “Knight”, about 6 or 7 minutes long. I thought about incorporating it in the new piece, but then decided against it. It might, however, go in front of the new piece. I kind of like this idea. Do you know the Schönberg 2nd Chamber Symphony (one of his finest pieces, in my opinion)? He wrote the first movement in 1906 and the second in 1936.

The Contemporary Music Ensemble has for many years been an essential part of the Oberlin Conservatory curriculum, a fact underlined by this New York Times article. Tim Weiss, director of the CME and all-around great bloke, said in the article that the CME “has a certain “sex appeal” on campus,” and you can hear evidence in the typically riotous, rock star response of Oberlin students to the performance in the YouTube videos below.

The videos preserve an interesting multimedia interpretation of Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint by Oberlin students Ted Rankin and Alex Overington, which will be part of 8bb’s American Mavericks concerts: