partial [dist]res[s]toration
20'
for ensemble
Required Audio Equipment
- Computer: Mac running OS X 10.10 or higher
- Max/MSP version 7.0 or higher
- Audio Interface with at least 4 outputs
- Mixer with at least 4 outputs
- 4 speakers
If Max/MSP is not installed, the performance patch can be executed on the Runtime version available from www.cycling74.com.
Program Note
partial [dist]res[s]toration
The story told by Felder in his seven-movement sextet is as elusive (and allusive) as its title. The composer explains: “Numerous materials are brought together in this composition: both newly composed fragments and those rescued from older sketch pads–all are subjected to both ‘restoration’ (making the older appear refreshed), and ‘distressing’ (newer materials are treated to ‘age’ them). And the word ‘partial’ refers both to incomplete presentation, and to the harmonic series, which serves overtly to harmonize different things.” Like the “partials” that sound above any given pitch as part of its overtones or harmonic series, the fragmentary components of partial [dist]res[s]toration sometimes run together and sometimes remain discrete, as their titles suggest:
1. a puro sol escribo... (I write in the pure sun...), Pablo Neruda 2. I remember, I remember, Memory the great pretender, Robert Creeley
3.a. I sing...
3.b. because I sing...
3.c. and because I sing..., Pablo Neruda
4. Ris de ton nom..., Rene Daumal
5. Die Felder sind grau... (The fields are grey), anonymous
Commissioned by Harvard University’s Fromm Foundation for the New York New Music Ensemble, partial [dist]res[s]toration invites one to listen for layers of sound and meaning: fragmentary bits of song; timbres ranging from the brilliance of “pure sun” to the “grey” of fields in winter; an array of textures wholly original, yet reminiscent of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, Webern’s lucid expression, and Renaissance polyphony. The work even contains some “textural washes” that Felder initially composed for the American Dance Festival in 1982. The old is hidden within the new, the new is altered as if through recollection–“Memory the great pretender.”
Note credit: excerpted from Beth Levy, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2008
Such a conception of history as layered, not stretching behind us with the past irretrievably gone, seems to lie behind partial [dist]res[s]toration (2001-3), also. On the nearest level below the surface, the work includes electronic material Felder created for the American Dance Festival in 1982. Further down are echoes, perhaps through such other works as Carter’s Triple Duo, from Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire in the scoring for flute (doubling piccolo and bass flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin (doubling viola), cello, piano (the player operating sometimes inside the instrument to produce harmonics), and percussion (marimba and vibraphone played by one musician). Deep beneath are shadows again from the Renaissance, especially in the “French” movement, with its hints of the old modes—though these modal flavors result, like the octaves, from a scaffolding in the harmonic series, as indicated by the multiformly ambiguous title.
The titles of the first, third, fourth, and fifth movements come from the Neruda text set in Memento mori, and yet there does not appear to be any direct musical cross-reference; as men- tioned, the latter part of the first movement links rather across to Stuck-Stücke. For the second movement Felder takes a quotation from a poem by Robert Creeley: “‘I remember, I remem- ber—’ Memory, the great pretender, says it happened, thinks it was, this way, that way, just because it was in my head today.” Thus warned, we arrive in the next movement at a song that sounds like a memory, sung by the clarinettist. The song extends and vanishes in the ensuing movements, to be replaced by a different, perhaps older song in “Ris de ton nom,” whose title deliberately misquotes a line from an early poem by the 20th-century French poet-mystic René Daumal, making a pun on his first name: “Renie ton Nom, ris de ton NON” (Renounce your Name, laugh from your NO). Disinclined to take this advice, however, Felder humorously places his own name in the title of the finale, “die felder sind grau” (the fields are gray), borrowed from the Bruce Hornsby song “Fields of Gray.” The fields in this case are harmonic, made of resonant spectra, and their colors are soft and luminous.
note credit: Paul Griffiths copyright 2009
Read more
partial [dist]res[s]toration
The story told by Felder in his seven-movement sextet is as elusive (and allusive) as its title. The composer explains: “Numerous materials are brought together in this composition: both newly composed fragments and those rescued from older sketch pads–all are subjected to both ‘restoration’ (making the older appear refreshed), and ‘distressing’ (newer materials are treated to ‘age’ them). And the word ‘partial’ refers both to incomplete presentation, and to the harmonic series, which serves overtly to harmonize different things.” Like the “partials” that sound above any given pitch as part of its overtones or harmonic series, the fragmentary components of partial [dist]res[s]toration sometimes run together and sometimes remain discrete, as their titles suggest:
1. a puro sol escribo... (I write in the pure sun...), Pablo Neruda 2. I remember, I remember, Memory the great pretender, Robert Creeley
3.a. I sing...
3.b. because I sing...
3.c. and because I sing..., Pablo Neruda
4. Ris de ton nom..., Rene Daumal
5. Die Felder sind grau... (The fields are grey), anonymous
Commissioned by Harvard University’s Fromm Foundation for the New York New Music Ensemble, partial [dist]res[s]toration invites one to listen for layers of sound and meaning: fragmentary bits of song; timbres ranging from the brilliance of “pure sun” to the “grey” of fields in winter; an array of textures wholly original, yet reminiscent of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, Webern’s lucid expression, and Renaissance polyphony. The work even contains some “textural washes” that Felder initially composed for the American Dance Festival in 1982. The old is hidden within the new, the new is altered as if through recollection–“Memory the great pretender.”
Note credit: excerpted from Beth Levy, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2008
Such a conception of history as layered, not stretching behind us with the past irretrievably gone, seems to lie behind partial [dist]res[s]toration (2001-3), also. On the nearest level below the surface, the work includes electronic material Felder created for the American Dance Festival in 1982. Further down are echoes, perhaps through such other works as Carter’s Triple Duo, from Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire in the scoring for flute (doubling piccolo and bass flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin (doubling viola), cello, piano (the player operating sometimes inside the instrument to produce harmonics), and percussion (marimba and vibraphone played by one musician). Deep beneath are shadows again from the Renaissance, especially in the “French” movement, with its hints of the old modes—though these modal flavors result, like the octaves, from a scaffolding in the harmonic series, as indicated by the multiformly ambiguous title.
The titles of the first, third, fourth, and fifth movements come from the Neruda text set in Memento mori, and yet there does not appear to be any direct musical cross-reference; as men- tioned, the latter part of the first movement links rather across to Stuck-Stücke. For the second movement Felder takes a quotation from a poem by Robert Creeley: “‘I remember, I remem- ber—’ Memory, the great pretender, says it happened, thinks it was, this way, that way, just because it was in my head today.” Thus warned, we arrive in the next movement at a song that sounds like a memory, sung by the clarinettist. The song extends and vanishes in the ensuing movements, to be replaced by a different, perhaps older song in “Ris de ton nom,” whose title deliberately misquotes a line from an early poem by the 20th-century French poet-mystic René Daumal, making a pun on his first name: “Renie ton Nom, ris de ton NON” (Renounce your Name, laugh from your NO). Disinclined to take this advice, however, Felder humorously places his own name in the title of the finale, “die felder sind grau” (the fields are gray), borrowed from the Bruce Hornsby song “Fields of Gray.” The fields in this case are harmonic, made of resonant spectra, and their colors are soft and luminous.
note credit: Paul Griffiths copyright 2009
