Simple Objects

Sometime in 2018 or 2019, on a visit to the Sheldon Museum of Art at UNL, I overheard a typical (if unhelpful) comment about a piece of abstract art: “my grandkid could make that!” We, as percussionists, are used to hearing this sentiment, whether it’s directed at tambourine, triangle, drums, or even keyboards. As much as people toss this around as an insult, or a way to trivialize the percussion artform, they aren’t wrong. Basically anyone can play any of our instruments in some way or another. Steven Schick put it well: “Percussion instruments are, after all, simple objects: hit them and they will make a sound.” With all of this in mind, I wanted to write a piece to celebrate these instruments in their simplicity. The four featured parts are not saturated with rhythmically complex or otherwise virtuosic material. Rather, the percussionists playing triangle, tambourines, cymbals, and drums lead the composition by playing melodically with their unique timbres. The rest of the percussionists, in turn, color these melodies with pitch. To quote Schick again, “A cymbal, a gong, and a drum: these are simple objects and that’s a good thing. With simplicity comes intimacy, and with intimacy the strong sense of shared musical experience that many listeners feel when they hear percussion music.” – L.R.K.  

Träd

Träd, meaning "Forest of Hands,” is a showcase of the marimba's textural range. John Eriksson draws from his influences of classical percussion and popular music to create a world in which sound echoes and rings into eternity. Following minimalist tradition, each player drives the piece forward with an individual motive, while melodies float above the undulating chord progressions. The piece ends with an explosion of color and light as the dark C-Minor tonality resolves into E-Flat major.

Après Rebonds

Après Rebonds by Luis Rivera is inspired by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis and his solo percussion work, Rebonds. Drawing on Xenakis-inspired melodies and grooves (and the familiar bongo drone used in several of his percussion works), Rivera has developed these flavors in a chamber setting for five skilled percussionists.

Unburdened by the constraints of a soloist having to execute the advanced choreography required of anyone performing Rebonds, Rivera has created a new way to experience the energy and essence of the piece through orchestration, the use of various implements, metric modulations, inventive new rhythms, and changes in texture.

Fratres

feat. Jacob Shelton, Marimba

Estonian-born composer Arvo Pärt occupies a prominent place among composers of what has been termed “holy minimalist” music. After early flirtations with serialism (which were criticized by the Soviet authorities), Pärt began to study Bach and to incorporate some neo-Baroque elements into his works. This in turn led to his exploration of music made from materials of the greatest simplicity.

Pärt began to immerse himself in medieval and Renaissance chant and polyphonic music—the title of this work, Fratres (Brothers) suggests monastic meditations -- and he started to focus on the mystical energy born of the simultaneous sounding of notes. By 1976 he had found the essence of the style that has been his hallmark ever since: a technique he calls “tintinnabuli,” referring to bell-like resonances. Pärt said:

“Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers -- in my life, my music, my work ... The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it?

“I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements -- with one voice, with two voices. I build with the most primitive materials -- with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.”

The tintinnabuli principle is central to Fratres. The three-part theme is repeated at successively lower pitch levels and in alternation with its inversion, as the work slowly and meditatively proceeds to its inevitable conclusion. A drone on A and E is sustained through the entire ten-minute piece as an unwavering foundation. Everything progresses slowly, and the volume swells halfway through and then sinks back to near-silence.

After Fratres was premiered in 1977, Pärt created or authorized new arrangements or elaborations over the course of many years. At last count, his publisher listed sixteen different versions for a wide variety of forces.

Little Smiling Figments

When I was younger, I used to hide small plastic toys throughout my potted plants, as if they were little characters exploring a jungle. As I grow older, I find that, as "professional performers", we still do this, but with trinkets or silly ideas in our percussion setups—from floating ducks hidden in water bins to doodles of birds strewn across drum sets and stuffed octopi hiding on cymbal stands.

It's nice. I'm happy that the percussion space welcomes these moments of levity and imagination. This piece draws upon those experiences. -SZ

Mudra

feat. Andrés Morales, snare drum

"The musical language found in my recent works has been evolving in my music since as long ago as 1982 with Palta, a kind of concerto for the Indian tabla drums accompanied by traditional western percussion instruments. The approach became explicit in 1990 with the percussion quintet Mudra, where the idea was to extract a functional harmony from a purely melodic source: specific ragas of Hindustani classical music. (The term rag was once succinctly defined by the musicologist Harold S. Powers as 'a generalized scale, a particularized mode,' although Indian musicians usually give the word a more poetic meaning: 'that which colors the mind.') Even though Indian music is generally characterized as being elaborately melodic with no harmony (by western European definitions) whatsoever, my personal experience has always been one of subliminally perceived harmonic movement, a sensation that is clearly related to my cultural background and musical training. This kind of cross-referencing is always experienced when one strong cultural expression encounters another and, in my opinion, this perceptual phenomenon will be the defining issue in all of the arts and politics of the 21st century. 

Musically, I have found this effect to be most pronounced in ragas which contain relatively few tones. The pentatonic modes containing no fifth scale degree (for example, the ragas Malkauns, Chandrakauns, and others) have, to my ear, the most ambiguous and intriguing harmonic implications. Rag Chandrakauns - traditionally linked to the full moon and late-night hours and with the scale degrees tonic, minor third, fourth, minor sixth, major seventh - has always attracted me. I have applied a variety of compositional and mathematical devices to these interval relationships to determine both the melodic and harmonic content of all of my music for the past twelve years. Most recently, I have used a matrix of four non-transposable nine-tone scales to derive the same interval relationships, resulting in a further expanded harmonic landscape. In 1971 the Montreal poet Louis Dudek wrote the following short but penetrating verse which seems to go to the heart of this method of working: 'We make our freedom in the laws we make,/And they contain us as the laws we break/Contained a remnant of an ancient music/That a new music in its laws contains.'" -BB