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May 15, 2009

Donald Erb, "Christmasmusic"

 -- LINER NOTES --

CHRISTMASMUSIC
(I) 3:36
(II) 3:25

CHRISTMASMUSIC was commissioned to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra and is dedicated to conductor Louis Lane. It was completed during the fall of 1967 and first heard on December 21 of that year. The eight-minute piece features a variety of novel musical media as outlined by the composer:
Some composers of my generation believe that traditional musical instruments are "washed up" as a source of new sounds, and have turned completely either to electronics or the stage as a source of new material. To me the appeal of "live" music is still irresistible. Musical instruments and musicians offer constant sources of new sounds. Listed here are some of the sounds you will hear:

Movement I. Timpani with snare drum brushes
Glass wind chimes
Brass players tapping mouthpiece with palm
Flutes clicking keys
Wind players humming and making tonguing sounds
String players rattling fingers against instruments
A bottle half filled with water used as a percussion instrument

Movement 11. Piano played with glass on strings
Trombone played with F slide removed
Harp strings pulled, played like Japanese koto
Piano played with xylophone mallets
But the point of CHRISTMASMUSIC goes much deeper than the creation of original sound effects. Erb has developed a miniature philosophical reflection on the dual nature of this peculiarly American phenomenon. This explains the contrasting character of the work's two movements, the first "quiet and mysterious" in the composer's words, the second "energetic and . . . earthy."
The festival of Christmas has, it seems to me, two quite opposite aspects to it. Christmas is sacred and secular; it encompasses the service and the office party, the church and the department store, prayers and feasting, the creche and crass commercialism . . . (Yet) CHRISTMASMUSIC is not meant to be taken either as a sermon, or as a satire. It simply attempts to deal, in light of today, with a "tradition" which is constantly changing and rarely examined.
When Louis Lane commissioned the work. he suggested the setting of traditional Christmas material, and Erb obliged by adapting the beautiful chorale melody "O Come Emmanuel." Motivic fragments of the melody are used throughout the first movement, toward the end of which the basses quote the entire melody. The second movement makes use of the melody's final phrase. "Toward the end of this movement." notes the composer, "the melody becomes gr.dually more audible until near the close it is quoted in a rather direct and discernible manner."

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on May 15, 2009 at 05:11 PM

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