Poetry and Music: A Conversation With Poet Elisabeth T. Eliassen

What is so wonderful about for me about my poetic “thought music” is that while it can have specific meaning for me, it doesn’t have to have a specific meaning for anyone else.

— poet Elisabeth T. Eliassen

My new choral work Waiting… is built around a hand-picked group of poems by Bay Area poet Elisabeth T. Eliassen, who is not only singing in the upcoming premiere, but has been very supportive and accessible during my process of composing the piece.

Owing to the unique aspects of this particular collaboration, we thought it would be interesting and edifying, to say nothing of fun, to share a bit of our ongoing email discussion about the creative process as it relates to music and poetry.

You can read the piece here, on Elisabeth’s blog Songs of a Soul Journey, where a great deal more of her work can also be read.

The Sanford Dole Ensemble will give the premiere performance Waiting…, for chorus, string quartet and piano, at the San Francisco Conservatory on February 4th at 8:00pm.  Tickets will be available at the door or directly from the Sanford Dole Ensemble for $30.

Update: (1/31/12) Elisabeth has posted an additional installment of our conversation.  You can read that here.

New Choral Work to be Premiered in February

The Sanford Dole Ensemble will give the premiere performance of my new choral work Waiting…, for chorus, string quartet and piano,  at the San Francisco Conservatory on February 4th at 8:00pm.

This “All New, All Local” program also includes new works by San Francisco composers David Conte and Peter Scott Lewis, as well as Sanford Dole himself. All of the pieces use various combinations of chorus, strings, piano and percussion.

Like my earlier large choral work Cycle of Friends, Waiting…, is imagined in the tradition of my favorite non-liturgical choral masterpieces, ranging from Brahms to Vaughan-Williams to John Adams.  The text is chosen from among the beautiful works of Bay Area poet Elisabeth Eliassen.

Unlike most such choral works and song cycles, where the work is organized around a sequence of poems,  Waiting… is cast in one movement, and is based on one large poem with a few smaller poems nested among the stanzas.  The work is dominated by Elisabeth’s masterful poem, “Come again”, whose relentless use of the word “waiting” in stanza after stanza provides something like a dramatic framework, taking us from urgency to desperation to resolution.

The stanzas of “Come again” are set in a fast-paced, narrative style, occasionally exposing my musical theater roots, whereas the other poems are treated in more relaxed settings.  Here’s an excerpt from “Come again”.

Waiting,
beyond waiting, there is nothing waiting,
and no one shall come down from on high, waiting,
as one might be, for a sign that we are ready and waiting,
for, lacking such an offer, still for some reply we are waiting
for something, from what we suppose to be a heavenly realm, waiting
for a new and familiar face to appear, waiting
to be acknowledged, to be loved, to be led.

The smaller poems are set as little diversions from the narrative drive, forming a kind of sub-plot and bringing about a sense of contrast and commentary.

Hear an Excerpt

One of these smaller poems, “Roll the Tide”, is set as a kind of a cappella spiritual. It was performed as an excerpt last year at the Kodály Summer Institute at Holy Names University, conducted by László Matos, and that performance can be heard below.

—Roll the tide,
o roll the tide over,
roll the tide over me,
and so hide my tears
in folds of your timelessly flowing,
salty blanket of turbulence
and music.

—Roll the tide
and rock me to a watery sleep,
rock and roll me
until my cares
have worn to sand,
and lay me bare and free
in the bosom of your shore.

The poetry excerpts “Roll the tide” and “Come again”,  the latter from the book Songs of a Soul Journey (2002), are by Elisabeth T. Eliassen, and appear here with the poet’s permission. More of her work can be found on her blog, also called Songs of a Soul Journey.

What is a Tritone? And, What Isn’t It?

The word tritone is frequently used interchangeably with the terms augmented fourth and diminished fifth.  Let’s see if we can clear that up.

The intervals of the augmented fourth and diminished fifth indeed sound the same when played out of context on a piano, but they are not the same interval, they are not both the same thing as a tritone, and the tritone is not an inversion of itself.

Raw Dough and Tea: Diabolical Solfège Songs

I recently discovered that an old acquaintance of mine is a fellow musicianship teacher and has been writing and recording diabolically clever songs that illustrate musical ear training concepts in a refreshing and fun way.

David Newman is an accomplished baritone soloist and teacher of voice and musicianship at James Madison University, who apparently knows a thing or two about songwriting as well.  His songs are on YouTube and they speak for themselves. If you are at all concerned with getting students to hear harmonic progressions and intervals, you will be thoroughly entertained by these.

Scores Now Available for Purchase Online

My self-publishing empire Swirly Music has just launched an online store where certain pieces will be available for purchase.  At the moment only my clarinet/piano piece American Standard and a short choral work are available.  I will be adding my other choral pieces and my string quartet as soon as I can.

Sibelius Trick: Use Your iPhone as a Number Pad for Your Laptop

I’m sure I’m not alone among Sibelius users in relying very heavily on the number pad for quick music notation.  It is of course much quicker than pointing and clicking on that little tool box.  So, at such times when I’m using my MacBook away from the wireless keyboard (with number pad) that I normally use, working with Sibelius is excruciatingly slow and frustrating.

The solution, it turns out, is a very nifty iPhone app that can be had for $3.99.  NumPad is a multi-purpose number pad that connects to your computer via the iPhone’s WiFi connection.  It can be set to work as a standard number pad with, you know, numbers, or as seen here it can be set to control Sibelius.  You can get to the various toolbox thingies (or whatever they’re called) by swiping left or right).

I find that it’s very fast and responsive when my WiFi connection is functioning properly, but I imagine performance will vary according to your setting.  In any case, I was thrilled to find this solution, and thought I’d pass it along to readers and future Googlers.

Oh, and guess what: It’s similarly compatible with Finale.

Video: American Standard at Old First

Filmmaker Mark Altenberg did a lovely video interpretation of my clarinet/piano piece American Standard that was displayed live during a recent performance at Old First Concerts in San Francisco. Using footage taken of clarinetist Karla Avila and pianist Regina Schaffer in rehearsal, the video is interesting and evocative.

Now, for posterity, Mark has synchronized the video with the recording of Karla and Regina’s live performance that evening and made it available for sharing.

City Walks at SFO “You Are Hear” Festival

Some composer friends and I have been kicking around the idea of getting our music played in unconventional venues. The idea is that if music is only played in concert halls, then the audience is limited to people who take time out of their busy schedules to seek it out, to say nothing of willingness to spend money on tickets. Surely we can find new ways of bringing new music to audiences that don’t require them to be so proactive.

Project Encore: Choral Works Awaiting Second Performances

Last year the New York chorus Schola Cantorum on Hudson initiated their Project Encore initiative, an effort to promote second performances of choral works that have received premiere performances and nothing since.  It is a great and much needed idea: a juried central repository complete with instrumentation, text, program notes and even audio excerpts that choral decision makers can resort to for new works to consider.

Joseph Castaldo’s “Ancient Liturgy” Revisited in Philadelphia

This month the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, my choral alma mater, will present a concert that epitomizes the kind of music making that went on in Philadelphia when I was a student there in the 1980′s. The occasion is the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Joseph Castaldo’s extraordinary work for narrator, chorus and orchestra Ancient Liturgy, which was originally commissioned and premiered by the Music Group of Philadelphia under Seán Deibler, who also happened to be Choral Arts’ founding Artistic Director.