Day 29
Hello! Two Videos & yesterday’s PDF in case the button didn’t work correctly.
“LOOPING” Review
2. My Mini Scaffolds
New Downloads:
The two sets of my own PRISM equivalents, just in case you find them useful.
Other Downloads:
PRISM Checklist in case you need it
Today’s Recommended Listening:
Eric Moore (b. 1986)
Soliloquy
(Solo Cello + Cello Quartet)
Eric Moore - Solo Cello
Megan Chartier, Emanuel Evans, James Jaffe, Natalie Raney - Cello Quartet
[YouTube] - 38 minutes
Soliloquy is an eight-movement work for Solo Cello + Cello Quartet. It is approximately 38 minutes long. I composed Soliloquy on and off from 2016 to 2022.
In 2016, my mother, Dr. Kathy Bundock Moore, was already a triple cancer survivor. At that time she was going through the second recurrence of her second cancer decided not to do another round of chemo, but she smiled through it each and every day. She was a brilliant harpist and theorist, with dual undergraduate degrees and a Master’s from the Eastman School of Music, and a Doctorate from Michigan State University.
Soliloquy is concerned with the slow evaporation of memories. I establish patterns and then slowly change them, merge them, or even audibly delete them until a new pattern emerges. The audience should be more or less unaware that the pattern has changed.
The Solo Cello’s starting C is a note to which it will struggle to return or, at other times, try to avoid. The Cello Quartet represents the inner monologue of the soliloquy. Often they provide a blanket of sound that smears material from the Solo Cello across time. Sometimes they help the Solo Cello along, sometimes they are indifferent, sometimes they trap the Solo Cello as it tries to flee, or even bombard it with sound while it plays its own line, unaffected.
Soliloquy has eight sections, four two-movement pairs.
Clear Lake | Chemical Fires
Little Things | Gypsy Moths
Paths | Furthest Thing
Hear You There | Automne
Their titles are taken from music or text that had lodged itself into my mind at the time. However, no musical material is derived from anything referenced except for the direct transcription of “Automne,” my mom’s favorite piece for harp (by my grandmother’s harp teacher). In “Hear You There” I also quote my mom’s Elegy, a small little work in 3/4 written after her own mother passed away from cancer.
I. "Sleight of hand / jump off the end
Into a clear lake / no one around."
—Radiohead
II. "Chemical fires / will signal we're dead.
Chemical fires / will signal we're dead / gone."
--Karnivool
III. "A house on fire / burning all the past away.
And what defines us, well / it's the little things that slip away."
--How to Destroy Angels
IV. "I like gypsy moths / and radio talk
Cuz it doesn't remind me / of anything."
--Audioslave
V. After the Violin Concerto, op. 23 "Concentric Paths" Mvt II: Paths
--Thomas Adès
VI. "The furthest thing from perfect
Like everyone I know."
—Drake
VII. "Deep asleep.
I heard you in my deep sleep.
There is no sleep so deep I would not hear you there."
--Samuel Beckett, Footfalls
VII. Automne for Harp
— Marcel Grandjany
The 2nd movement draws from Bela Bartok’s Solo Violin Sonata, with “third tones” - splitting a whole step into three parts instead of two parts. There are an increasing number of works for cello ensemble or solo cello + cello ensemble. I’ve suggested two below.
What to Explore Next:
Gustavo Tavares - Ladaihna [Former Richard Aaron students playing a cello octet at Amsterdam Cello Biennale - YouTube]
Bartok - Solo Violin Sonata: IV. [Leila Josefowicz recording]
JL Adams - Canticle of the Sky [Cello Ensemble]
See you tomorrow!
—Eric