Centaur Release – Program Notes

When I was a young child, as the story in my mind goes, my father would play a composer-guessing game with me during the many hours we listened to music. I see us in the car, me behind while he drives, a cassette-tape playing or the radio on, and the notion of what a composer is beginning to seed itself in me. Apparently, I got pretty good at the game. This one sounded this way and that one sounded that way – a burgeoning understanding of what “composer” means.

My father was responsible for bringing music into my world and, once introduced, I gravitated to it with a certain voracity. As I expanded out of the bounds of his listening sphere, music became my own. He too, previously, had been graced with music through his father who would travel many kilometers by train with one of his three boys to hear his favorite sopranos sing.

“Futuro ancestral” or ancestral future, the indigenous sage Ailton Krenak has recently written, is a sensibility brought to our awareness by rivers, “entities who always inhabited the world in various forms and have suggested that if there is a future to be thought of, this future is ancestral, because it has already been here.” This conversing across time occurs as well when we experience music of centuries past today, and even more obviously in the transmission of music from grandfather to a grandson he never knew. It still amazes me how a melody written by Machaut in the 14^th century can float across time and space and penetrate our hearts. This recognition has become an essential part of my music, since I see myself as conversing with the past (and perhaps with the future).

When my music dialogues with another work, I sometimes describe it as tipping my hat to that composer, but it is so much more than that; it is that the music has spread its roots in me and has brought about a flowering now expressed through my creativity. It does not matter if the listener knows my references, for they are woven into the fabric of the music. Nor is it necessary for an appreciation of the music itself, for these connections-across-time are but a thread in the tapestry of each movement. My music never sounds like the composer I am in conversation with, but the connections can be heard and felt. It is the deep love I feel for this music that ends up touching my own.

As I compose, I listen to what the music tells me it wants to be. I stay attentive, lovingly, critically, to how it needs to unfold. It’s about being in a state of receptivity. In this regard I feel closely aligned with the work of the artist Nelleke Beltjens, [“The Only Constant is Change” #4 appears to the left] whose process is so similar to mine. She is keenly aware of detail – how one element can affect the whole, how surprise and intuition activate her creativity, how the work is an entity beyond her that she must coax into fullness as one does a child, respecting it at every point along the way. As such, I think of each movement on this recording as having its own essence and its own unfolding. I am also attentive to how each movement fits into a work’s larger trajectory.

The first set on this album, Pears on a Sill, was brought out of hiding by Heather Lanners. She was the first pianist to have the sensibility and willingness to make the work her own. Sometimes our belief in a piece only comes to fruition in the right hands (and what extraordinary sensitivity these hands are capable of)! Our collaborations have led to the creation of Pictures Without an Exhibition and, since this recording, to a short solo work entitled Plainte and to the forthcoming Two Nocturnes.

“3 a.m. Nightingale” begins the four movements of Pears on a Sill with a melancholic lyricism. It is one of the few tracks that doesn’t have a specific reference-across-time, although I can’t help think of some of the murmurings near the end as being touched by Debussy.

As for “Spinning Waltz”, it dialogues across time with Gretchen at her spinning wheel – now in a more psychologically turbulent state of mind. The title came after the movement was composed, so its reference is only a possible window into the music, rather than anything definitive or limiting.

The brief “Boatman’s Song” was inspired by barcarolles, especially the one by Charles Griffes from his Fantasy Pieces. It sounds nothing like the Griffes, but has that lilt.

It sets up “Caitlyn’s Goodbye”, which is the most extensive and demanding movement of the set. The recurring saloon-like rhythm came from my admiration for Mauricio Kagel’s Westen, a work I heard at Tanglewood as a fellow, and for the deep effect he had on me that summer. The work as a whole is dedicated to Anne Modugno, my high school music teacher, who was such an important person at a critical juncture in my young life.

The second piece on this album, Souffle et Contresouffle, was originally written for pianist Stephen Perry who premiered it with brilliant panache. It then became a vehicle for pianist Solungga Liu during her concerts on our tours together. And it was this piece that began my connection with Heather Lanners. She graciously filled in for a performance for a pianist I did not know and it was this gesture that led to our connection – to her bringing Pears on a Sill to life and to commissioning Pictures Without an Exhibition, which I composed expressly with her playing in mind.

Souffle et Contresouffle is in a basic A-B-A’ form with the A section drawing inspiration from the last movement of Lutoslawski’s Double Concerto, a piece I love so much, and the B section from a certain guy named Debussy. The title, with the invented word “contresouffle” (thus breath and counterbreath), was a way to draw attention to the multitude of contrasts in the piece, both at the micro and macro level. It was composed to be a tour de force for the pianist.

Pictures Without an Exhibition began in residency at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico with (after I had written the first few notes) a sudden lightning flash of recognition that I was about to embark on a dialogue with Mussorgsky. My music was channeling Pictures at an Exhibition, the multi-movement work that Mussorgsky composed for piano in 1874. Intimidated at first, I allowed the Mussorgsky to stimulate my own creativity and immediately realized what the overall title would be. My music often evokes journeys in sound or pictures in sound, so the reference felt very true to form. I thought about his work’s structure and saw how I could take my own approach.

One of Mussorgsky’s many brilliant ideas is his Promenade theme, a musical idea that carries the listener from painting to painting, from movement to movement. Each time it appears (even within a tableau) it undergoes variation. This is what gave rise to the Air, a melody I first described to Heather as what a Hungarian grandmother might sing as she cradled a grandchild.  While my metaphor didn’t help Heather (of Irish, Scottish and Icelandic ancestry) understand how to feel it initially, for me it came out of my own relationship with Hungarian folk music.  Did I say that my father was Hungarian?

The Air, like the Promenade, anchors the listener as it recurs over the entire work. It doesn’t only get varied, but expands, recreated, so that eventually the 4^th Air becomes three times the length of the original.

Unlike the Mussorgsky, which has ten movements interspersed loosely with the Promenade, the structure of Pictures Without an Exhibition is much more specific. Five main movements are separated by four iterations of the Air.  These main movements, or “pictures”, each have completely different characters and challenge the pianist in divergent ways.

The “Lento misterioso” features the tremolo, the texture and the opening pitch, that first made me realize I was in conversation with Pictures at an Exhibition, since Mussorgsky’s haunting movement “Cum mortuis in lingua mortua” likewise uses the tremolo and begins with an F#.

“La Poule”, whose title is in French due to its inspiration, Rameau’s ingenious La Poule, is my own joy-filled approach to depicting a hen.

The third picture, “Scherzo”, begins with a texture that I love so much in Beethoven’s second movement from the “Hunt” Sonata as it is sometimes known (Opus 31, no.3). He contrasts a lyrical right-hand line with the bubbling, staccato bass of the left hand.  This Scherzo, unlike its more structured cousin, breaks out of its usual form and turns into something unexpected only to revert to its original self at its close.

The fourth picture, “Languorous Clouds”, is less obviously in dialogue with a particular composer, but alludes to the many pieces of music that clouds have inspired.

And finally, “Ballade”, often thought of as a narrative by such composers as Chopin, Beach, Brahms, and Fauré, tells a story in sound. While I don’t know what that story is in words, I am definitely attentive to how the trajectory of the movement embodies a narrative.  The work’s (and this picture’s) conclusion not only recalls “The Great Gate of Kiev”, which ends Mussorgsky’s monumental work, but serves as the piece’s own final flourish.

What makes a composer’s sound world so distinctive, what makes their individual voices speak across time, remains a mystery, yet, they tap into something ineffable that makes them sing. My music celebrates others, but it draws from its own source and is filtered through my own singularity. I sense this is one of the reasons that attracted Heather Lanners to it. And it may be, as evidenced by this recording, why, as she merged fully with my work, it has become her own.

-Gregory Mertl