Program Notes |
| Steven Stucky Born 7 November 1949 in Hutchinson, Kansas. Spirit Voices, Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (2003) PREMIERE OF WORK: Singapore, 14 November 2003 Shui Lan, conductor Evelyn Glennie, soloist APPROXIMATE DURATION: 22 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, harp and strings. Steven Stucky is one of America’s most highly regarded and frequently performed composers. Born in Hutchinson, Kansas on 7 November 1949 and raised in Abilene, Texas, he studied at Baylor and Cornell universities, where his teachers in composition included Richard Willis, Robert Palmer, Karel Husa and Burrill Phillips. Stucky taught at Lawrence University in Wisconsin from 1978 to 1980, and has since been on the faculty of Cornell University, where he founded the new music group Ensemble X and is now Given Foundation Professor of Composition; he has also taught at the Aspen Festival, Eastman School of Music and University of California at Berkeley. Stucky’s compositions have been widely performed throughout the United States and abroad by leading chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras, and he has fulfilled commissions from the orchestras of Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Singapore, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Baltimore, Cincinnati and St. Louis, as well as from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yale University, Boston Musica Viva, Cornell University and other distinguished organizations. He was one of ten composers selected internationally to contribute a work to the centennial celebration of New York’s Carnegie Hall; Angelus was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in that celebrated auditorium on September 27, 1990. Stucky was Composer-in-Residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1988 to 2009, and hosted the New York Philharmonic’s Hear & Now concert series from 2005 until 2009. His other residencies include the American Academy in Rome, Princeton University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotà, Colombia, Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and National University of the Arts in Taipei. In addition to composing, Stucky is also active as a conductor, writer, lecturer and contributor to music journals in America and Britain; he won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Prize for his 1981 book, Lutos³awski and His Music. Among his other honors are the ASCAP Victor Herbert Prize and First Prize from the American Society of University Composers, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation, Bogliasco Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2005, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Second Concerto for Orchestra. He is a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, chair of the American Music Center, a board member of the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Stucky writes, “Spirit Voices, composed in 2003 for percussionist Evelyn Glennie on a commission from the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival, takes its inspiration from the diversity of spirits and other supernatural forces from cultures around the world who manifest their presence through sound. The Irish banshee (cousin to the Scots bean nighe of my second movement) is one well-known example, but there are countless others. However, Spirit Voices borrows only the names and general behaviors of the spirits and gods used for its seven movements; the music itself does not borrow from these original cultures but instead comes purely from my own imagination. “I. Jiu huang ye (Malaysia). The ‘Nine Emperor Gods’ are star deities who control the nine planets of our solar system. They constitute the most popular spirit-medium cult within the Taoist pantheon in the region of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. The Jiu huang ye are celebrated in an annual festival during the first nine days of the ninth lunar month, including a raucous martial-arts dance (wushu). “II. Bean nighe (Scotland). The ‘Washer of the Fords’ is a female wraith who washes blood-stained clothes when someone in the neighborhood is about to die, especially in battle. She haunts desolate lakes and streams, and is the counterpart of the Irish bean-sidhe (‘banshee’). A similar figure, the cadineag, caonieag or caointeach, may be heard weeping in the darkness near a waterfall before catastrophe strikes a local clan. “III. Ellyllon (Wales). Tiny, diaphanous creatures ruled over by Queen Mab, the ellyllon are benevolent Welsh elves. (The singular form is ellyll). Like brownies, they will help out with household chores; also like brownies, they will leave the house if they are offended, or if their privacy is invaded. “IV. Te Mangoroa (Maori). The ‘Long Shark’ (in English, the Milky Way) are the ‘people in the sky’ whose task it is to foretell the coming of day. “V. Coyote (Navajo and many other Native American Indian traditions). According to the Navajo creation myth, the Milky Way was created by the mischievous behavior of the trickster god, Coyote. Coyote’s character is greedy, vain, foolish, cunning and occasionally displaying a high degree of power. “VI. Tengu (Japan). Originally long-billed bird-spirits, tengu are a race of evil mountain goblins known for their ferocity. These giants have wings, large claws, red ugly faces, a long beak, feathers, long hair and a stormy temperament. These devils often harass people, playing jokes on them, spiriting away children, and tormenting the Buddhist priests who come to the mountains to study them. Those who meet them become insane. “VII. Wah’Kon-Tah (Native American traditions). The ‘Great Spirit’ or ‘Great Mystery’ is a supreme being in many Native American traditions. (In some tribes, it is known as WakanTanka — the ‘Breath Giver’). According to Big Thunder, a Wabanaki Algonquin, ‘The Great Spirit is in all things, he is in the air we breathe. The Great Spirit is our Father, the Earth is our Mother.’” - Dr. Richard E. Rodda |