Michael Torke (1961- ), Adjustable Wrench
The music of Michael Torke has been called "some of the most optimistic, joyful and thoroughly uplifting music to appear in recent years" (Gramophone, August 1996). Hailed as a "vitally inventive composer" (Financial Times of London, February 25, 1995) and "a master orchestrator whose shimmering timbral palette makes him the Ravel of his generation" (New York Times, June 30, 1996), Michael Torke has created a substantial body of works in virtually every genre, each with a characteristic personal stamp that combines restless rhythmic energy with ravishingly beautiful melodies.
Adjustable Wrench (1987) is one of Torke’s earlier works, a period during which Torke helped define the post-minimalist style. Utilizing the repetitive structures of minimalism combined with elements of the traditional classical and the contemporary pop world, Adjustable Wrench truly defines the post-minimalist style. Following are notes from Mr. Torke in his own words on the composition:
"Each group of four instruments combines with a keyboard: four woodwinds matched with a piano, four brass with a marimba, and four strings with a synthesizer. After a melody is introduced, it is then harmonized into four-note chords. The chords become an accompaniment for a new melody, which in turn is harmonized to work with the accompaniment. The old chords drop out making the new chords become the new accompaniment for yet another melody."
"The keyboard instruments, around which each family of four instruments is grouped, simply doubles exactly what is being played. The piano, marimba, and synthesizer add no new material. Instead, they add an extra envelope to the four-note chords as well as reinforce the attacks."
"The music falls into the kind of four-bar phrases in most popular music. Overall, the structure of the piece is arranged in four identifiable sections."
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), La Création du Monde
Paris in the first decades of the 20th Century was fertile ground for artistic innovations of all kinds. Picasso continually broke new ground in the visual arts; Marcel Proust was writing and publishing his masterpiece, the multi-volume In Search of Lost Time; and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes along with Igor Stravinsky were creating a series of masterpieces in dance, music and the visual arts. The French love of exotica and the new created in the opening years of the 1920’s a craze for American jazz and African art, a combination that soon came to fruition in La Création du Monde.
Milhaud’s La Création du Monde (or “The Creation of the World” in English) captures perfectly the essence of that era. A ballet written by Milhaud from a commission by the Ballets Suédois, Swedish contemporaries of Diaghilev’s much better-known troupe, the Ballets Suédois were a very influential company, staging five Paris seasons and touring continually. As a historical aside, during 1923 the company also premiered Cole Porter’s only ballet, Within the Quota, as well as Milhaud’s La Création we are hearing today. The story of the ballet La Création du Monde outlines the creation of the world based on African folk mythology, and costumes and sets from the original production mirrored the influence of African folk art.
Musically, Milhaud’s music reflects his 1922 trip to the United States where he immersed himself in the newly created American jazz. When Milhaud first heard an American jazz band in Paris his interest was so piqued that he left almost immediately for the new world to explore this music firsthand. During his time in New York City he met and mingled with jazz musicians and spent considerable time in jazz clubs and bars soaking up the music and atmosphere. In describing his first experiences of jazz in America, Milhaud said that, "...the music was absolutely different from anything I had ever heard before, and was a revelation to me. Against the beat of the drums the melodic lines crisscrossed in a breathless pattern of broken and twisted rhythms."
La Création du Monde was composed immediately upon Milhaud’s return to France from the US. Written for an ensemble that closely resembled the one he found in the United States, Milhaud began writing in what he called a “jazz idiom-“ music colored with bluesy turns of harmony and melody, swinging climaxes and stomping rhythms. Milhaud described the La Création as, “a work making wholesale use of the jazz style to convey a purely classical feeling," In six sections which are played without a break, La Création du Monde was the first of Milhaud’s works to incorporate jazz influences and is generally considered his finest work and a masterpiece of 20th Century music.
The debut of La Création du Monde took place on October 25, 1923, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. It was not particularly well received, being more a “success de scandale” than a true success. As Milhaud notes ironically in his autobiography, however, that "…the critics decreed that my music was frivolous and more suitable for a restaurant or a dance hall than for the concert hall. Ten years later, those self-same critics were discussing the philosophy of jazz and learnedly demonstrated that La Création was with the best of my works."
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Violin Concerto in D Major
Musical ideas for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto appear in sketchbooks dating from 1806 side by side with those for the Fifth Symphony- proof that Beethoven often worked on compositions of decidedly different character simultaneously and that his compositions often had gestational periods that could be measured in years. The Violin Concerto is a work of deep spirituality and expansiveness, while the Fifth Symphony is a work of drama and conciseness- diametric opposites- and the Violin Concerto appears to have been dashed off in a short period prior to the premiere in 1806 while the Fifth Symphony was worked on for years before its first performance in December 1808.
Written for the violinist Franz Clement, to whom the first performance was entrusted, Clement was Concertmaster of the Theater an der Wien and in that position was involved in a number of premieres of Beethoven’s major works, including the Eroica Symphony. Clement also was a former child prodigy who by all accounts seemed to have weathered quite well a youth of constant travel and performances throughout Europe. The nature of the relationship between Clement and Beethoven is not entirely clear, but one has to conjecture that both having survived the rigors of being a child prodigy they must have had a certain sympathy and understanding between them.
Apparently the Violin Concerto was completed in great haste, and according to a legend which may be apocryphal, was barely completed in time for the premiere on December 23, 1806, when it was performed without sufficient rehearsal. Whether that is true or not, the concerto was not particularly successful at its premiere, and was only performed a handful of times to cool receptions before a historic London performance in 1844 with the great violinist Joseph Joachim as soloist conducted by Felix Mendelssohn brought the concerto to its rightful prominence. In a sense this delayed popularity is understandable- potential performers (and audiences) may have been put off with the concerto’s unprecedentedly large proportions and seriousness. And the difficulties in performing the work are more spiritual, expressive and musical than technical- this is no mere virtuoso showpiece but a great work of art that happens to feature a solo violin in a prominent role.
In three movements, the first movement of the Violin Concerto by itself exceeds the entire length of nearly every earlier complete concerto for the violin. And it’s serious, expansive and dramatic character set it apart from all previous concertos as well. The writing for the violin is extremely demanding, but not in an overtly virtuosic way- the exalted discourse between violin and orchestra is delayed for as long as possible, heightening the tension and highlighting the appearance of the solo violin when it does appear.
The second movement, essentially a Romance in modified variation form, reaches a level of sublimity paralleled in only the greatest of works in Beethoven’s oeuvre. There are many parallels, not necessarily musical but spiritual, with the works of Beethoven’s late period, in particular the late string quartets. Enlightening is a comparison with Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, composed at roughly the same time as the violin concerto. The second movement in the piano concerto features a discourse between solo piano and orchestra, but it could be likened to a dispute; whereas in the violin concerto it is a lyrical discussion between two like-minded, agreeable friends.
The final movement, a rondo, which follows the second movement without a break, brings listeners back down to earth after the spiritual heights of the first two movements with a graceful dance. Yet even the earthiest of dances has in Beethoven’s hands something Olympian about it, with a certain nobility of character that makes the finale seem an organic part of this incredibly profound whole. Perhaps the key to this seeming paradox is Beethoven’s view of nature as ultimately religious in character, as typified in a work performed earlier this season, the Pastoral Symphony. When viewed through the lens of Beethoven’s trinity of “humanity, God and nature,” this seeming paradox disappears.
The greatness of Beethoven’s achievement in the Violin Concerto can be no more simply stated than in the fact that until Brahms wrote his over 70 years later no major composer attempted (or dared) to write a violin concerto of similar depth and dimensions.
