RING OF BONE

excerpt from “Scene 1”

“Ring of Bone” is my newest piece and written in collaboration with Jeremy Wineberg of Madison.  The composition, in three scenes for chorus and sound artist, is based on dream sequences and the experiences Jeremy and I communicated about our individual dream processes.  I am a vivid and lucid dreamer, as is Jeremy, and although we share similarities, our descriptions were still personal. 

excerpt from “Scene 2”

A poem that Jeremy had been reading came to mind during our early discussions and it fit perfectly with the other aspect of this project, synesthesia.  Lew Welch’s “I Saw Myself” compellingly describes a dreamlike state of the mind that drifts from sight to sound.  The collaboration that Jeremy and I set out to achieve was a bridge between sight and sound.  A visual depiction of experience to be translated by the singers and sound artist into tones through improvisation and interpretation.  Some notes are prescribed, but most of the decisions are left to the individual artists to draw from the images.  The piece will premiere on May 15th on the East Side.

excerpt from “Scene 3”

New York sound artist Stephan Moore is collaborating with C4 (Chris Baum, conductor) to help realize the piece.  The ultimate sound profile will include remastered samples from the choir, creating a broad and multi-dimensional improvisational palette.

RECENT PREMIERES

“Sonnet”  performed by C4 on February 27th

Daniel Andor, Conductor and Chris Baum, Guitar

Program note from the concert

Art often inspires a feeling of, in the words of James Joyce, “a stasis called forth, prolonged and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty:” an emotional happenstance of impenetrable presence wherein we want to believe we can remain.  Following attempts by composers over the past century to create stasis through metric and formal elements (think Glass’ repetitive cells, Ligeti’s slow-moving blocks of sound or Stravinsky’s rhythmic/metric layering) the form of “Sonnet” juxtaposes a ritornello (“How sweet the moonlight sleeps…” ) with solo-like passages on Sonnet 104.  Each section in the piece approaches time release in a different way, and sectional contrast equally challenges measurement.  An altered version of the whole tone scale disrupts directional focus.  The idea comes from Shakespeare, as in both texts he usurps temporal boundaries and establishes new authority (1=“the sound of music” and 2=an immortal “beauty”).   The piece opens with seven other sonnets, as I have come to believe that all 154 sonnets speak to a universal sense of humanity understood through love, loss, impermanence, beauty, ego, connection, creativity, devotion, belief and faith as much as they speak to (or, possibly, from) an individual.  Jumbled layering asks the listener to release their desire to grasp meaning and listen for meaning to flow from the experience, the essence of Joyce’s “stasis.”

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 56

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but today by feeding is allayed,
Tomorrow sharpened in his former might.
So love be thou; although today thou fill
Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,
Tomorrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.
Let this sad int’rim like the ocean be
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
Come daily to the banks, that when they see
Return of love, more blest may be the view;
  Else call it winter, which being full of care,
  Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.

Sonnet 105

Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my belovèd as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent—
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
  Fair, kind, and true have often lived alone,
  Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.

Sonnet 128

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy’ those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
  Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
  Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

Sonnet 12

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silvered o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow,
  And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defense
  Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heav’n with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.
  For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 109

O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain’d,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

The Mercant of Venice IV:1

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sonnet 104

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen;
Three April pérfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. 
Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
  For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
  Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

PAST PERFORMANCES

Perish, the Thought, Premiered May 22-23, 2009

The concert Perish, the Thought featured The Rocky Mountain Chamber Singers, a string quartet of the Boulder Philharmonic (Gyongver Petheo, Annamaria Karacson, Matthew Dane and Marcelo Sanches), Elizabeth Caswell Dyer, soprano, Marta Burton, mezzo, Ryan Connell on organ and David Harris conducting. The concert collected several of David's new compositions including the cantata The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew the choral set The Frail Stag and his first String Quartet. 

This program is now available for purchase on CD by contacting David or at CDBaby.com and iTunes

Synopsis "and as to you death, it is idle to try to alarm me." ~Walt Whitman

A voice lives in every person that questions existence, that, when pressed, is willing to believe that violence can somehow find explanation in hope. Sometimes lives depend upon this hope, but what happens when the threat is gone and the questions remain? The music in "Perish, the

Thought" flows from that voice and speaks directly to a connection that draws humanity into one, a place where all people gather, though, not often in public acknowledgement. Beautiful and lyric melody plays upon sharp layered rhythms and creates a textural enticement for pop and classical lovers alike.

The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew

This cantata explores the ubiquitous complexities surrounding death by juxtaposing texts from the first century AD (The Secret Book of James and the Gospel of Thomas), the 14th century AD (the chant “Appostolo Beato") and the 19th and 20th century AD (Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Prayer” and Pablo Neruda’s “A Few Things Explained”).  Particularly, these texts wrestle with the nobility that humans often assign to death and the manner of death.  They reflect on what meaning these matters can ascribe to life. They ponder the definition of life and whether one can be living and yet dead (a popular religious and secular sentiment).  The words offer hope for the living (e.g. Stevenson’s words “Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind”) while offering critique on humanity’s self-destructive impulses (e.g. Neruda’s words “Out of dead houses metal blazes instead of flowers”). Although each author presents death in a drastically different context, their connection to one another is striking and knocks at the heart of humanity, namely, our similarities even in difference.

The music continues in the lyrical mode of my most recent compositions and employs rhythmic and harmonic layering also found in who are you, little i and Ascendit Deus.  The choir, accompanied by organ and string quartet, sings supplicant lyrics to St. Bartholomew, seeking support for life from one fallen in a senseless killing.  Soloists outline the narrative of Bartholomew’s story, and both choir and soloists offer reflection from the two represented Gnostic gospels and the 20th-century poets.  The organ and string quartet each play vital roles as accompaniment and as musical reflection in solo movements.

The Frail Stag

Both this piece and The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew found their inspiration in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Upper West Side annex, The Cloisters.  The cantata comes from The Florence Laurdario (book of chants) that The Cloisters has on display and The Frail Stag from a 15th-century French tapestry bearing the allegory of a stag hunt, one that depicts human mortality.

In the tapestry, Old Age hunts the stag (mankind) with the help of her hounds whose names are grief, anxiety, fear, cold, heat and toil.  This activity occurs in the foreground of the tapestry.  In the middle, an adult man fishes from a boat and in the background several children play with a puppy along a road.  The Frail Stag for chorus is in three movements.

The first bears the tapestry's text that describes the activity in the foreground image that represents the end of life.  The second movement is from the poem “Pense Morir” by Pablo Neruda and reflects adulthood’s principle challenge, the quest for meaning and love. "And a little child will lead them" from the book of Isaiah finishes the set. Instead of a focus on loathing, the choral cycle, in contrast to the tapestry, suggests that life springs from death, and that perspective offers relief from the pain of aging.

The music flows from the text.  In the opening movement, sopranos and tenors trade a cycling agitated melody as the bass and alto bemoan the fate of the stag.  The second movement flows more freely as the lower parts support the soprano with a Latin-derived rhythmic ostinato.  The final piece floats unassumingly, adding parts as it moves toward the end.

String Quartet

My first string quartet takes its departure from the text printed on “The Hunt of the Frail Stag” tapestry, with each of the movements named for one of the dogs who attack the stag.  By extension, the music stirs thoughts of mortality and time.  It moves from a G minor ostinato (Peine) over which the viola sings a languid melody, to an aggressive second movement (Soussy) built on layered polyphony, free-flowing rubato and haunting ostinato (Froet et Chault) and quiet rhythmic control (Doubtace), to the aching persistence of the final movement (Laboir). Moments of untroubled beauty mingle with fast-paced textural conflict.

who are you, little i

a chamber opera by David Harris

to poems by E.E. cummings

The Maklidam Quintet:  Kip Kuepper (electric bass), Elizabeth Caswell Dyer (soprano), Lukas Graf (baritone), Marta Burton (mezzo-soprano), David Harris (tenor)   photo by Ashley Mask

Synopsis

“who are you, little i" is an chamber opera for soprano, mezzo, tenor and bass vocalists and electric bass written by Denver-area composer David Harris.  The music flows from 18 poems by E.E. cummings, all but one from the posthumous publication “73 Poems.”  The poem “in heavenly realms of hellas” drives the plot through recitative, a classic “girl meets boy, sleeps with boy’s brother and gets caught,” love story.  As cummings weaves his way through the temptations and delights of life in this poem, Harris uses the other 17 poems to comment on the action.  So present are key themes in cumming’s work (e.g. time, beauty, love, life and distractions from all of these), that the songs throughout the opera resonate with intention and interconnection.  Subtle moments of reflection on beauty and loss mingle with outrage at life’s injustices and playful whimsy.  Harris’ collaborators on the creation of the piece, Elizabeth Caswell (soprano), Marta Burton (mezzo), Lukas Graf (bass) and Kip Kuepper (electric bass), bring a wealth of experience and ability to the project.  As performers and producers, they have worked throughout the Denver area and the United States.