Nico Muhly » Solo

O Antiphon Preludes

fmyers — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:34:32 +0000

Each prelude is based on each of the Seven Great O Antiphons for Advent:

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

O Radix Jesse, qui stas insignum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem Gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel; qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit:veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

Radiant Music

Nico — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:38:37 +0000

Radiant Music was written for Alice K. Dade at her request for a short recital piece. The tape part is made up of several episodes of shimmering music for electric flutes, dulcimers, organs, baroque strings, trumpet, and choir. This piece is focused on a simple progression of three chords; this progression appears in the sequence that opens the piece. This sequence reappears in each episode as a harmonic goal for the flute, whose part circumnavigates it but never hits it exactly. Also at play in Radiant Music is a notion of fast music that moves slowly versus slow music that moves quickly. This is most evident in the “Throbbing” music which is very fast, but has an immensely slow harmonic motion, and in the conclusion, which is made of one chord reworked over a long stretch of time. Radiant Music is dedicated to Alice K. Dade.

Performance Notes
Radiant Music requires a pair of stereo speakers, placed as far apart on the stage as possible. The tape requires manipulation twice during the piece: at the start and conclusion of the cadenza. If possible, an assistant should execute this pausing and recommencing, but if necessary, the performer can control the tape from the stage.

Honest Music

Nico — Wed, 16 May 2007 20:39:32 +0000

On the page, the violin part for Honest Music looks something like Terry Riley’s In C, insofar as it’s a collection of discrete, modular phrases to be recombined in “performance,” or in this case, by the electronic manipulation of the recording–but these aren’t Riley’s musical Lego blocks; most of these are long, expressive, idiomatic gestures, combining Nico’s soaring English-choirboy diatonicism with Romantic, violinistic leaps and slides up and down the fingerboard. As these figures pile on top of each other, the close-miked, aberrant fiddle timbre comes to seem, as per the title of the piece, brutally candid.

The other fragments, imitated in character by the sputtering harp and percussion of the accompaniment, sound more like scraps swept from a cutting-room floor somewhere – all false starts, warm-ups and afterbeats – and the glitchy, staticky noises in the background contribute to the sense of something rough, half-finished. The result is to suggest that all of Honest Music is an out-take, a rehearsal for another, wholly imaginary piece. But the gravity and authority of the harmonies (and the low drones) lend the makeshift nature of the piece an authentic drama in its own right: the sad beauty of things coming together and things falling apart.

Performance Notes
The irregularities in the tuning of the pre-recorded organs are intentional and should be loosely followed; in general, however, the spirit of the solo “live” part should be much more aggressive and forward than the pre-recorded violins.

Lisa Liu, violins
Monika Abendroth, harp
Nico Muhly, keyboards

Honest Music is recorded on Bedroom Community Hvalur 001 (Nico Muhly Speaks Volumes).

Una Sveinbjarnardóttir plays Honest Music in Rotterdam, April, 2007

It’s About Time

Nico — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:52:51 +0000

It’s About Time has two sets of attendant notes, one by Sam, for whom it was written, and one by me.
Performer’s Note
It’s About Time was written for percussionist Sam Solomon. It’s about time, the piece is. It’s also about time Sam asked Nico to write a solo piece – the first time since some vibraphone solo Nico wrote in 1996 or 97 in high school. There was a timpani piece too, also in high school. After probably dozens of other collaborations of all shapes and sizes, the time came in the spring of 2004 for another Nico solo for Sam. Like much of the percussion repertoire, time (rhythm) takes center stage as the primary compositional element, namely though various additive procedures. These additive procedures, however, are clouded, or actually they’re “colored,” by Nico’s enormous and infectious personality, as is the pitch material, orchestration, and form. If you know Nico and/or his music, you know what I’m talking about. And that’s what it’s about. ““ Program Note by Sam Solomon (for use by Sam Solomon only)

Program Note:
It’s About Time was written for Sam Solomon, one of my oldest collaborators. Some of the first music I wrote, I wrote for Sam, so when he asked me to write a solo for him in 2004, I started thinking about the sort of thing you cook for your best friends – food from the pantry, not designed to impress: the company itself is the point of the encounter. It’s About Time is precisely that: staples, things I know that I do well, and things I know Sam (and, by hopeful extension, any percussionist) does well. It’s About Time lasts 9 minutes and is dedicated, with many thanks, to Sam Solomon.

Performance Note
It’s About Time was written for a setup detailed here as “Setup #1.” All setup notes should be scrupulously observed as outlined on the website.

Live Recording
Sam Solomon, percussion

Sam & Nico

Pillaging Music

Nico — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:03:23 +0000

Muhly names Pierre Boulez as the inspiration for Pillaging Music, and it’s easy to hear the influence of pieces like Sur-incises and Répons on this metallic piano/percussion texture, with its wild, electronic antiphony. But where Boulez’s music wears, self-consciously, the sheen of the new, Pillaging Music has been painstakingly distressed. The percussion is complemented by a battery of found instruments, household objects chosen to approximate the pitches of the other instruments without matching them exactly. And the tape component was edited (by the composer and Valgeir Sigurðsson) with an ear-popping ruthlessness. More obviously, where Boulez’s convulsive rhythms and atonal harmonies reject the familiar, inhabitable spaces of classical music”””He takes the gargoyles,” composer Ned Rorem complained after hearing Répons, “and leaves the cathedral”””Muhly is willfully humane, pushing the drama of his tonal language across the threshold of camp. The aggression is ritualised, mitigated by an excess of style. A hushed, reverent interlude demonstrates that Muhly could never leave the cathedral too far behind, before the instruments literally race””Nancarrow-like””to the piece’s rhythmically virtuosic conclusion. – Notes Â© 2007 by Daniel Johnson

Pillaging Music is recorded on Bedroom Community Hvalur 001 (Nico Muhly Speaks Volumes).

Sam Solomon, percussion
Nico Muhly, keyboards

Nico & Sam during Pillaging Music rehearsal, Zankel Hall, 2007

Sam recording Pillaging Music in Brooklyn, 2006

Nico & Valgeir playing Pillaging Music in Rotterdam, April, 2007

It Goes Without Saying

Nico — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:07:21 +0000

For a piece with such a strong electronic component, It Goes Without Saying is surprisingly organic. While the electronics include chillier, metallic noises””samples ranging from a kitchen whisk to a unique set of tiny bells””most prominent are the warm, woody sounds of a harmonium and of clicking clarinet-keys, sounds that share a certain sonic DNA with the live components of the performance.

The piece also develops according to organic principles. Over the initial drone of the harmonium, the rhythm track and the clarinets build the material of the piece up from small, replicating cells into a lively and elaborate texture. The minutely wrought surface is stretched over the simplest possible formal contour, the drone undergirding the piece progressing from C to F and back again. When the slowly building dissonance of the underlying harmonium chord finally reaches its tipping point, the resolution corresponds to a dramatic timbral shock: a shocking burst of industrial noise, dominating rather than complementing its acoustic surroundings. Finally, the machine noises die away and the harmonies return home, the texture warms once again””now leavened by the gentle sound of the celesta. ““ Program Notes Â© 2007 Daniel Johnson

Performance Notes
The clarinet should be placed in the center of the stage. If amplification is used (which is not necessary but can help solve certain balance issues), it is recommended that there be one microphone traditionally placed, and another close to the side of the instrument, gently amplifying the natural sound of the keys clicking.

It Goes Without Saying is recorded on Bedroom Community Hvalur 001 (Nico Muhly Speaks Volumes).

Carol McGonnell, Clarinets

Watch Una Lorenzen‘s beautiful video for it here.

Carol, with Thomas and Valgeir in the background, at the dress rehearsal for It Goes Without Saying at Zankel Hall, March, 2007.

Keep in Touch

Nico — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:46:48 +0000

Keep in Touch is a lament, a sort of chaconne divided up into sections by more freely-composed cadenzas for the viola. But the chaconne, a musical form based around a repeated cycle of chords, is not only the domain of composers like Bach and Purcell””one is as likely to hear the form on a Nina Simone record, and Antony Hegarty, the bluesily androgynous vocalist we hear in the electronic component of this piece, is a performer from the Simone school.

Every dimension of the piece accentuates what Muhly calls the “in-betweenness” of these two strange voices: Antony’s singing and the equally sweet falsetto of the viola. The solo part, with its bow-scrapes and awkward passagework, affectionately emphasises the instrument’s flaws, its unevennesses of tone, and its idiosyncratic character as the neglected middle child of the fiddle family. (Even the percussion on the electronic track is constructed from the little noises a violist usually makes only by accident.) And Antony’s voice, so stately on his own records, is here reduced to abrupt, extemporaneous gestures””mirroring, not alleviating, the viola’s isolation. – Program Notes Â© 2007 Daniel Johnson

Performance Notes
It is important that the viola be lightly amplified in order to achieve a good balance with the pre-recorded materials. Although the best results have been with a microphone clipped to the bridge, anything to subtly boost the viola’s volume is appropriate provided that both the viola and the pre-recorded elements come out of the same speakers.

Because it is usually cumbersome for the violist to trigger the tape start in bar 46 herself, an assistant and/or engineer should be on hand.

Additional Program Note
The complete title of this work is Keep in Touch (Three Missed Calls for Holy Week). The title should only be listed in a program as such if it is performed during Lent; during other times of the year, Keep in Touch is sufficient.

Keep in Touch is recorded on Bedroom Community Hvalur 001 (Nico Muhly Speaks Volumes).

Nadia playing Keep in Touch in Reykjavík in October, 2006.

Recording Keep In Touch at the Looking Glass Studios in April 2005, with Valgeir reflected in the control room window.