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Reynolds compositions on disc: The Palace (Voicespace IV) (1980, baritone and tape) Eclipse (Voicespace III) (1979, tape) Still (Voicespace I) (1975, tape) Liner notes by Roger Reynolds in English |
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| About the Voicespace
pieces: Voices, language and space… they interested me even in the early 60s when I wrote The Emperor of Ice Cream for the ONCE Festivals in Ann Arbor. Since each of us knows so much about the behavior of the voice - intimate endearments, rage at a distance - it is an ideal vehicle for auditory spatial illusions (all the more when in the service of language and its powers of invocation). In the early 70s, at the Center for Music Experiment in La Jolla, I heard daily rehearsals of the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble as they perturbed vocal norms. Evenings, I read my daughter to sleep trying to capture, for each character in the story, an individual and consistent vocal behavior. She was a demanding critic, and stimulated a good deal of nocturnal reflection about vocal identity. Electronics, at first analogue, later digital systems, offered rather precise control over auditory space (a particular sound’s size, location, distance, the character of the host space in which it was heard). I sought spare but evocative texts and tried to conjure up unfamiliar yet appropriate vocal behaviors with which to present them. The five works in the series thus far share a concern with the potential of auditory spatial imaging: this is a subject still only tentatively broached. They attempt to create a personal theater through the mind’s ear. Yet they are distinct. Three of them are presented here. -from the liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: Watershed I (1995, solo percussion) Other works on disc:
Six Japanese Gardens (1995) by Kaija Saariaho Rebonds (1989) by Iannis Xenakis Bone Alphabet (1992) by Brian Ferneyhough Liner notes by Steven Schick in English |
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| About Watershed I: Early in the learning process of Roger Reynolds’ Watershed, I identified (and identified with) the tight spiral of drums as the central force of the piece. The drums are confident, learned and focused. Soon enough they begin to listen to the other instrument: first to the volatile circle of metallic instruments and then to the incessant carpings of four wooden boxes. Approaching the critical “watershed” moment of the work, these forces challenge and begin to transform the drums with steady insistent pressure. The drums, at first dark and laconic, soften and begin to sing. We move seamlessly from order and logic into a far less rational world of impulse and intuition. -from the liner notes |
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Reynolds compositions on disc: Odyssey (1989-92, two singers, ensemble, and computer sound) Summer Island (1984, oboe and computer sound) Archipelago (1982-83, ensemble and computer sound) Autumn Island (1986, marimba) Fantasy for Pianist (1964, piano) Liner notes by Peter Szendy in French
and English and by Risto Nieminen in French, |
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About Odyssey: Reynolds’ work, instead of trying to put words to music (or music to words), attempts to create a space of/for the voice, within the continuity of the Voicespace cycle he undertook in 1975: “from one mind through two written languages to one executant who becomes the vessel for two spoken languages that reach the single auditor, a cyclicity of the unitary and the multiple.” -from Szendy’s liner notes |
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Reynolds compositions on disc: Coconino... a shattered landscape (1985/93, string quartet) Visions (1991, string quartet) Kokoro (1992, solo violin) Ariadne's Thread (1994, string quartet) Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... (1989, solo cello) Liner notes by Ciro G. Scotto, in English and French. |
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| Arising from the eventful scenery of Coconino... (1985, revised 1993) and the mysterious Visions for string quartet (1992), Kokoro for solo violin (1993) presents a labyrinth of expanding strings, without any immediate markers. Ariadne's Thread (1994), with its entanglement of uninterrupted sounds for string quartet and electronics, is the final secret passage leading to the bright regions of Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... for solo cello (1989), a vast space for meditative reflection. -from the liner notes |
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Reynolds compositions on disc: Transfigured Wind IV (1985, flute and tape) Other works on disc: Poeme Electronique (1958) by Edgard Varese Phonemena (1975) by Milton Babbitt Philomel (1963) by Milton Babbitt Mycenae-Alpha (1978) by Iannis Xenakis Liner notes by Shirish Korde, Robert Cogan, Milton Babbitt, Roger Reynolds in English |
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| About Transfigured Wind IV: This work is primarily concerned with the way in which transformations may allow music a more subtle and far-reaching engagement with the complexity of our temporal experience as human beings. We recall, immerse ourselves, and anticipate (past, present, and future). We are sometimes absorbed in specifics, at other times wander in larger, less well-defined worlds of impression. The formal aim in many of my recent works has been to invite back into music recognizable but not literal repetition of materials, while at the same time providing a new rationale for the role of “the precursor” (that which acts as a premonition of musical ideas that have not yet appeared in definitive form). -from Reynolds’ liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: …the serpent-snapping eye (1978, trumpet, percussion, piano, and tape) Ping (1968, piano, flute, percussion, and live electronics) Traces (1969, flute, piano, cello, and live electronics) Liner notes by Roger Reynolds and Peter Yates in English |
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| About …the serpent-snapping eye: My intention … was to explore those situations in which a loss of orientation leads us more deeply into the moment itself. There is a certain aquatic feel to the music, in which the performers are joined with a complex and sonorous fabric of computer generated sound. […] The work is twenty minutes long, divided into three roughly equal sections. In the first, the primary aim of the performers is to match, submit to and intensify the taped sounds. The second, in which the synthesized sounds are sparse, introduces a feeling of independence as the performers respond, reflecting on models provided by the tape. In the final section, the live performers complement and elaborate upon - they attempt to augment - the synthesized sound. -from Reynolds’ liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: Transfigured Wind III (1984, flute, ensemble, and tape) Ambages (1965, flute) Mistral (1985, chamber ensemble) Liner notes by Stephen Soderberg in English |
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| About Reynolds’ music: The three works on this CD are linked in various ways, not the least of which is the common element wind. Ambages and Transfigured Wind III both feature a wind instrument, the solo flute. But Mistral, while it also employs wind instruments (brass) with strings and harpsichord, is more fundamentally “wind-built” … its construction principles originating in Reynolds’ form-musings on the famously brutal wind in the south of France. -from the liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: The Dream of Infinite Rooms (1986, cello, orchestra, and tape) Other works on disc: What the Monster Saw (1987) by Libby Larsen LON/dons (1989) by Salvatore Martirano London Serenade (1988) by Bernard Rands Liner notes by Bruce Millard, Christina Thoburn, and Jan C. Snow in English |
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Available at: amazon.com amazon.co.uk |
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| About The Dream of Infinite Rooms: The Dream of Infinite Rooms (1986), for solo cello, orchestra and computer-processed sound on tape, explores the metaphors of dreams - remote, inscrutable and unrecoverable in life, but, perhaps, capturable in music. The solo cellist (the dreamer) - in this recording Regina Mushabac - initiates the work with fragmentary proposals, seeding the dreams to follow. The orchestra enters with the first of several “rooms” within which the cellist’s materials elongate and flower. The innermost room (remote and fanciful) is manifested by the tape, and after this interlude of computer sound, the previous orchestral “rooms” return, varied and in reverse order. The cellist-dreamer takes a more expansive role after the deepest recesses of the dream, and the orchestra’s influence wanes. As the dreamed subjects fade, a more reflective and lyric mood ensues, though the orchestra interjects an occasional evocation of the earlier worlds of sleep. -from Reynolds’ liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: The Ivanov Suite (1991, tape) Versions/Stages (1988-91, tape) Liner notes by Mark Swed in English |
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| Available at: |
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| About Reynolds’ tape music: What makes Reynolds’s music rich and interesting is that the various wings of his musical house are not entirely compartmentalized. Even at his most experimental, as in Versions/Stages, Reynolds retains a grounding in the world of concert music. Unwilling to give up what he calls the vitality of natural sound, he uses the computer as a means to explore in depth the properties and hidden beauties of the sound of a wave or a flutist breathing into her instrument. That hypersensuality of sound often finds a visceral equivalent in both Reynolds’s concert and theater music, just as his theatrical side can enliven the experiments. Moreover, both formal abstraction and a frequent underriding poetic content … characterize nearly all of Reynolds’s diverse musical productions. On this program, for instance, bits of experimental music find their way into the theater while concert excerpts are fodder for the computer lab. -from the liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: Whispers Out of Time (1988, string orchestra) Transfigured Wind II (1983, flute, orchestra, and tape) Liner notes by Kyle Gann in English |
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| On Reynolds’
music: Few composers can match Reynolds for technological sophistication. Of those who come close, no others have written such human, ear-conscious music. -from the liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: Personae (1990, violin, ensemble, and tape) The Vanity of Words [Voicespace V] (1986, tape) Variation (1988, piano) Liner notes by Thomas DeLio and Roger Reynolds in English |
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Available at: amazon.com amazon.co.uk |
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| On Variation: What interested me most in composing Variation was the notion that transformations of meaning could occur entirely as a result of changes of context. In this work there is no transposition of thematic materials, nor any thematic development; none of the tactics by means of which musical ideas have traditionally evolved are in play here. The listener is faced with only the thing itself heard in changing relationship to itself. -from Reynolds’ liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: last things, I think, to think about (1994, baritone, piano, and tape) Liner notes by Joshua Cody in English Complete lyrics (by John Ashbery) also included |
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| On last things,
I think, to think about: Like Archipelago, last things is a kind of mosaic: the ten discrete settings of poems (drawn from disparate parts of Ashbery’s career) are musical islands floating in the stream of an eleventh poem, called Debit Night, that Ashbery wrote specifically for the work. Ashbery taped a reading of Debit Night under Reynolds’ supervision, and the recording preserves Ashbery’s unaccompanied voice but stereophonically spatialized it. The tape was then divided into ten fragments that are distributed throughout the work as intercalations between the movements of the work proper, suggesting both continuity and fragmentation, two different approaches that characterize the music’s “reading” of the poetry in a general sense. An archipelago, as it were, of songs in a sea of spoken words: but whereas the elaborate musical mosaic of the earlier Archipelago was, according to the composer, “purely architectural in notion - the plan for the work was entirely devised before any music was composed” - last things is an exercise in spontaneity, the composer reacting to the poetry with the same capricious immediacy that Ashbery (of all poets) demands of his reader: “the associative mobility of human thought caught while musing,” as Reynolds described it. -from the liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: From Behind the Unreasoning Mask (1975, trombone, percussion, and tape) Other works on disc: Ceremony II (1974) by Paul Chihara Suite for Harp and Wind Quintet (1950) by Chou Wen-Chung Earthlight (1973) by Earl Kim Liner notes by Tom Johnson in English |
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| Available at: amazon.com towerrecords.com |
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| On From Behind the Unreasoning Mask: In the trombone part at the beginning of the Reynolds one also hears notes that are much more than simply notes. They could perhaps be better described as wails or gestures. Reynolds is particularly inventive in his exploration of sounds in this piece, with many special instrumental effects, such as the hum-and-play passages in the trombone. And the tape part, of course, explores a broad palette of colors as well. -from Reynolds’ liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc: Epigram and Evolution (1960, piano) Wedge (1961, chamber ensemble) Mosaic (1962, flute and piano) A Portrait of Vanzetti (1962-63, narrator, ensemble, and tape) Other works on disc: String Trio (1960) by George Cacioppo Sinfonia for 12 Instruments and Magnetic Tape (1958-60) by Gordon Mumma The Fourth of July (1960) by Robert Ashley Matrix for Clarinet (1962) by Donald Scavarda and many others Liner notes by Leta E. Miller, Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds, and Donald Scavarda in English |
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| On Wedge: Reynolds deals with two layers of sound moving at different speeds and densities, one mostly winds (…), the other, percussion (…), At two points the layers coincide, delineating a three-section form. A dialogue between the two groups opens the work, active lines in one accompanied by transparent halos in the other. Reynolds’s sensitivity to orchestral color is much in evidence: Near the opening, for instance, an ethereal effect is created by halo tones sounding simultaneously in the piccolo and the string bass; timbral modulation also appears in several places. Out of the two instrumental clusters, soloists at times emerge in concerto style: The middle section, for example, features virtuosic cadenzas for piano, vibraphone, flute, trumpet, trombone, and percussion. -from Miller’s liner notes |
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| Reynolds compositions on disc:
Kokoro (1992, violin) Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... (1989, cello) Process and Passion (2002, violin, cello, and electronics) Liner notes by Mark Menzies, Hugh Livinston, and Roger Reynolds in English |
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Available at: amazon.com |
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| On Focus a beam...: Like a modern look at a Baroque solo suite combined with a set of classical variations, Focus considers the instrument, its melodic and figurative linearity and its double stop potential, and provides a neatly wrapped package of "views" of the rhythmic pattern and a tone row that does much to unify the linear identity of gestures. Passages with double stops alternate with flying finger-slurred miniatures where fleeting recognition of the opening, signal gestures offers an impelling force that drives to the final simplicity of the closing section: pure again, single notes with occasional vestigial flickering, open strings and harmonics, some warmth from stopped notes, but overall a nearly headlong pace which shows that there is no room for relaxation even in the final glowing moments of the inclonclusive search that the composition represents. -from Livingston’s liner notes |
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This page last modified on 8 August 2005.
