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Music by Eliza Brown with quotations from Richard Strauss
Text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (translated/adapted by Eliza Brown)
and Eliza Brown
Commissioned by Ensemble 20+ at the invitation of Michael Lewanski
Premiered October 9, 2016, Chicago Cultural Center
Presented by the Ear Taxi Festival
This piece weaves two musical strands together. The first is a loose orchestration of a soundwalk through Lincoln Park Conservatory out to the frozen shore of Lake Michigan. The second combines fragments of music and text from "Der Rosenkavlier" (Richard Strauss/Hugo von Hofmannsthal) in which the Marschallin (aka Resi) reflects on her youth and the strangeness of time. A soundwalk involves hyper-awareness of one’s present environment and does not have a clear pulse or meter, while the Strauss fragments are from and about the past and rely on meter and pulse to organize time. The combined force exerted by these tensions - between past and present, and between different expressions of time - shapes the two musical strands into a figurative sonic essay on time, life cycles, and the inevitability of change.
flute: Leah Stevens
oboe: Laura Adkins
clarinet: Alessandro Tenorio-Bucci
alto saxophone: Richard Brasseale
French horn: Fiona Chisholm
percussion 1: Christian Hughes
percussion 2: Sarah Weddle
percussion 3: George Tantchev
harp: Kasia Szczech
violin 1: Erica Jacobs-Perkins
violin 2: Cody Hiller
viola: Jonathan Walters
cello: David Sands
double bass: Daniel Meyers
conductor: Michael Lewanski
Ensemble 20+ librarian/administrative assistant: Laura Adkins
Recorded and produced by Thomas Miller and the DePaul Sound Recording Technology Program
Mastered for internet streaming by Aphorism Studios
Recorded October 18 and 20, 2016, DePaul University School of Music Concert Hall
This recording was partially supported by a DePaul University Quality of Instruction Council grant and by a Professional Development Fund grant from DePauw University
Ensemble 20+, comprised of DePaul University School of Music students, rehearses, performs, and studies a range of works from the early 20th century to the present day. It collaborates with composers and performers of diverse backgrounds: DePaul faculty and students, Chicago composers, and national and international artists. In doing so, it fosters a sense of collaboration and mutual respect among performers, composers, and audience members; it contributes to a positive and creatively vital musical community.
Track image: Photo by Yonatan Aljadeff
credits
released October 9, 2018
____________________________
Text:
Time is a strange thing.
Most of the time, time feels like nothing.
Then suddenly we feel nothing but time.
Where did she go?
That girl whose dreams I remember –
She melted, like dreams – or last winter’s snow.
I know that she once saw with my eyes,
And she once sang with my voice.
But was she once me?
And was I –
And will someday I be die Alte Frau? [the old woman]
Time is all around us, and inside us.
It ripples across our faces.
It surprises me when I look in the mirror.
Then I wake up and it’s flowing between you and me…
Time is all around…
die alte Frau…
Flowing…
Time is all a–
Sometimes
I get up in the middle of the night
And stop all the clocks.
What would she say if she were here?
I would take her out to the lake in winter,
When the ice and the sky are the same blue-grey
And it looks like there’s no horizon –
Only blue, grey-blue, going on forever.
I would like to walk out there,
But I think that the ice is too thin.
That’s alright –
If I just stand here, I can keep thinking it goes on forever –
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