DAVID B. SMITH: Life Cycles (2022)
This piece is generated using a formal compositional process I call "transformational composition." The process starts with an existing piece of music upon which I apply rules-based transformations, resulting in an entirely new work of art that still draws derivative expression from the original piece. Life Cycles is mapped from "Gretchen am Spinnrade," the famous Schubert song based on the Faust story. Schubert uses a relentless circling motif to represent the turning of the spinning wheel. I hope you enjoy hearing these two pieces back to back. I chose this topic because it speaks deeply to our existing concern that these lifecycles are in danger of failing. Is it our responsibility to ensure that the next generation, the next breath, the next meal is available? Will our generation be the one that watches the collapse of a beautiful structure, evolved over billions of years?
THOMAS PARENTE: Island Elegy and Aubade (2022)
Words by Deborah Gould and Peter Filkins
Description of my imaginings that inform the four-song extended drama:
"My Beautiful Island" — It is the present. A young woman sings joyfully and exuberantly of the beauty of her island, a truly magnificent paradise.
"Oh Home of Sweet Tranquility" — Twenty years later. The no-longer-young woman realizes that her cherished island is beginning to disappear; waves encroach, storms rage, the heat only grows more intense. Her youthful, idyllic bloom has faded; the impact of her species' actions on her beloved home has begun.
"The Song Itself We Have Forgotten" — Another twenty years go by. Rising seas force the island's inhabitants to evacuate. The island is clearly doomed. The once-young woman is now sadly mature. She has no illusions. She is in shock, bewildered, mumbling in disbelief at what is taking place. In the distance, on the horizon, a large ship waits. She joins the others in line to board the ship, which will eventually take her… where, she does not know.
"Aubade"— A song or poem announcing the dawn. A seagull soars above the ocean. He possesses will, determination. He scans the sky, seeking a destiny he knows is there, even though this world's next day—the dawn of the title—may be destiny beyond imagination. Still, buffeted by winds not he, nor his father, nor his grandfather have ever known, he flies on. The dawn awaits.
ARNOLD FRIEDMAN: Plastic Lives (2020)
Words by Arnold Friedman, Roland Barthes, and e.e. cummings
The composition of Plastic Lives began in London, England, where I spent a sabbatical semester in spring 2019. Originally, I had intended to collect and set varied poems that deal with mankind's impact on nature, to make a song cycle for Dr. McCann. However, the view from the kitchen window of my London flat changed that intention radically. It overlooked the Regent's Canal, one of a vast network of canals that provided transportation for goods around England prior to the railroad. In recent years, the canals have been revived for pleasure boaters and even for affordable housing. On windy days, the eddies gather large whorls of plastic shopping bags, plastic toys, plastic beverage bottles, plastic clamshell packaging, and other plastic flotsam. Observing that, while at the same time reading a book by Susan Freinkel called Plastic, a Toxic Love Story, focused my thinking on the problem of plastic.
Plastic Lives treats its subject from the vantages of documentary, alluding to the history and technology of plastic; of socio-economic commentary on plastic's essential place in consumer culture; and of plastic's ecological consequence, both its direct effects and its symbolism of mankind's attitude towards our environment.
