a r t i s t : David Lang
t i t l e : Child
d a t e : 2003
l a b e l : cantaloupe
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : Jun/2008
t r a c k s : 05
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 55,4 MB
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Description
David Lang follows his highly-acclaimed Cantaloupe debut, The
Passing Measures, with this major new work for seven
musicians. Child is a powerful meditation on childhood and
memory - sweet and simple on the surface, gentle musical
fragments float by leaving faint traces of darkness in their
wake. The result is at once dramatic, personal, intensely
introspective, and piercingly beautiful.
Written in five separate parts for some of Europe's finest
groups, Child is recorded here by the Italian ensemble
Sentierri Selvaggi.
"Boldly realized - snakes its intriguing way over varied
emotional turf, with melancholic irresolution in the mix.
Sheer musical energy and spiritual inquiry hover over the
proceedings."
-Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times
David Lang on the concept of Child
In the space of one month in 1999, by some strange
coincidence, I received five commissions for almost the same
instrumentation. The prospect of writing five practically
identical pieces in a row seemed uninviting to me, so I came
up with the idea of organizing these pieces around common
themes, shared materials, and unorthodox doublings, such as
having a flutist or violist play percussion. I was then able
to link these pieces, as movements in a larger work. The
larger work is called Child.
Child is my attempt to examine certain experiences as I
remember (and misremember) them from my childhood. Each of the
individual movements is in some way a memory of how I learned
how to do something. Because I was taught (as most children
are) that one learns how to perceive the world by making up
rules it has been possible to apply these rules to musical
environments.
I am not nostalgic for childhood, mine or anyone else's. It is
not a point of Child to show either how childhood is a time of
great excitement or great disturbance, or that I miss it or
that I suffered through it. What is most interesting to me,
especially now that I have children of my own, is that
childhood is the time when one learns how to think, how to
feel, how to move forward. Because each piece of music in some
way needs to teach its listener its own rules for how it
works, it is a comparison I have found meaningful.
Lang on "My Very Empty Mouth"
The phrase "my very empty mouth" is part of a sentence I was
taught to help remember the order of the planets: mercury,
venus, earth, mars, etc. Now I no longer remember the whole
sentence, and the rest of the solar system has been lost. "My
Very Empty Mouth" (1999) is scored for flute, bass clarinet,
piano, violin, viola and cello, and was written for Ensemble
Alternance (Paris).
Lang on "Sweet Air"
During a trip to the dentist, my oldest son Isaac was given
laughing gas. The dentist called it "sweet air," a gentle name
to take the fear out of having a cavity filled. It worked. My
son experienced something - a drug - so comforting that it
made him ignore all signs of unpleasantness. This seemed
somehow musical to me. One of music's traditional roles has
always been to soothe the uneasy. I must say I have never been
that interested in exploring this role. It is much easier to
comfort the listener than to show why the listener might need
to be comforted. My piece "Sweet Air" tries to show a little
bit of both. In "Sweet Air," simple, gentle musical fragments
float by, leaving a faint haze of dissonance in their wake.
"Sweet Air" (flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello) was
written for Sentieri Selvaggi (Milan) and is dedicated to
Louis Andriessen.
Lang on "Short Fall"
I wanted to write a piece in which a large amount of effort
was expended to go a very small distance. "Short Fall" is that
piece. Underneath all the activity in short fall the actual
notes fall only very slightly. It is as if the surface is so
active that the subtle effects of gravity pass (almost)
unnoticed.
"Short Fall" (piccolo, piano, violin, and cello) was written
for the Pearls Before Swine Experience (Stockholm) and is
dedicated to Lynn Garon.
Lang on "Stick Figure"
A child learns to draw by drawing lines. In the hands of a
child a person is a stick figure, a skeletal intersection of
stark lines, stripped of flesh, without subtle details. Only
later does a child learn to add things - some hair, a dress,
some shoes. Watching my children go through this stage has
made me realize that my music is moving in the opposite
direction. With every piece a little bit of flesh is removed,
a little more skeleton is uncovered.
"Stick Figure" (clarinet, piano, percussion, cello and two
non-percussionists) was written for Sentieri Selvaggi (Milan).
Lang on "Little Eye"
Small children get bored easily when traveling long distances
by car. One way to distract them is to play the game "I spy
with my little eye," in which you look out the window and
describe something you have noticed. In my experience this
does work, but in a very subdued way - it is not the most
exciting way to pass the time. Eventually, however, time does
pass.
"Little Eye" was commissioned by the Italian music festival
Nuova Consonanza for the ensemble Alter Ego, and was premiered
at the Opera Paese in Rome, Italy, 16 October 1999.
About David Lang
"There is no name yet for this kind of music," writes music
critic Mark Swed, but audiences around the globe are hearing
more and more of David Lang's work: in performances by such
organizations as the Santa Fe Opera, the New York
Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland
Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet; at Tanglewood, the BBC
Proms, The Munich Biennale, the Settembre Musica Festival, the
Sidney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, and the Almeida, Holland,
Berlin, Strasbourg and Huddersfield Festivals; in theater
productions in New York, San Francisco and London; in the
choreography of Twyla Tharp, La La La Human Steps, the Paris
Opera Ballet, The Nederlands Dans Theater and the Royal
Ballet; and at Lincoln Center, the South Bank Centre, Carnegie
Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican Centre, and the
Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Recent projects include monumental musical environments like
the dark and meditative amplified orchestra piece "The Passing
Measures;" "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" - an opera for
the Kronos Quartet with libretto by Mac Wellman and direction
by Carey Perloff, "Grind to a Halt" for the San Francisco
Symphony; the opera Modern Painters about the curious and
tragic life of art critic John Ruskin; the evening-length
piano solo "Psalms Without Words," and the bittersweet comic-
book opera "The Carbon Copy Building," with cartoonist Ben
Katchor, Bob McGrath and the Ridge Theater, and composers
Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe. He is currently collaborating
with visual artist Mark Dion on an opera, entitled "Anatomy
Theater," that will premiere in Darmstadt, Germany in 2005.
Lang has been honored with the Rome Prize, the BMW Music-
Theater Prize (Munich), a Kennedy Center/Friedheim Award, the
Revson Fellowship with the New York Philharmonic, and grants
from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the
Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1999 he received a Bessie
Award for his music for choreographer Susan Marshall's "The
Most Dangerous Room in the House," performed live by the Bang
on a Can All-Stars at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn
Academy of Music. The Carbon Copy Building won the 2000
Village Voice OBIE Award for Best New American Work. The CD
recording of "The Passing Measures" was named one of the best
CDs of 2001 by The New Yorker magazine.
Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's
legendary music festival, Bang on a Can, and Composer-in-
Residence at the American Conservatory Theater in San
Francisco. Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Lang holds degrees
from Stanford University and the University of Iowa, receiving
his doctorate from the Yale School of Music in 1989. He has
studied with Jacob Druckman, Hans Werner Henze and Martin
Bresnick. His work is recorded in the Sony Classical, BMG,
Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca, CRI and Cantaloupe labels.
About Sentieri Selvaggi
Sentieri Selvaggi was formed by some of the best Italian
musicians united in a cultural project that aimed to bring
contemporary music closer to the general public. Sentieri
Selvaggi was founded in 1997 by Carlo Boccadoro, Filippo Del
Corno, and Angelo Miotto. Their debut took place in a sold out
concert at the Teatro di Portaromana during Suoni & Visioni
Festival (Milano). In six years the project has had great
success in different areas:
The group collaborates closely with composers such as Louis
Andriessen, David Lang, Philip Glass, James MacMillan, Michael
Nyman, and has premiered many of their works in Italy,
including pieces written expressely for the group.
Every spring, Sentieri Selvaggi puts on their own festival of
contemporary music in Milan. The group is often invited to
perform concerts in famous concert halls and theatres and
prestigious festivals, including La Scala, Venice Biennale,
Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Settembre Musica (Torino).
Sentieri Selvaggi creates written and discographic works to
spread and share contemporary music: "Bad Blood" is the latest
disc by the group whose title best represents their
repertoire.
Credits
Produced by Carlo Boccadoro and Filippo Del Corno.
Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Renato Campajola and Mario
Bertodo at SMC Studios, Ivrea, Italy 2003.
(http://www.cantaloupemusic.com/album.php?catno=ca21013)
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01-My Very Empty Mouth [12:59]
02-Sweet Air [08:49]
03-Short Fall [04:07]
04-Stick Figure [09:56]
05-Little Eye [07:23]
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43:14 min