4
nexus
Saturday
june
Bob Becker
Russell Hartenberger
Bill Cahn
Garry Kvistad
WITH
Maria Finkelmeier, vocals
8 PM
Pre-concert talk with Dr. Jeremy Gill, 7 PM
MUSIC OF STEVE REICH (B. 1936)
Music for Pieces of Wood
Mallet Phase
Drumming Part I
:: intermission ::
MOONDOG SUITE
Louis T. Hardin (1916-1999), aka Moondog/
Arr. Russell Hartenberger
Viking 1 (arr. Tosoff/Hartenberger)
Snakebite Rattle
In Vienna
Pastoral
I’m This, I’m That
Maria Finkelmeier, vocals
MUSIC OF GEORGE HAMILTON GREEN (1893-1970)
Caprice Valsant (arr. Becker)
Just a Kiss from You (arr. Becker)
Castle Valse Classique (Dvor
ák/Dabney/green, arr. Kimura)
Alabama Moon (arr. Becker)
35TH SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 5
WEEK 1
the program
MUSIC OF STEVE REICH
Notes
on the
program
by
Bob Becker
and
Sandra Hyslop
Music for Pieces of Wood
Steve Reich (b. New York City, October 3, 1936)
Composed 1973; 15 minutes
Music for Pieces of Wood relies on the composer’s process of “rhythmic construction,” or
substitution of beats for rests in a rhythmic pattern. Reich had first explored the process in
1970-71 with his Drumming, parts I-IV. Unlike Drumming, which Reich wrote for different
kinds of percussion instruments, this piece requires five performers each playing a tuned
pair of large wooden dowels called claves. One player maintains a steady pulse throughout
the piece while another performs a short rhythmic pattern over and over. One by one the
other players build up this same pattern one note at a time, but several beats out of phase
with the original pattern. This process is carried out in three sections with patterns of six,
four, and three beats.
Mallet Phase
Steve Reich/arr. Garry Kvistad
Composed 1967 as Piano Phase
Steve Reich Ensemble in
France, 2007, with (left to
right) Garry Kvistad, Bob
Becker, Edmund Niemann,
Thad Wheeler, Russell
Hartenberger, Nurit Tilles
(Photo: Todd Reynolds)
Steve Reich wrote Piano Phase in 1967 for two pianos. It has been adapted to performances
on many different instruments. It often takes on the name of the instrument used. Tonight’s
version will incorporate a set of mallet instruments built by NEXUS
member garry Kvistad using two elements of sound, wood and metal,
tuned in the ancient system of just intonation. The two players begin in
unison with a 12-note melodic fragment repeated several times (on the
xylophone). Then one of the players speeds up slightly until his second
note is in synch with the first note of the other player, creating a musical
canon. He then speeds up again until his third note sounds at the same
time as the first note of the other player. He continues this process until
the two players are in unison again. The melody then changes to an 8-note pattern and
the process is repeated (on the metallophone). A 4-note pattern (back on the xylophone)
completes the set of cycles, and the two players end the piece in unison.
Drumming, Part I
Steve Reich
Composed 1970-71
Steve Reich composed Drumming under the influence of music he heard and studied during
a trip to ghana. The piece, which eventually comprised four discrete parts, marked a new
phase in Reich’s work, as he began to incorporate different kinds of percussion instruments
into the same piece. He also added sounds of the human voice to the ensemble. Because of
certain choices left up to the performers, the duration of a performance of Drumming varies.
In the context of Steve Reich’s music, Drumming is the final refinement of the phasing process
where two or three identical instruments playing the same repeating melodic pattern
gradually move out of synchronization with each other. The canons, or “rounds,” that result
from this procedure produce new rhythmic and melodic motives that are then selected and
reinforced by other performers.
Reich’s Drumming introduced the technique of gradually substituting beats for rests (or
rests for beats) within a constantly repeating rhythmic cycle. Part 1 of Drumming, which
6 :: NOTES ON THE PROgRAM
Reich scored for eight small tuned drums, begins with two drummers constructing the basic
rhythmic pattern of the entire piece from a single drum beat. gradually, additional drum
beats are substituted for rests, one at a time, until the pattern is constructed. The reduction
process is simply the reverse, where rests are substituted for beats, one at a time.
MOONDOG SUITE
Louis T. Hardin, aka Moondog (b. Marysville, Kansas, May 26, 1916;
d. Germany, September 8, 1999)
The composer, poet,
philosopher Moondog
Louis T. Hardin was a blind, eccentric composer, musician, poet, and inventor of music
instruments who became known as “The Viking of 6th Avenue” because of the Viking outfit
he wore while he stood on the corner of 53rd Street and 6th Avenue in New York City talking
to passersby about his music, poetry, and philosophy. He adopted the name “Moondog” in
1947, in honor, he said, of a dog “who used to howl at the moon more than any dog I knew of.”
Moondog was befriended by the conductor Arthur Rodzinski, who invited him to attend the
Carnegie Hall rehearsals of the New York Philharmonic (of which Rodzinski was the music
director for four years beginning in 1943). Moondog was also friends with Philip glass and
Steve Reich and is sometimes credited with having some influence on the minimalist music
movement. His compositions, many still available on recordings, are tonal, rhythmic, often
percussive, and make frequent use of canons.
Moondog was regarded
as little more than a
panhandler by many
passersby, who were
unaware of his extensive
music education and his
accomplishments as a
composer and performer.
MUSIC OF GEORGE HAMILTON GREEN
George Hamilton Green (b. Omaha, Nebraska, May 23, 1893;
d. Woodstock, New York, September 11, 1970)/Arr. Bob Becker (b. 1947)
george Hamilton green was hailed as the world’s greatest xylophonist while still a teenager.
He passed away in 1970, after an astonishing career as a concert virtuoso, recording artist,
radio performer, ground-breaking jazz improviser, composer, and teacher.
The trimbal, an instrument
created by Moondog
During the decade from 1915 to 1925 green’s name was instantly recognizable to anyone
who listened to phonograph recordings of popular dance music. He made literally thousands
of recordings for the major record companies, including Victor, Columbia, Brunswick, and
Emerson, and he appeared as leader with ensembles such as the green Brothers’ Novelty
Band, and as featured soloist with groups like the All Star Trio and Earl Fuller’s Rector
House Orchestra.
green was a prolific composer and lyricist, but it is his legacy as a performing artist that
continues to the present time. He pioneered a classical technical approach to the xylophone,
which still serves as the foundation for modern keyboard percussion playing.
Bob Becker, the arranger of three of these four george Hamilton green pieces, has built an
illustrious career in music as a composer and performer. As a timpanist he has performed
with the world’s most noted orchestras and conductors. He has toured, performed, and
recorded with NEXUS (which he co-founded) for the past 46 years. Since 1973 he has played
regularly as a member of Steve Reich and Musicians.
Becker’s extensive work with the music of george Hamilton green, and with green’s writings
on xylophone techniques and practices, has been described in some detail in Much More than
35TH SEASON | ROCKPORT MUSIC :: 7
Notes
on the
program
by
Bob Becker
and
Sandra Hyslop
Ragtime: The Musical Life of George Hamilton Green, a 2009 doctoral dissertation (available
online) by Ryan Lewis, now a music professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas.
“His style of playing was remarkable and new to me,” wrote Becker about his discovery of
green. “And to hear the sound of those pieces on a good xylophone, put in the right register—
suddenly, the whole character of the music opened up for me….I soon began to understand
that there had been a time in history when some quite different and very beautiful kinds of
xylophones had been manufactured….my real interest all along was to be able to play this stuff…
I tried to focus on how to bring this music to life for myself, a person living here and now.”
Caprice Valsant
This xylophone waltz was one of a collection of eight solos for xylophone with piano by
george Hamilton green published in1936 by Carl Fischer Music, Inc. green’s command of
the instrument drew popular interest through the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, when such pieces
as his Caprice Valsant became successful concert works.
Just a Kiss from You
Subtitled “a waltz ballad,” Just a Kiss from You was composed in September 1921. green
never recorded it.
In March 1920 George
Hamilton Green and Lloyd
Garrett (advertised as
“the phenomenal tenor”)
performed Alabama
Moon with a 40-piece
orchestra at a Fox Theater
in Kansas City. The scena,
complete with a fancifully
painted drop-cloth set
(image below), was
sensationally successful.
Castle Valse Classique, Dvořák/Dabney/Green/arr. Kimura
In 1894 Antonín Dvor
ák composed a piano composition, Humoresque (Op. 101, No. 7), that
became known in the United States through various arrangements in popular styles, for piano
and for other instruments. One such adaptation was Ford T. Dabney’s piece in 3/4 measure
Castle Valse Classique, which he named in honor of the renowned and glamorous husbandand-wife dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle. Highly successful through the 1910s, they
used Dabney’s waltz arrangement as a signature piece. In 1917 the Castles appeared with
the Earl Fuller Rector Novelty Orchestra, in which george Hamilton green was a featured
xylophone virtuoso. This brilliant combination, of popular music performed by the sensational
george Hamilton green with superstar dancers, elevated the Castle Valse Classique to
pop-hit status. green recorded his virtuosic treatment of the piece eight times for various
labels. This arrangement is by xylophonist Yurika Kimura, a virtuoso player of the marimba
and xylophone, and Bob Becker’s frequent partner in concert.
Alabama Moon
green wrote Alabama Moon, in popular waltz tempo, sometime in the
late 1910s. With two guitarists complementing his extraordinary
xylophone playing, he recorded it for Victor Records (on the company’s
Black Label) in March 1920, just one of thirteen recordings that green
made of this piece.
8 :: NOTES ON THE PROgRAM
Black Label Victor 78 rpm
recording of Alabama
Moon