October 21
East Wind
Schulamit Ran (b. 1949)
Shulamit Ran is a Pultizer-Prize-winning, Israeli-American composer and was a long-time professor of composition at the University of Chicago. Winds from the east are used as symbology for deadly or chaotic events in biblical writings and poetry. East winds are also geographically ominous for Ran’s native Israel, originating from the Arabian desert and carrying high gusts and drought. East Wind is undoubtedly inspired by this connotation but mixes in moments of calm tranquility among sections marked “wild,” perhaps alluding to the contemplative nature of wind in addition to its disastrous qualities.
NFA Rep Guide Level K
Performed by Philip Snyder.
October 23
Second Prayer from Four Prayers
Ned Rorem (1923-2022)
Ned Rorem, born on this day in 1923, has been called “the world’s best composer of art songs.” This affinity for melody is clear in Four Prayers for flute and piano. Christopher Chaffee is the Professor of Flute at Wright State University and great friend of the University of South Carolina Flute Studio. His album Four Prayers is available from Open G Records.
Performed by Christopher Chaffee, flute and Joshua Nemith, piano.
October 24
Sequenza I
Luciano Berio (1925-2003)
Luciano Berio, born on this day in 1925, was a pioneering composer noted for his work in electronic media and for his series of virtuosic pieces for solo instruments, the first of which is written for flute. These Sequenzas are meant to explore every timbral possibility of the instruments for which they are written and often call exhaustively for extended techniques. The Sequenza I for flute employs the first known use of multiphonics on the instrument as well as a pioneering usage of spacial notation. Interpretational challenges of this composition are additionally complicated by a 1992 edition which sets the piece in traditional notation and which opens up to a wide variety of choices to be made by each performer.
NFA Rep Guide Level K
Performed by Nave Graham.