Isotone
tribute to Lise Meitner
3:00 p.m.
AMSE Auditorium
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Fantaisie for Violin and
Harp, Op. 124
Poco allegretto. Allegro. Più allegro
Vivo e grazioso. Largamente
Andante con moto
Cindy Hicks, Harp
Susan Eddlemon, Violin
Scott
Eddlemon
Cell-abration in Three Movements
Allegro
Andante
Pollyphoney
Audiencoso
Sacred Sisters
Esther
Ruth
Judith
Cindy
Hicks, Harp
Susan Eddlemon, Violin
Scott
Eddlemon
World Premiere
Shema Yisrael
Cindy Hicks, Harp
Susan Eddlemon, Violin
Scott Eddlemon, Percussion
Dale Watermulder, Bass
Program Notes
Lise Meitner was
born November 7, 1878 into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. She
conceived of nuclear fission to explain the experimental breakup of
uranium nuclei bombarded with neutrons.
Sadly, the Nobel committee overlooked her achievement and awarded
the Nobel Prize for which she labored only to her colleague Otto Hahn.
Element 109, Meitnerium, is named in her honor.
Physics of music…
Today we consider
the physics of the harp, an ancient instrument and favorite of King
David. For our
demonstration work, we will hear music for harp and violin. Where
harpist and violinist share the stage together, it is most often to
perform the 1907 work by Camille Saint-Saëns entitled “Fantaisie.”
Harpists regard it as a staple of their study repertory.
Violinists find it remarkable that, given the soft beauty of the
timbres produced by the combination of the plucked and bowed strings,
more music for this genre of ensemble has not been written!
We could therefore not resist including it in today’s concert
along with the contemporary “Sacred
Sisters,” though it was written 101 years earlier and during the
young adulthood of physicist Lise Meitner.
The two instruments
complement one another and exchange musical motifs as the work
progresses. As the
reading progresses the performers see the same material appearing in
changing rhythmic meters; and first one, then the other leads the
episodic musical events.
Using the cyclic construction of French compositional technique of his
time, Saint-Saens brings back the opening musical materials in the
closing pages of this rhapsodic work - an example of the late work of
this beloved composer.
Music of physics…
Physics invades the
whole world! Today’s modern
cell phone can trace its roots to the invention of the radio by Nikolai
Tesla in the 1880s. For
possibly the first time, we will ask you to turn your cell phone
on for the duration of
this work. The first
movement consists of cell phones being used physically as percussion
instruments. In the second
movement the audience will be directed to call numbers on the screen to
produce a symphony of ring tones!
The final movement will be composed by the audience using “poll
texting” from cell phones, hence the name
Pollyphoney
Audiencoso.
In recognition of
Lise Meitner’s Jewish heritage, we have turned to a great friend of
Isotone, Victoria Bond.
Faithful Isotoners will recognize Bond as the composer of a tribute to
Marie Curie, A New Light,
premiered at these concerts two years ago.
Ms. Bond writes:
I decided to write
Sacred Sisters because I
wanted to explore my own cultural and musical heritage. My grandfather,
Samuel Nathan Epstein, ran away from his home in Sellets, Russia because
his father wanted him to be a rabbi and he wanted to become a musician.
He made his way to Warsaw by stowing away under a rail coach and
arriving in the city at night, falling asleep on the steps of the Warsaw
Conservatory. The next morning, he was found by a professor, and my
grandfather became his student. He completed his studies and traveled to
the United States as a bass player with the St. Petersburg Symphony,
eventually combining his father's ambitions with his own by composing
liturgical music for the temple. Although my grandfather died before I
was born, his spirit and his genes are a part of me and I wanted to
honor his memory with Sacred
Sisters.
To prepare myself
with the musical materials that are chanted in the traditional telling
of the stories of Esther, Ruth and Judith, I studied A. W. Binder's
fascinating Biblical Chant, using the appropriate tropes as the basis of
my composition. As the story of Judith comes from the apocrypha and not
from the Torah, I invented my own melodic motives in keeping with the
traditional ones in the other two books.
The stories of
these three women are filled with courage and resolve. These biblical
heroines are shown using their brains at least as much as their beauty:
Their highest priority is the future of their people. These qualities
make them suitable role models for any era.
Our commissioned
work as tribute to Lise Meitner is entitled “Shema
Yisrael.” The
composition attempts to portray an integration of Meitner’s discovery of
fission with her Jewish
Heritage. The focus of the
work is a common melody used for the singing of
Shema Yisrael, the
centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services.
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
This passage is musically bookended by a portrayal of fission,
with one note breaking up into many notes, and then at the end many
notes combining to become one, just as “the Lord is one.”
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November 1, 2009 3:00 p.m.
Click here to download the Isotone Poster
Program
Bohuslav
Martinů (1890-1959)
Three Madrigals for Violin and
Viola (Duo No. 1), H. 313
Susan
Eddlemon, Violin
Hillary Herndon, Viola
Variations for Four Drums and Viola
Hillary
Herndon, Viola
Scott Eddlemon, Percussion
World Premiere
Quintet for Geiger Counters
Susan Eddlemon
Karen Kartal
Hillary Herndon
Ihsan Kartal
Scott Eddlemon
World Premiere Forever I Have Known You
(But Knew Not Where You Were) for Melinda
Susan
Eddlemon, Violin
Karen
Kartal, Violin
Hillary Herndon, Viola
Ihsan
Kartal
Scott Eddlemon,
Percussion
Program Notes
Physics of music…
For our
demonstration work of the physics of the viola, we turn to
Three Madrigals for Violin and
Viola. Czech composer
Bohuslav Martinů studied at the Prague Conservatory (1906-10), then
worked as a teacher and orchestral violinist before going to Paris in
1923. There he studied with Roussel and developed a neo-classical style,
sometimes using jazz. When
Martinu wrote this duo he was recuperating from a dreadful accident: He
had broken his skull in a fall of over ten feet to concrete. During his
recuperation he concentrated on chamber music because it was easier to
write pieces for a half-dozen or fewer instruments than to write
orchestral music, which requires a composer to fill in over as many as
two dozen or even more staves of music.
This work was written for Susan’s teacher, Joseph Fuchs and his
sister, violist Lillian Fuchs in 1947.
Music of physics…
In recognition of
Richard Feynman’s interest in drumming, we present the Colgrass’
Variations for Viola and 4 Drums.
This work was written very early
in Colgrass’ career (1959), while he was in New York. The work was
commissioned by Emanuel Vardi, and was premiered by Vardi and Colgrass
at the Five Spot Cafe in New York City. It has become a standard in the
viola literature. The "4 Drums" are roto-toms, which are small, shallow
drums tuned to encompass all the chromatics between middle c and the
e-flat below. These are tapped variously with small-headed timpani
sticks, wool-covered and exposed-tip sticks, and by hand.
Scott first performed this work in 1975 at the
Festival dei Due Mondi in
Spoleto, Italy with violist Walter Trampler.
In a unique display of musical physics instrumentation we present
Quintet for Geiger Counters. The Geiger counters, portal monitor and
surgical gamma probe used in the work are provided through the courtesy
of Wm. B. Johnson
Instruments, Care Wise Medical Products and Pulcir, Inc.
The three movements of the quintet are entitled “Quiet Nights at
K-25,” “Last Tango at Y-12” and the finale, “La Fiesta(ware) X-10.”
The finale incorporates the use of dishes called Fiestaware
which, according to Joe Eddlemon, contains uranium oxide in the pigment.
Joe relates an incident in the 40’s in which an Oak Ridge
National Laboratory employee was checked for radiation exposure because
his film badge indicated high dose rates.
It turns out the employee placed his badge on a Fiestaware dish
every day when at home. This
work concludes with an “alarming” climax.
Forever I Have
Known You, But Knew Not
Where You Were
is a work commissioned by Isotone from UT composer Ken Jacobs in honor
of Richard Feynman. It
apprises four Movements for string quartet and percussion and is dedicated to
Melinda, the Composer’s Wife.
Gentle and lyrical but also lively and energetic, the ideas for
this work came about as the direct result of the composer’s courtship in
2008–9. All of the movements are the same length except for the third,
which is slightly shorter. Syncopated and sensuous, the work employs the
traditional string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello) plus
percussion instruments – glockenspiel, chimes, vibraphone, marimba, bass
drum, tom-toms, tam-tam, suspended cymbal, tambourine, and especially
timpani. In fact, the timpani play a role as important as the strings.
The title was inspired by the feelings aroused upon meeting the
composer’s soul-mate – after so many years of searching.
February 22, 2009 Concert
Click here to view the Program
Click here to view the Poster
November 2, 2008 Concert
Click here to view the Program
Click here to view the Poster
Click here to view the Review