Weekly Listening: Four Parables by Paul Schoenfield

This piece is so absurdly difficult to find in nearly all respect, and I have no idea why! There seems to one complete recording available commercially (it is on Naxos, if you have access to that library).

Here is a recording of the third movement from youtube.

A Brief Overview of Schoenfield

Paul Schoenfield is a pianist, composer, and mathematics scholar at the University of Michigan, which his primary position at the University being on the composition faculty. His music is heavily influenced by Klezmer and Vaudeville styles. In short, his music is great fun!

A great deal of his music focuses on a comedic, lounge jazz piano part—usually premiered by Schoenfield himself—which pulls on the composer's time as a pianist for Murray's Steakhouse (this connection only seems to be documented between Cafe Music and the steakhouse, but if you listen to enough of his music in close proximity, one can easily pick up the same melodic fragment across about ten of his pieces).

A bit about the piece

This is such a fun piece! When it first starts, it sounds like one of the most dreary, contemporary pieces ever, but suddenly explodes into one of the most ruckus presentation of a concerto I have ever come across. What is really, REALLY nice about this piece is that it is void of pretension. It just is a fun, wonderful piece!

A great deal of this piece shares a great deal in common with Cafe Music (written in 1987) and his Trio (1990), and encapsulates the entertainment found in both these pieces, but amplifies it by the forces of a full orchestra!

Similarly to 1B, the publisher—this time Schirmer—is sitting on the rights to this piece and seems quite reluctant to let anyone get their hands on it. The difference this time is that Schirmer WILL rent the piece out for performance, but the humorously aggravating thing is that you cannot get a perusal score. This means you need to rent the piece without seeing any part of it, which means it almost never gets performed!

It really is unfortunate that such a neat and fun piece is under such tight restrictions by the publisher, but maybe if more people are aware of it, then more people will get it performed? I sure hope so!

Weekly Listening: Telaio: Desdemona by Susan Botti

A piece that a friend brought to me several years ago was Telaio: Desdemona by Susan Botti. It features a string quartet, harp, piano, percussion, and soprano, and is a psychological trip through the character of Desdemona from Shakespeare's Othello. This piece ultimately launched the Colorado New Music Ensemble.

Since the piece is relatively new and the only regular performer of it is the composer, there does not seem to be a full recording or performance of it anywhere online. Thus, I highly recommend checking out Botti's album, Listen, It's Snowing, to get the full effect of the work.

A Brief Overview of Botti

One of these days I'll do a weekly listening for someone who might benefit from some of the attention (if anyone actually would), but Ms. Botti gets a similar statement that I have made about many of my previous picks: she does not need the help.

Her career is expansive to say the least, with such credentials as the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, support from the National Endowment for the Arts, and on and on. She was formerly on the faculty at the University of Michigan, and currently holds faculty positions with the Manhattan School of Music and Vassar College. Her music has been performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and many other top organizations.

In addition to all of this, she is also an active performer of not only her own works, but also works of her contemporaries, including George Crumb, John Cage, Harry Parch, and James Matheson. On top of all of this, she is also a wonderful and responsive human being with whom to correspond, offering great insight into her own works and the performance therein willingly and without question.

A bit about the piece

As Botti describes, the piece is a character sketch of sorts on the character of Desdemona organized in an alternating recitative and aria structure. Each recit is a setting of from Shakespeare's prose about Desdemona, while the arias consist of settings of Italian folksong or the poet Gaspara Stampa. It is a compelling and vivid depiction of the tragedy that befalls the leading lady.

The curious—and quite ingenious—aspect of this work is that the Shakespeare text is taken from OTHER characters in Othello, and never provides direct insight into Desdemona's self. Furthermore, when she is singing directly, she uses words other than her own (Stampa and folksongs). By developing her character through the eyes of others, this emphasizes how incredibly out of her control Desdemona's fate really is.

Be it staged or not, this chamber work is vivid and enthralling, providing a full evening of sorrow and depression fitting of even Shakespeare's great tragedy.