Analogies of Control is “composed for the ear and by the ear.” Performer-composer communication has generally been conveyed in written terms of a score. Since the advent of recording, the nature of that communication has changed. Improvisers endeavor in instantaneous composition. Composers have created fixed sound accompaniments for their written music. Because this work’s construction was with audible material, it has two aspects of existence and is a new type of open form. The aural score is only in the ears of the cellist who renders the score to the audience. What the cellist actually hears is the sound of heat exchange via various metal. What the audience hears are derivations of cello, both the performer and the composer’s.
Richard Nance
Included in March 30, 2008
The fifth installment in a series of works for solo instruments, Sans Titre V for amplified cello was commissioned by Hultgren. The work explores contrasts in musical distance and aural proximity. The use of amplification and electronic effects, such as reverberation and digital delay, are used to reduce the distance between the audience and the performer and provide a feeling of an alternative sonic environment, a space within a space. Musical distance is achieved through the use of tonal and atonal materials within a modified strophic-variation structure. Throughout the composition, three main musical ideas are explored and developed: the brief but unrelenting ”interruption,’ the extended discursive “interjection,” and the longer musical “digression.”
William Price
Included in March 30, 2008
Chiaroscuro was written for Hultgren. The title (from Italian meaning “bright/dark”) comes from the technique of drawing that focuses extensively on the use of shading to create the illusion of depth. This composition is an intimate piece that captures the resonance of the cello from percussive to pitched sounds. Like a pencil or charcoal drawing, the creation of a palate stemming from one source (the cello) that would be further shaded, highlighted and exaggerated by the electroacoustic music, which is generated entirely from recorded cello sounds. The formal structure of Chiaroscuro encompasses three large sections with the addition of an introduction and a coda. The introduction, percussive in nature, serves to conjure the sound at the opening of the piece, while the coda is a reflection of the piece as a whole. The middle section consists of a controlled improvisation using thematic elements found throughout the work.
Mikel Kuehn
Included in performance of March 30, 2008
Elegy was composed following the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001. Through shifting textures of slow lyrical lines that are interrupted by stuttering pizzicato phrases, the piece aims to convey coexisting emotions of sorrow and apprehension. The relatively systematic construction of the piece, which utilizes tetrachords, reflects an attempt to restore order to the psychological turmoil suffered by Americans during the aftermath of the tragedy.
Amy Canada
Performed: March 30, 2008
Quiet Music is a three-movement work for solo cello. Its title refers to the work’s singular sonority, dominated by the use of natural harmonics and the exclusive use of the practice mute (a large mute radically affecting the instruments voice). Quiet Music was commissioned by cellists Craig Hultgren, David Russell, Jonathan Golove, and Madeleine Shapiro with assistance from the Birmingham Art Music Alliance. This is the premiere of the work.
Andrew Rindfleisch
Performed March 30, 2008
Craig Hultgren
Bare ruin’d choirs… was written for Hultgren. Following a slow introduction in harmonics that displays the principal interval series of this one-movement work, a broad and accelerating connecting device leads to a fast, agitated passage of bowed tremelos. The piece continues to unfold in alternating fast and slow tempos before returning to a quiet variant of the opening announcement. Bare ruin’d choirs… was cited for merit in the 2003 Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial.
