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75th Anniversary Concert Not long after the world premier of blue cathedral, Jennifer Higdon visited George Blood, of DVD Media, Inc., who recorded the piece at the Academy of Music on May 1, 2000. As they viewed the videotape of the performance, Ms. Higdon recorded her thoughts on the intent of the piece, its metaphors and illusions. "First thing I was thinking about setting up - as a composer - was kind of an intimate invitation for the listener having to do with cathedrals and stars. So I began with these light delicate sounds in the percussion, somewhat unsynchronized, in an attempt to imitate distant church bells that, [at] the same time, represent stars up in the heaven. And the quartet that you're hearing - two violas, two cellos - was also kind of an intimate invitation for the listener to come along [with] what I was thinking about as a magical journey. "When I was writing this piece, I thought a lot about the sky. And I was thinking about that because when I first got the commission, knowing this orchestra as well as I do, I thought, the sky is definitely the limit. But I also found myself thinking a lot as I was writing this about my younger brother, Andrew Blue Higdon, who had passed away about nine months prior. And I thought a lot about the fact that life is such an interesting journey of learning and pain and joy and in a way that's kind of what Curtis is, too. The time you spend there is intense, there is a lot of learning from your colleagues, all the experiences of music. People have a good time and I know people also go through a lot of growth and in that growth is a certain amount of pain and joy. And so, that's kind of what I wanted to encapsulate in creating this piece. "I thought a lot about the sky ... and I also thought about a giant cathedral way up in the sky - like a glass cathedral. So this opening is a little bit like first coming into a cathedral. This is an imaginary cathedral, not a stone one, but kind of a glass one that you can see out and see the clouds and the stars. These solos that you're hearing, the flute and the clarinet, are for me the start of many solos that are going to happen in this piece because I wanted to emphasize the individual within the context of a whole group. [It] kind of represents the students in the institution of Curtis, but [it also represents] being a human, a human individual in a giant collection of people. "I start in this piece with a flute solo. And I decided on [the] flute because I play that instrument. [The] clarinet solo follows immediately after and the reason I decided on clarinet is because my brother had played clarinet. In fact the opening pitches of the flute line, D & G, represent very strong pitches on the instrument. And so there's a conversation that goes on between the clarinet and flute. A little ways into that then the violin enters, a third member of the conversation, the opening chords being very full chords, in the way you'd be walking to church and be kind of awed by the structure. This section here I was thinking about the incredible, grandiose sort of feeling you might have entering into something that's sort of beautiful and a little beyond words. Solos have been absorbed into a tutti, a very expressive sort of tutti, and I thought this might be a good section in the music to let the strings really really sing, high up in their register. So kind of going from an intimate feel of the string quartet and the solos to tutti with the strings primarily with the brass kind of backing that up. "I had the thought going through this that it was a little bit like walking through a church, but at the same time I think I was also pondering what happens after we pass away. Do you float up? What do you see? What do you experience; what is the journey like? And so, I come back here with the winds carrying people along on this journey in the same way I had the string quartet in the beginning doing. They are the exact same chords, major chords, descending into a pattern. And the music is about to enter a series of solos. This section was written to sound very intimate and contemplative as if the person entering a church has gone from looking at all the objects in a church to actually looking inside, seeing what's reflected inside. I decided the English horn would be a primary solo through this section because I've always admired the English horn playing in the school. I'm sure I've been to enough concerts where I've heard English horn solos that when I started thinking about the piece, I thought, ah, I've got to write a nice English horn solo. "And after the statement of the English horn, the solo is handed off between different players, between piccolo, viola, cello, actually the oboe comes in with it again. This is a little bit like a dialogue going on ... and I had the thought that if you were moving forward in the church, it's almost representative of giant stained glass windows where the characters are speaking to you. They are speaking to each other and they are speaking to the individual who has entered the church, so the dialogues kind of enter together like a lot of different songs but they're all saying the same thing. Hear the percussionist playing these open fifths which I was thinking of as distant bells, but kind of twinkling bells, not the kind you normally would hear in a church. And as the music progresses along, it actually moves a little bit faster as if the journey is kind of carrying the listener up into the church, almost into the heights of the church. "After having some intimate conversations with the church windows, but also kind of examining what's inside, you start to look around, you're moving into the bigger space. So I decided to create here a very full sound in the music by allowing the strings to both play two different melodies that were very alike but the rhythms [are] slightly different so they overlap. But the music takes on more of an urgency as if it's moving forward in the church, becoming aware of a larger surrounding, as if the church is expanding the further you go into it. And then I decided I wanted to move it up a little bit more so that there is a certain kind of sense of entering up towards what would be a pulpit. But also resembling a journey that one might make in self-discovery, some sort of positive journey, and you'll hear and hear the quartets and the bells moving along making explanations. To me, that represented the sparkle of glass. If this was in the sky and there were suns shining through - what would you be seeing in the colors? I've thought about that a lot. "The brass represents power, basically, the power of the individual but also power in the sections. I was very fascinated with color and I did something very unusual in this section. To give a little bit more of a drive, I created big full chords in the strings, put runs in the winds but I also did something unusual in that I put cardboard on the timpani and the tom-toms so that there wouldn't be as much pitch, but there would still be a driving sound. So finally, the traveler kind of gets into the church and is starting to ascend. I thought this brass fanfare was kind of appropriate to the feeling of just ultimate growth, but at the same time, I thought it also was appropriate for Curtis since it was ... it's a anniversary piece, celebrating achievement over seventy five years, so the brass seemed to be an appropriate sort of sound there. And then you hear the brass carrying on with a long line while the strings ... playing runs here, which I thought, I was hoping actually, would give more of a sense of flying as if someone going through this church, instead of entering out of the church in a normal way, would fly up toward the ceiling and just out into space. "But I also decided when I got to this point in writing the piece, that rather than having the piece in a large sort of sound, like a lot of people would probably be tempted to do, that really the journey was an internal journey, that it was a more of a journey of the inside. So in this section, I had some of the brass players play crystal glasses, kind of pull the sound back down and have a pure sort of feeling to it with those glasses. They're playing two pitches that are a fifth apart and I have the percussionists standing next to each other, the three of them, playing the chimes as if there are distant bells that sound more like church bells than anything I've had up to that point. The string quartet returns... pulling everyone down into a kind of a calmer more interior sort of space. And the clarinet and the flute restart their dialogue and the English horn rejoins with basically it's same melodic contour that it had in its solos before except the rhythm has been changed. And in a symbolic gesture, I actually have the flute stop it's solo, and the clarinet to go on. Kind of representative, I thought of my brother going on without me. "And you will hear... these Chinese reflex bells. There are about sixty to seventy of them in the orchestra, played by members of the orchestra, as they finish their lines, they enter from the back stands moving forward, entering one at a time. It makes a beautiful high pitch kind of a tinkling sound that is very unusual to hear in the context of an orchestra. And you are about to hear the piano enter, which is been prepared. Two of the notes have had screws put in to change the timbre just slightly so that the piano sounds a little bit more like a clock gonging. There are thirty-three strikes of the piano, which represent the age of my brother when he passed away. And you hear the percussionist playing. They've come in with patterns that run over six bars that actually have the numbers that represent my birthday and my brother's birthday. So I wanted to take the sound down to a very intimate setting. "And they did a magnificent job performing it." |
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