David Del Tredici

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Vintage Alice • Dracula

Vintage Alice (1972)

Fantascene on “A Mad Tea Party”

Drawn from Lewis Carroll’s

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

1 Narration 2:23

2 First Evocation of the Queen 0:24

With crude pomposity

3 Cadenza I 1:05

“Bat! – at!. Bat! – at!”

4 The Mad Hatter’s Song: Verse I 3:55

“…little bat! Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!”

The Star: Verse I

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star”

The Star: Verse II

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star”

“You know the song, perhaps?”said the Hatter

5 Second Evocation of the Queen 0:29

With crude pomposity

6 Cadenza II 0:32

“Fly – sky… Fly – sky…”

7 The Mad Hatter’s Song: Verse II 2:35

(with the Time “murdered”)

“…world you fly…Up above the world you fly”

“Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,” said the Hatter

8 Interlude 1:51

“Little bat!”

Then a bright idea came into Alice’s head

9 Changing Places 3:24

“Let’s all move one place on”

He moved on as he spoke

10 Cadenza III 1:28

“move…moving…Let’s all keep on”

“But what happens when you come to the

beginning again?” Alice repeated.

11 Quodlibet-Return 2:47

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!”

12 Hymn to the Queen 3:16

“God save our gracious queen”

Here the Dormouse shook itself,

and began singing in its sleep.

13 Sleeping-Coda 1:53

“Twinkle, twinkle”

14 Dracula 21:46

Hila Plitmann, soprano

Cleveland Chamber Symphony

David Del Tredici, guest conductor

Against the Grain of Unconventionality

American composer David Del Tredici, often referred to as “the father of Neo-Romanticism,” writes music that is full of sentiment and humor. A masterful orchestrator and a wizard at setting music to text, he composes with a clarity of ideas, both musical and social. His music is at times subtle and refined, at others blatantly over-the-top. A strong sense of theatricality infuses his work, instrumental and vocal pieces alike.

“Everyone has a secret music,” Del Tredici once said. “You just really have to listen, follow your instincts.” In the liner notes for his CD Secret Music, he elaborates on this notion, describing a “Secret music” as “a musical event, or an enthusiasm—that [composers] enjoy, but think is irrelevant, shameful, or somehow ‘wrong.’ They think of it, too often, as a blemish to be removed, rather than a beauty spot to be cherished. Yet paradoxically, this can be the composer’s most original attribute—his vein of gold…his authentic self.

Del Tredici’s own trajectory as a composer illustrates this concept perfectly: He was trained as a serial composer in the late fifties and early sixties, writing atonal music because, as he puts it, “every young composer wants to be bad.” During the sixties, he started developing his own sense of tonality that introduced the whole-tone scale into a music of highly organized mechanical processes. During this period he produced masterpieces such as Syzygy and Night Conjure-Verse (both set to poems by James Joyce), which have been praised by academics and romantics alike, while containing seeds of the sumptuous music of his future.

Upon the recommendation of a friend, he discovered Martin Gardner’s book, The Annotated Alice, which – by including the Victorian poetry that Lewis Carroll parodied – made Alice’s wonderland much more interesting and ultimately opened up a whole new world for Del Tredici: that of tonality. The texts he took from Lewis Carroll are far more playful and narrative-driven than that of Joyce’s dark modernist poetry, seeming to urge him to write “wholesome, more energetic” music, and break out of the “green horrifying fog” of modern academic composition. Bravely, he forged ahead. He kept to himself for a while, remaining true to the Alice texts that he was setting (which he did to the point of obsession for about twenty years), nervous about sharing his music with colleagues, afraid they would dismiss his music and call him crazy. On the contrary, in 1980 he won the Pulitzer Prize (notorious in music for being a prize given to academics by academics) for In Memory of a Summer Day.

Del Tredici’s music goes against the grain of unconventionality: At a time when it was taboo to write in the tonal idiom associated with older music, he followed his native impulse. But he has been revolutionary in another important way. He is among the first gay composers to openly celebrate his sexuality with his music, which he does primarily by setting homoerotic texts to music. He seems to be reacting to a long history of shame associated with sex, recognizing that social taboos have had their strongest hold on gay culture. Although many composers have been gay, few, if any, have shown it in their music, and some have been inclined or even forced to keep their sexuality to themselves: Virgil Thomson and Henry Cowell were arrested on separate occasions for homosexual activities, and Cowell even spent four years in San Quentin State Prison (where he wrote nearly sixty compositions) after being convicted on a “morals” charge.

With his Alice music, Del Tredici was dealing, in a sense, with the closeted Victorian way of life, as the texts arguably deal indirectly with Carroll’s repressed love for a young girl. Whether conscious or not, there is a clear parallel linking the subject of these pieces to the struggles of gays living in an intolerant society.

Del Tredici’s music has outraged some concertgoers, but it has delighted many more. In the long run, it may help to inject a more irreverent attitude into the staid “serious” classical music scene. This has happened before, musically speaking, with composers like Cage, Stockhausen, Varese, Boulez, and Cowell. However, there is clearly still some progress to be made on a social level. Del Tredici is making his way along that path, all the while staying true to his musical impulses.

— Sergei Tcherepnin is a composer/performer of new music currently based in Brooklyn; this essay is excerpted from a review published in the May 2007 online edition of The Brooklyn Rail <brooklynrail.org>. Used by permission.

Vintage Alice,

Fantascene on “A Mad Tea Party”

Vintage Alice, dating from 1972, is the fourth of Del Tredici’s compositions based on episodes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice books; the series started with Pop-Pourri in 1968 and culminated in the 1990s with the opera Dum Dee Tweedle, which is still awaiting stage production. These works trace the composer’s evolution away from atonality towards a reconsideration of Romantic tonal practices and idioms.

Vintage Alice – so named because it was commissioned for the concert series of Paul Masson Winery in California – stands mid-way in this stylistic trajectory. The basic material of the work is a pair of famous, even banal, tunes: God Save the Queen” (known to Americans as “My Country, ‘tis of Thee”) and “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” Their treatment is not conventionally tonal, however, and its manic complexity frequently results in Ives-like mayhem.

As well as singing all the roles, the soprano narrates Lewis Carroll’s text and is joined by a moderate-sized chamber orchestra and, as in Del Tredici’s other Alice pieces, a “folk group.” The composer comments that “the use of a folk group…with the normal symphony orchestra is a kind of metaphor for whimsical incongruity. The serious listener needs only to glimpse an accordion, a mandolin, a banjo and two saxophones gathering together on a concert stage to know that things are not as they ought to be and may yet become curiouser and curiouser…”

Vintage Alice is a setting of the Hatter’s famous “mad tea-party” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It reflects both the inspired lunacy of the party itself and the Hatter’s account of his performance at the Queen of Hearts’ “great concert.” The Queen is duly invoked in a raucous rendition of “God Save the Queen” in several keys and speeds simultaneously, and Del Tredici juxtaposes the original texts of “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” with the Mad Hatter’s parody of it as “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat.” The work culminates in the densely layered “Quodlbet – Return,” which combines several renditions of “God Save the Queen” with the Mad Hatter’s song and “Twinkle, twinkle,” in canon, poly-rhythm, augmentation and diminution, against a decorative vocalize in the soprano.

Throughout the piece, multiple use of augmentation, diminution, and other speed distortions for a brilliant musical analogue to the Queen of Hearts’ comment about the Hatter’s performance: “He’s murdering the time!”; the resultant textures exemplify the precisely calculated chaos that is the hallmark of Del Tredici’s mature style. Finally, only the somnambulant murmurs of the Dormouse remain, until the others silence him with a sharp pinch, clearly audible in the concluding orchestral tumult.

— Julian Anderson is an English composer; this text originally appeared in the liner notes to the Deutsche Grammophon recording of Vintage Alice.

The Hatter’s Song

(from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, 1865)

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a tea-tray in the sky.

The Star

(Jane Taylor, 1806)

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are!

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark

Thanks you for your tiny spark:

He could not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep

And often through my curtains peep,

For you never shut your eye

Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark

Lights the traveller in the dark,

Though I know not what you are,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Hymn to the Queen

(Traditional)

God save our gracious Queen,

Long live our noble Queen,

God save the Queen:

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us,

God save the Queen.

Violin I: Laura Martin, concertmaster

Violin II: Peter Briedis

Viola: Heather Walker

Cello: Heidi Albert

Bass: Dianna Richardson

Keyboard: Mark George

Flute: Sean Gabriel, Mary Kay Ferguson, Sally Sherwin

Oboe: David McGuire, Martin Neubert

Clarinet: Louis Gangale, Daiel Williams

Bassoon: Mark DeMio, Todd Jelen

Horn: David Nesmith, Cynthia Wulff

Trumpet: John Brndiar, Michael Chunn

Trombone: James Taylor, Eric Rowles

Tuba: Gary Adams

Percussion: Andrew Pongracz, Janet Pemberton

Folk Group

Soprano Saxophone: Thomas Reed, Richard Shanklin

Accordion: Henry Doktorski

Banjo: Robert Tye

Mandolin: Michael George

Dracula

Dracula is a 20-minute setting of Alfred Corn’s poem, “My Neighbor, the Distinguished Count.” It is written for a soprano-narrator and thirteen players: flute (doubling on piccolo), clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet), trumpet, horn, percussion (two players), theremin, piano (doubling on celesta) and a quintet of strings.

The text retells the famous gothic tale from the point of view of a woman living next-door to “the distinguished count.” In five scenes, the poem chronicles her initial disinterest, gradual seduction, then degradation, rejection and finally, “vampiristic” transformation.

The piece makes enormous demands upon the soprano soloist, who must speak even more than she sings and, when singing, must negotiate over three octaves – from the D below middle-C (when conjuring up the voice of the count) to the E^b above high-C (when depicting the woman in extremis).

The instrumental ensemble is perhaps most notable for the inclusion of the theremin – the exotic, other-worldly-sounding electronic instrument that evoked “horror” and “mystery” in early Hollywood films. Most of the poem is written in the past tense – the woman is telling us what happened. When the narrative reaches the present and Dracula himself comes to her “for the last time,” the theremin – with its whooshes and wails – announces itself, personifying the (excitingly) depraved count.

Singing, in Dracula, is reserved for special occasions, such as when the count himself speaks or when the woman is most overwrought. As well, at key moments throughout the setting, I repeat, like an incantation, certain texts of the menacing count (“I come to you, dearest, because you think / Of me. An irresistible summons.”) and of the ecstatic woman (“How often I long to stay profoundly asleep / And never be conscious again.”).

Midway through the musical discourse, there is a fugue (the count’s “troop of haggard followers…congregate”) and a final aria of transformation wherein the soprano’s high-flying voice and the wail of the theremin merge as one…

The piece touches many emotional levels. With the use of the theremin, copious amounts of wind-machine and roiling bass drum, “scary" is a primary reaction – as is “funny.” Nervous giggles and startled gasps would not be unwelcome here. Deeper down, the listener confronts the more ominous world of addiction, betrayal and obsession. And inevitably, there comes the ultimate degradation – a Faustian bargain with a devilish price: devolution into the living dead.

— David (Count) Del Tredici

October, 2007

Dracula was commissioned jointly by the Eos Orchestra, Jonathan Sheffer, conductor, and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. It was premiered by the Eos Orchestra on March 4th, 1999 and by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony on September 27, 1999.

Flute (doubling piccolo): Sean Gabriel

Clarinet (doubling bass clarinet):

Pat O’Keefe

Trumpet: John Brndiar

Horn: David Nesmith

Piano: Mark George

Two percussionists: Andrew Pongracz, Janet Pemberton

Two violins: Laura Russell, Peter Briedis

Viola: Nicole Divall

Cello: Martha Baldwin

Double bass: Dianna Richardson

Theremin: Dalit Warshaw

Soprano soloist: Hila Plitmann (amplified)

My Neighbor,

The Distinguished Count

by Alfred Corn

At first thinking it was harmless

Enough, I told myself I had pints

To spare, so why refuse a simple favor?

Hannah could have turned him away at the door,

But I didn’t think that was necessary.

I’d always liked his mother and father

(Whom he grew sadly to resemble less

As months passed, his condition progressing).

The visits came bearably seldom,

And no one could have brought everything

Off more smoothly. Afterwards I’d feel calmer,

Drowsy, reconciled. Easy to see why

People once regularly bled themselves

For medical reasons, though of course

That was a cure normally reserved for men,

Who labor under greater pressures than we.

Easy, too, for one to thin of donor service

As the good deed for the day – thy neighbor

As thyself, no? – a neighbor so visibly

In need, his pale brow furrowed, an electric

Tic active at the corner of his mouth

Thoughts less reassuring surfaced later

When what he meant as compensation arrived,

The flowers, touring car idling outside,

Heart-shaped boxes of intricate chocolates,

Young Burgundies, spring lamb nicely done up.

Why did the visits multiply? No doubt

There had been other clients beforehand,

But perhaps they moved or died, who can say?

Or else, he’d concluded I was, for the moment,

A likely vintage and a pleasant temperature.

One afternoon I brought myself to ask.

“I come to you, dearest, because you think

Of me. A irresistible summons.”

Manners: how tell an acquaintance serene

In the conviction of having been your constant

Preoccupation for how long now that,

In fact, you hardly ever thought of him?

He answered, even better than that, he could read

Signs. It seemed I’d left them everywhere.

And true messages always reached their addressee,

Wasn’t it so? From this I knew the mere facts

Of our erratic situation counted for nothing

When placed beside his own inner persuasions.

He told me he’d been seeing more “signs” than ever,

And certainly he came to me more and more often,

Insisting I call him Tony, as his friends did.

I tactfully refused. When dealing with

Obsessions, as a rule the safest plan

Is to maintain a strict formality.

Yet it occurred to me at some point symptoms

Might creep up with no warning. You would be

Quite unaware of new expressive habits

Connected, he said, to your daydreams – which,

In this case, were also traps. I must outwit them.

Have you ever tried not to think of a face

Or a voice, going over each confused tangle

On the mental loom to make sure the banned

Thread of reference doesn’t appear in it?

How often I longed to stay profoundly asleep

And never be conscious again…. Waking,

I brooded on little but how to stop our meetings,

A rebellion no doubt proving just how much his

I was. For what demonstrates more clearly

The power of a creator than fierce resistance

From his creature? If alive, it will be free.

Free, it will insist on its own ideas–

And so, at last, have to be disciplined.

Lately, there’s been another turn of the screw.

His chauffeur arrives with a silver cover

Under which lies a rat, spitted and roasted.

Or his gardener will leave a fistful of poisoned ivy

Tied with catgut in the mailbox. And then, the dresses,

Too small, too large, jaundice yellow, black violet.

Now it’s hopeless, no our passes without thoughts

I’ve given up trying to sidestep or quench–

Which he has taken as license to appear

At all hours, day or night, and send, with thanks,

More frequent tokens of declining esteem.

I gather from what he says (we sit, we chat)

I’m not what I used to be, his visits, indeed,

A gesture of sentimental gallantry.

Apparently, there’s someone else less…shopworn.

Yesterday I asked, in a voice admittedly weak

(The constant drain), why he still bothered to call.

“Because, my dear, you haven’t stopped thinking of me.”

I blushed (faintly), he smiled, and when he left there was–

Where? Oh yes, the kitchen–a coiled blood sausage,

Old, wizened, utterly dried out, resting

On a small hand mirror. I remember this now

Only because I can’t help doing so, aware

Of the acrid little joke: that, according

To his iron code of gamesmanship, I have

Just authorized another courtesy call.

In full knowledge also (hideous necklace of sores

That no longer heal, veins like blackened vines!)

That today he will come for the last time.

My quaint request is that the coup de grace

Be administered by himself alone and not

By any of his troop of haggard followers

Who have begun to congregate outside.

Thick as autumn leaves ready for the bonfire,

They throng my doorstep, basser eyes pleading;

And without giving their names, they pronounce my own,

A silken cajolery drolly intoned, as if–

As if they were old friends I’m about to rejoin.

And then , this driving pain in my eyeteeth,

This thirst…. Well, you see, I want my turn, too.

A country mile off, I saw and felt the change.

It has the magnetism of all dimly grasped ideals.

Surely by now no one can say I am not deserving?

I understand the problems and am willing to work.

Look, he has arrived. Hannah’s white cap vanishes

Down the dark passage and is replaced by his face

Floating in the gloom like a full moon, eyes lowered,

His left hand dangling a gold watch on its long chain.

Never have I seen so much, nor ever felt so deeply–

Hence the sudden piercing intimation of what I am

One day to be, this twilit picture of discretion, the set

Of his features calm as an engraving of one who lets words

Of gratitude pass in silence as he settles to the task.

Bios

Generally recognized as the father of the Neo-Romantic movement in music, David Del Tredici has received numerous awards (including the Pulitzer Prize) and has been commissioned and performed by nearly every major American and European orchestral ensemble. “Del Tredici,” said Aaron Copland, “is that rare find among composers – a creator with a truly original gift. I venture to say that his music is certain to make a lasting impression on the American musical scene. I know of no other composer of his generation … who composes music of greater freshness and daring, or with more personality.”

Born on March 16, 1937 in Cloverdale, California, Del Tredici was a child piano prodigy who gave his professional debut at 17 with the San Francisco Symphony. In his formal training, he earned degrees at the University of California (Berkeley) and Princeton University.

Stylistically, over the course of his compositional life, Del Tredici has moved – controversially – from mid-20th-century serialism (exemplified by his elaborate vocal settings of James Joyce – I Hear an Army; Night Conjure-Verse; Syzygy) to an individualistic musical language re-embracing tonality. The breakthrough came with his unique series of “Alice” works, based on stories and poetry of Lewis Carroll and written for amplified soprano and large orchestra (Final Alice, Child Alice, Pot-Pourri and Adventures Underground, to name just a few).

Beyond Joyce and Carroll, Del Tredici has more recently set to music a cavalcade of contemporary American poets, producing a number of song cycles – Miz Inez Sez, Chana’s Story, Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter and On Wings of Song – and several works celebrating a gay sensibility. Gay Life, Wondrous the Merge and Three Baritone Songs are three examples of the latter; OUT Magazine, in fact, has twice named the composer one of its people of the year.

Over the past several years Del Tredici has ventured into the more intimate realm of chamber music with String Quartet No. 1, Grand Trio (brought to life by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio), and – harkening to his musical beginnings as a piano prodigy – a large number of solo-piano works: Gotham Glory, Three Gymnopedies, Ballad in Yellow, Opposites Attract, Wedding Song and Wildwood Etude.

Still, the extravagant Del Tredici remains at large. In May 2005, Robert Spano conducted the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, with Hila Plitmann as soprano soloist, in premiering Paul Revere’s Ride – an impassioned work inspired by Del Tredici’s 9/11 experience. (Recorded by Telarc, it became a Grammy Award nominee for Best New Classical Composition of 2006). November 2005 brought the premiere of the melodrama Rip Van Winkle with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and narrated by world-famous Broadway actor Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Besides the recent Telarc CD, Del Tredici’s new releases include an all-Del-Tredici CD on Deutsche Grammophon, and In Wartime, a spectacular new work for concert band on the Dorian label. (Among past recordings were two best-sellers ¬– Final Alice and In Memory of a Summer Day, the work that won Del Tredici the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.)

Concerts planned throughout the years 2007-2008 mark Del Tredici’s 70th birthday, culminating with the return of Del Tredici’s seminal, evening-long Final Alice, which will be performed May 8, 9 and 10, 2008 by soprano Hila Plitmann and the National Symphony at Washington’s Kennedy Center, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Originally commissioned and premiered by Sir Georg Solti in 1976, Final Alice received a second premiere – of a sort – when a chamber-ensemble version (created and conducted by Alexander Platt) was played at the edgy Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, New York, on September 1, 2007. Also of special interest is a new concert series in New York City (“Then and Now”), which is devoting its inaugural season to Del Tredici, offering a four-concert survey of his works.

The passing years have done nothing to dampen Del Tredici’s creative fires, with an explosion of newly-commissioned works marking his most recent birthday: Love Addiction (a baritone/piano song-cycle on poems by John Kelly), Magyar Madness (for clarinet and string quartet), Queer Hosannas (for male chorus and piano) and S/M Ballade (for piano).

Having previously taught at Harvard University, Boston University and the Juilliard School, Del Tredici is currently Distinguished Professor of Music at The City College of New York. He and his life-partner, Ray Warman, make their home in Greenwich Village.

Over the past twenty-four years under the visionary leadership of founder and artistic director, Dr. Edwin London, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony has steadily climbed to the summit of new music’s Mount Olympus. It has had a long history of commissions (premiering over 170 new works), nurtures young composers, and regularly receives significant national accolades, most recently a 2007 Grammy Award. The orchestra’s Artistic Director is currently Steven Smith.

Hila Plitmann has been praised by the New York Times for her “brilliant top register”; the Los Angeles Times calls her “exceptionally gifted” and the Chicago Tribune has described her as “...superb, with an expressive range and communicative power.”

She has performed as featured soloist with ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Among numerous recordings, she's appeared as soloist in three recordings that have received Grammy nominations for 2007, one of which is the soundtrack to the Hollywood blockbuster The DaVinci Code.

Upcoming engagements include the NAXOS world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man with the Buffalo Symphony; and David Del Tredici’s Final Alice with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin.

She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School of Music. She has a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do.

CREDITS

This CD was funded in part by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording Program, administered by the American Music Center. And by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Special thanks to Mark George, Corey Field, and David Del Tredici.

Engineer: David Yost

Program Annotator: Robert Finn

General Manager: Daniel Morgenstern

Dracula performed October 30, 2000

Vintage Alice performed September 24, 2001 at Drinko Recital Hall, Cleveland State University, OH

Published by Boosey and Hawkes

Clevelandchambersymphony.org

Innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation.

Director, design: Philip Blackburn

Operations: Chris Campbell

www.innova.mu