Partita for 8 Voices | |
---|---|
by Caroline Shaw | |
Genre | |
Composed | 2009–2012 |
Performed | November 4, 2013 : (Le) Poisson Rouge |
Published | October 30, 2012 |
Movements | 4 |
Partita for 8 Voices is an a cappella composition by American composer Caroline Shaw. It was composed from 2009 through 2012 for the vocal group Roomful of Teeth and was released on their Grammy Award-winning self-titled debut album on October 30, 2012. [1] [2] [3] The piece was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music on April 15, 2013, making Shaw the youngest recipient of the award. [4] [5] [6] [7] The work was not premiered in full until November 4, 2013, at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City. [8]
MovementsPartita for 8 Voices has a duration of roughly 25 minutes and is composed of four movements named after Baroque dances:
Shaw said the piece was inspired by Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing 305 and "...our basic desire to draw a line from one point to another." [9] Some of the lyrics are from textual instructions LeWitt wrote to direct the draftsperson (Jo Watanabe in the first instance) who does the actual drawing. [10]
At the premiere of the complete Partita for 8 Voices, Justin Davidson of New York wrote that Shaw had "discovered a lode of the rarest commodity in contemporary music: joy." [11]
In October 2019, several performers of katajjaq, including Canadian Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, accused Caroline Shaw and Roomful of Teeth of having engaged in cultural appropriation and exoticism for the perceived uncredited quotation of a katajjaq song in the third movement of Partita. [12] [13] [14] In a public statement released by Caroline Shaw and artistic director Brad Wells, Roomful of Teeth acknowledged that they had hired and studied with Inuit singers in 2010 and that techniques learned from those studies had been used in Partita; they further stated that they believed those "patterns to be sufficiently distinct from katajjaq". [15] [16]
In 2019, The Guardian ranked Partita as the 20th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Erica Jeal dubbing it "an explosion of energy cramming speech, song and virtually every extended vocal technique you can think of into its four 'classical' dance movements. It might blow apart solemn, hard-boiled notions of greatness, but it has to be the most joyous work on this list." [17]
The third movement of Partita, "III. Courante", can be heard in numerous episodes of the Netflix show Dark . [18] The first movement was used as the theme song for the 2022 BBC Television drama Marriage. [19]
Inuit throat singing, or katajjaq, is a distinct type of throat singing uniquely found among the Inuit. It is a form of musical performance, traditionally consisting of two women who sing duets in a close face-to-face formation with no instrumental accompaniment, in an entertaining contest to see who can outlast the other; however, one of the genre's most famous practitioners, Tanya Tagaq, performs as a solo artist. Several groups, including Tudjaat, The Jerry Cans, Quantum Tangle and Silla + Rise, also now blend traditional throat singing with mainstream musical genres such as pop, folk, rock and dance music.
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted into a prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year."
In Western musical theory, a cadence is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution, especially in music of the 16th century onwards. A harmonic cadence is a progression of two or more chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music. A rhythmic cadence is a characteristic rhythmic pattern that indicates the end of a phrase. A cadence can be labeled "weak" or "strong" depending on the impression of finality it gives. While cadences are usually classified by specific chord or melodic progressions, the use of such progressions does not necessarily constitute a cadence—there must be a sense of closure, as at the end of a phrase. Harmonic rhythm plays an important part in determining where a cadence occurs. The word "cadence" sometimes slightly shifts its meaning depending on the context; for example, it can be used to refer to the last few notes of a particular phrase, or to just the final chord of that phrase, or to types of chord progressions that are suitable for phrase endings in general.
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Caroline Adelaide Shaw is an American composer of contemporary classical music, violinist, and singer. She is best known for the a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices, for which she won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Shaw received the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Narrow Sea.
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Pieces of Winter Sky is a composition for chamber ensemble by the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis. The work was commissioned by the consortium Music Accord for the ensemble eighth blackbird. The piece was a runner-up for 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, losing to Caroline Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices.
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Inspired by Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing 305.