Still Movement with Hymn

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Still Movement with Hymn is a composition for piano quartet by the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis. It was composed in 1993 and was given its world premiere at Princeton University on November 11, 1993. It is dedicated to the memory of the composer Stephen Albert, who died unexpectedly in 1992. [1] The piece was a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Music. [2]

In European classical music, piano quartet denotes a chamber music composition for piano and three other instruments, or a musical ensemble comprising such instruments. Those other instruments are usually a string trio consisting of a violin, viola and cello.

Aaron Jay Kernis is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer serving as a member of the Yale School of Music faculty. Kernis spent 15 years as the music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and as Director of the Minnesota Orchestra's Composers' Institute, and is now currently the Workshop Director of the Nashville Symphony Composer Lab. He has received numerous awards and honors throughout his thirty-five year career. He lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Evelyne Luest, and their two children.

Princeton University University in Princeton, New Jersey

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, and renamed itself Princeton University in 1896.

Contents

Composition

Still Movement with Hymn has a duration of roughly 25 minutes and is composed in a single slow movement divided into three sections. Kernis described the composition in the score program note, writing:

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession. A movement is a section, "a major structural unit perceived as the result of the coincidence of relatively large numbers of structural phenomena".

A unit of a larger work that may stand by itself as a complete composition. Such divisions are usually self-contained. Most often the sequence of movements is arranged fast-slow-fast or in some other order that provides contrast.

During the year or two preceding its creation, I composed three serious and intense works, all of which nourished and influenced the present work: Hymn for solo accordion, Aria-Lament for solo violin, and the English horn concerto Colored Field. I would call all of this music mournful, tragic, and elegiac. These pieces are also unified by the influence of medieval and Jewish music and their use of long, unbroken melodies. Much of the emotional tenor of these works stems from reaction, albeit at a distance, to the genocide in Bosnia and Croatia along with the disbelief and loss of innocence that comes from learning that the world that most of us believe we live in, one that's rational, compassionate, and forgiving, seems so banal and fragile in light of the force of ethnic hatred and brutality. This music is in no way programmatic, but it does at times suggest a Judeo-Christian prayer for the dead, a hymn and Kaddish that also embodies hope for the living. [1]

Instrumentation

The work is scored for a piano quartet consisting of violin, viola, cello, and piano. [1]

Violin bowed string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths

The violin, also known informally as a fiddle, is a wooden string instrument in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the kit violin, but these are virtually unused. The violin typically has four strings tuned in perfect fifths, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings, though it can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.

Viola bowed string instrument

The viola (; Italian pronunciation: [viˈɔːla]) is a string instrument that is bowed or played with varying techniques. It is slightly larger than a violin and has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the violin family, between the violin (which is tuned a perfect fifth above) and the cello (which is tuned an octave below). The strings from low to high are typically tuned to C3, G3, D4, and A4.

Cello musical instrument

The cello ( CHEL-oh; plural cellos or celli) or violoncello ( VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh; Italian pronunciation: [vjolonˈtʃɛllo]) is a string instrument. It is played by bowing or plucking its four strings, which are usually tuned in perfect fifths an octave lower than the viola: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3. It is the bass member of the violin family, which also includes the violin, viola and the double bass, which doubles the bass line an octave lower than the cello in much of the orchestral repertoire. After the double bass, it is the second-largest and second lowest (in pitch) bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. The cello is used as a solo instrument, as well as in chamber music ensembles (e.g., string quartet), string orchestras, as a member of the string section of symphony orchestras, most modern Chinese orchestras, and some types of rock bands.

Reception

Reviewing a recording of the work, the music critic Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a potent elegy for piano and strings" and wrote, "The score itself, with its anguished climaxes and interludes of serene mourning, is exquisite." [3]

<i>San Francisco Chronicle</i> newspaper serving the San Francisco Bay area

The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper is currently owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from the de Young family in 2000. It is the only major daily paper covering the city and county of San Francisco.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Kernis, Aaron Jay (1988). "Still Movement with Hymn". G. Schirmer Inc. Retrieved June 1, 2016.
  2. ↑ Suzuki, Dean (August 1, 2003). "View from the West: New Hope for the Pulitzer". NewMusicBox . Retrieved June 1, 2016.
  3. ↑ Kosman, Joshua (February 25, 1996). "CLASSICAL CDS -- S.F. Delivers Kernis' `Field'". San Francisco Chronicle . Retrieved June 1, 2016.
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