Sunday, June 5, 2016
I begin with events featuring my music because there has been a change:
The June 12, 2016, performance of Quiltings at the Fresno Art Museum has been postponed to a future date, most likely August 7, 2016, at 2:00 pm. Please watch this blog for a confirming announcement soon.
June 19, 2016, 9:00 am, at First Presbyterian Church, 1540 M Street, Fresno, California, during the worship service: Walter Saul will perform “Bridalveil Falls,” with the video, from Quiltings for the offertory.
Texu Kim: Monastic Sceneries
If there ever was an unbridgeable chasm between two different kinds of music, it would definitely be between the Gospel hymn “Wonderful Peace” (Words by Warren D. Cornell and music by George Cooper written in 1889 for a Methodist camp meeting in Wisconsin)[1] and the modernistic Monastic Sceneries completed by Texu Kim in 2013 for his doctoral recital at Indiana University.[2] This work is a marvelous reflection on Kim’s own spiritual heritage, which itself seems to bridge the two worlds of Western Presbyterianism and indigenous Korean spiritualism. The work is “in memory of my beloved grandmother,”[3] who prayed extensively throughout her life.
And yet, Kim somehow unites these two unreconcilable worlds of music by having the chamber orchestra of ten quote the tune as sung by a small group of mothers unconcerned with pitch and rhythm, and this is a perfect fit for both the modernistic and postmodern realms. The latter is well represented by the heterophonic presentation of the hymn tune, while modernism is evident in the many different tonal and timbral effects called upon, especially in the strings.
Speaking of modernism, Kim himself compares his second movement, “Incantation,” to Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. As his work emerges exactly a century after the Rite, it would be quite natural to celebrate this epochal piece in his own writing, as many others have done. Indeed, the Rite’s unrelenting ostinatos, massed sonorities, and wildly unpredictable rhythms are woven into the fabric of this energetic movement. But I hear many influences of other significant composers over all three movements, particularly Charles Ives and Krzysztof Penderecki.
The layout of Monastic Sceneries strongly resembles Ives’ Third Symphony, “The Camp Meeting.” Both works bookend the fast movement in the middle with two slower and more meditative movements, and even the titles evoke similar images. Monastic Sceneries begins with “Small Group Gathering for a Religious Service” while the Ives work opens with “Old Folks Gatherin,” which itself suggests a hymn sing.[4] The second, livelier, movements are, respectively, “Incantation,” and “Children’s Day,” and both feature many repeated notes and energetic rhythms. The finales of the two works are “Prayers” and “Communion,” both of which suggest spiritual intimacy with the Lord. Perhaps Kim was even influenced by Ives’ deft quotations of the hymns in “The Camp Meeting” many of which he surely played for services at the two Presbyterian congregations he served in New Jersey and New York City as he was composing this work. Interestingly enough, Ives’ Pulitzer-Prize-winning work was completed in 1911, barely two years before the Rite.
Another comparison between “The Camp Meeting” and Monastic Sceneries is the similar instrumentation. While Ives called for a full string section, his woodwinds and brass are strikingly parallel to Kim’s chamber ensemble, which adds only a piano for its percussion section.
Penderecki’s influence is also writ large in Monastic Sceneries. Many of Kim’s stunning string effects seem made possible by Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, which explores the realms of microtones (quarter sharps and flats), tone clusters, extended string techniques, and aleatoric repetitions of gestures and motives. In the last few moments of “Incantation” there is a vibrant crescendo to a cliffhanging climax that adroitly combines the Rite’s rhythmic drive with the Threnody’s aleatoric repetitions of patterns. It is a marvelous moment that is beautifully answered with the calmness of the opening strains of “Prayers.”
Speaking of “Prayers” and that remarkable double bass solo over the rumbling vamp of the piano, I cannot help but think of “Cage Machine” written in the mid-1990’s by Paul Dresher for his Electro-Acoustic Band of six musicians.[5] This was originally the first movement of a violin concerto accompanied by the band, which included an electronically “prepared” synthesizer, hence the name “Cage Machine.” Kim, however, keeps his sounds all acoustic, but the descending lines of the double bass here resemble the descending lines of the violin solo in Dresher’s work.
One very neat rhythmic effect begins in the midst of “Incantation” around the six-minute mark on the YouTube video footnoted above. By cleverly alternating quarter, eighth, and dotted-eighth notes, Kim achieves a magical rhythm effect that resembles at times a lopsided waltz, but is always mesmerizing.
I also admire Kim’s ability to share his faith and spiritual heritage so boldly, even as he, like Ives, sharply departs from music languages accessible in church! He has done so in a very engaging way, which is amply demonstrated in the multiple performances this work has received around the world and the significant awards it has won. This work deserves many more performances and listenings, and the YouTube video is a superb and well-prepared performance of this piece, and may be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8KfA0cbRBQ. To experience the “unbridgeable” chasm, search YouTube for the hymn “Wonderful Peace” and listen to both traditional and Contemporary Christian presentations. Kim has indeed bridged that chasm!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHB8JcX_A0g, accessed June 5, 2016
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8KfA0cbRBQ, accessed June 5, 2016
[3] Texu Kim. Monastic Sceneries. Bloomington, Indiana: www.texukim.com, 2013
[4] http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/29245, accessed June 5, 2016
[5] https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/cage-machine/id78645300, accessed June 5, 2016