6/9 – IN THE LOOP: Music of G.P. Telemann, Sebastian Huydts, Philippe Hurel & W.F. Bach

Today we have intriguing music scored for two solo flutes, with the added interest that we shall hear how composers three centuries apart addressed the form. We’ll have two pieces each from the 18th and early 21st Centuries.

The term Canonic might suggest that today’s Telemann sonata follows the strict definition of canon – namely that one part is imitated by another, entering in such a way that successive statements of melody overlap – but, as you shall hear, there’s much more to this music than that feature.

Lamb Chase was written in 2007 for flutists Claire Chase and Eric Lamb. Their request was for a piece with virtuosity and fun, and Sebastian Huydts’s description of the music seems to fit the bill:

“I imagine two house cats struck by cabin fever. They start to run and frolic. Initially all seems to be playful, (but) things get out of hand and the time for screaming and hissing arrives. Fat, fluffy tails have to be shown, complete with raised coats and sharpened claws. As intense and threatening as this moment may appear, before we know it, the two are peacefully lying together again, licking and grooming as if nothing serious ever happened. After all, kibble should be served pretty soon.’’

Philippe Hurel’s series of compositions titled Loops, written for one or two instruments, explore processes of transformation of deliberately simple little motifs, easily recognized, in a deliberate nod to American and Dutch minimalism. Hurel says he is interested in the process of change, and there is a good deal of virtuoso writing in these pieces. Speaking of Loops III, the composer has noted:

“I have tried to make use of the flute in its most immediate form, namely its flexibility, fluidity, and flights of virtuosity, deliberately making no use of any particular playing technique. This work incorporates a new idea, since the music is deliberately obsessive. Each transformation of the little motifs exposed inevitably leads to a loop that has already been heard, and the hearer is gradually absorbed into a sort of spider’s web from which it proves very difficult to disentangle oneself. My choice of two flutes for Loops III resulted from my desire to make two identical instruments sound like one. I have above all paid attention to the harmonies and timbres created by the extended use of microtones. From time to time, one of the flutes makes an escape to “live its own life,” at which point the melody gains the upper hand, before returning to the side of the other flute a few bars later.”

Perhaps the most often quoted thing about Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of J.S. Bach, is that despite great talents as organist, improviser and composer, his income and employment were unstable and he died in poverty. His compositions include many church cantatas and instrumental works, of which the most notable are his fugues, polonaises, and fantasias for clavier, as well as his six duets for two flutes. Today’s concert concludes with a movement from one of those latter works.

Georg Philipp Telemann is often described as the most prolific composer in history, at least in regard to the number of his works – usually listed as some 800 – which survive 242 years after his death. (Some recent scholarship suggests there many have been as many as 3000 compositions originally). German-born, he was a contemporary of J.S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi, and was a lifelong friend of George Friedrich Handel. Today Bach is considered a greater composer than Telemann, but in their lifetimes, Telemann was much more highly regarded. One of the hallmarks of Telemann’s life and work was that he traveled a great deal and absorbed various musical styles he encountered, working such things as Italian and French styles of composition of the time into his own compositions, and introducing them to his German contemporaries.

Both of the contemporary composers represented in today’s concert have connections with Chicago.

Netherlands-born Sebastian Huydts began his musical studies in his native country, but in 1993 the Music Department of the University of Chicago gave him a four-year stipend to study composition. The teachers and varying types of music-making he encountered have led him to a wide-ranging compositional style of his own, usually described as one which seeks to combine 20th Century innovations with traditional elements of Western music. He has written song cycles, sonatas, chamber music for various combinations, and concertos. He has taught at the College of the University of Chicago, Lake Forest College, and Northwestern University. He has been Composer In Residence with Chicago’s new music ensemble CUBE, and was Artist In Residence at the Music Department of Columbia College in Chicago. His Chicago ties have led to commissions from a large number of this area’s music groups (as well as from other parts of the world), and premières and performance of many of his works have been heard here.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra devoted a workshop/concert to French-born Philippe Hurel as part of its MusicNOW Festival in Chicago in 2002 (the same year he began composing Loops III, which he completed the following year). Hurel is described as an unashamed but eclectic French modernist composer, interested in electroacoustic and instrumental writing. (Jazz was an element of his early musical thinking.) He has studied at, and become otherwise involved with, some of the most important musical institutions in France, the University at Toulouse, the Paris Conservatory, and IRCAM, among them.