8/3–Paul Lansky: Threads

Currently a professor of composition at Princeton University, Paul Lansky has centered his career largely on the relationship between computers and music. For more than 20 years he wrote almost exclusively for computer-generated sound, only recently returning to acoustic music. His 1973 tape piece “Mild und Leise,” inspired by the finale of Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde,” was sampled prominently in the Radiohead song “Idioteque” on their 2000 album “Kid A.”

“Threads” is a ten-movement instrumental cantata for percussion, written for the New York quartet So Percussion. The title refers to the three different types of movements that make up the piece – named for, and derived from, the movements in a traditional vocal cantata.

The arias are mellow and lyrical movements that focus on metallic, pitched instruments: vibraphones, glockenspiel, and metal pipes cut to different lengths to create specific pitches. The heavier chorus movements use a choir of drums: tom-toms, congas, bongos, and a djembe, whose sounds blend into a unified musical force. In the quirky recitatives, polyrhythms and rapid parts are played on noise instruments, including flowerpots and glass bottles.

Each of these types of instruments has its own character and thematic material, varied and developed throughout the piece. Themes from one type of movement will often crop up in another and take on a whole new personality when played on different instruments. This sort of clear thematic development, while less common in modern music, is the backbone of much of the classical-music tradition. The formal cantata structure of “Threads” is also a centuries-old classical tradition.

program notes by Andrea Lamoreaux