For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the 

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue NW

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, MD 20785

www.nga.gov

cover: Paul Stevenson Oles, Sketch ofthe East Building Interior View Toward West,

1971, Gift of I. M. Pei & Partners, National Gallery of Art Archives

3 - 7 ~/G

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,774th Concert

National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble

Roger Reynolds, composer

Steve Antosca, composer and computer musician

changes: seasons

Presented in honor of

The Robert and Jane MeyerhojfCollection: Selected Works

March 7, 2010 

Sunday evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Atrium

Admissionfree
p j>;u i

T<*Jlr C 5/1J

Performed without intermission

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

Mikka (1971)

Roger Reynolds 

Seasons: Cycle I (2009-2010)

Of Life and Spring

Understand: Nothing*

With Awe and Tenderness *

A Mind ofWinter

Xenakis 

Mikka S (1976)

x

3:3(0

\(e'H

W-l3

Edgard Varese (1883-1965)

Poeme electronique (1957-1958)

Restored version by Kees Tazelaar (2009)

Steve Antosca

One becomes Two (2007)

ir/f

-H°

This concert is made possible in part by grantsfrom Meet the Composer (funded

in part through the MetLife Creative Connections program), the Randy Hostetler

Living Room Fund, and the University ofCalifornia-^/ashington Center.

Some ofthe audio equipment used in this concert was provided by VARK audio

ofCabin John, Maryland.

World Premiere Performance

The Composers

ROGER REYNOLDS

Bom and educated in the Midwest, Roger Reynolds left the United States in

the early 1960s upon completing an education that included both engineering

and music. After seven years in Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, he took

a position in the newly established music department at the University of

California, San Diego (UCSD), where he founded the Center for Music Experiment with a major grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. He collaborated 

with other composers to mount international events such as The Pacific Ring

Festival (featuring music ofJohn Cage, John Chowning, Henry Cowell, Conlon 

Nancarrow, Nam Jun Paik, Harry Partch, Tom Takemitsu, and Joji Yuasa), and

combined music with technology during summers at Stanford’s Center for 

Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Reynolds is currently engaged in

a revival ofthe legendary ONCE Festivals of new music as artistic advisor for

ONCE MORE, a festival scheduled to be presented by the University ofMichigan 

in November.

As composer-in-residence at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technologies at UCSD, he continues to explore text and

voice, and the innovative use ofthe spaces in which his music is performed.

Mark Swed, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described Reynolds as an “allaround sonic visionary.” Reynolds’ work is published exclusively by C. F. Peters 

Corporation, and is widely available on CDs. His oeuvre is the subject of a

special collection at the Library ofCongress.

In August 2009 Reynolds was appointed University Professor— the

highest honor that can be bestowed on a University of California faculty 

member—by the University ofCalifornia Board of Regents. He is only the

thirty-sixth person and the first composer to be so honored. He is currently

artist-in-residence at the University ofCalifornia’s Washington, DC, Center.

3
STEVE ANTOSCA

Steve Antosca integrates musical instruments with computers for real-time

processing and pre-recorded audio processing. Through the realization of

scores that juxtapose elements of non-determinacy with traditional notation,

his work enables musicians to craft a sonically rich performance environment. Antosca is artistic director, composer, and performer for the VERGE

ensemble, the modern music ensemble-in-residence at the Corcoran Gallery 

ofArt. In 2007 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his

work with VERGE. He has a master’s degree in computer music composition

from the Peabody Conservatory ofJohns Hopkins University.

In 2007 Antosca was awarded a McKim commission from the Library of

Congress. His work, chamber set ~ threads for ensemble and computer, was

also supported by the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund and was

premiered last June in Buffalo, New York. He received a Fromm commission

from Harvard University to compose elements ~jive transjigurationsfor cello and

computer. He has also received grants from the United States Department of

Education, and has been guest composer at the Southeastern Composer’s

League 1997 Festival of New Music and Radford University’s New Horizons

2002 and 2005 festivals. His work shadowland is represented in the MIT

publication The Csound Book. Antosca has been a guest lecturer at American

University, Cleveland State University, Escuela Superior de Musica in Mexico

City, the Library ofCongress, the Peabody Conservatory, the University of

Maryland, and the University ofVirginia.

changes: SEASONS is part of crossingPOlNT, an unfolding series of

collaborative projects that Antosca has generated in Washington, connecting

music with technology, architecture, and the visual arts. More information

about the composer is available at www.steveantosca.com.

4

Bom in Paris on December 22,1883, Edgard Varese spent his early years in

Paris and Burgundy. When he was nine years old, his father moved the family

to Turin, Italy. Varese struggled to leam music against the wishes ofhis father,

who was intent upon preparing him for a career in engineering. He studied

music and composed on his own until he reached the age ofseventeen, when

he was taken on as a pupil by Giovanni Bolzoni and became a percussionist in

the Turin Opera Orchestra, where he also had his first opportunity to conduct. 

Two years later, he returned to Paris to pursue his musical studies without

further interference from his father.

At the Schola Cantorum and the Paris Conservatory, Varese resisted the

conservative doctrines ofVincent d’Indy (1851-1931) and Gabriel Faure 

(1845-1924), finally leaving to pursue his own independent development. In

1907 he left Paris for Berlin, but his burgeoning career as a conductor was

cut short by the outbreak ofWorld War I. In late 1915, after being discharged

from the French Army because ofpoor health, Varese left Europe for America.

He completed his first work in his new country in 1922 and titled it 

Ameriques, because it represented discoveries, adventures, the unknown, and

“new worlds... in the minds ofman.’’

Varese struggled throughout his entire career to find adequate means

and instruments to represent the sonic landscapes he heard in his mind. His 

realization ofthese concepts in an electronic medium had to wait until the late 

1940s and 1950s, when he created two masterpieces: Deserts (1949-1954) and

Poeme electronique (1957-1958). He spoke ofhis work with electronic music

as “composing with living sounds... [thinking] ofmusical space as open rather

than bounded.” Toward the end ofhis life, Varese received the accolades he

richly deserved for his visionary achievement. In a 1965 interview Varese

spoke ofhis motivation to compose: “I want to be in the material, part of

the acoustical vibration.... I care about reaching certain musical-acoustical

phenomena, in other words, to disturb the atmosphere.” Edgard Varese died

in New York City on November 6,1965.

EDGARD VARESE

5
IANNIS XENAKIS

Iannis Xenakis was bora in 1922 in Romania and by 1932 his family had

settled in Greece. His formal studies at the Polytechnic Institute in Athens

began in 1940, and he joined the Greek resistance movement shortly

thereafter. Even after sustaining a life-threatening injury during a protest

demonstration in 1945, Xenakis completed his degree in Athens. He then

left Greece, and was given a death sentence in absentia for his activities as a

political resistance figure. He went to France, where in 1947 he found work

as a draftsman in the studio offamed architect Le Corbusier. Xenakis’ most

notorious work from this period was his collaboration with Le Corbusier

and Edgard Varese in the realization ofthe Philips Pavilion at the Brussels

World’s Fair in 1958. His radical approach involved the creation of curved

surfaces utilizing ruled parabolas. This concept derived from an earlier

musical work, Metastasis 1953-54, in which surfaces ofsound were evoked 

by configurations of carefully plotted string glissandi.

From 1967 through 1978, Xenakis created a series of Polytopes—events that

unified physical, auditory, and visual space for performance. These included

the Polytope de Montreal, Polytope de Persepolis, the Polytope de Cluny, and

in 1978, his Polytope de Mycenes, marking a triumphant return to Greece as a

hero after years in exile. Xenakis died in Paris on February 4, 2001.

6

The Musicians

CHANGES: SEASONS features an exceptional complement ofinternational

specialists in contemporary music performance and the real-time computer

processing and spatialization ofsound. Performers will be placed strategically 

at different levels throughout the Atrium ofthe East Building ofthe National 

Gallery ofArt. Their placement, coordinated with technology developed for 

the concert, will respond to the sonic—as well as the visual—uniqueness of

I.M. Pei’s architecture.

Members ofthe National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble performing

in this evening’s inaugural concert are:

Lina Bahn, violin

(University of Colorado at Boulder, verge ensemble)

Lisa Celia, flute

(University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

Alexis Descharmes, violoncello

(Ensemble Court-Circuit, National Opera Orchestra, Paris)

Bill Kalinkos, bass clarinet

(Alarm Will Sound, New York, NY)

Ross Karre, percussionist

(red fish blue fish, Ensemble XI I, and University ofCalifornia, San Diego)

Steve Antosca, computer musician

(VERGE ensemble)

Jaime Oliver, computer musician

(Lima, Peru, and University of California, San Diego)

7
Program Notes

changes: seasons is a series of events that address current and historical 

trends in the use of technology in music and the role that performance

spaces play in the dissemination of music, art, and technology, changes:

SEASONS events are presented through a partnership between the National

Gallery ofArt and the University of California Washington Center (ucdc),

with the additional collaboration ofthe California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technologies (Calit2), University of Maryland,

Peabody Conservatory ofthe Johns Hopkins University, American University, La Maison Fran<;aise/Embassy of France, the Library ofCongress, and

the Contemporary Music Forum. Tonight’s concert is the culmination of

the series and will include a preconcert panel focusing on art, architecture, 

music, and technology.

Mikka and Mikka S are seminal works by Iannis Xenakis. They emphasize 

an insight that this musical architect saw as his primary contribution to

music: the realization that all the dimensions ofmusical sound can be opened 

to continuous variation. In the late 1960s Xenakis began to use Markov chains

to suggest branching structures he referred to as “arboresences.” Normally

tempered pitches served only as anchors. He asks the violinist to alter pitch

constantly, sometimes as subtle inflections, but at other times as wildly

careening wailings that require the left hand to slide up and down the fingerboard rapidly. Written in 1971, Mikka opens this terrain, utilizing a single line

in constant flux. Written five years later, Mikka S requires two moving lines.

The performer must somehow evoke the simultaneous meandering oftwo

interwoven voices.

Roger Reynolds’ SEASONS is a collection of nine shorter works: two

cycles offour plus a culminating ensemble work. Their subject is change 

and consistency through the four stages of human life (infancy, youth, maturity, old age) and the four stages ofweather during a year (spring, summer,

autumn, winter). Poetic fragments from Wallace Stevens, Czeslaw Milosz,

and other writers offer a variety of perspectives on both seasonal cycles. For

example, old age entails urgency, grotesquery, grieving, and resolution. Each

movement references both sets ofstages; for example, Of Life and Spring

includes infancy and spring.

Both cyclical and progressive influences are present, providing connectivity and flexibility, while insuring shifting perspectives. Each movement

involves an instrumental trio and a “mediator" that offers connectivity and

commentary on the activities ofthe members ofthe trio. In the first cycle,

mediation is provided by a musician controlling real-time computer processing from a multi-channel sound system, whereas in the second cycle a

soprano and oboe duo move between the remaining instrumentalists. The 

computer musician is armed with a set oftransformative algorithms, the 

soprano with actual poetic phrases. Two ofthe cycles receive their premiere

performance on this evening’s program. The entire collection will be

presented in future seasons by the adventuresome New York ensemble

Alarm Will Sound, under the direction of Alan Pierson.

In the late 1950s, Edgard Varese collaborated with the architect Le

Corbusier (1887-1965) and his then associate, composer-designer Iannis

Xenakis, to create a unique architectural space, the prototype “polytope,” the 

Philips Pavilion. Xenakis later used polytope (“many"+” sites”) to describe 

a series of projects that involved music, light, and custom-designed spaces.

Although the pavilion was designed primarily by Xenakis and utilized visual

projections conceived by Le Corbusier, it featured Varese’s first grapplings 

with the imaginative dimensions of electroacoustic sound as conceived for a

surround experience: Poeme electronique. This work is a visionary montage,

incorporating many ofthe thematic images that had arisen in Varese’s

earlier work: sirens, expressive keening, organ-like sounds, dramatic lowregister gestures, rhythmic pulsing, and the human voice, all in startling

accumulations, changes: seasons will present a version ofthis pathbreaking work newly restored by Kees Tazelaar at the Institute of Sonology

ofthe Royal Conservatory of Music in the Netherlands.

9
The inspiration for Steve Antosca’s One becomes Two comes from a

passage from Carl Jung’s (1875-1961) writings, symbolically describing

a process oftransformation:

... when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges, then

One becomes Two and the greater figure, which one always was but

which remained invisible, appears with the force of a revelation.

Here the expansion ofbud into flower is represented by two characteristics. 

First, the piece provides two paths between which the performer must choose.

Within them, each passage also has a distinct set of non-determinate performance alternatives. At the end ofthe “path section” the performer must choose 

among four personalities: joy, passion, duality, and enduring spirit, each with 

its own unique performance requirements. The second characteristic is the

use ofthe computer for the transformation ofthe violin sound in an interactive, 

real-time manner. The instrument is connected to a computer running a

composer-created Max/MSP patch utilizing feedback, flange, pitch shifting,

delay and tap delay to generate flowing reflections ofthe violin source.

One becomes Two was premiered by violinist Lina Bahn at the Phillips 

Collection in Washington, DC, in March 2007. Two months later she gave its

European premiere in Paris at the Festival de Musique Americaine. One

becomes Two has been performed throughout China, Europe, and the United

States. In 2009 it was chosen as a selected winner in the “electroacoustic

music with instruments" category ofthe Thirty-sixth Bourges International

Competitions and was performed as part ofthe International ElectroAcoustic

Music Festival in Rome. A graphic page from the score for One becomes Two

was published in Notations 21, a compendium and anthology ofillustrated

contemporary scores.

Program notes and composer biographies by Roger Reynolds and Steve Antosca

10

Next Week at the National Gallery of Art

Oni Buchanan, pianist

Music by women composers ofthe twenty-first century

Presented in honor ofWomen’s History Month

March 10, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Ewa Poblocka, pianist

Music by Chopin

Presented in honor ofthe 200th year ofChopin’s birth

and in cooperation with the Embassy of Poland

March 14, 2010

Sunday evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court
CrtANG&S: SEASONS

a concert at the crossing point of Music, Architecture, Technology and Art

National Gallery of Art - East Building Atrium, Washington, DC

March 7, 2010

The inaugural concert of the National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble

Pre-concert panel, East Building Atrium - 6:30 PM

concert program ALL TIMES ARE CLOSE APPROXIMATIONS

Mikka(1971) Iannis Xenakis 3:15

solo violin, some amplification

Seasons: Cycle I (2009-10) Roger Reynolds

flute, bass clarinet, violin, violoncello, percussion, real-time computer sound processing

Of Life and Spring- flute, violoncello, percussion, computer musician 1 7:00

Understand: Nothing - violin, bass clarinet, percussion, computer musician 10:00

With Awe and Tenderness - violin, bass clarinet, percussion, computer musician 10:00

A Mind of Winter-flute, violoncello, percussion, computer musician 1 7:00

Mikka S (1976) Iannis Xenakis 3:30

solo violin, djgkMrackJrom computer

audio from computer

Poeme electronique (1958-2009) Edgard Varese 8:00

8 tracks of audio only from computer

One becomes Two (2007) Steve Antosca 11:00

violin and computer musician 

violin into computer

8 tracks of audio from computer