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Program Notes for A Benjamin Songbook
These concert arias, arranged for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone, clarinet and piano, were composed for a concert in Merkin Concert Hall (May 24, 2001).
The arias are from my comic opera Benjamin (1987), to a libretto by Sarah White.
The topic is Benjamin Franklin and his many facets. An unusual feature of the opera is the splitting
of the Franklin persona into a child's voice, a mezzo-soprano (pants role) and a baritone. The mezzo-soprano role
is called "Benjamin Younger," and the more conventional Franklin "Benjamin-Baritone."
Although the child is not heard in this songbook, Franklin's wife, Deborah, is represented by a soprano.
One additional character, Madame Brillon, is not heard in this arrangement.
The original 150-minute opera is scored for 15 instruments, chorus, soloists and dancers.
These arrangements are in some cases new pieces, in that I have actually gone so far as to
combine two arias (in the Dear Child Reprise) that are sung separately in the opera.
I also have added new melodies for the clarinet. The piano part is more than a reduction of the score here.
The order of the arias has also been changed for dramatic and tonal considerations, so the
sequence of events depicted in the story is not always preserved.
The following comments may help the listener understand a few elements of the story of the opera:
To Be Frugal:
Benjamin-Baritone, his own task master, laments the fact that discipline requires sacrifice.
Gulf Stream Aria:
Benjamin-Younger, Franklin's more playful, spontaneous self, decides that he will explore
the Gulf Stream.
Dear Child:
Franklin's faithful helpmate Deborah reads a letter from her husband,
who has been overseas for many years.
Our Bell:
Franklin reassures Deborah that the electrocution of a turkey caused by
his electrical experiments will not be the only product of his risky investigations.
Your Ship Will Roll:
Deborah warns Franklin of the dangers of the high seas in an effort convince him to remain in America.
Dear Child Reprise:
Franklin, returning from England, many years later, finds the Dear Child letter
and laments that he did not return before Deborah died. In a new duet setting,
heard here for the first time, Deborah (as a ghost) reads the letter,
haunting Benjamin while he grieves.
Gulf Stream Trio:
Franklin is torn in two by conflicting desires. Deborah urges him to stay in Philadelphia
(Your Ship Will Roll), Benjamin-Younger advocates ocean travel (Gulf Stream Aria),
and Franklin tries to reassure Deborah that his inventions will keep her safe and
remind her of his love while he is gone (Our Bell).
Program Notes for Adam and Eve and the Animals
The cantata, Adam and Eve and the Animals,was composed in the late spring and early
summer of 1987 at the request of the American choral conductor Steven Edwards. Mr. Edwards suggested
I compose a companion piece to Honegger’s King David. What emerged is a
four-movement cantata, for large mixed chorus, four vocal soloists and an instrumentation of winds,
brass, percussion, keyboards and double bass. The instrumentation and the Biblical setting are the
only real similarities to the Honegger work. Later Harry Jepson orchestrated the work for strings, woodwinds,
harp, percussion and keyboards, without brass. Both versions have been performed, but I have withdrawn
the first version in favor of the second which is the one now available for performance.
Adam and Eve was the first work to follow the composition of my second opera, Benjamin, and
the two have both a similarity of style and the same librettist, Sarah White. According to Ms. White:
Our story is influenced by numerous painters, sculptors and poets who have
elaborated their own versions of the Creation, Temptation, Fall and Expulsion.
The text is borrowed from chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis (New English Bible) and
from the anonymous Old French “Play of Adam,” written in the late twelfth
century. However, these rich sources fail to credit the Animals for the redemptive
role they play, consoling Adam and Eve and ourselves for the loss of Paradise.
I have tried to repair that oversight.
The quickly shifting moods and tone of this sometimes dramatic, sometimes touching, and sometimes
coyly amusing blend of several versions of the creation story caught my fancy right away, and the
actual composition of the 27-minute work that resulted all took place within the compressed period
of six weeks. Of course the orchestration, piano-vocal score construction and part editing took
much longer. Fortunately I had the help of composer Jeffrey Nytch, who at that time was my composition
student at Franklin and Marshall College.
The cantata is at times operatic in tone, with accompanied “recitative” and “aria”
sections for the four soloists, God, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, alternating with ensemble singing,
both with the chorus and without. This operatic quality is perhaps best exemplified by the dramatic
arias of the Serpent and Eve in the third movement during the “temptation scene” and in
God’s “fury aria,” also in the third movement. There is considerable a cappella
writing for the chorus itself, which, though challenging for the performers, is a sound of which I
am particularly fond.
The short, introductory, first movement begins a cappella, and depicts the creation of paradise
with the resolution of a suitably exotic quasi--”French Sixth Chord” and a mixture of wholetone
scale figurations. It closes with the accompanied recitative of God, in which He warns Adam not to eat
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
After a short a cappella section for the chorus, reminiscent of the opening of the work, the
second movement begins a scherzo-like canonic middle section in which the animals are introduced and named.
The movement closes with the “paradise music,” which contains a prominent ostinato above an
F# Major pedal point, the tonality toward which the entire work eventually gravitates.
The third and most complex movement contains the creation of Eve, the temptation, the fall of Adam and Eve,
and the wrath of God. After another a cappella beginning, the creation of Eve and the Fall are both
accompanied by swirling orchestration that builds in both cases toward the same explosive climax.
These events frame God’s mysterious and ominous warning, accompanied by an f# minor drone, complete
with English Horn snake -like music and a water gong glissandoing in the orchestration, a restatement of
the “paradise music,” and the Serpent’s powerful aria, which is accompanied by brass in the
smaller orchestration, strings in the larger. After the fall, Eve’s transformation is depicted, as
she ironically recapitulates the Serpent’s aria in a new orchestration. God’s fury is accompanied
by the same meandering ostinato that depicted paradise, now transformed into a dissonant atonal parody of the original.
The last movement is an expanded version of the “paradise music” first heard at the end of the
second movement. The tonal plan takes us entirely through the circle of fifths during the various episodes
recounting the expulsion of Adam and Eve, but returns to F# Major as God proclaims, “Dust you are and
to dust you will return.” The movement builds many layers previously heard separately into a resonant
and fully joyous conclusion, as the animals choose to join Adam and Eve in leaving the Garden of Eden.
The ending of the smaller orchestration is more bombastic than the serene diminuendo of the full orchestral version.
Selected Performances of
Adam and Eve and the Animals:
Premiere: April 17, 1988, Lancaster, PA. Steven Edwards, Musical Director, F&M Choral Society,
with guest artists Stephen Kalm (Adam), Karin Calabro (Eve), James Longacre (God), and Darrell Lauer (Serpent).
This was a performance of the smaller orchestration, without strings.
May 2, 1999, Harrisburg, PA. Harrisburg Choral Society, Simon Andrews, Musical Director.
This was a performance of the larger orchestration with strings.
Program Notes for Angels
Angels, for solo alto saxophone and wind ensemble, was commissioned by saxophonist Lynn Klock
for performances by the Franklin & Marshall Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the Boston Metropolitan Winds.
This ten-minute concerto features the saxophone section as a “consort of angels” that both physically
and acoustically surrounds the solo alto saxophonist. The work was at least partly inspired by passages from
Rilke’s Duino Elegies which contain numerous images about angels and the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
which describes both peaceful and wrathful deities in vast otherworldly realms of the heavens. Central to the
aesthetic of the work is the juxtaposition of violent, cataclysmic musical events with moments of simplicity and serenity.
The percussion section plays a substantial role (both acoustically and physically on stage) in painting this cosmic landscape.
Selected performances of Angels:
Premiere: April 23, 1989, Lynn Klock, saxophonist, Brian Norcross, Musical Director, F&M Symphonic Winds, Lancaster, PA.
2 Performances: April 28, 1990, Lynn Klock, saxophonist, with Malcolm Rowell, Musical Director, Metropolitan Wind Symphony,
Norwell, MA, Boston, MA. Sponsored in part by the Selmer Corporation.
February 6, 1992, 40th Anniversary of Eastman Wind Ensemble, Jamie Kalyn, saxophone, Sydney Hodkinson, conductor,
Eastman Wind Ensemble, Rochester, NY.
May 14, 1993, Jerry Luedders, saxophone, David Whitwell, conductor, the California State University,
Northridge Wind Ensemble, Northridge, CA.
Program Notes for: Astro Cats
Astro Cats, for solo guitar, was composed especially for Jim Hontz. These are intended to be
zodiacal sketches of 12 types of cats. Each brief movement has a mood indication. The Libra cat is elegant
and whimsical, Cancer cat is moody, Aries cat is tempestuous, Pisces cat is sensual, Gemini cat is nervous, Capricorn cat is sleepy,
Taurus cat is mock heroic, Scorpio cat is macabre, Sagittarius cat is dreaming of distant lands, Leo cat is in love, Virgo cat is a
meticulous workaholic, and finally, Aquarius cat waxes from coldly cerebral to eccentric.
Selected performances of Astro Cats:
Premiere: March 27, 1994, James Hontz, Classical Guitar Society, Philadelphia
January 29, 1995, James Hontz, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA
February 24, 1995, James Hontz, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA.
Program Notes for Ballade
Yearning after the unattainable soulmate, the paradox of perfect love--unrealized except as a frozen moment in time--and the
inexorable progress of change (as reflected in the transitory nature of romantic striving) were all much on my mind as I composed
Ballade for cello and piano.
Cast in a single movement, the work is rhapsodic in character, and compresses a contrasting multi-movement scheme into a single movement fantasy.
The serenely peaceful opening is meant to capture the spirit of the Alba, a medieval genre of poetry that revolves around the idea of
lovers parting at dawn, the most famous example by a later writer being that of the dawn scene (“It is the lark”, etc.) in Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet. Quasi bird song writing iand resonant chords in the piano join the yearning solo cello line, which builds to an
impassioned outburst. The fantasy flows into a scherzo-like section filled with colorful scurrying pizzicati notes, jeté glissandi,
and muted notes in the piano. The scherzo mood opens out into a return of the opening material, now even more anguished and haunting, which builds
to a high point in both range and tension. The mood then turns darker, perhaps more cynical, as a demonic dance rhythm takes over and pushes
ahead full steam into a virtuoso cadenza for the cello. The macabre dance rhythms survive the cadenza, and emerge in the piano, joined by cello
accompaniment to make up the coda which ends the piece.
Dedicated to and written for Cellist Jan Pfeiffer, Ballade, was composed in 1987 and premiered by Ms. Pfeiffer that same year.
Selected performances of Ballade:
Premiere: April 24, 1987, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Andrew Bonner, pianist, Belmont Music School, Belmont, MA.
March 10, 1992, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, Music at Holy Cross,
Boston
May 30, 1992, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, University of Missouri, Kansas City
November 1, 1995, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA.
November 5, 1995, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cellist, with Timothy Steele, pianist, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA.
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Program Notes for Benjamin
The opera explores facets of the legend called Benjamin Franklin. A printer-publisher by trade, Franklin respected the written word,
used it to achieve his goals, and worked industriously toward the creation of his own persona, keeping copious notes, writing thousands of letters,
and composing an Autobiography.
Three of our five scenes emphasize verbal signs, and show them combining, like the composer’s musical phrases, to invent a character
we name “Benjamin”. In two other sequences, the Prologue and the Paris scene, we highlight a different type of Franklin invention,
the Glass Harmonica, to suggest those playful, non-verbal, less purely rational traits that he had in abundance but did not always sufficiently cherish.
A pervasive theme, involving orchestra, principals, chorus and dancers, arias and ensembles, is that of the Gulf Stream. For us, its color,
warmth and speed embody the best intellectual, aesthetic, political and personal currents of Benjamin’s life, and perhaps of our own lives as well.
The Franklin texts that most influenced libretto and score were: The Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanac, letters of Benjamin
and Deborah Franklin, and the Bagatelles.
Synopsis
Prologue: About 1715. A playful Child solves a problem and becomes Benjamin, while the Chorus explains his game and warms up for the opera.
Grown-up Benjamin Baritone, impatient to proceed, puts a stop to the Child’s playfulness.
Act I, sc. 1: Benjamin Baritone, in about 1730, begins his notebook. He tells what a serious young man he is, and reveals his plans to become
a person of Prosperity and Civic Importance. With the help of his artisans, he founds the Pennsylvania Gazette. He meets a serious helpmate, Deborah,
and meets Benjamin Younger, whose plans have more to do with pleasure than with Civic Importance. B. Baritone is as severe with him as he was the Child.
He meets the Virtues and learns how difficult it is to attain Moral Perfection. We hear an evening prayer.
Act I, sc.2: A decade or so later, having attained Prosperity and Civic Importance, if not Moral Perfection, B. Baritone reacquaints himself with
B. Younger, and declares that together they will undertake a life of Philosophical Amusements, a change that Deborah fails to understand. During a storm,
he discovers a novel purpose for lightning, and receives two invitations to London, which he accepts, to the joy of B. Younger, and the sorrow of Deborah.
Philadelphia bids farewell to Dr. Franklin.
Intermission: The Harpsichord plays Hide and Seek.
Act II, Introduction: 1757. The Atlantic voyage provides Benjamin with a new Philosophical Amusement, but sailing is not everyone’s Cup of Tea.
Act II, sc.1: In London and Philadelphia, for nearly 15 years, B. Baritone and Deborah write each other faithfully. His life, though, is full of movement,
while hers is “sort of hollow”. Seasons pass for them both, but not at the same speed. In 1774, Politics force B. to leave London;
only it is too late to rejoin Deborah. B. Baritone, in a moment of despair, seeks to blame her death on somebody, and puts the lid on B. Younger, again.
Interlude:
1776. It seems the lid was not locked. B. Younger emerges, and finds he is on his way to Paris!
Act II, sc. 2: In the salon of beautiful Madame Brillon, we meet the Mâitre de Musique; B. Younger enjoys translating, conducting
and hypnotizing, while B. Baritone practices his French, expresses his love, hears a song of praise and a song of rebuff, which sends the Benjamins
back to Philadelphia with sad resignation.
Interlude:
1785. The last Atlantic crossing.
Act II, sc. 3: 1790. Dying B. Baritone expresses his regrets and loneliness. He finds one of his letters to Deborah and regrets not having
returned while she was still alive. B. Younger, failing to console him with words, stages two wordless encounters, each of which brings some
reconciliation and peace to our hero. We hear the Epitaph he wrote for himself sung by all. A Childish hand closes Benjamin’s notebook.
Selected performances of Benjamin:
Premiere: April 23, 24 and 25, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA. Stephen Kalm (Benjamin Baritone), Constance Beavon (Benjamin Younger), Pamela King (Deborah), Kristin Samuelson (Madame Brillon). Musical Director, Steven Edwards, Stage Direction, Edward Brubaker, Choreography, Lynn Brooks, Stage Design, John Whiting, Lighting, Reid Downey, Costumes, Nancy Whiting, Vocal Coach, Joan Krueger
Concert version (unstaged): April 17, 1990, University of Pennsylvania 250th Celebration, Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Chamber Singers, William Parberry, Director. Concerto Soloists. Stephen Kalm, Tanya Courier, Constance Beavon and Kristin Samuelson.
Narrated Concert Version (unstaged): 2000, F&M College, Lancaster, PA. Stephen Kalm (Benjamin Baritone), Constance Beavon (Benjamin Younger),
Pamela King (Deborah), Kristin Samuelson (Madame Brillon). Musical Director, Simon Andrews
Chamber Music Version (unstaged): 2001, Merkin Concert Hall, NYC, Stephen Kalm, Tanya Courier, Constance Beavon
Benjamin will be fully staged once again in January 2006 at F&M College, as part of the Franklin Tercentenary Celebration.
Reviews of Benjamin:
Daniel Webster, Philadelphia Enquirer:
“...glimpses, half-parodistic allegorical tableaux and brightly telescoped scenes of Franklin’s achievements.
The intimacy of the vision of Franklin ....allowed the composer to equate a bassoon melody with a voice and to create transparent
instrumental atmospheres to match the stage music. Pamela King made the letter scene telling...through its shadowed melody and the starkness of
solo piano accompaniment. Carbon has even included a coloratura aria for the French woman who beguiled Franklin’s Paris stay.
The aria sketches a bright, tempting character who appears only for a moment in this vignette. Her scene, however--set in a salon for a musical evening--is one of the opera’s wittiest. Franklin declares himself inventor of the glass harmonica and also composer of a string quartet. When the orchestra quotes the quartet, harpsichordist and all, the guests fall into hypnotized sleep, leaving Franklin and Mme. Brillon to wonder at their own feelings. Constance Beavon’s role [Benjamin Younger] was nervously active, urgent really. Kalm’s Franklin passed through moments of poignance and high comedy.”
Jon Ferguson, Lancaster Intelligencer Journal:
“...Soaring success...a charming opera that rings with an emotional resonance...carried along by a wonderful score containing many memorable melodies. It is a deft portrayal of a man both creative and pragmatic who often finds he’s at odds with himself. The opera is extremely moving throughout...the authors deserve nothing but plaudits. The tension between the [three main characters] gives the opera its movement and its great depth. [The letter writing scene] is an extremely poignant scene, made more so by the solo piano piece which accompanies Ms. Beavon’s aria. Especially effective was [Lynn Brook’s choreography in] the dance of the four seasons.”
Joe Byrne, Lancaster New Era:
“From the opening scene’s first pure notes of an oboe, “Benjamin: An Opera of Our Own Invention,” is less drama than it is a complex, entertaining and colorful portrait of the mind of a legendary man. The show is intriguing...Franklin is a kind of Everyman in the opera. Using three characters to portray various aspects of Franklin’s personality, the opera crisscrosses from his near-obsession with moral perfection to a boyish, irresponsible fascination with the mechanisms of nature. Franklin’s humanity, particularly his self-centeredness and eye for the ladies, provides tension and provides a needed contrast to his otherwise boring tendencies toward regimentation, civic responsibility and all personal virtues. Carbon’s music electrifies Ms. White’s libretto and carries the history from scene to scene. [The letter scene] is poignant....made more bittersweet by lovely arias. There are truly comic parts, too. In one scene, Ben returns home after experimenting during a fierce electrical storm--carrying aloft an electrocuted turkey.”
Program Notes for Berceuse
This short lullaby was inspired by a painting by Vincent Van Gogh.
Program Notes for Clarinet Concerto
The concerto was composed especially for an MMC recording by Richard Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic, conducted by the American conductor George Manahan.
Notes by Mark L. Lehman from the CD jacket (MMC 2031):
None of this information prepares the listener for Carbon’s extraordinary Concerto -- a huge (twenty-five minutes long) single-movement rhapsody of passionate, darkly voluptuous, chromatically intoxicated, endless melody teased and crooned and keened out by the solo clarinet amid a lush phantasmagoria of shimmering and flickering orchestral polyphony. Despite the wild diversity of mood--from ecstatic and rapturous to frenzied or desolate, from demonic to serene, from skittish to dreamlike, from the mysterious solenne e tenebroso opening to the lascivious and jazzy central scherzo-dance--everything is held together by the subtle but pervasive flowering into innumerable guises of a single five-note phrase given at the very beginning.
A few of the many ingenious devices that Carbon employs to create so much variety can be singled out. Notice, for instance, the way he extends the territory of his solo protagonist by echoing (and extending) its figurations with the shriller E flat clarinet on top and the deeper bass clarinet below. More obvious are the “blue” notes (from microtonal glissandos) in the solo part with their smoky, jazz-club ambiance. Carbon’s use of cadenzas in this concerto is also canny: instead of a single, extended showpiece for the soloist that might detract from the carefully sustained mood of nocturnal fantasy, he places several shorter cadenza-like solos at critical intervals that continue (and intensify) rather than disrupt the lyrical flow. The fluidity and expressiveness of these cadenzas --especially in Stoltzman’s performance--are astounding. There are moments of unearthly beauty that one would not have believed the instrument capable of.
But despite (and in a way because of) the sensuous beauty in this concerto, it is ultimately a deeply serious, even tragic work. Like a strange and wonderful dream-vision it begins and ends--as we all begin and end--in the soft darkness of a quietly heartbeating drum and the mystery of life emerging from and returning to nothingness.
The recording, on MMC, is performed by Richard Stoltzman with George Manahan conducting the Warsaw Philharmonic. There have been numerous international radio broadcasts of this work since the recording has been released.
Reviews of Clarinet Concerto:
Sonneck Society Bulletin:
“The flawless performance Richard Stoltzman’s admirers expect of him. John Carbon’s Clarinet Concerto provides some luscious atmospheric, introspective moments, supported by a thoughtful orchestral performance.”
Fanfare Magazine:
“Richard Stoltzman negotiates the demands ...with remarkable aplomb and effectiveness. [The orchestra] also rises to levels of great virtuosity. The idea of the clarinet concerto as a work of immense power and drama is new to me. John Carbon (b. 1951) provides a Concerto in one long (25:34) movement. His score is ... richly orchestrated, reminding me at different turns of Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, and Ottorino Respighi, though Carbon’s harmonic language and use of percussion are far more advanced that one finds in these masters of the early twentieth century. ...The soloist is asked to both exhaust and extend the potential of his instrument to make all manner of sounds. The orchestra is put through similar strenuous exercises, pausing from time to time to allow bravura cadenzas from the clarinet. MMC’s gorgeously recorded disc is a winner in every respect, and decidedly material for the 1997 Want List.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Clarke Bustard:
"Just as attractive, maybe more accessible, is John Carbon's moody,
sometimes bluesy Clarinet Concerto (1993)."
American Record Guide, Stephen D. Hicken:
"John Carbon's Concerto is also in one movement. Its structure is
rhapsodic, episodes rapidly following one another. Its 25-minute length is
held together by a clearly recognizable (and pregnant with possibility)
five-note motive that appears in countless guises in contrasting episodes.
George Manahan is the expert conductor on one of MMC's best releases."
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Program Notes for Crossing Over
Crossing Over was composed especially for a Network for New Music Concert (Philadelphia) at the request of
clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati. Doris premiered my Dreamspiral for the same combination of instruments
with Alaria in Carnegie Hall two years ago. It might seem odd that I should choose to compose two works for
the same combination so close together, but my second work is quite different in intent.
Whereas Dreamspiral explores the boundaries between waking life, dreaming, memory
and death (as many of my pieces do), I wanted to say something about crossing over the boundaries
that we experience primarily during waking life in this work. Much of what I've written as a composer has
had to do with that moment when things change and one realizes that the landscape (be it literal or psychic)
shifts. The shift is interesting to me perhaps because of my interest in Tibetan Buddhism and related
concepts of always being on unstable ground. We cling to certainty but things are changing all the time.
I am interested in those moments when we somehow doubt whether there is a continuity of being other
than what we try somewhat desperately to maintain through identity constructs and memory evocation.
In reflecting I have realized that my music exists more for the transition or shift than the shift
exists for the music, which I feel certain is not true of much of the music I have encountered. In this piece the boundaries crossed are stylistic, harmonic, emotional and nationalistic. The
justaposition of memory as opposed to being in the present (which I've written about many times)finds its way into the section right before the coda.
Program Notes for Different Ghosts
This work for solo percussionist, tape with synthesized sounds, and wind ensemble with five
assistant percussionists was commissioned by Portland State University, for percussionist Joel
Bluestone. The tape part contains “ghost sounds” that mimic the real percussion sounds
heard in the ensemble and played by the soloist, as well as “voices” and other supernatural
effects. These ghost sounds on the tape are notated in the score and parts in cue notes that are 75%
of the size of the music which is to be played live. All taped sounds that are to be mimed are also
identified by boxed names in the score. When the soloist, or any other player has “ghost
notes,” in his or her part, and there are no full-size notes to be played at that time, it is
expected that the player will “mime” these notes silently on his or her instrument in a
visible, theatrical manner. In the solo percussion part, there are often several “ghost
effects” happening at once. If there are full-sized notes, they must be played, however
if free, the player may choose which instrument to mime the part on. That is, if it is a
“ghost xylophone,” the solo percussionist could choose to mime it on the vibraphone, or
even on the woodblocks. The tone should be cartoonish, wild, funny, but always with a serious
undercurrent. Try to vary the moods of the miming and the actual playing as much as possible to
create the mood of a haunted house or a camp silent horror film soundtrack. If at all possible,
the speakers should be concealed, but monitors need to be provided near the conductor and soloist
which are audible in the wind ensemble.
Selected performances of Different Ghosts
Premiere and three other performances: March 25-27, 1992, Joel Bluestone, percussion, Portland State University Wind Ensemble, Portland, OR
Program Notes for Do Not Go Gentle...
The Piano Trio, Do Not Go Gentle... was composed at the request of the Philadelphia Trio in the summer and fall months of 1995. The title refers to the poem by Dylan Thomas, written on the death of the poet’s father. The lines from the poem that struck me as particularly meaningful at the time of the composition were:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage, until the dying of the light...
At the time, several of my good friends and colleagues, some facing cancer and some AIDS, were exhibiting extraordinary courage and dignity in their struggles. I was also being made aware of the different stages of the dying and the grieving processes. The piece, cast in a single movement, begins with anger and denial, and then after a building intensity gradually moves into a transcendental dissolving, a peaceful surrender.
Selected Performances of ...Do Not Go Gentle:
Premiere: March 10, 1996, The Philadelphia Trio, F&M Sound Horizons Series,
Lancaster, PA.
April 14, 1996, The Philadelphia Trio,
Friends of Chamber Music in the Delaware Valley,
Devon, PA.
October 6, 1998, The Philadelphia Trio, Temple University,
Philadelphia, Pa.
March 24, 2001, The Philadelphia Trio, Weiss Center, Bucknell University,
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Program Notes for Dream Spiral
I composed Dream Spiral in 1999 especially for Alaria Chamber Ensemble (Yuri Yodovoz, violin, and Nancy Garneiz, piano with guest artist Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet) . I had heard the three musicians rehearse together, and had their particular sound and personalities in mind when I began to compose. The diverse moods of the piece intertwine the pianist’s considerable gift for creating color and nuance, the violinist’s intensely poetic side, and the clarinetist’s mercurial personality with its virtuosic changes of mood. After the work was completed I realized that its episodic structure recalled the return to familiar physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychic landscapes after being transformed by life experiences. Each return seems to be at a different level, and each has the quality of a memory or a parallel universe. The piece as a whole seems like a large dream which builds in intensity as it goes deeper, with the characters changing as a result of their unexpected arrivals in different times and places.
Selected Performances of Dream Spiral:
Premiere: May 6, 1999, Alaria Chamber Ensemble, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, NYC
Program Notes for Dreaming
Cast in a single large movement, it could be thought of as a latter-day fantasy on the “Queen Mab” speech from Romeo and Juliet, in which Mercutio describes the “fairies’ midwife” whose little wagon is drawn “athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep” to bring them dreams. In this, his second work using harpsichord, the composer shows himself to be completely comfortable with the idiosyncrasies of the instrument, able to create new sounds and textures with amazing fluency. (Notes by Bruce Gustafson)
Performances of Dreaming
Premiere: June 2, 1985, Bruce Gustafson and Arthur Lawrence, harpsichordists, Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC
May 30, 1985, Bruce Gustafson and Arthur Lawrence, harpsichordists, Davidson College, NC
February 2, 1986, Bruce Gustafson and Arthur Lawrence, harpsichordists, Nevin Chapel, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Reviews of Dreaming
The Evening Post, Charleston, Vincent C. Schwerin Jr.
“Dreaming”, a new piece by John Carbon, was given its world premiere at this concert. Without benefit of score, this reviewer found the piece highly enjoyable and stimulating. There was a gradual buildup of dissonance that was truly awesome in its use of polychords and complex rhythms. Near the end, a third [actually a third and fourth] harpsichord was introduced via tape and added to the general picture of the unreal world of dreams.
Program Notes for Dreaming The Wild Spirit-Wind Dance
Many cultures have viewed the four winds as spirit forces, entities with power and grace, capable of entering the lives of human beings and changing their fates. Dreaming the Wild Spirit-Wind Dance is about wind with special powers, for example sorcerers, who may become the wind, merging their identities with natural forces, especially in lucid dreams that act as a bridge to the other world. During these lucid dreams--and I am thinking in particular of the type of lucid dreaming described by writer Carlos Castaneda in his Don Juan series--the ordinary preconceptions that imprison us in our sometimes narrow world of perception are suspended, and the dreamer is free to summon other wind spirits, thereby gathering the awesome energies of nature in a ritualistic “dance of creation.”
In Dreaming the Wild Spirit-Wind Dance, for solo clarinet and wind ensemble, the solo clarinet dreams the summoning and gathering of other spirit winds. The ritualistic drumming that drives the dance-like ending of the piece is perhaps unusual for a concerto. This is one of three concertos that Brian Norcross has asked me to compose in the last few years for soloists and winds, the previous two featuring a solo percussionist and saxophonist. The present concerto was written especially for Doris Hall-Gulati and the Franklin and Marshall Symphonic Winds and was composed in the fall of 1989.
Selected Performances of Dreaming the Wild Spirit-Wind Dance
Premiere: April 22, 1990, Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, F&M Symphonic Winds, Brian Norcross, conductor, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Dreams within Dreams
Dreams Within Dreams was composed in the summer of 1989 especially for percussionist Joel Bluestone and the Franklin and Marshall College Chamber Winds. Inspiration for the work was derived from my hobby of reading books about physics (for the non scientist!). In particular, several ideas are addressed in this single-movement concerto for solo percussionist and antiphonally-separated wind instruments. One such idea is that of an infinite number of parallel
universes, reflected in both the multiple personalities of the soloist, who is required to play vibraphone, marimba and xylophone at various times, and in the use of a double woodwind quintet (also acoustically separated), which shares motives which mutate and revel in an atmosphere of surrealist déja-vu through transpositions, rhythmic permutations and other time distortions, such as the recapitulation of musical ideas in variant meters, or the juxtaposition of different musics from previously independent ‘universes’. Of course each player (except the soloist) has his or her double or phantom in the other group, as each instrument is doubled, including the pairs of brass instruments in the choir loft and the chimes which are echoed by the crotales.
There is also a literary association that I kept gravitating toward while composing the music, a certain quotation from Jorge Luis Borges’ The Garden of the Forking Paths, in which a world is described in which there are “an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times. This web of time--the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries --embrace every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words, but am an error, a phantom.” Perhaps the total reality of celestial mechanics is comprised of nothing less than a series of Chinese boxes, an infinite number inside each other, like dreams within dreams?
“If so, if I dream myself, and come upon myself dreaming, who is it dreaming?”
Selected Performances of Dreams within Dreams:
Premiere: September 10, 1989, Joel Bluestone, percussionist, F&M Chamber Winds Society, Brian Norcross, Director, Lancaster, PA.
September 24, 1989, Joel Bluestone, percussionist, F&M Chamber Winds Society, Brian Norcross, Director, Lancaster, PA.
January 27, 1996, Larry Reese, percussionist, F&M Chamber Winds Society, Brian Norcross, Director, Lancaster, PA.
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Program Notes for Fantasy
Fantasy for solo harpsichord and string quartet was composed in 1991 at the request of harpsichordist Bruce Gustafson, for the dedication of Miller Recital Hall at Franklin and Marshall College. It is a 10-minute work in rondo form, with a dark, foreboding beginning section that is contrasted with joyous, more dance-like episodes that eventually triumph over the haunted, macabre mood of the beginning and middle of the piece. The two moods of the work depict the old chapel before restoration, and then the new recital hall with its more cheerful demeanor. Even though short, the piece has aspects of a mini-concerto, especially the cadenza-like runs and flourishes near the end, which might remind one of Bach’s Brandenburg 5.
Premiere: February 11, 1992, Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
Program Notes for Fantasy-Impromptu
Fantasy-Impromptu was composed especially for Susan Klick, whose playing I admire greatly. It is a one-movement trio for flute, cello and piano, intended to showcase all three instrumentalists as equal soloists. A little in form like the Chopin piano work of the same name, it is basically a rondo.
The lively principal idea or refrain isn’t introduced at the very beginning, rather there is a slower, more lyrical section that builds in intensity and increases in tempo up to the first statement of the refrain, which is introduced by the flutist, accompanied by pizzicato cello. This lively refrain section is interrupted suddenly by a darker, more somber and slower episode featuring a varied ostinato (repeating melodic pattern) introduced by the piano, joined by the cello playing a dramatic oration punctuated by quadruple stops and recitative-like fragments. It is a nocturnal mood, which is to return later. But first, like the opening of the work, this section also gradually builds in intensity and increases in tempo until it is also interrupted by the lively refrain, again introduced by the flute and pizzicato cello, but joined this time immediately by the piano. The contrasting, slower nocturnal mood returns, this time with the ostinato in the cello, traded off to the flute. Once again the tempo increases, as does the intensity, until yet another variation of the refrain is reprised. This time the refrain itself increases in tempo and virtuosity until the music deserves the indication Presto energico. After several furioso outbursts accompanied by fortissimo chords in the piano part, the music slows and the final variant of the nocturnal ostinato begins, also in the piano. This time the piano extends the idea with a fuller chordal accompaniment that builds to a maestoso mood which subsides after a fiery outburst by the flute. The music subsides to pianississimo after a ghostly melody played by the cello in harmonics. Suddenly the piano reintroduces the lively refrain, and the trio concludes Presto e fieramente, with a flashy coda.
In order to capture a variety of moods and characters, I employed a tonal language which is highly chromatic in many sections, uses synthetic modes, and also features large tonal areas with materials as varied as triads and clusters. Frequently shifting meters and precision ensemble playing make it a piece of challenging, but hopefully rewarding to play, piece of chamber music.
Selected performances of Fantasy-Impromptu
Premiere: March 13, 1999, Susan Klick, flute, Matthew Herren, ‘cello, Steven Graff, piano, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Felix
Felix is a six-minute saxophone quartet (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone) written in 1995. It is a contrapuntal showcase in which all four parts play an equal part in the invertible counterpoint, and inversion. The tempo is fairly fast throughout and calls upon the saxophonists to demonstrate their ability to create crisp and precise textural balance with carefully rendered articulations and dynamics. The title refers to the cartoon character Felix the Cat, and the animated images that were the first to come over the television tube when broadcasts began. I have been very influenced by the cartoon soundtracks I heard as a child and this piece is one of several of mine that betrays that interest.
Program Notes for Ghost Town Sketches
Ghost Town Sketches was composed in 1993 at the request of English hornist Tamara Field, and was premiered in Boston in 1994. It has been recorded by members of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble for an upcoming release on the MMC recording label. The following quote by Edward Abbey from The Brave Cowboy served as inspiration:
There is a valley in the West where
phantoms brood and mourn,
pale phantoms dying of nostalgia and bitterness.
You can hear them, shivering and chattering
among the leaves of the old dry mortal cottonwoods
down by the river...whispering and moaning
and hissing with the wind...whining their past away
with the wild dove and the mockingbird... and you
may see one, touch one, in the silences and space
and mute terror of the desert.
I have incorporated some cowboy songs taken from the collection by Alan Lomax to help create a ghostly western mood.
I was able to visit several ghost towns as a child, and some of the less commercial ones made quite an impression on me. Each movement is intended to capture the haunted memories of a particular date and time (around a holiday, or in the case of III, an equinox) in a different ghost town.
I. October 31st, 1888, midnight
II. February 14th, 1888, afternoon
III. July 4th, 1889, noon
IV. March 21st, 1852, daybreak
V. November 25th, 1889, sundown
VI. December 24th, 1892, 5:38 p.m.
Selected performances of Ghost Town Sketches
Premiere: October 9, 1994, Sad Trio, Old Deerfield Sunday Afternoon Concert Series,
Deerfield, MI
September 23, 1995, Sad Trio, First Presbyterian Church Chamber Music Series,
Crystal Falls, MI
August 23, 1995, Sad Trio, Newton School of Music, Boston
November 17, 1995, Triptych, Society of Composers Region III Conference, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA. (also broadcast on WITF: Harrisburg)
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Program Notes for Giverny Iris
Giverny Iris(1997) was written for the compact disc recording Waterlilies: Visions of Monet,
released by Moonbridge Recordings in 1998. All of the pieces on the CD were inspired by the paintings of Monet and
were composed especially for the Ensemble Giverny, made up of members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra.
The lively rhythms of this short scherzo-like bagatelleare meant to reflect the vibrant blues and yellows
of Monet's many paintings of Irises.
Selected Performances of Giverny Iris
Premiere: March 3, 1997, Ensemble Giverny, Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon.
[There have been numerous radio broadcasts of this work in the USA, Australia, and Eastern Europe]
Program Notes for Hommage à Trois
Hommage à Trois (1989-91) was the result of a three-year compositional struggle, an exception to my usual fluency. After an initial flurry of compositional activity, generating three times as much material as was finally used, I spent the balance of the time distilling out the remaining thirteen minutes of music. My aim was to present only that which is essential.
The work’s three movements, played without pause, are dedicated to my three composition teachers, Thea Musgrave, Paul Cooper and Peter Racine Fricker. I was very fortunate to have had three powerful mentors who influenced me greatly; but Hommage à Trois is about my misguided struggle to wrestle myself away from their influences. As I began the piece, I tried to accomplish
this by wholeheartedly embracing their styles, to the point where I could wean myself away forever. Paradoxically, I found that when I stopped rebelling against these inner voices, what was uniquely “me” grew out of the tradition to which my teachers belonged. There was no need for the total break I had imagined was necessary. In the end, the piece was a search for my own voice which ended up both embracing my influences and celebrating my differences.
During the composition of Hommages à Trois Peter Racine Fricker, the teacher with whom I both began and finished my studies, died of cancer. This tragic incident inevitably shaped the tone and form of the work, and like the loss of a parent, left me feeling truly on my own in my work. it also explains the tragic outburst at the beginning of the third movement and why the piece begins and ends with similar music. The powerful and mysterious tone of the
first movement reflects the influence of Thea Musgrave’s “dramatic abstract” style and my initiation into the use of intuitive and emotional creative modes of expression. The scherzo-like second movement shows the orchestrational and structural influences of my mentor, Paul Cooper. The coda-like resolution of the piece reflects the cyclical quality of beginning and ending with the same teacher, his passing on, leaving me to find my own way.
Hommage à Trois has been recorded on the VMM label by the Slovak Radio Orchestra under the direction of Szymon Kawalla
Program Notes for Icarus
Icarus, for piano solo, was composed in the summer of 1988 at the request of pianist William Koseluk. The title refers to the Greek myth about Daedalus, an inventor and builder of the labyrinth, and his son, Icarus, who were punished by King Minos of Crete by being placed in the labyrinth. So difficult was the labyrinth that not even its inventor could discover the way out. Daedalus, however, made two pairs of wings as a means of escape. Before the flight, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, as the wax that held the wings together might melt and he would be killed. Icarus, however, was so thrilled by the joy of flight that he disobeyed his father and soared higher and higher, only to fall into the sea when the wax melted.
The mood of the piece reflects the youthful enthusiasm and heroism of the flight of Daedalus and his son and evokes the romantic spirit of the “wanderer.” The work is cast as a one-movement rondo lasting thirteen minutes and is intended as a brilliant showcase for the pianist, who at times might seem to be struggling against impossible odds.
Selected Performances of Icarus
Premiere: November 15, 1988, William Koseluk, pianist, Artists in Concert, Franklin and Marshall College
May 2, 1989, William Koseluk, pianist, Prisms New Music Ensemble, University of California at Santa Barbara
December 8, 1990, Broadcast on BBC New Music program, Rolf Hind, Piano
April 5, 1993, Jon Hendrickson, pianist, Rice University, Houston
Program Notes for Inner Voices
This three-movement [orchestral] piece is the composer’s largest and most venturesome to date. It represents three states of mind and voices inside himself that he became aware of as he worked. Romanticism is expressed here as a voice in each movement that gives it an other-worldly character. The movements are not in a specific key as much as around a tonal center, each movement creating an exotic tension by being as far from the previous one’s tonal center as it can get.
Of his own piece, the composer writes: “the large-scale tonal architecture and fast-slow-fast structure of the three separate movements create a resemblance to a short three-movement symphony. Although the three movements and their different titles imply three separate worlds, the work is really through-composed as far as a progression of emotional and psychological states is concerned. That is, the voice of the first movement, Tigers, which opens ardente e feroce, also expresses the amorous and the heroic (as well as the two descriptive terms movement marking), and builds to a violento climax. This voice also delves into the regretful and mysterious, the powerful and the passionate, ending with a surge.
The voice of the second movement, Phantom, speaks of desolation and a relentless emptiness, which builds several times--again through a feeling of expectancy or inevitability--to several climaxes of intensity, only to fall back into the desolate mood of the opening. The last movement, Nightride, reveals a new inner strength, carried along by a macabre and sinister darkness, which alternates with a giocoso section, and music that is related emotionally (the notturno sections) to the first two movements.
Inner Voices was composed especially for the Warsaw Philharmonic and this recording between December and May of 1991-1992. It is an exploration of my inner spiritual world and the diverse, often competing voices that speak to me in a creative fashion. In that sense, the aesthetic, but not the harmonic language of the piece is probably closest to that of Robert Schumann’s fantasy pieces.” (Notes by Leslie Kandell)
Reviews of Inner Voices
Fanfare Magazine, William Zagorski
“It’s an otherworldly piece that swings between dream and nightmare. Each movement presents a symphonic synthesis...The second movement, Phantoms, is desolate...The third movement, Nightride, projects a sense of triumph. All is done in tonal yet highly convoluted language.”
Program Notes for Jabberwocky
Jabberwocky for chorus, flute and bassoon, was commissioned in 1990 by Millersville University’s Style and Form IV class through a Meet-the-Composer Grant, and was composed in December, 1990. I tried to capture the mock-heroic tone of the famous ballad as told by Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, by following the emotional shape of the original poem, but also by adding ironic touches of musical sarcasm, understatement, and overstatement at appropriate moments.
Humpty Dumpty’s explanation (in Chapter VI) of the nonsense words as being ‘portmanteau’ words is interesting. For example, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’. You may wish to guess the meanings of some of the others yourself. The musical language I’ve chosen to compliment the portmanteaux in the text involves shifting and overlapping modes and synthetic scales, which duel against each other in the protagonist’s mock-heroic battle against the Jabberwocky. The performance should be light-hearted at all times, but subtle and witty. To bring this off, I’ve included many more articulations and dynamic shadings than usual to ensure the necessary refinements for such a droll enterprise.
Selected performances of Jabberwocky:
Premiere: April 18, 1990, Millersville University New Music Ensemble,
Millersville University, PA
April 23, 1993, F&M Chamber Music Singers, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
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Program Notes for Lullabiesfor the Infant Jesus
John Carbon’s Lullabies for the Infant Jesus for harp and small chorus sets two sixteenth century Christmas texts: the well known “Coventry Carol” from the Pageant of the Shearman and Tailors (1591) and the Scottish “Balulalow” (Wedderburn, 1567). Deceptively simple in style, chordal sections containing subtle harmonic inflections are contrasted with more contrapuntal sections whose lines often soar free of the harp accompaniment.
The nuances of the poetry are beautifully portrayed, from Herod’s raging in the Coventry Carol to Balulalow’s ‘I shall rock thee in my hert’. While contemporary in style, both pieces succeed in suggesting a medieval atmosphere of devotion and serenity. (Program Note by Simon Andrews)
Selected Performances of Lullabies for the Infant Jesus
Premiere: December 8, 1989, Franklin and Marshall Chamber Chorus, Steven Edwards, Director, Nevin Chapel, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.
December 24, 1989, Church of the Good Shepherd Choir, Arthur Lawrence, Director, NYC
April 9, 1995, The Franklin and Marshall Chamber Chorus, Simon Andrews, director, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Magic Circus Music
Magic Circus Music, for wind ensemble, was composed in the summer of 1994 especially for the Commissioning Cooperative. My idea for the piece was to evoke feelings and memories of acrobats, parades, clowns, trapeze artists and other icons of the big top. The piece is intended to be impressionistic rather than programmatic.
Harmonically speaking, quartal harmonies, synthetic scales (particularly the octatonic) and tonal fragments (often juxtaposed in bitonal or polytonal strands) are featured in all three movements. Rhythmically, the second movement is challenging because of the shifting meters.
This is my 12th piece for wind ensemble. I played clarinet in high school bands, and my first piece for band - written when I was in high school - used evocations of circus band music in it, so I guess I’ve come full circle. This is meant to be a fun piece to learn, perform and hear.
Selected Performances of Magic Circus Music
Premiere: November 19, 1994, The F&M Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Brian Norcross, Director, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
1994, 12 performances by a consortium of 12 different high schools
Program Notes for Marie Laveau
Marie Laveau, completed in 1983, is a full-length (2 hours) Voodoo-Opera based on legends about Marie Laveau, the legendary Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Music and libretto are both by John Carbon who wrote the story as a play first. The play was produced at University of California (Santa Barbara) in 1981. A recording of selections (with piano reduction) was made in 1985 in New York City.
This opera tells the story of a woman forced to choose between love and power. Although the character Marie Laveau is based on an actual historical figure, the many legends that surround this amazing woman made it possible to create a new tale comprised of several local legends and folk tales gathered from street people of New Orleans and the rich stock of stories (plus a few facts) about the Voodoo world’s heroes and heroines. The opera is cast in the comic-tragic mold and is intended to be a surprising blend of humor, satire, melodrama and pathos.
Synopsis
The opera opens in a church at midnight where Marie invokes a death curse on her rival, Dr. John. She fears his ability to steal her Voodoo followers (her “business”). She also is torn in two because secretly she loves him. In the past she swindled him out of his fortune partly to dethrone him, but more exactly because he would not submit to her amorous designs. While in the process of casting the spell, Marie is interrupted by Euphrasine, a young Creole girl of the upper class, who appears to light a votive candle. Marie hides and overhears Euphrasine’s plight: she is going to be married off by her dying father to an ugly French dwarf who wants her father’s money. She asks St. Jude for a way out of this marriage. After she leaves, Marie makes it clear to St. Expedite (a patron Saint of the Voodoos) that she is going to use Euphrasine to snare Dr. John.
A month later Euphrasine shows up at Marie’s door. She has had a dream in which she fell through a mirror, surrounded by Marie and her Voodoo followers. Marie seizes the moment and reads Euphrasine’s Tarot cards, telling her everything she overheard in the Church a month earlier. She also tells Euphrasine to give Jules (now her husband) the potion she supplies on the night of St. John’s Eve and to come to her ceremony at Bayou St. John. Euphrasine protests but Marie tells her prophetically that she will be there.
Meanwhile, Blackhawk, Marie’s hired spy, has informed Saloppe, Marie’s older mentor, that Dr. John has returned to New Orleans. Blackhawk, who doesn’t believe in Voodoo, teases Saloppe, who in turn tries to scare Blackhawk. She scolds him for frittering away Marie’s time with all his gambling and womanizing. Saloppe takes off for Marie’s place to tell her the news about Dr. John.
When she arrives, Marie is involved in casting another spell, and Saloppe knows it is a love spell to try to snare Blackhawk. She warns Marie that she will lose Blackhawk if she uses her powers to entrap him--just like she lost Dr. John. She tells Marie Dr. John is back. Marie tells Saloppe about the nightmares she’s been having about Dr. John’s demise and doesn’t quite believe Saloppe but finally does as she once again reveals that she is still carrying a torch for Dr. John. Her desire for a lover’s revenge comes to the surface and the scene ends with a reluctant Saloppe helping Marie plot to use Euphrasine as a “fetch” to trap Dr. John.
After Saloppe leaves, Blackhawk shows up and Marie quarrels with him, telling him that he can only get back into her good graces by submitting to her advances. Blackhawk tactlessly hits the nail on the head by telling her she cannot use her power over people to win love but somehow ends up being undressed by Marie as the scene ends with the lovers in each other’s arms.
Sometime later we join Euphrasine and her husband, the French dwarf, Jules. Euphrasine is getting gussied up to go to the St. John’s Eve Ceremony. Jules wants to consummate their now month-old marriage--a condition of Euphrasine’s father’s will if Jules is to inherit the dough. The frustrated Jules pulls a revolver on the prepared Euphrasine who slips the potion Marie gave her (unseen) into a brandy snifter. Jules commands her to submit to his wishes but she persuades him to drink--but only after she suspensefully shoots the wrong brandy snifter out of Euphrasine’s grasp. He sings a “drunken worm” aria and collapses as Euphrasine sneaks away to the ceremony.
Act II opens with Marie leading the Devotees in a wild St. John’s Eve Carnival dance. She gives a powerful speech telling them that they must get rid of the “evil” Dr. John who will undoubtedly show later in the evening, trying to win them over. Euphrasine arrives and a series of possession dances begins. Several of the devotees are possessed by various Voodoo Gods. In Act One, Saloppe tells Marie that Dr. John’s Loa is Ghede, Baron of Cemeteries, who loves Erzulie, Goddess of Love. Shrewdly, Marie devises a scenario in which Euphrasine is possessed by Erzulie, knowing that this will prove to be the best bait for Dr. John. Dr. John arrives dressed as Ghede, and makes his own plea to the crowd, portraying his healing powers and defeating a possessed suitor of the now possessed Euphrasine. They dance together in a wildly sexual dance of possession and he carries her off to his shack in the woods. Marie laughs and tells the crowd to let her go...”people get what they ask for in this world!”
Act Three begins with Marie, who is now stabbing voodoo dolls of Dr. John and Euphrasine, in an effort to make Euphrasine crazy and turn against Dr. John. It is a spell of unrequited love--a mirror of her own situation with Dr. John. Meanwhile at Dr. John’s shack, John has Euphrasine tied to a bed in an effort to restrain her desires. He makes her promise “no more lovin,” unties her, then tells her his story which includes how Marie swindled him out of his fortune he made in Voodoo. He sudden;y gets the idea to use Euphrasine as a means of getting his fortune back and doing in Marie once and for good. He ties her back up and tells her he’s going to Jules to get a ransom and report Marie, the real culprit. As soon as he leaves, Blackhawk, sent by Marie to spy, jumps in the window and takes a liking to Euphrasine. He unties her an decides to steal her away with him and travel up north with his gambling money. He shows Euphrasine the voodoo dolls he has stolen from Marie and puts them on the table for Dr. John to see. Euphrasine is driven over the edge by the sight of the dolls and vows revenge on Dr. John. They leave for Blackhawk’s hideout.
Meanwhile, Marie discovers that the dolls are missing! She goes to Saloppe devastated by the loss of her powers. Dr. John shows up unexpectedly and grinds the dolls he found when he returned to his shack in the dirt at Marie’s feet. He tells Marie that he knows where Euphrasine is--he found Blackhawk’s handkerchief on the floor of his shack and knows he has her. Then he tells her that he sold Euphrasine back to Jules and he is a wealthy man again. He also cuts Marie to the quick by telling her that he knows why she has tried so hard to bring him to his knees for years and years: she wanted him but couldn’t admit it. She is devastated as he leaves and Saloppe has to pull her back together as Marie begins to reinfuse the dolls with her powers.
The final scene opens in a rented room in Josie Arlington’s Five Dollar House on Basin Street where Blackhawk and Euphrasine are in bed. Blackhawk comments on the sad strains of the Black Funeral procession which can be heard from the street in the distance. He tells Euphrasine that they will play uptempo on the way back. As he looks out the window, he sees Jules coming up the street and tells Euphrasine to hide. Euphrasine is crazed and responds by reciting lines at random that she has recited at other times and places. He hides behind a screen and gives Euphrasine his revolver. Jules storms in and quarrels with Euphrasine, who shoots him. They drag the body behind the screen and begin to plot their escape but again hear footsteps. This time Euphrasine hides behind the screen and Dr. John storms in looking for Euphrasine. he begins to strangle Blackhawk and they back out of sight onto the veranda. Meanwhile the funeral band has returned and is now playing “Oh Didn’t he Ramble” at a deafening pitch. Above the sound we hear shots ring out and Dr. John reemerges. He grabs the deranged Euphrasine and they fall oblivious on the bed wild with passion.
Marie enters unseen with a knife and the dolls. Just as she places the knife in Euphrasine’s grasp (stabbing the dolls frantically) Dr. John turns around and sees her! He picks Euphrasine up and pushes her at Marie. Euphrasine stabs Marie to death. Euphrasine has a short mad scene. Saloppe arrives and falls hysterically on Marie, then asks about Blackhawk. Dr. John points to the veranda and Saloppe rushes out to find the body. Meanwhile, Voodoo drums are heard in the distance and Euphrasine is driven over the edge into possession once again and becomes Erzulie, Empress of the Voodoos. Saloppe brings the limping Blackhawk in (who has only been shot in his “seat ‘o learnin’”). Blackhawk looks upon the body of Marie. he places some money from his bankroll on her body and tearfully demands that she get a decent burial. Saloppe and Blackhawk decide to go to Port-au-Prince with the bankroll and leave Dr. John and Euphrasine alone in the gathering darkness. the lovers gaze into each other’s eyes hypnotically above the sound of the drums and Euphrasine, the new Voodoo Queen, commands him: “Come, my people call me.” The opera ends as they float off into the distance.
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Program Notes for Music for Two Clarinets
Music for Two Clarinets was written for clarinetists Doris Hall-Gulati and Harry Jepson in 1993. It is a set of miniature character pieces which combine to create a 9-minute work.
Selected Performances of Music for Two Clarinets
Premiere: May 12, 1993, Doris Hall-Gulati and Harry Jepson, New Art Voices Opening, Lancaster, PA
June 9, 1995, Harry Jepson and Bernie Schwartz at the New Settlement Art School, NYC
Program Notes for New Moon Music
My second string quartet, New Moon Music, was composed especially for the Essex Quartet as a companion piece to my first string quartet, Quartetto spettrale, which is a primarily dark and macabre piece. New Moon Music is intended to evoke the entire lunar cycle by its form which waxes in mood and texture up to the golden section and then wanes until it disappears. Astrologically the new moon symbolizes growth, renewal and enthusiastic rebirth, and certain parts of the piece attempt to capture the urgency of the new growth around the vernal equinox.
Selected performances of New Moon Music
Premiere: July 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1994, by the Essex Quartet, At the Arcady Music Festival at four locations in Maine: Belfast, Bar Harbour, Bangor and Dover Foxcroft; all four performances broadcast on Maine Public Radio
Review of New Moon Music
The Ellsworth American, Ellsworth, ME, Win Pusey
“The opening work, a world premiere of New Moon Music, by John Carbon, written for this [Arcady Music] festival, began with Yuhsik Andrew Kim’s haunting cello solo. Kim counts Yo-Yo Ma as one of his coaches and there were moments of uncanny resemblance.
Carbon’s music projected dissonant piquancy without losing a certain semblance of tonal structure and each player made the most of it. Violist Amy Dulsy-Little brought dynamic warmth as the intensity increased and the violins, Claire Chan and Zoran Jakovcic, added symmetrical brilliance. The music itself dissolved into joyous cacophony before a powerful unison theme again brought focus.
Although no movements were indicated there was a clear separation into two parts, the second being a marvelous first violin solo accompanied by the other three voices. Jakovcic displayed the charisma of a pied piper in the bird-song like cadenza, sublimating his first-class technical skill to creativity. When he finally descended into a g-string rhapsody at the end, it sent shivers into the room.”
Program Notes for Night Music
Night Music, for violin and piano, was composed in the late spring of 1987, at the request of Marta Jurjevich and Steven Edwards. The piece is a “Fantasy-Nocturne,” cast in a single movement, lasting about nine minutes. In the tradition of Bartók and Crumb’s “night music,” my piece features nocturnal sounds reminiscent of natural phenomena, obtained by the performers through the use of “special effects” ranging from string harmonics, glissandi and pizzicati, to inside the piano playing. This sound world is intended to evoke the magical perceptions of night that we feel as children (and sometimes as adults) that can be scary, playful, or peaceful in the course of a single night of existence (both in dreaming and in insomnia).
Selected Performances of Night Music
Premiere: October 12, 1987, Marta Jurjevich, violin, Steven Edwards, piano, St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, IN.
November 30, 1987, Marta Jurjevich, violin, Steven Edwards, piano, F&M Sunday Concert Series, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Niobe’s Tears
This is a lyrical and short 2 -minute work for solo flute that is based on the Ovid myth. I was influenced by Britten’s Metamorphoses for solo oboe in the modal and neoclassical style that is employed here.
Selected Performances of Niobe’s Tears
Premiere: November 3, 1991, Lucy Stimson, flute, Sundays at Eight, St. Mary’s Church high Pavement, Nottingham, England
Program Notes for Notturno for Trumpet, Harp, and Strings
Notturno for Trumpet, Harp, and Strings, was composed for Jeffrey Silberschlag. The work has been recorded and released on Delos, performed by Mr. Silberschlag with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz.
While composing the work, I had in mind impressions of hot summer nights I once spent in Madrid, Spain. Cast as a single-movement fantasy, the music increases in complexity and excitement as the city wakes from its siesta and shopkeepers resume their posts in the early evening hours. Gradually, as the families with their elegantly dressed children begin their promenades, the orchestration becomes thicker and the music more agitated. Traffic noise increases and the city comes alive as students and young business people join each other in the outdoor cafes for drinks, cigarettes, and snacks. Finally, after the long dinner hour, the music begins to calm into a sensual serenade, as the only strollers left on the street are the lovers, embracing in front of the now-closed shop windows. The music ends quietly, as it began, with the city once again asleep.
There are several unifying motives throughout the piece. One is a violent flamenco-like stamping of repeated notes; another is reminiscent of the four-note descending ostinato that is repeated throughout Maurice Ravel’s tribute to Spain, Rhapsodie espagnole. The virtuoso solo trumpet plays the role of omnipresent observer, reacting to and commenting on the life of the city as it unfolds.
Selected Performances of Notturno
Premiere: April 28, 1999, Jeffrey Silberschlag, trumpet, New York Chamber Symphony, with George Manahan, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC
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Program Notes for Paseos
Paseos for flute and guitar was written at the request of guitarist James Hontz. These short pieces were inspired by a vacation I took in Spain. Each little excursion is intended to be a miniature evocation of a particular setting I visited. The pieces are meant to capture the spirit of a stroll or walk, sometimes along a cloudy beach, or at other times (as the titles suggest), in the solitude of the moonlit mountains. The work has been recorded by the Hontz-McDermott Duo on the CGS label and was used as a fund-raising gift in the WITF Harrisburg pledge drive in 1996.
Selected Performances of Paseos
Premiere: March 10, 1996, Hontz-McDermott Duo, Fine Arts at First, Monroe, MI.
March 31, 1996, Hontz-McDermott Duo, Flute Society of Greater Philadelphia, Perkins Center for the Arts, Philadelphia
April 16, 1996, Hontz-McDermott Duo, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA.
May 2, 1996, Radio Broadcast, WITF, Hontz-McDermott Duo, and numerous other radio broadcasts of recording during fund-raising drive of 1996.
August 27, 1996, Live Radio Broadcast, WNYC, NYC, Hontz-McDermott, Duo
Review of Paseos
American Record Guide, Elaine Fine
“John Carbon’s Paseos, with its harmonically and rhythmically interesting interchanges and unusual guitar writing, is the most challenging music here. It has five playful, light, soft and sweet sections. The rest of the contemporary music is all harmless and very tonal.”
Program Notes for Pentacles
Pentacles, my second work for organ, was composed in January of 1988 for the dedication of Kalamazoo College’s new organ at Bruce Gustafson’s request. In a single movement, the work alternates between introverted, lyrical refrains and more extroverted episodes of figuration. These two characterizations develop as the rondo progresses; the episodes become increasingly demonic, but the refrains respond with ever-increasing lyricism and warmth. Although developmental in form, the piece evolves out of minimal material based on fifths (hence the title) and seconds.
Selected Performances of Pentacles
Premiere: March 4, 1988, Bruce Gustafson, Organ, at the Dedicatory Concert for the Stetson Chapel Organ, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI
December 6, 1990, Karl Moyer, organ, Chadron State College, Chadron, NE
January 13, 1991, Karl Moyer, organ, Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity, Lancaster, PA
March 22, 1992, Sam Porter, organ, at the Society of Composers 26th National Conference, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL
Program Notes for Piano Concerto
The Piano Concerto for piano and large orchestra was written especially for William Koseluk and the Czech Radio Orchestra as part of their historic first American tour in 1998. Mr. Koseluk writes the following about the concerto:
“With an intensity and gestural language in the tradition of the Brahms D minor, the Liszt E-flat major and other notable works in the same genre, John Carbon’s Piano Concerto makes an effective new mark in a medium too long overburdened with the piano-as-noise. Indeed, this new work recognizes the piano as melodic and seeks to exploit this instrument in a manner that shows its many riches and colors. This is not to suggest that the work is a throwback to sentiment or a mere example of neo-romanticism. Rather, it is certainly new, with enough complex formal and harmonic constructs - disjunct in the romantic mold - to escape being seen as a return to a bygone era. Certainly, polychordal and dissonant dialogues between orchestra and piano bring this piece to the contemporary field. Serenity, though, and tender melodic consideration are also an important part of the compositional fabric and provide the listener with a rich, varied, experience.
It was the composer’s intent to vaguely imitate the compositional and performing temperament of the premiering pianist (William Koseluk). In fact, a key theme in the piece is a partial paraphrase of one of Koseluk’s early melodies, a composition dedicated to Mr. Carbon. In the Piano Concerto, though, the treatment is very new and different.
The theme is presented and developed, but it is actually encapsulated within a larger set of chordal and technical movements which treat this melody more as a harmonic element, rather than a specific melody to be played, repeated, developed, and sentimentalized.
The work is in one movement, with three sections. The first is grand and dynamic: the section demands decisive interaction and declamation between all forces. Many motives and thematic fragments are presented, all of which are recapitulated at different times for different purposes. The second section contrasts, with a lyric melody with a rather original sentiment very much in the character of Carbon’s lyric writing. The final section is whimsical, yet very technically demanding for the pianist. This movement certainly reveals the composer’s skill in writing for the instrument, allowing the performer to show much technique, in a manner appropriate to the instrument, while also showing the instrument’s lyric and harmonious side as well.”
The Piano Concerto has been recorded by William Koseluk for the MMC label.
Selected Performances of Piano Concerto
American Premiere: November 30, 1998, William Koseluk, pianist, with the Czech Radio Orchestra of Prague, Vladimír Válek, musical director, as part of their Boston-Prague Contemporary Music Festival, and first American Tour, Symphony Hall, Boston
European Premiere: May 3, 1999, William Koseluk, pianist, with the Czech Radio Orchestra of Prague, Vladimír Válek, musical director, as part of their Boston-Prague Contemporary Music Festival, Smetana Hall, Prague
Program Notes for Quartetto spettrale
My first string quartet, Quartetto spettrale, was composed especially for the Essex Quartet. Cast in a single 15-minute movement, the piece unfolds from a series of juxtaposed vignettes which are of strongly contrasting moods. A violent opening gesture is followed by a more elegant mood, which gives way to a lyric intensity. The overall topic is that of the “spectral” or haunted and macabre, and the vignettes are extended and developed into a long crescendo and accelerando of increasing intensity near the climax of the work. While composing the quartet I was influenced by Janacek, Ligeti, Szymanowski, Bartók, Poe and Baudelaire.
Selected Performances of Quartetto spettrale
September 17, 1993, Essex Quartet, F&M Sound Horizon Series, Miller Recital Hall,
Lancaster, PA.
September 21, 1993, Essex Quartet, Nicholas Music Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Program Notes for Rhapsody
Rhapsody for clarinet and chamber orchestra was composed in 1997 for Doris Hall-Gulati. It is cast in a single, rhapsodic movement tied together by several key motives punctuated by cadenzas by the soloist. The work alternates among four basic tempi and moods and represents a journey in which the soloist is “transformed” by the time the opening mood returns at the end of the piece. The opening (larghetto, tranquillo), portrays the soloist in a solitary mood surrounded by sparse orchestration and introspective figuration. The mood changes to a more capricious one and the surroundings become more dense as the clarinet explores “slap tongued” percussive moments, and the tempo begins a long accelerando, which is eventually halted by a new mood and texture (cantabile ed amabile; una memoria) in which the soloist is invited to display lyricism underscored by the strings and echoed by various winds. This cantabile mood increases in intensity and tempo, returning to the scherzo-like mood that preceded it. A transition leads to the fourth mood and tempo (allegro giocoso), dance-like music, displaying driving rhythms and hints of exoticism. The shifting meters of this section are interrupted by a sudden return of the earlier cantabile. However, this time, the soloist is accompanied by the two clarinets in the orchestra and xylophone and strings. The accelerando ends this time with a bravura solo cadenza, which leads, in turn, to a reprise of the allegro giocoso. The dance is driven forward by the soloist into a manic presto, ending suddenly fortissimo. The soloist continues, however, with another unaccompanied utterance bringing back the solitary music of the beginning. The work ends with a brief return to the larghetto, tranquillo mood of the very opening, scored even more sparsely with ethereal string harmonies and accompanying woodwind duets in the orchestra.
Rhapsody has been recorded by Doris Hall-Gulati with the New York Chamber Symphony, conducted by Gerard Schwarz, for the MMC label.
Selected Performances of Rhapsody
Premiere: April 27, 1997, Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, with Gerard Schwarz conducting the New York Chamber Symphony, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC
Review of Rhapsody
Allan Kozinn, New York Times:
“...only a few of the works made a lasting impression, on first hearing. The most striking was John Carbon’s Rhapsody for clarinet and chamber orchestra, in which a demandingly agile clarinet line, played with both virtuosity and nuance by Doris Hall-Gulati, wove its way through a variegated orchestral fabric. Except for a slow, dark-hued coda, the orchestral writing was brisk and vital, and rich in the coloristic effects of the sort that create depth rather than artificial glitter.
.....an essentially Neoromantic style with a modernist tinge...”
Program Notes for Rasgos
Rasgos (Sketches) for violin and chamber ensemble, was composed in the late summer and fall of 1992 at the request of Brian Norcross, who asked that I write a concerto for violinist Claire Chan and the Franklin & Marshall College Chamber Music Society. The idea behind the piece was to employ winds, harp and percussion, with the violin playing a prominent solo part, as in a concerto. Initially, I was stumped by the problems the instrumentation posed because I worried that the violin might be overpowered by the winds, and I couldn’t imagine a satisfying blend of the contrasting timbres.
It was only when I was in Madrid the summer of 1992 and had visited the Prado Museum several times, enjoying the sketches of Goya which were on exhibit, that I found a solution. I had just finished a large, thick, complex work for orchestra and I was fascinated by how much Goya conveyed in his often incomplete and always miniature sketches, which employed so few lines. Instead of a concerto, I decided to create a set of fourteen miniature rasgos (sketches) whose individual titles were borrowed from the poetry of Spanish poet Garcia-Lorca. These titles turned out to be more of a direct inspiration than the Goya sketches, because each movement or sketch was inspired not so much by an individual drawing by Goya, but more by the general style of his drawings. Like the music I composed, these drawings seemed to be incomplete studies. Only a small portion of each sketch is completed in any detail; the other portions are left with a few lines to suggest something vague and at times enigmatic. Also like the sketches of Goya, my pieces are very thin in texture, and remain intentionally terse in form and development.
Unlike the piano work Goyescas, by the Spanish composer Granados, which contains six pieces based on particular paintings by the artist, my piece differs in that there is no intended correspondence between each movement and the sketches I viewed. Even though the Spanish sound of Rasgos is sometimes only subliminally present, and may not be obvious to all listeners, I think the fascination and pleasure felt upon experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of Spain for the first time is reflected in the various moods of the work as a whole.
Rasgos has been recorded by violinist Claire Chan with the Concordia Orchestra of New York, conducted by Maron Alsop for the MMC label.
Selected Performances of Rasgos
Premiere: February 28, 1993, Claire Chan, violin, with the F&M Chamber Music Society, Brian Norcross, conductor, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
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Program notes for Shadows and Echoes of Summer
Commissioned by Catholic University, this piece is a single movement Serenade for solo harp, double woodwind quintet, brass quartet and double bass. I composed the work as a more introverted “shadow” or “echo” of a previous work of mine, Dreams within Dreams, written for percussion with the same accompanying instruments. The extra-musical sparks that ignited my imagination in the present work were shadows and echoes, and particularly shadows of summery things such as roses. I was interested in the parallels between shadows and echoes and the way in which both of these images in turn generate memories. And then again, I was interested in the way a memory can be a type of echo or shadow or remembrance. The bell-like resonances that echo throughout the work are attempts to capture that unique luminosity characteristic of summer evenings and the memories of all such evenings that are superimposed upon the present.
Shadows and Echoes of Summer was jointly commissioned by Catholic University and Franklin and Marshall College, and composed during the early summer months of 1990 in Lancaster, PA.
Selected Performances of Shadows and Echoes of Summer
Premiere: February 23, 1991, Felicia Coppa, harp, and F&M Chamber Winds, Brian Norcross, Director, Miller Recital Hall, F&M College, Lancaster, PA.
January 27, 1996, Felicia Coppa, harp, and F&M Chamber Winds, Brian Norcross, Director, Miller Recital Hall, F&M College, Lancaster, PA.
Program Notes for Sinfonia
Sinfonia for chamber orchestra was composed throughout 1996-1997. The title derives from the Greek syn (‘together’) and phone (‘sounding’). The term was used from the late Renaissance to the present for a wide variety of genres, mostly instrumental, and has also been used by twentieth-century composers (Britten, Berio) to describe a work that is lighter than a symphony. Mr. Carbon had in mind the Franklin & Marshall College Orchestra while composing the work. The way the group has grown both in numbers and ability is reflected in the music he composed for them. The use of solo and duet material juxtaposed with full orchestra was exploited out of a desire to feature some of the excellent individual musicians in the group.
Mr. Carbon was thinking more of a collection of short stories than a novel when he settled on the overall form of the work. The five short movements share motives but are separate worlds that hopefully compliment one another even though they tell different stories. The darker, more dramatic-abstract style employed in the Introduction and Twilight Piece gives way to a lighter, parodistic vein in the Rondo. The opening of the Passacaglia returns to the depths, but the mood modulates into a lighter more scherzo-like feeling towards the end, which provides a transition to the jubilant mood of the bustling moto perpetuo Finale.
(notes by Theodore Tzirimis)
Selected Performances of Sinfonia
Premiere: January 30, 1999, F&M Philharmonia, Brian Norcross, Director, Miller Recital Hall, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Six Spanish Lessons
Six Spanish Lessons for solo harpsichord was composed in the summer of 1988 during a period when I was enjoying beginning spanish lessons along with my friend and colleague harpsichordist Bruce Gustafson. The lessons were given to us by another colleague and friend, Ana Börger-Reese, and took place in her garden. The piece was subsequently premiered by Mr. Gustafson at Franklin and Marshall College that fall.
The titles need a bit of explanation, even for those who have more than a passing knowledge of the language. After a Prólogo, which sets the mood with a reference to a well-known folk tune, the suite begins with the depiction of the manic La perra Marysol, the very small hyperactive dog of our teacher, who was always present at these gatherings. In the following piece, La siesta de Domenico Scarlatti, the famous harpsichordist/composer is depicted during his sojourn in Spain with hand-crossings (one of his trademarks) perhaps in the middle of a dream (indicated in the score by the words “el sueño”). Because Ana used to always take a siesta before, during and after our lessons, this piece is necessary. Next we have Siempre elegante, (always elegant), a reference to the extravagant meals Ana served in her garden. The absurdist piece, Y de niño? (and as a child?) refers to the terrifying drills in the imperfect tense we performed as students. The teacher is depicted in the faster parts of the piece and the students more slowly. The suite concludes with El trabajo del gato (the cat’s work), which refers to Blanche, Bruce’s cat, yet another resident of the garden who was always occupied with afternoon chores.
Selected Performances of Six Spanish Lessons
Premiere: Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Franklin and Marshall College Sunday Concert Series, Lancaster, PA
September 28, 1991, Bruce Gustafson, harpsichord, Society of Composers Region III Conference at Radford University, Radford, VA
Program Notes for Six Spanish Songs
These songs were composed for Kristin Samuelson in 1990, and join a number of works that are characterized by lyricism and a warmly chromatic tonal idiom. The poems (in spanish) are by the passionate Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, whose life was cut short in the Spanish Revolution (1936). The musical settings evoke but do not imitate the florid and intense style of Flamenco song, as they also stir memories of the spiced harmonies so associated with Spanish music in general. This is the composer’s second essay in this vocabulary, following his Six Spanish Lessons for harpsichord (1986).
Selected Performances of Six Spanish Songs
Premiere: Kristin Samuelson, soprano, Joan Krueger, piano, F&M Sound Horizons Series, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Six Twilight Pieces
John Carbon, of the Franklin & Marshall College Music Department, allows the solo clarinetist to select both the number of works to play and their order from the complete set of six. A clarinetist himself, Professor Carbon knows the instrument well. The Conjurer has to do with the casting of a spell and introduces moods of sensuousness, agitation, grandeur, fury, and mystery. “It Burbled As It Came...” refers to Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, a dragon-like creature from Alice in Wonderland. The movement calls for performance “as fast as possible” and ends with an explosive rush. Finches was drawn from a real-life situation in which an owner was driven wild by her birds. The music makes the outcome clear. (notes by Doris Hall-Gulati)
Selected Performances of Six Twilight Pieces
Premiere: Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet, Sound Horizons Series, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Sphinx
The title of this work, a word that generally connotes the awe-inspiring mystery and majesty of the ancient Egyptians, is something of an irony, as it is really a very light-hearted and playful tune for solo piano. To add to this playful effect, the ostinato played on five “prepared” notes is heard throughout. As a further irony, Dr. Carbon wrote this piece soon after celebrating his 39th birthday and, evidently beginning to feel his own mortality, included musical excerpts that dealt with death and passing: the traditional Gregorian chant “Dies Irae”. a theme from the Les Adieux Sonata by Beethoven, a leitmotif from the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheinhold with clock chimes which symbolize the passage of time. (notes by Peter Smith)
Selected Performances of Sphinx
Premiere: January 27, 1991, Peter Smith, piano, senior recital at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Suite Trouvères
Composing for any instrument that you do not play is a challenge, but guitar poses particularly thorny problems for many composers. Fortunately, I was able to work closely with an excellent guitarist who literally played each few measures as they emerged, often suggesting revisions that were more idiomatic or effective.
What emerged from this process was a set of five miniatures. Each movement is either song-like or dance-derived. Canto - to be played slowly, with ancient yearning - is meant to serve as an extemporaneous, bard-like introduction to the rest of the Suite. Sogno (dream), enigmatic and stoic, relies on harmonics and ringing notes that stand out against a stark staccato background to evoke the feeling of a fading dream memory. Burlesque is a dance-like account of the adventures of a knight errant; the performer is instructed to play “with parody”, to create a mock-heroic effect in the irregular subdivisions of the beat, abrupt cadences, sudden accelerandos, and quivering tremolos. Aubade is a waltz-like song of lovers parting at daybreak. The fast and furious Toccata is a study in lombardic and iambic rhythms (short-long and long-short). This short virtuosic movement employs quartal harmonies (chords built on fourths) and explores the entire range of the guitar, from the lowest notes to the very top of the fingerboard.
Premiere: September 30, 1984, Allen Krantz, Sunday Concert Series, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
1985-1986, 3 broadcasts on WPEB FM (Philadelphia) of Allen Krantz, guitarist, discussing and performing on Guitaromania by Michael Wright, Philadelphia
April 2, 1991, James Hontz, Temple University, Philadelphia
May 26, 1991, James Hontz, at a Classical Guitar Society Concert, Philadelphia
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Program Notes for The Pond in Winter
This short work is one of a number of pieces written for a CD recording, Waterlilies: Visions of Monet,
released by Moonbridge Recordings. This particular piece was inspired by a black and white photograph of a Japanese
Garden in winter that Monet had hanging in his home at Giverny.
Selected Performances of The Pond in Winter
Premiere: March 3, 1997, Ensemble Giverny, made up of members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra
at the Portland Art Museum.
[This work has been broadcast on numerous radio stations in the USA, Australia, and Eastern Europe]
Program Notes for Transcendental Études, Book I
John Carbon’s Four Études are meditations inspired by the ancients’ quaternity of elements: air, earth, fire, and water. “Ariel’s Invention” turns into an upward spiral of counterpoint that vanishes into thin air at the end of this brief but difficult étude. The mugwumps in the second movement are “persons of great importance,” rather than specific political creatures, and their dance is earthy and barbaric.
“Fireflies,” written ppp throughout, builds in intensity as the fireflies appear over a dark passacaglia. This movement was the most difficult one to write. The composer’s problem was how to portray fire. He found the answer one spring evening outside the Herman Arts Center (on the Franklin and Marshall College campus) when he stopped to watch the fireflies come out. The “Rainmaker’s Song” suggests drops of water by means of a continual flurry of notes that gradually change color as they evolve into new patterns. (notes by Courtney Adams)
Selected Performances of Transcendental Études, Book I
Premiere: February 15, 1985, Betty Oberacker, piano, Sunday Concert Series, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
March 23, 1986, Marian Bucklew, piano, Catonsville Community College, Catonsville, MD
January-March 1986, Betty Oberacker, piano, People’s Republic of China (3 performances)
March 25, 1986, Betty Oberacker, piano, Prisms Concert, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
February 7, 1988, Silvia Glickman, piano, Millennium Concert, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Reviews of Four Transcendental Études Book I
LIP (Lancaster Independent Press) by Ross Care
”Carbon’s work was not the academic exercise in worn-out serialism one might have expected a few years ago, but rather a vital, appealing work, by turns lyrical, flowing, technically challenging (as the performer pointed out) and even humorous, as in the clever, cynical “Earth Dance of the Mugwumps” movement. ... most effective was the third étude, ‘Fireflies,’ a sustained movement in the Bartókian night-music mood, but one in which the composer’s originality seemed most apparent. A remarkable piece of keyboard writing, a kind of endless melody in the piano’s middle register wound its way through the entire movement amidst pointillistic dabs of color from both extremes of the keyboard, and even from the interior of the instrument when the performer was called upon to strum the lower strings to add a soft shimmer of vibrating color.”
Program Notes for Troika
Much of my recent music is intended as a ticket to a psychological journey. Often taken without pause, these journeys are meant to come full circle, paradoxically ending in the same place but seen from a different perspective.
Troika, was composed in the Fall of 1989 (completed on Halloween) at the special request of Tamara Field. The unusual combination of English horn, clarinet, cello and piano, suggested a rather dark, wintry landscape to me. In fact, the image that first came to mind--and that which I attempted to convey throughout the work--was of a dark snowy night spent in a horse-drawn sleigh. From this image I fantasized a story of sorts that put me as a child in a troika (horse-drawn sleigh) crossing a frozen winter lake somewhere in the mountains of Europe during the second World War. I had a vision of being held-safe and protected-in my father’s arms as we crossed the lake. The allusion to Schubert’s Erlkönig came to mind, as the journey crystallized in my consciousness. As in the Schubert, while we traveled into the snowy night something dark and frightening surrounded and threatened us (an allusion to the time period perhaps), but unlike the outcome in Goethe’s poem, we managed to travel through the danger to the safety of a warm and welcoming hotel on the other side of the lake. These images were much in my mind as I worked on the piece. Although the opening, more comforting, music returns near the end of the work, there is a subtle change in tone that suggests a shift in consciousness. We’re back where we started, but our perspective is different because of what we’ve been through.
Cast in a single movement, the piece calls for virtuosic chamber-music expertise from all four players, and is dedicated to Tamara Field.
Selected Performances of Troika
Preview: Tamara Field and Chicago Lyric Players, L’Anse, MI
Premiere: September 17, 1989, Tamara Field, with players from Chicago Lyric Opera, The Chicago Temple, Chicago, IL
April 28, 1991, Tamara Field with the Timberland Chamber Players, Crystal Falls, MI
November 3, 1991, Tamara Field, English horn, Frank Corliss, piano, Jan Pfeiffer, ‘cello, and Richard Shaughnessy, clarinet, on the 1991-1992 Parlor Recital Series at the United Parish in Brookline, MA
Program Notes for Two Concert Arias
These arias were composed in the spring months of 1990, especially for baritone Stephen Kalm, who requested a new work which could be presented on voice recitals. Together, the two texts, taken from Edmond Rostand’s ‘Heroic Comedy’ of 1898, Cyrano de Bergerac, adapted here and translated from the original French by Sarah White, make a short scene which shows the depth of Cyrano, a poet with a grotesquely large nose, and a wit, ego and heart to match it.
The second aria, A Modicum of Wit, is a catalog aria in which Cyrano lists a variety of improvements on his detractor’s blunt comment that his nose is “rather large.” This aria calls for a virtuosic mercuriality of mood and lightning-fast impersonations of various characterizations. Cyrano is at his wittiest and most flippantly sarcastic here. The first aria, I Have No Illusions, shows the underlying pathos of Cyrano’s plight. He betrays his longing for a normal life and the comfort of a lover’s acceptance while confiding to a friend.
Selected Performances of Two Concert Arias
Premiere: October 11, 1990, Sound Horizons Series, Franklin and Marshall College,
Lancaster, PA
November 8, 1990, Stephen Kalm, baritone, Greenwich House, NYC
November 21, 1990, Stephen Kalm, baritone, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Program Notes by the composer for Violin Concerto
Completed in 1995, for Peter Zazofsky, this concerto for violin and large orchestra has been recorded by the Warsaw Philharmonic with Gerhardt Zimmermann conducting. Cast in three movements, the plan is moderate, slow, fast. The first movement begins with soft flutterings in the strings and harp and progresses to a passionate first outburst from the violin in its highest register. The five-note motive that the soloist introduces is presented in many different moods and textures, and there is little extraneous material in the first movement. The mood is one of intense yearning with forceful outbursts. This movement ends with a serene coda that leads into the more amorous mood of the second movement.
Slower in tempo, the second movement is songlike and lyrical, with tragic undercurrents. The middle section is a barcarolle-like jazzy section with bluesy clarinet and flute obbligatos and string harmonics. After a return to the opening mood this movement ends with a cushion of string harmonics that supports a long prayer-like recitative in the solo violin part.
The utter calm at the end of the second movement is broken by the beginning of the third movement which is marked Allegro tumultuoso. The percussion and accented irregular note groupings lead into a rollicking perpetuo moto that gains speed as it progresses. Only one short passage of stasis above a walking bass slows the momentum as the soloist demonstrates more and more technical expertise, ending the movement with a coda taken at breakneck speed.
Reviews of Violin Concerto:
Fanfare Magazine:
“ John Carbon’s more traditionally structured, three-movement Violin Concerto, recorded in 1995, the year in which it appeared, ventures further harmonically and melodically, and offers the soloist more opportunities for technical display. Unlike so many works in which disjointed melodies leap capriciously among dissonant harmonies, Carbon’s showcases the solo violin in conjoint ones that brood (as in the ominous conclusions of the second movement) and soar, albeit in unfamiliar harmonic territory. The finale’s dazzling, kinetic virtuosity culminates a difficult but rewarding work. ”
American record Guide:
“ ...many moments of genuine beauty ”
Program Notes for Voices
This short five-minute work for SATB and organ is a setting of Psalm 19, verses 1-4. It has been performed in various churches since it was composed in 1986 and is only moderately difficult.
Selected Performances for Voices
Premiere: September 12, 1988, Lancaster Chamber Singers, Steven Edwards, Director, St. James Church, Lancaster, PA
Program Notes for Weeping Willow
This miniature for shakuhachi solo was inspired by a painting with the same name by Monet.
Selected Performances of Weeping Willow
This short work has been performed by Larry Tyrrell in Portland, Oregon.
Program Notes for Wind Shadows
Wind Shadows is a song cycle for soprano, clarinet and piano, which I composed for soprano Kristin Samuelson in 1990. The cycle is a setting of four poems by D.H. Lawrence. The first song, Mystic Blue, juxtaposes large tonal areas in a moderate tempo with some forward momentum created by rocking motion in the piano. All three instruments are equally involved in the first song. The second song, for voice and piano only, Piano, is about a man who remembers sitting at his mother’s feet when he was a child while she played the piano. The piano in this case plays something that sounds like a solo in the background more than an accompaniment while the voice floats above it, evoking the quality of reminiscence and nostalgia. The third song, for voice and clarinet only, is a dryly humorous setting of Lawrence’s ironic poem The English Are So Nice! The capricious figuration of the clarinet is in stark contrast to the rather terse vocal declamations. It should be sung with a British accent if possible. The mood indication is “Nice, but not too nice...,” which is a bit of advice from the poem as to how the English should be handled. The last song, A Baby Running Barefoot, again for all three instruments, has a background of rippling moto perpetuo arpeggiations in the piano, while the clarinet and voice sustain more lyrical lines above and through the transparent wash of color the piano provides. The soft, yet rhythmic quality of the first line of this fourth poem was the impetus for the entire cycle: “When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass...”
Selected Performances of Wind Shadows
Premiere: December 13, 1992 Kristin Samuelson, soprano, Ed Gilmore, clarinet, Richard Duncan, piano, Nicholas Roerich Museum, NYC
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