Spotlight Interview: Martin Bresnick

GRACE is a musical meditation on Heinrich von Kleist's brief essay “The Puppet Theatre”. In the essay, two friends meeting in a public park discuss the concept of grace as suggested by a simple puppet show. During their conversation they observe, among other ideas, how easy it is to lose grace and what should be done to find it again. GRACE was commissioned by Ronald H. Martin, Jr. for his grandmother and written for marimbist Robert Van Sice.

Watch our video interview with Martin Bresnick:

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Featuring: Robert van Sice and Eduardo Leandro, marimbas;
The Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale, Yale School of Music,
Shinik Hahm, music director
For information on the Yale School of Music, visit http://www.yale.edu/music

Martin Bresnick's compositions, from chamber and symphonic music to film scores and computer music, are performed throughout the world. Bresnick delights in reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, bringing together repetitive gestures derived from minimalism with a harmonic palette that encompasses both highly chromatic sounds and more open, consonant harmonies and a raw power reminiscent of rock. At times his musical ideas spring from hardscrabble sources, often with a very real political import. But his compositions never descend into agitprop; one gains their meaning by the way music itself unfolds, and always on its own terms.
Besides having received many prizes and commissions, the first Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Koussevitzky Commission, among many others, Martin Bresnick is also recognized as an influential teacher of composition. Students from every part of the globe and of virtually every musical inclination have been inspired by his critical encouragement.
Martin Bresnick's compositions are published by Carl Fischer Music Publishers, New York; Bote & Brock, Berlin; CommonMuse Music Publishers, New Haven; and have been recorded by New World Records, Albany Records, Bridge Records, Composers Recordings Incorporated, Centaur, and Artifact Music. He joined the Yale Faculty in 1981, and is currently Professor of Composition and Coordinator of the Composition Department.

About GRACE: Concerto in 3 movements for marimba and orchestra

Grace is a musical meditation on a remarkable essay, “The Puppet Theatre,” by Heinrich von Kleist. In the essay, two friends meeting in a public park discuss the concept of grace as suggested by a simple puppet show. The one, a recently appointed principal dancer a a local theater, is found to be a regular at performances by a marionette troupe. Why, the other wonders, does he so often indulge himself with this “vulgar species of an art from?”
The answer has to do with what both finally agree is the distinctive gracefulness of the marionettes. The dancer proposes to his initially skeptical acquaintance that grace inheres in “The traces of human volition” having been removed from the wooden bodies, such that they are subject purely to natural forces and the will of the operator. Although it will be in vain, human dancers can and should aspire to such grace.
Bresnick's meditation on Kleist takes the form of a concerto for two marimbas whose primary and secondary roles personify the dancer and his rather more pedestrian interlocutor. The use of the marimba is an inspired choice, one naturally following Kleist’s observation with respect to the marionette theater that “the operator controls with his wire or thread only this centre, the attached limbs are just what they should be: lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only the the law of gravity.” Kleist’s description applies equally to the mallet virtuoso for whom the weight of the appendages and the mallets are indeed experienced both from within and without as “removed from human volition,” in a word, “effortless.”

Movement I: Pendula and the Center of Gravity (The Puppet Theatre)

| CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO MOVEMENT I |

The first movement states its essential premise, doing so in the melodic form of two minor third leaps. Initially these are heard less as motives than as gestures suggesting mallets not having been directed red at, but rather allowed to fall on, the wooden bars of the marimba. The premise is gradually developed while, as is rhetorically necessary, being continually, almost obsessively, restated in its original literal form throughout the course of the piece.
The second marimba's role is immediately identifiable. It restates the dancer's words verbatim, the mechanical repetition suggesting a less than complete comprehension. As the movement progresses, the dancer further elaborates his thesis, while his counterpart tries to grasp it, chiming in by picking up a few words or a short phrase and sometimes advancing a tentative continuation of the dancer's line of thought.

This recording is excerpted from Martin Bresnick: My Twentieth Century, New World Records

Featuring: Robert Van Sice, marimba I; Kunihiko Komori, marimba II;
Izumi Sinfonietta Osaka, Norichika Iimori, conductor

Click here for more information and to purchase this release from New World Records

Movement II: Of the Heaviness of Matter

| CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO MOVEMENT II |

The second movement states the premise in an altered form: inverting its pitch relationships by exchanging the horizontal/melodic and vertical/harmonic axes. The minor thirds now become the basis for a lushly orchestrated and evocative string of harmonies that support some of Bresnick's most stately and affecting melodies, simple but powerful statements that seem to be brought in by the breeze, and disappear.

Movement III: Grace Will Return (most purely in a puppet or a god)

| CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO MOVEMENT III |

In the third movement, the music takes flight through arpeggiated statements of the initial premise. While subjected to metrical displacements, these tend to remain grounded in static pitch configurations. The tonal stasis embodies the final passage of Kleist's imagined encounter: The two friends have reached a shared conclusion with respect to “the damage done by consciousness to the natural grace of a human being. . . . Only when consciousness has passed through an infinity will grace return. Grace will be most purely present in the human frame that has either no consciousness at all or an infinite amount of it, which is to say either in a puppet or a god.”

	Robert Van Sice Featuring an extensive video interview on a variety of musical and educational topics.
	Eduardo Leandro Watch Eduardo perform Alejandro Viñao's Khan Variations from PASIC 2005
	Joseph Schwantner Exclusive video series with one of the foremost composers of the late 20th and early 21st century.
	Ji Hye Jung Performance clips from an exciting new talent and winner of the 2006 Linz marimba competition.
	Stuart Marrs Excerpts "Stuart Marrs on Elliott Carter Eight Pieces for Four Timpani: Performance and Analysis."
	Vic Firth Vic reminisces on his 50 year career with the BSO and the history of his company.
	Tom Gauger A video lesson series on the concert bass drum from one of the most respected experts in the field.
	Gary Burton Watch Gary play the vibes and talk about what he looks for in a set of mallets.
	Ted Atkatz Ted talks about his background and winning the audition at the Chicago Symphony at a young age.
	Michael Varner Professor Michael Varner performs two pieces for solo marimba.
	Giff Howarth A lesson series for the beginning four mallet student from Giff's book "Simply Four."