Become River 
John Luther Adams

Composer John Luther Adams was born in Meridian, Mississippi on January 23, 1953. As stated on his website (https://johnlutheradams.net/), Adams, who feels a special kinship with nature, describes himself as the composer of music that reflects a “lifelong search for home—an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth.” New Yorker music critic, Alex Ross, has called him “One of the most original musical thinkers of the new century.” His musical activity began as a drummer in rock bands. A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts in 1973, Adams lived in Alaska working on environmental protection. He now divides his residence between the Sonora Desert in Mexico and New York.

Become River (2010) is one of a trilogy of works with similar titles, although the creation of a set of such compositions was not intentional. Become Ocean (2013) was commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and went on to win for him the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Its recording also won the Grammy® in the category of “Best Contemporary Classical Composition.” The work of the trilogy is entitled Become Desert (2017). Become River, the result of a commission from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, is scored for 2 flutes (doubling piccolos), 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, percussion, and strings.

John Luther Adams is a composer whose work is closely related to his love of nature and concern for the environment. Adams’ program notes for the work may also be found on the website, (https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/57009/Become-River--John-Luther-Adams/:

Steven Schick [conductor and percussionist from San Diego] and I were having dinner together. I was just beginning work on a large-scale piece for the Seattle Symphony. So when Steve asked me if I might be interested in composing a new piece for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, I must have hesitated. Deftly, Steve asked me to tell him a little about the Seattle piece. I went on at length about the music I'd begun to imagine, finally concluding: "It's called Become Ocean. The title comes from a poem that John Cage wrote in honor of Lou Harrison." Cage observes that the breadth and variety of Harrison's music make it "resemble a river in delta." He concludes that:

LiStening to it we becOme oceaN. 

"So you're already composing a symphonic ocean," Steve said. "Maybe for a smaller orchestra you could go ahead and compose that river in delta." Steve had me, and I knew it. Within a week I'd begun work on Become River. From a single high descending line, this music gradually expands into a delta of melodic streams flowing toward the depths. I now imagine this river and its related ocean, as part of a larger series of pieces encompassing desert, mountain, tundra and perhaps other landscapes and waterscapes.

In an interview for the Great Northern Festival, Adams added:

Become River is a tough piece to program on a concert, because it has this ridiculous setup. You have the violins all the way in the back and a big percussion set up in the middle, the double basses in front. It’s an integral part of the piece. Physical space, not just poetic and metaphorical space, has become an integral part, a fundamental compositional element, of my music. It has to be done that way, but that’s a lot of furniture moving for an orchestra to deal with for a 15 minute piece . . .

Meander, Spiral, Explode (Concerto for Percussion Quartet and Orchestra)
Christopher Cerrone

Christopher Cerrone was born in Huntington, NY on March 5, 1984. According to his website (https://christophercerrone.com/biography/), he is” internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations.” He studied musical composition at the Manhattan School of Music and Yale. Cerrone’s first opera, Invisible Cities, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2014. He also received a commission from the Fromm Foundation, was the winner of Rome Prize (2015), and has received numerous awards from ASCAP. He has composed works in a wide range of genres, including numerous works for percussion ensembles. He currently serves on the faculty New York’s Mannes School of Music. Meander, Spiral, Explode (2019) was commissioned by Third Coast Percussion and received its first performance by the Chicago Civic Orchestra on May 12, 2019, followed by a July 26 performance at the Britt Festival. The work is scored for four percussion soloists, 2 flutes (doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 2 bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, percussion, piano, harp, and strings.

Louis Harris, writing about Cerrone’s Meander, Spiral, Explode in the cultural magazine, Third Coast Review, observed that the “four members switch among wood slats, marimbas, vibraphones, cymbals, bells, and other objects played with mallets and bows.” Harris concludes that the “work created an aural fabric that was both interesting and vivid.”

The composer himself provides the following program notes:

“In April 2019, my friend Tim Horvath, a novelist, texted me, “Do you know Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode? It’s a book that focuses on unusual structural elements in novels.” I always trust Tim’s suggestions, and I tore through the book over the next few days, finding it unique and deeply insightful. I experienced what Melville called “the shock of recognition”—seeing someone describe your own efforts (in this case, an in-progress percussion concerto) without ever having seen a note of it. The three words of the title seemed to pertain specifically to each movement of my concerto. The first movement—while dramatic and intense—seems to meander through different landscapes, where the gunshot-like sound of four wooden slats morphs into marimbas and bowed vibraphones while changing volume, key, and context.

The second movement (played without pause after the first) is structured like a double helix. A rising scale on two vibraphones slowly expands, speeds up, and finally blossoms into a sea of polyrhythms.

As for the last movement (again played without pause): the explosion seems fairly self-evident. A single exclamation point ejects lines of 16th-notes into the ether which return, again and again, to a white-hot core. The propulsive patterns in this movement constantly shift emphasis but always maintain energy.

The end of the work brings us back to the first three notes of the piece, suggesting one more shape that Jane Alison discusses in her book: a fractal. The simple shape of the opening turns out to have contained the entire form of the work to come.”

Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes”, Op. 33a 
Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten, one of England’s leading twentieth-century musicians, was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk on November 22, 1913 and died in Aldeburgh on December 4, 1976. Britten’s contribution to the vocal and instrumental repertory is impressive, both in quantity and quality, and is widely admired for its superb craftsmanship and expressive power. His opera, “Peter Grimes” (1944-5), one of the masterpieces of the repertory, tells the tragic story of a rugged fisherman whose “otherness” alienates him from the society that inhabits his seaside “Borough.” The Four Sea Interludes form an eloquent reflection of the shifting moods of this gripping drama and is scored for 2 flutes (both doubling piccolos), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (2nd doubling E-flat), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (xylophone, bells, bass drum, cymbals, gong, snare drum, tam-tam, tambourine), harp, and strings.

The years that have elapsed since the death of Benjamin Britten have only served to enhance the reputation that accrued to him during his lifetime – one of the greatest composers in the history of English music. Much of that reputation is based on his operatic masterpiece, “Peter Grimes”, based on George Crabbe’s poem, “The Borough”. Despite the suspicion, never proven, that he was responsible for the death of two of his young apprentices – Grimes manages to garner the audience’s sympathy, thanks in large part to Britten’s sensitive musical and dramatic portrayal. Both the seaside setting and the character of the enigmatic anti-hero who gives the opera its name proved irresistible to Britten – himself somewhat of an outcast in English society because of his unpopular pacifist views and homosexuality.

The Four Sea Interludes that Britten excerpted from “Peter Grimes” are presented as follows, with no break between movements:

I. “Dawn”. This music links the opera’s prologue to Act I and evokes the wind and waves (violas, harp, and cymbal) that lap against the haunting sonority of unison flutes and violins. This seascape alternates with the choir of brass, representative of the proper, if standoffish, citizens of the “Borough.”

II. “Sunday Morning.” This prelude to Act II, whose chords evoke the church bells of the town, also portrays the character Ellen, a schoolteacher who is one of the only citizens to befriend Grimes. Her aria, “Glitter of waves and glitter of sunlight” is sounded by the violas and cellos.

III. “Moonlight.” This music from Act III is permeated with surging figures in the brass that represent an uneasy serenity. The piquant interjections of flute and xylophone cast shimmers of sublime and haunting beauty upon the evening sea.

IV. “Storm.” This final interlude is the most fully developed of the four. Cast as a kind of rondo, the movement’s last gentle episode evokes Peter’s rhetorical question, “What harbour shelters peace?...What harbour can embrace terrors and tragedies?...” The answer for Peter Grimes, alas, is none, as the final outburst of the storm brings the work to its furious conclusion.