Tina Davidson

Composer

original compositions

My Heart is a Cello

by

Of all the instruments, cello is the closest to my heart.

Growing up, I was the pianist in a household of strings. My mother was an avid amateur violinist and insisted my sisters learn to play violin and viola. I envied their ability to play with others, while I was continually alone on my own.

In college, I took up cello in addition to studying composition and piano. At times I studied with Michael Finkle, who, mustached, quirky, was full of joy. Up in a large room on the third floor of the music building we gathered weekly to play cello quartets and octets late into the evening. As a night cap, he turned off the lights and we improvised in the dark.

Soon I was transcribing Palestrina and Farkas for cello quartet. Later, I wrote a cello concerto for the wonderful Maxine Neuman, and Dark Child Sings, a cello quartet, which she recorded. And of course, many string quartets and piano trios.

It was Anna Cholakian, the cellist of the Cassatt Quartet, who cemented my love for cello. Delicate and long-haired dark hair, she played with a intensity and passion that belied her small frame.  Listen to her play the opening of my string quartet, Cassandra Sings.

 What exactly is it about the cello that calls to me? The high notes are clear and bell-like, and the low notes have a width and groundedness to them, moist and vibrant.

But mostly, the cello is the only classical instrument where you must open your legs and embrace the instrument to play. The broad back of the cello lightly rests against your sternum, almost touching each knee – it is a full body experience of sound. Sitting squarely, you become a tripod, a solid stance with flexibility of movement. You are the cello. You are the music.

CASSANDRA SINGS
Commissioned by the Kronos Quartet and recorded by the Cassatt String Quartet, “builds to a climax of tremendous richness, throwing out a soundscape that would seem to be much greater than merely four instruments can produce.  An extended coda achieves a resolution of sublime dimensions” (Fanfare).
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2y5Z17bEilAiViMp9FMuJh

DARK CHILD SINGS 

 

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Random Thoughts, #7

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Notes from my Journal

July 28
A beautiful, clear, bright and cool day. The children sit on an animal swing with four chains in the park, swinging back and forth. The chains creak and scream, high and overlapping, a shrill cry.I am composing finally; “After two days of ranting and raving, mercy descended.”

August 4
I begin the saxophone concerto with earnestness. It is on my mind constantly. I listen, knowing both time and persistence are on my side.

Sometimes I have to hear all the old ways first, before I can steer clear to a new place. Always, a balance between movement and patience. If I move too soon, I run over myself. If I relax too much, there is nothing. I work and wait.

September 1
I focus on the solo, the “first person” of this piece. This is, in many ways, the first flight. Rupture – big glissando section. Out of the disorganization comes the voice. Out of sound come melody and energy. How do I give the saxophone space to improvise without boxing him in?

November 20
Today, the work on this piece discourages; I lose heart and go shopping for Christmas presents. I contemplate a movie. I eat gummy bears, drink coffee, and sigh over a new flannel nightgown. I snarl at smokers.November 22
In morning’s first light, all is not lost. Even my music has possibilities.

November 30
My piece is almost complete. I have a few weeks of orchestrating, and it will be done by first of the year. The last ten days have been a wonderful slide home. Once I was able to accept the flaws and disappointments of the piece, I started making progress.

Music with Saxophone by Tina Davidson

LULLABY
for solo & unspecified instrumentation (6-8)
Lullaby is the song we all sing to our children, amid the distant noise of the outside world, cradling and surrounding them with a protective love.
“a gorgeously gentle piece” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
https://open.spotify.com/track/77Nm1qrUp6RKBRWhti8z2S

TRANSPARENT VICTIMS
for soprano/alto saxophones & pre-recorded saxophones
 “Davidson has created accessible music of real substance.”  (Classical Insites)
https://open.spotify.com/track/4u13FNvMkWlx9AhLxU6mJJ     

\CEL”E*BRATE\
alto saxophone, bass clarinet, piano & percussion 
To commemorate, bless, carouse, ceremonialize, commend, dedicate, drink to, eulogize, feast, glorify, honor, jubilate, keep, laud, let loose, lionize, make merry, make whoopee.
https://soundcloud.com/tina-davidson-3/celebrate-for-alto-sax-b-clar-piano-percussion

 

Random Thoughts #5

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Notes from my Journal

 April 6

I am in between a state of reluctance and anticipation. I can “hear” the new work better than I can understand it, something about mountains, fires, sexuality and the dark pounding of the heart.

March 31

“What is the relationship between artists and their work?” a friend asks.

I can only speak of my landscape – to economize my life so that I am available. Not as an act of abstinence or poverty, instead, of allowing. When my life is work centered, all else falls off. I am at the essence of my life. The choice is time, energy and clarity. The rest – family, friends, fun – falls into place naturally.

Being available is an act of love I give myself, for here is where my spirit lives. As I go out in my work, it is all me, and at the same time, not me. When my work connects with others, my face becomes many faces, both anonymous and personal, both unrecognizable and identifiable.

The risk of art is to be at the edge of selfishness, which seems to be vanity, but is not. Vanity keeps me separate and elevated from others. Art grovels in the same mud, but ascends.

For today, I ask what my work needs and thereby know how to live my life. Letting the non-essentials go, I keep the treasures. The rest flows from me like fall leaves tossed on the river stream, riding the current happily away from me. The love I put into my work is the same that pours into my life, family, and community. A source that renews itself continually.

October 9

The string quaMysterium, drawing, colored pencilrtet continues to fall into shape, and the work is exciting. The previous agony was pressure during the most vulnerable stages of composing, of gathering the raw material together, finding tiny bits of flesh, atoms or protoplasm. The stuff of creation is a delicate process, full of uncertainty and patience. It is a time when I am open to outside fears and pressures.

The first section is almost completely mapped out. The rhythm tears along, bumping into sounds that are both unexpected and comfortable. I spin through reams of material, yet it is all connected somehow; tense, pressured, chased, inescapable, and swept away. I stitch together the fabric of the piece carefully, paying great attention to the transitions. The directions surprise the ear, and are, somehow, just right. The new shape of the piece pleases me, and has released the music inside. Unbelievable.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2022

Drawings by Tina Davidson:  Orb #1, charcoal and water color, Mysterium, colored pencil

Listen:

 

 

 

Deep Listening

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Pauline Oliveros and James Tenney

Pauline Oliveros playing the accordianA few days up at the Charles Ives Center for the Performing Arts gives me relief. I am in residence with musician, composer, and maverick Pauline Oliveros. “Hear, remember, and imagine,” she intones. You hear a sound, remember it, and then imagine it again. She uses words to form her music, bringing the performers into the process of creation. Her work begets community.

I am struck by music’s linear process, where duration is the great ingredient. Unlike visual art, music cannot be experienced all at once. Instead, it moves though time. As we listen, we construct the whole in our mind through memory. Like a transparent ghost, music moves our hearts with its lack of tangible substance.

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I heard a piece by composer Jim Tenney recently at a concert. Something interests me. HisComposer James Tenney piece is a voyage of technical manipulations involving tape delay and difference tones – those haunting resonances that appear when certain pitches rub against each other.

At first I am rapt. But, I cannot hold on, my mind disengages and falls into a dark quiet. After eight to ten minutes, the piece suddenly opens up, and I catch onto the piece again. How did I get here – where have I been? As if a white shirt, shown in meticulous technical detail, suddenly blossoms with blood, both a terrifying signal of death, and an affirmation of life.

The shape of his music reminds me of my own shape. While the content of our work is different, the linear shape and flow, moving from one point to (and through) another, is similar. He uses a one-theme-one-idea approach, where the starkness and persistence engages the listener. I am episodic, darting though material with single-minded purpose. His music is a straight line, mine moves in and over. He takes a fragment and expands it. I sew my fragments together, so one becomes another becomes one. His overall shape is like the stem of a flower, long and thin with a sudden bloom at the end. My shape is conical; the whole piece expands from a beginning point and opens up to an ecstasy. His epiphany is sharply beautiful in relief to his material. Mine is joyous and circular.

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer  by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2022

Listen: Wēpan for string quartet and piano, was written at the request of the Open End Ensemble. From the old English, wēpan means to weep, bewail, mourn over, or deplore.

I have written about Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) before and I suspect I will write about her again. She is one of the great American composers, investigating new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of “deep listening” and “sonic awareness.”

Jim Tenney (1935-2006), a pioneer of computer music, was interested in the possibilities offered by pure tuning. I met him in the mid-1980s and was drawn to him  as a fellow graduate from  Bennington College, and to his warmth, kindness and curiosity.

 

How Will I Know When to Stop?

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Timothy stands close to me. When I move, he moves. He waits for me to play his piece with him and follows me like a shadow around the room.

I help Shante with her instrument, calm Ferron down so he can concentrate, and get sidelined by Brandi and Terrell. They work on a piece for two desks and their hands. Experimenting with fingers, palms, and fists, they make sounds on the wooden tops. I step back and almost fall over Timothy; he is patient.

Jake and Michael struggle with their invented notation. Jake’s faces contorts, he cannot figure out how to write his rhythm down. We put words to the melody, and suddenly he claps it with ease.

Timothy pushes me towards the piano and I grab a drum. His piece, Thrill Ride, is carefully notated in tiny print. Only he knows what it means, but he has taught me. He begins to play, his long fingers curving around the complicated chords. A dreamy look comes over his face.

“How will I know when to stop?” I press him. He continues to play, immersed in his own sound world. (McMichael Elementary School)

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Michael’s eyes are full of tears. His small body slumps in the chair. “It’s not fair! I want to work with the cellist.” Tears splash down his face. I study him for a moment, then settle down beside him.

Michael and two other boys were out of the room recording the rap lyrics to the song the fifth grade class had written. During their absence, the rest of the class completed their graphically notated pieces about Homer’s Odyssey. Today, the Cassatt String Quartet joins my residency. Each group will collaborate with a member of the ensemble. The three boys have no composition. I stall, thinking.

“What if you write a new piece for all of the string players right now?” I suggest. Michael runs for the markers and newsprint. Working quickly, the boys write a piece they call Rough Riders from Lotus Town. They fight briefly about how to notate the motorcycle sound.

After a discussion, the Quartet plays the piece for the class. Michael leans into me, smiling. “They played my piece pretty good!” he concedes.  (Nebinger Elementary School)

Excerpted from Let Your Heart Be Broken, Life and Music from a Classical Composer  © Tina Davidson, 2022.

Listen:  Celestial Turnings, string orchestra: excerpt

 

Tina Davidson created Young Composers program to teach students to compose their own music through instrument building, graphic and invented notation. Designed to enhance self-esteem and reinforce achievement through alternative measures of expression, the course culminates with a performance of the students’ compositions.