Tina Davidson

Composer

Tina Davidson

Random Thoughts, #2

by

from my music journal

September 1

Bruce Chatwin, in his book Songlines, suggests that the aboriginals sing the world into existence. Songs, or “dreaming,” are a primitive map of the world. Their natural soul describes the country in its most primary form.

February 26

I grapple with the ending of my new piece. Does the energy transform into a ‘still point,’ or is it unto itself? What is the balance between terror and wonder? What is ‘sitting-there’ energy that doesn’t change or go anywhere? I only know a deep body sense, but struggle for words.

My energy comes from a center place, and expands outwards in a kind of fullness, without grasping or overwhelming. The energy exists unto and for itself; there is no motive other than being. Like mountains, or volcanoes, like the ocean, it is guileless and full of terror. Wonder without intent. Turn away from these edifices of nature, they continue in memory, persistent, eternal. Lost or misplaced, they are there at the next turn. So simply. Just this much.

Drawing from music journal

April 16

Composer Morton Feldman reportedly said, “Most composers are limited by one form.” Finding a level of comfort, they stay with it. I wonder about mine, and wonder if I should relook at it. Press on, explore it further.

Forms or approaches are inherently archetypal. Like jewels, hidden deep in the earth, not all have been found. The work of an artist is to reveal the ones overlooked and connect us, the present us, with their magic in new ways.

July 26

Is my music an attempt to control time? Often, it is a passage or a journey, other times a documentation of now. Do I compose to control life or explain it? I have a back and forth, give and take, learning and growing relationship with my work. I dip into a sea of myself, and try to capture it in music to share with others. My work and life are fluid and I experience myself through it.

My work has a life of its own, and often insists on its own way. But it is reciprocal; as I reveal myself to my music, the music reveals myself to me. The work teaches me where to go, and what next to learn.

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

Listen: Paper, Glass, String and Wood, for two string quartets.  III. String: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNOBbt1EHrQ

It is My Heart Singing, music by Tina Davidson, Albany Records, TROY842, 2006

Performed by the Cassatt Quartet (Muneko Otani, Jennifer Leshnower, Tawnya Popoff, Nicole Johnson), Stephen Manes and Caroline Stinson

Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/My-Heart-Singing-Tina-Davidson/dp/B000FO443K

Writers I Have Stalked

by

Mary Gordon and Father Daniel Berrigan

I love setting a poem or text to music. Constantly on the look-out, I read extensively. But primary to finding the right text is getting permission to use the text. Too many composers have learned the hard way, setting a contemporary text only to learn that the author or publisher will not give them permission. The piece, then, lives in a kind of limbo, waiting for the seventy years to elapse until the text is in public domain.

Locating an author is the first order of business. Over the years, I developed an uncanny ability of finding writers through a combination of sleuthing and stalking. Getting permission to use a text is usually through the publisher, but often I need to be in direct contact with the writer. Finding their contact information can be challenging. Researching them extensively at libraries or online, through universities or book reading, I snoop out addresses and phone numbers. And always, I sent them samples of my music.

In the mid 2000s I had two projects in mind, the setting of Daniel Berrigan’s poems from Uncommon Prayer for chorus, and an opera based on Mary Gordon’s wonderful novel, Pearl.  Of course, I knew neither writer, nor did I know anyone who knew them.

Mary Gordon, one of America’s most admired writers, was the easiest to track down. I quickly discovered she taught at Barnard College, and sent her a letter with a CD of some of my choral pieces and an outline of the opera project.

Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, peace activist, and poet best known for his commitment to a ministry that combines work among the poor with nonviolent civil disobedience, was another matter. Despite his international profile and long list of publications, he was a hard man to find. He seemed to have disappeared.

I poked around to no avail. Finally, I found his name on the Interfaith Assembly Community web site. I called the director. Yes, he knew Berrigan and had his contact information. No, he would not give it to me. I hesitated, “Would you be able to forward a letter from me to him?”  I immediately sent Berrigan a CD of my music with an attached note.

By mid-December I was on the train to NYC to visit Father Berrigan on the upper west side. His apartment was spare and airy; a crucifix hung on the wall along with colorful wall hangings. A lean man in his eighties, he was suffering from a cold. Somehow, in our conversation, I mentioned Mary Gordon. He laughed and recounted that he had, years before, received a letter from her when she was in a catholic high school. Having been discouraged by the nuns and doubting her work, she asked what he thought.  ‘Full speed ahead.  Stay with it.  You’ll be terrific.’ he wrote back.

I brought out my copy of his Uncommon Prayer, his rewriting of the Old Testament psalms, a brilliant reweaving of their themes into contemporary reflection.

 “I haven’t read them in years,” he mused. 

“Why don’t we read them out loud together,” I suggested. 

We sat side by side in the white winter light, reading his poems to each other. “When the Spirit struck us free/ we could scarcely believe it for very joy,” I read his version of Psalm 126.  “The heavens bespeak the glory of God/The firmaments ablaze, a text of his works,” Berrigan read.

The afternoon grew dark and we sat quietly with his poetry curling around us. Finally, he said, “They held up pretty well,” his face breaking into a smile.

That evening I sat on the train returning home. I was aglow with the afternoon and pressed my forehead to the cold window. My cell phone rang. Absentmindedly I put it to my ear.

“Tina,” said a woman’s voice. It was Mary Gordon. “I loved your choral piece, Antiphon to a Virgin.” It brought tears to her eyes and she had to call me.

I laughed, “I was just talking about you this afternoon.”

Listen –

Radiant, from the opera Pearl, soprano and piano: https://soundcloud.com/tina-davidson-3/pearl-radiant

The Land, from the opera Pearl, soprano, tenor and piano: https://soundcloud.com/tina-davidson-3/pearl-the-land

Random Thoughts, #1

by

from my music journal

August 3

A new piece of music stirs within me. I feel it in my stomach. It twists and wrenches. I know it is time to start, but I bargain for a later date. The piece quiets for a moment, then twists again. There is no real latitude in here. It pretends to placate me, but ultimately is relentless. I am relieved. Without its insistence, I am lost.

August 24

Marc Chagall wrote, “In my paintings I have hidden my love.”   Why does he hide his love? In my work, I want my love to pour out.

October 20

I am testing the difference between knowing and knowledge. Knowledge is a noun, knowing is a verb. Knowledge is permanence, an arrival to a destination, a measure of power, and a method of control; it is a command, and a grasp with expertness or skill. Knowing, on the other hand, is to perceive, sense, or see; it is to trust and listen, to hear and accept things beyond one’s imagination. Knowing is not being able to explain, but being able to expand and grow continuously. Unfixed and inexhaustible. Knowing is to be.

Fear, fear!? What is there to fear? Knowing is to recognize oneself. What is this crisis, then, this debate, this holding back?

Deisis, drawing by Tina Davidson

April 3

My music is an experience, not an event. Most music is circular and contained. Mine, on the other hand, is languid and rests on its elbows like a horizon. I create a linear shape, where the music evolves, transforms, and becomes. The listener moves with the music though a passage of time, into another place. In the end, the music breaks open like an egg, its content finally revealed. The gift is the inner and outer, the private and public. The soul unveiled.

Excerpted from Grief’s Grace, A Memoir by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2021

Listen: Delight of Angel for string quartet: 

It is My Heart Singing, music by Tina Davidson, Albany Records, TROY842, 2006

Performed by the Cassatt Quartet (Muneko Otani, Jennifer Leshnower, Tawnya Popoff, Nicole Johnson), Stephen Manes and Caroline Stinson Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/My-Heart-Singing-Tina-Davidson/dp/B000FO443K

Cassandra Sings; Changing the Music

by

a commissioned by the Kronos String Quartet

One day in 1988, David Harrington, first violinist of the Kronos Quartet, calls me. Weeks before, on a whim, I had sent the quartet a recording of my saxophone quintet, Transparent Victims without invitation or introduction. “We listened to your music and loved it,” Harrington says. “We want to commission you for a new string quartet – say 15-17 minutes long?”  I am astonished. 

Not long afterwards I fly down to the New Music America Festival in Miami to meet with the quartet. I hear them premiere Steve Reich’s powerful Different Trains and Eleanor Hovda’s beautiful and evocative Lemniscates. I sit and dream through their four-hour performance of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet, No. 2.

Back at home, I being to compose. I title the piece, Cassandra Sings, after the mythological Cassandra in the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus. There Cassandra ‘sings’ her lines, for she, like the chorus, speaks the truth – she sings the reality of life.

The work on the quartet is a sickening roller-coaster ride. Writing the first section is like going through a manic-depressive storm, at times ecstatic, at others agonizingly difficult. 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 direction surprises the ear, and is, somehow, just right. The second section rolls out easily. Already I am at Cassandra’s true joy. My dreams are released. I soar along with my music.

I fly to San Francisco to rehearse with the Kronos Quartet. The week is black and desolate. In three days they have only rehearsed two thirds of my quartet and I have yet to hear the whole piece through. Each day they inch through a small section, making almost no progress. I am exhausted. The weather is bone cold and I take long baths.

A week later I am back with the quartet in Minneapolis. At the dress rehearsal in the Walker Art Center, they play my piece in an extraordinary manner, with every note of this difficult piece in place – except for the last two, a major third echoed an octave below. I almost laugh out loud. “What’s going on with the last two notes?” I ask.

“We felt the ending was too optimistic, so we changed them.” the first violinist, David Harrington explains.

I hold my breath and wait. They have several versions to play for me – a minor third, and dissonant second, but nothing seems right.

Finally the violist says quietly, “Let’s play the piece the way it is written.”

The performance is brilliant, and I go on stage during the applause. David leans towards me. “I withdraw the argument,” he whispers. Next week is the New York City premiere at Alice Tully Hall.

Excerpted from Grief’s Grace, A Memoir by Tina Davidson.  © Tina Davidson, 2021

Listen: Cassandra Sings, for string quartet: http://www.tinadavidson.com/works/#string-quartet-sextet

Recorded by The Cassatt String Quartet, CRI # 671, Emergency Music. Listen on Spotify:

I Can Also Tell You This

by

A few things I have learned about opera

 “I can also tell you this” is the lyric written by my sister Eva Davidson for my opera, Billy and Zelda. My understanding of opera and song has deepened since I began to write several decades ago.

Opera, in its classical form, is theater in a continuous singing from beginning to end. It is a marrying of several art forms – theater, music and prose. Always shunning its more popular sibling, music theater or musical, it has no dialog. For some, the narration is held in the recitative, or “recitativo,” sung-speech that tells the smaller actions of the story.

Billy and Zelda

For me, the music of the opera – song – is when the voice disconnects from the flow of the story and steps forward to speak directly to the audience.  It is an opening the heart to the moment. The act of singing has sacredness about it. Emerging from the depths of my body, warmed by my breath, it is when I utter my most intimate thoughts: truth telling, a moment of revelation, insight or growth – this is where I am right now.

And always in the beauty of words, a rich variety of poetic words. I work closely with my sister, to capture what is at hand. She creates poetry, not libretto or lyrics – an essence of things. 

As I compose, I taste each word, like small beautiful stones. I pour through the lines looking for understanding. I live days between words. I lose some of my composing assertiveness and melding my music to a phrase as if in service. Rarely do I go straight through the poem in song, rather, I circle back to a line, a set of delicious words, or hard consonants to punctuate meaning.

My characters are learners; they enter the opera without realizing they have questions about themselves and life. They are on a journey of illumination. 

Set of Billy and Zelda

Billy and Zelda explores the mystery surrounding the deaths of two children. The work uses both opera and theater, intertwining contrasting stories about Billy, a young man killed in war, and Zelda, a little girl who has died of pneumonia.

But this is a ruse to talk about the rich life of relationships between parents and their children. The dead return to confront the living, the result of which is the love between them that endures through time as if it were yesterday.

Zelda Narrator, Billy and Zelda

The overlay is the pregnant neighbor who comes to the opera almost by chance. Listen to here in the final song of Billy and Zelda, https://soundcloud.com/tina-davidson-3/core-lullaby-from-billy-and-zelda.

Standing alone at end of the last act, she addresses her new, learned awareness of life; there is no protection for her child-to-be, only a willingness to love – a love that knows no safety from loss.

And I have to ask, is Billy and Zelda the only opera whose main character is pregnant, and whose subject is the greatest love story of all – that with our children?

BILLY AND ZELDA

“Blue moon, over the curve of the horizon, the earth proves spherical beneath the crush of chain link stars,” Tina Davidson’s opera tells the story of two children lost in death and found by love. Based on the poetry by the composer sister, Eva Davidson and a short story by Lâle Davidson, and the work is a uniquely moving experience.

Billy and Zelda is a passionate, melodic work which explores the rich life of relationships between children and their parents. A truly innovative opera theater piece, one part is all theater (Zelda), while the other (Billy) all song, with the two plots winding in and out of each other. Zelda is for actress and improvised cello and Billy is for five singers, string quartet and marimba.

Excerpted from Grief’s Grace, A Memoir by Tina Davidson

LISTEN TO BILLY AND ZELDA: https://soundcloud.com/tina-davidson-3/billy-and-zelda-5-songs-compilation