debmin – Elizabeth Knudson

September Songs

chamber quartet (two erhu, viola & cello)

12 min. 45 sec.

September Songs was written for erhu quartet (two erhu, viola, and cello), and is comprised of three movements: “The Hummingbird”, “To the Rising Moon”, and “Tunnels of Light”. The first movement, “The Hummingbird”, captures the light, delicate movements of these tiny feathered creatures. Featuring trills, tremolo, quick rhythmic patterns, and short melodic phrases, the energy of this movement leads into something more calm and a bit mysterious in the second movement.

“To the Rising Moon” opens with the first several notes of a Gregorian plainchant melody found in the “Graduale Romanum” (c. 8th century). This melody develops gently, making use of canonic phrases, and the idea of mirror images—as the moon rises to its peak in the sky, before sinking again behind the trees. This movement was also inspired by a short work by the 13th century poet and mystic, Rumi:

“There is a way
From your heart to mine
And my heart knows it
Because it is clean and pure like water When the water is still like a mirror
It can behold the Moon.”

This gentle interlude melts back into the energy of the third movement, “Tunnels of Light”. Inspired by the ongoing movement of clouds in the sky on an overcast day, and the fleeting moments where the sunshine suddenly bursts through in brilliant, colourful rays– there are several short melodic and rhythmic motifs at work in this movement, combined and recombined playfully.

September Songs was commissioned by Vancouver-based erhu player, Lan Tung, and its creation was funded with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.

After the Storm

solo clarinet & string octet

9 min.

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“The air is full of after-thunder freshness,
And everything rejoices and revives.
With the whole outburst of its purple clusters
The lilac drinks the air of paradise.

The gutters overflow; the change of weather
Makes all you see appear alive and new.
Meanwhile the shades of sky are growing lighter,
Beyond the blackest cloud the height is blue.
An artist’s hand, with mastery still greater
Wipes dirt and dust off objects in his path.
Reality and life, the past and present,
Emerge transformed out of his colour-bath.

The memory of over half a lifetime
Like swiftly passing thunder dies away.
The century is no more under wardship:
High time to let the future have its say.
It is not revolutions and upheavals
That clear the road to new and better days,
But revelations, lavishness and torments
Of someone’s soul, inspired and ablaze.”
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After the Storm, for string octet and clarinet, was inspired by a colourful poem of the same name, by Boris Pasternak. The piece was commissioned as part of the HER Projected online festival, presented by all-female ensemble, Allegra Chamber Orchestra. The work received its premiere online on June 26th, 2021, (recorded earlier at the Orpheum Annex, Vancouver), featuring Michelle Goddard- clarinet, with members of Allegra Chamber Orchestra, directed by Janna Sailor.

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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.

Hymn

Hymn, a work for solo cello and orchestra in three movements, takes its inspiration from a variety of sources. The first movement, The Sun, was inspired by a poem of the same name, by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004). The poem opens with:

“All colours come from the sun. And it does not have

Any particular colour, for it contains them all…”

This ties into the idea of exploring the classical Hindustani Raag Des. The piece begins from a fixed central point (much like the idea of an alap introduction in classical Indian music)– one unison pitch, here carried by the string section– gradually melting into various other orchestral colours– then, radiating outward from its unison beginnings, to explore a full range of the orchestral palette.

The second movement, Hymn, was inspired by another poem by Czeslaw Milosz:

“There is no one between you and me.

Neither a plant drawing sap from the depths of earth

Nor an animal, nor a man, nor wind walking between the clouds.

The most beautiful bodies are like transparent glass.

The most powerful flames like water washing the tired feet of travelers.

The greenest trees like lead blooming in the thick of the night.

Love is sand swallowed by parches lips.”

This movement takes its inspiration from a melodic fragment of a hymn, Oh, Love, How Deep, attributed to 14th century monk, Thomas à Kempis. The music grows from these pure, austere beginnings into something warm and passionate.

This leads into the third movement, Light, inspired by a poem of the same name– written by 14th century Persian poet, Shamsedin-Mohamed Hafez Shirazi. This movement explores some playful rhythmic patterns and cascading scales, contrasted against steady, supporting long tones.

“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness

The astonishing light of your own being!

…One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have

Is that I did not kiss you enough.

Look what happens with a love like that–

It lights the whole sky.”

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Sheet music (score and parts) are available through the Canadian Music Centre.

Mosaic

Mosaic was inspired by the idea of creating a dreamscape, with the solo horn as the central character: the one experiencing the dream. I was interested in exploring the idea of dreaming as a means of processing ideas and information, but at the same time, being aware that dreaming is not a process over which we have the same degree of control as we do over our conscious thoughts. Just as real-life information and experiences are filtered and transformed through the dreaming process, several motivic ideas recur and are transformed throughout the various movements. The piece is structured in five movements (attacca), beginning with the lower strings emulating the slow breathing of one falling asleep. The second movement is bright, with melodic reference to a pelog gamelan scale. The third movement begins with a duet between solo horn and solo cello, expanding outwards from the first three notes of Brahms’ famous Lullaby, and evolving into something much more intense at the climax of the piece. The fourth movement is a cadenza for the solo horn, leading into the fifth movement, which contains reference to an out-of-body experience.

Premiered by Oliver de Clercq (horn) with West Coast Symphony Orchestra (Bujar Llapaj, conductor), at Vancouver Technical Theatre, Vancouver, 11 June, 2010. Second performance with WCSO at the Roundhouse, Vancouver, 13 June, 2010.
Performed by Oliver de Clercq (horn) with Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra (Jin Zhang, conductor), at Shaughnessy Heights United Church, Vancouver, 1 December 2012.
Performed by Oliver de Clercq (horn) with Orkestra Simfonike e RTSH (Albanian Radio-Television Orchestra), Bujar Llapaj, conductor, at the Academy of Arts, Tirana, Albania, 21 March, 2013.

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Orchestral score and parts are available for rental through the Canadian Music Centre.

Arrangement for horn and piano is available through the International Horn Society.

Triptych

I. Frontispiece/The Garden
II. Earthly Delights
III. Hell

Triptych was inspired by one of the most well-known paintings ever made in that genre: The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Flemish master, Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516). The three movements of the piece correspond to the three panels of the painting (plus frontispiece). The piece evolves from the austere, uncertain beginnings of the world (Frontispiece), into the peaceful, but strange surroundings of the Garden. The middle movement is playful, sensual, and earthy (Earthly Delights); the last is relentless, mocking, and grotesque (Hell).

There is so much colour, symbolism and detail present in the painting; the music is simply a distillation of these ideas. The piece, like the painting, follows a sense of predestined trajectory. The opening material of the piece becomes a recurring motive throughout all three movements: from the very beginning, there is a sense of inevitability about where things are going.

Commissioned by: Caroline R. Cloutier, Loyd Furnes, Colin Hamilton, Ralph Maundrell, Patricia Osoko, Christina Wolf, Mark Yeung, and Karl Zaenker.

Premiered by Caroline R. Cloutier, Loyd Furnes, Colin Hamilton, Ralph Maundrell, Patricia Osoko, Christina Wolf, Mark Yeung, and Karl Zaenker, at Redeemer Lutheran Church, Vancouver, 27 September, 2009.

Performed by Orchestra Armonia, at St. Mark’s Anglican Church, Vancouver, November 7, 2010.

Performed (2nd movement only, with string orchestra, and Anne Bonnycastle, conductor) at the 2nd Annual Concert for the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, at Blusson Spinal Cord Centre, Vancouver, September 10, 2016.

Performed (2nd movement only, with string orchestra, and Anne Bonnycastle, conductor) at the 3rd Annual Concert for the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, at Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, September 9, 2016.

Performed (2nd movement only) by Allegra Chamber Orchestra, with Janna Sailor, conductor, at Sofar Vancouver- “Give a Home 2017” event, September 20, 2017.

Performed by Kensington Sinfonia at Hope Lutheran Church, Calgary, Alberta, February 11, 2018.

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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.

Black Tusk Overture

Written for the Hannaford Street Silver Band’s composing competition “Pieces in the Form of an Overture” (2008)

From the Ninth Elegy

text by Rainer Maria Rilke; translated by Graham Good

The inspiration for this piece came in equal parts from the 1987 Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire (Der Himmel Über Berlin), and from my maternal grandmother, Gudrun Joensen, who passed away in 2006. Wings of Desire appealed to me in its imagery and thematic use of angels existing alongside “earthly” beings; the film is based on the writings of poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). The text of my piece is taken from Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy, which speaks of the transience of being “earthly”, and yet that the fact of having existed once on this earth is irrevocable. Ever since my grandmother passed away, I had been looking for an opportunity to incorporate her essence somehow into one of my compositions. She was a very gentle person, hence the whispered, hushed quality of the beginning of the piece. The very end of the piece uses a quotation of a Danish lullaby she used to sing. From the Ninth Elegy was written specifically for musica intima (12-voice conductorless chamber choir), and given its premiere on March 21st, 2009, as part of Vancouver Pro Musica’s Sonic Boom Festival, at the Western Front, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. It was also performed by DaCapo Chamber Choir, in Kitchener, ON, on February 27th, 2010, and by the Vancouver Chamber Choir (with guest conductor Michael Zaugg), on April 20th, 2018.

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“But because being here means so much, and because
all of the transient things that are here
seem to need us…
They need us- us, the most transient. Once
for each thing, just once. Once and no more.
Just once for us too… But having been
earthly just this once, even though
it was only once, seems irrevocable.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), translated by Graham Good

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Sheet music is available through the Canadian Music Centre.