by Eleonora M. Beck as published in the IAWM Journal, June 1997, pp. 32.
Songfest: Works by Elizabeth Scheidel-Austin, Mary Jeanne Van Appledorn and Susan Hurley. Capstone CPS-8618, Digital Stereo (1994)
Tina Davidson: I Hear the Mermaids Singing (1996). Composers Recordings, Inc., CRI 681
Elizabeth Scheidel-Austin hails from Baltimore and resides half the year in Mannheim, Germany, where her music, as in the United States, is critically acclaimed. The Songfest CD includes her Five Sonnets from the Portuguese on texts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I found these to be the most accomplished pieces in this collection, perhaps because the texts themselves, which include references to music, propel Austin into a strong musical collaboration. Sonnet III is particularly lovely with its operatic melodic line that shows Scheidel-Austin as a master of the voice. The singer, however, must have the skill to maneuver the rushes to a high tessitura without tripping over the registral changes.
Mary Jeanne Van Appledorn offers her Freedom of Youth for speaker and Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. Unlike the other selections on this CD, this piece sounds best when heard on digital equipment. van Appledorn is a stylist and creative artist, whose range on the synthesizer is noteworthy. Swatches of the reciting voice blurt out between clumps of electronic tinkles. The electronic sounds evoke the neon, harp-like chimes that flood the airline walkways mixed with the sound of a pinball machine when the ball falls into the "extra game" slot. A dazzling synthesizer cadenza erupts at 5 minutes into the eleven-minute composition. The piece originally accompanied a 1986 installation of a nine-foot bronze structure by artist Rosie Alford at Texas Tech University (where Van Appledorn is a professor), which explains the atmosphere the music creates.
Susan Hurley's Wind River Songs consists of three short, charming pieces for soprano, cello and piano. The poetry is by Nick Bozanic, whose lines Hurley sets lovingly. The first of the three, "Wind," to me sounds more like rain because of a descending four-note figure that recurs in the cello. The second song, "River," is based on a slow, descending three-note pattern. "Song," the most beautiful and delicate of the three selections, betrays its namesake as it hovers around a single series of pitches and moves gently to its conclusion.
Tina Davidson's new collection of works, entitled I Hear the Mermaids Singing (1996), grapples with profundity. Her music searches for meanings and beginnings, and answers difficult questions that start with "why"-why, for example, does music exist? Sometimes I think it is because music is beautiful; it makes one feel beautiful; it reflects the beautiful. While listening to Davidson's compositions I sense that incandescent glimmer-the fleeting "why?" of music. Davidson knows why-you can hear it. Her music is primal. Ostinati knock calmly at the door and thirds resound like emergency vehicle horns sans the usual impatience and anger. What remains are delightful sounds-sounds that make us human and resound in the universe. If these words sound lofty, it is the result of listening to this otherworldly music.
Davidson's first piece for saxophones, called Transparent Victims, treats each line as expressive and unique. The saxophones reach into the upper part of their range, and then new material enters, which reminds one of the hymnody in Ives' Concord Sonata. Glissandi intrude and the piece fades to its conclusion. Her Lullaby, for saxophone, flute, English horn, bassoon and piano, churns like the one your mother might have hummed. Fire in the Mountain plays with rhythmic jaggedness, rapid chord changes and punching piano effects. The mountain fire spits, crackles, and flashes as played by the marimba, vibraphone and piano.
I Hear the Mermaid Singing is written for viola, cello and piano. The piano plays the ostinati with plaintive strings that imitate the Neptunal sounds of mermaids. As pizzicato playing takes over, the emotions change and the music exudes the strength. Possibly Davidson is mindful of the Mermaids Parade that takes place every year in Coney Island, Brooklyn, where women parade in their true power. As the piece ends, chromatically colored scales bid the mermaids adieu.
Bleached Thread, Sister Thread is based on a poem by the composer's sister, Eva. In a string quartet that splinters open with octaves, we hear what has become Davidson's signature: a slow preparation of ideas, a heating up of the furnace, and a return to the calm of the beginning. There are a few moments of what I would call "down time," where the emotions catch their breath. This piece is longer than the others, 16 minutes or so, and for me is least attractive of the set, which is not meant as a criticism, because the music of the set as a whole is very enjoyable.
The final work is Blue Dawn, where Davidson recomposes the Adam and Eve story so that Eve is eating the promised fruit of salvation. Davidson is a feminist-no question about that!
Eleonora M. Beck is Assistant Professor of Music at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon. She has published pieces on Meredith Monk and Italian composer Fiorenza Gilioli. Her new book, Singing in the Garden: Music and Culture in the Tuscan Trecento, will appear soon.