Armer's musical sci-fi in SF

Synopsis

On today's date in 1995, the Women's Philharmonic and conductor JoAnn Falletta premiered a new work for chorus and orchestra. It was called "Island Earth," and was the eighth installment of a multi-year collaboration between the Bay Area composer Elinor Armer and the popular science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin.

The collaboration began, according to Le Guin, with "an intuition that somewhere there must be other uses for music than those commonly recognized, namely: to sooth the savage beast, to arouse patriotic fervor, to allay qualms in elevators, to increase egg-laying, to permits glimpses of ineffable truth, etc. etc."

Much to their delight, Le Guin and Armer, while exploring a remote archipelago that existed purely in the outer reaches of their own imaginations, discovered a race of exotic islanders for whom music can serve as food, paving materials, or even aphrodisiacs. On the Island of Gegge, for example, the seven-legged inhabitants have only one immense musical instrument -- namely the island itself, which can accommodate thousands of players. If the island isn't played, in fact, it would simply sink -- so for the Geggerets, music is a life and death matter.

So fascinated were Elinor Armer and Ursula Le Guin by these imaginary islands, that they created a series of large and small musical portraits titled "The Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts." The result is a kind of "Young Person's Guide" to the fantastic orchestras of their imaginations.

Music Played in Today's Program

Elinor Armer (b. 1939) Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts SF Chamber Singers; Women's Philharmonic; JoAnn Falletta, cond. Koch 7331

On This Day

Births

• 1791 - French opera composer Louis Joseph F. Herold, in Paris;

• 1898 - Italian-American composer Vittorio Rieti, in Alexandria, Egypt;

• 1944 - British composer Sir John Tavener, in London;

Deaths

• 1935 - Russian composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, age 75, in Moscow;

• 1947 - Venezuelan-born French composer Reynaldo Hahn, age 72, in Paris;

Premieres

• 1725 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 92 ("Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn") performed on Septuagesimae Sunday after Epiphany as part of Bach's second annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1724/25);

• 1828 - Schubert: Piano Trio in Bb, Op. 99 (D. 898), at a private performance by Ignaz Schuppanzigh (violin), Josef Linke (cello), and Carl Maria von Bocklet (piano);

• 1830 - Auber: opera "Fra Diavolo" in Paris at the Opéra-Comique;

• 1876 - Tchaikovsky: "Serenade mélancolique" for violin and orchestra, in Moscow (Julian date: Jan. 18);

• 1897 - Glazunov: Symphony No. 5, in London;

• 1915 - Ravel: Piano Trio in a, in Paris, by Gabriel Wilaume (violin), Louis Feuillard (cello), and Alfredo Casella (piano);

• 1916 - Granados: opera "Goyescas," at the Metropolitan Opera in New York;

• 1927 - Copland: Piano Concerto, by the Boston Symphony conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, with the composer as soloist;

• 1941 - Copland: "Quiet City," at Town Hall in New York City by the Little Symphony conducted by Daniel Saidenberg; This music is based on incidental music Copland wrote for Irwin Shaw's play of the same name produced by the Group Theater in New York in 1939;

• 1944 - Bernstein: Symphony No. 1 ("Jeremiah"), at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh by the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by the composer, with mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel as vocal soloist;

• 1972 - Scott Joplin: opera "Treemonisha" (orchestrated by T.J. Anderson), in Atlanta;

• 1990 - Joan Tower: Flute Concerto, at Carnegie Hall in New York, with soloist Carol Wincenc and the American Composers Orchestra, Hugh Wolff, conducting;

• 1995 - Elinor Armer: “Island Earth” (to a text by Sci-Fi writer Usula K. Le Guin), at the University of California, Berkeley, by the various San Francisco choirs and the Women’s Philharmonic, conducted by JoAnn Falletta; On the same program were the premiere performance’s of Chen Yi’s “Antiphony” for orchestra and Augusta Read Thomas’s “Fantasy” for piano and orchestra (with piano soloist Sara Wolfensohn);

• 1997 - Morten Lauridsen: “Mid-Winter Songs” (final version) for chorus and orchestra, by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, John Currie conducting; Earlier versions of this work with piano and chamber orchestra accompaniment had premiered in 1981, 1983, and 1985 at various Californian venues;

• 2000 - André Previn: "Diversions," in Salzburg, Austria, by the Vienna Philharmonic, the composer conducting;

Others

• 1742 - Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin (and the author of "Gulliver's Travels"), objects to the cathedral singers taking part in performances of Handel's works while the composer is in that city (Gregorian date: Feb. 8); Rehearsals for the premiere performance of Handel's "Messiah" would begin in April of that year, involving the choirs of both Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedrals in Dublin;

• 1971 - William Bolcom completes his "Poltergeist" Rag (dedicated to Teresa Sterne, a one-time concert pianist who was then a producer for Nonesuch Records); According to the composer's notes, the "Poltergeist" Rag was written "in a converted garage next to a graveyard in Newburgh, N.Y."