Roger Reynolds 'O'o

	PROGRAM NOTE back to Program Notes Last modified 12 June 2024 'O'o (2018) (Flute and String Quartet) by Roger Reynolds In the summer of 2017 Bob Aitken and I were on Nova Scotia, talking about repertoire. He expressed the wish that there were more music for flute and string quartet. I realized, immediately, that the prospect of such a quintet was appealing—entailing a “repositioning” of the string quartet medium that I have found so continuously engaging so as to include another, distinctive, treble voice. We quickly came to agreement that I would compose something for him, and, in the following weeks I “opened myself” as I do when considering a new project, so that breezes familiar and remote could come in and seed my mental space. The perils of climate change, and of the related loss of one after another evolutionary line of fellow creatures, are clear. I happened upon a poignant tale of the last remaining pair of 'o'o birds that had retreated to the Alaka'i swamp on the Hawaiian Island of Kaua'i as their former environment degraded. Both male and female of this species sang. It seems that the male of the last pair lived for four years after his mate ceased responding. My plan was to fashion a sonic environment within which, the outlines of a calling and responding would gradually emerge. In the resulting quintet, different instrumental pairings try out responsive interaction and finally settle on the flute as caller and the cello (all high-register harmonics) as respondent. I am less interested in the melodrama of a haunting narrative of loss and constancy, than by the ways in which varied musical behaviors evolve successively, as a “coming to awareness” of the need to call out: fields of pizzicato points, the gradual occurrence of sustained tones, stable threads weaving into cloud-like strata, intermittent warbles urging the strata into harmonic blocks, and the blocks then stretching and fragmenting so as to provide a ground against which the calls and responses increasingly occupy a listener’s attention. 'O'o is dedicated to Robert Aitken, and was commissioned by New Music Concerts and the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, with the financial assistance of The Koerner Foundation; The Merryweather Fund; Austin and Beverly Clarkson; Camille Watts; Véronique Lacroix and Paul Taub. 'O'o was premiered by Robert Aitken and the Iris String Ensemble on a New Music Concerts event at The Royal Conservatory of Music’s 21C Music Festival, 27 May 2018.

PROGRAM NOTE

back to Program Notes

Last modified 12 June 2024

'O'o (2018)
(Flute and String Quartet)

by Roger Reynolds

In the summer of 2017 Bob Aitken and I were on Nova Scotia, talking about repertoire. He expressed the wish that there were more music for flute and string quartet. I realized, immediately, that the prospect of such a quintet was appealing—entailing a “repositioning” of the string quartet medium that I have found so continuously engaging so as to include another, distinctive, treble voice. We quickly came to agreement that I would compose something for him, and, in the following weeks I “opened myself” as I do when considering a new project, so that breezes familiar and remote could come in and seed my mental space.

         The perils of climate change, and of the related loss of one after another evolutionary line of fellow creatures, are clear. I happened upon a poignant tale of the last remaining pair of 'o'o birds that had retreated to the Alaka'i swamp on the Hawaiian Island of Kaua'i as their former environment degraded. Both male and female of this species sang. It seems that the male of the last pair lived for four years after his mate ceased responding. My plan was to fashion a sonic environment within which, the outlines of a calling and responding would gradually emerge. In the resulting quintet, different instrumental pairings try out responsive interaction and finally settle on the flute as caller and the cello (all high-register harmonics) as respondent.

         I am less interested in the melodrama of a haunting narrative of loss and constancy, than by the ways in which varied musical behaviors evolve successively, as a “coming to awareness” of the need to call out: fields of pizzicato points, the gradual occurrence of sustained tones, stable threads weaving into cloud-like strata, intermittent warbles urging the strata into harmonic blocks, and the blocks then stretching and fragmenting so as to provide a ground against which the calls and responses increasingly occupy a listener’s attention.

         'O'o is dedicated to Robert Aitken, and was commissioned by New Music Concerts and the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, with the financial assistance of The Koerner Foundation; The Merryweather Fund; Austin and Beverly Clarkson; Camille Watts; Véronique Lacroix and Paul Taub. 'O'o was premiered by Robert Aitken and the Iris String Ensemble on a New Music Concerts event at The Royal Conservatory of Music’s 21C Music Festival, 27 May 2018.