NOTE: This is the third version of this story to be posted on PRX; it reflects some listener comments as well as the keen editorial insight of PRX member Sarah Elzas.
By all that's good and true, the musical forces gathered for composer Ingram Marshall's latest work, Dark Florescence, shouldn't be seen together. The reason? They're breaking the law -- or, to be more precise, the laws of physics.
All of which explains, at least in part, why no one had ever thought of composing a piece for classical guitar, electric guitar, and orchestra -- they had never been seen in the same place. The classical guitar had been happily whispering in the little salon; the orchestra bellowed in the concert hall; and the electric could make itself heard anywhere it liked.
This is a story of how a composer who admits to knowing nothing about guitars managed to create a work that embraces two such instruments while at the same time tucking them into the fabric of a symphony orchestra.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
NOTE: This is the third version of this story to be posted on PRX; it reflects some listener comments as well as the keen editorial insight of PRX member Sarah Elzas. By all that's good and true, the musical forces gathered for composer Ingram Marshall's latest work, Dark Florescence, shouldn't be seen together. The reason? They're breaking the law -- or, to be more precise, the laws of physics. All of which explains, at least in part, why no one had ever thought of composing a piece for classical guitar, electric guitar, and orchestra -- they had never been seen in the same place. The classical guitar had been happily whispering in the little salon; the orchestra bellowed in the concert hall; and the electric could make itself heard anywhere it liked. This is a story of how a composer who admits to knowing nothing about guitars managed to create a work that embraces two such instruments while at the same time tucking them into the fabric of a symphony orchestra.
Broadcast History
none
Transcript
Ingram Marshall’s Dark Florescence: The Music Behind the Story
Jackson Braider; edited by Sarah Elzas
When guitarist Benjamin Verdery approached Ingram Marshall to write an orchestral piece featuring two guitars, Marshall was hesitant. Or so says Verdery:
VERDERY: Well, he sort of said, ‘well, it’s very daunting ... and well, he never says no and he never says yes. It was more like, wow, what will I do?)
But then the American Composers Orchestra called Marshall for a piece to premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Gilmore Music Library at Yale commissioned him to compose a musical work to mark the library’s fifth anniversary. So, Ingram Marshall set to work.
> DARK FLORESCENCE MUSIC
Ingram Marshall has been tagged with many aesthetic labels – minimalist or New Romanticist. He experiments with “concrete” elements -- sounds found in the “real” world that he manipulates and...
Read the full transcript
Musical Works
Marshall: Fog Tropes II, Kronos Quartet, Nonesuch CD 79613 (0:45)
J.S. BACH, trans. Verdery: Sarabande from Cello Suite no. 6 in D, BWV 1012; GRI Records GRICD 002 (1:00)
Andy Summers: Above the World, from Earth and Sky, Golden Wire GW 1001-2 (0:50)
Beethoven: Symphony no. 3 in E flat, Allegro; Chicago Symphony, Sir George Solti, London Records (0:30)
Marshall: Soepa, movement 2. Benjamin Verdery, guitar and effects; Mushkatweek Records 002 (1:00)
Marshall: Dark Florescence. American Composers Orchestra, Steven Sloane, cond. Andy Summers, electric guitar; Benjamin Verdery, classical guitar NCA (3:00)
Additional Files
Steven Hale
Posted on February 02, 2007 at 12:33 PM | Permalink
Review of Ingram Marshall's Dark Florescence: The Music Behind the Story
Jackson Braider's exploration of the paradoxical combination of acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and orchestra in composer Ingram Marshall's "Dark Florescence" achieves a feat as impressive as the composition itself.
Braider overcomes several formidable obstacles:
1. Composer Ingram Marshall is hardly a household name, and his compositions are so individual and diverse that familiar labels like "minimalist' or "new Romanticism" only obscure Marshall's genius. Any overview risks portraying Marshall's writing as aridly cerebral or patronizingly flashy, and it is neither. Braider avoids simple categorization, while at the same time vividly describing the work's complexities, using examples not only from "Dark Florescence" but from other music by the three principals as well.
2. The documentary cannot presume that the listener has heard the piece, and thus must include excerpts, yet Marshall's music most frequently reaches its peak through gradual, sometimes even glacial, development. Braider wisely incorporates just enough of the original to motivate the audience to audition the entire work.
3. Braider knows that he must target both the sophisticated classical listener and the avid but often untrained rock audience, and he succeeds admirably.
This 14-minute profile wastes not one second, and is scripted with the pace of an engrossing detective novel rather than a didactic lecture. Stations that play "The Music Behind the Story" should also purchase a copy of Marshall's composition in preparation for the listener requests that will inevitably follow.