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Saturday 11 November 3.00pm
The Music of Jean Catoire

Union Chapel  £10/£6 concessions

Sarah Leonard, soprano; James D'Angelo, piano; Helen Tunstall, harp; Stephen Bennett, clarinet; Maxine Willis, flute

Programme

Jean Catoire Sonata for Piano No. 9, op.204*; Sonata for Solo Voice, op.195*; Sonata for Flute and Harp no.6, op.382*

Interval

Jean Catoire Sonata for Voice and Harp no.9, op.401A*; Sonata for Clarinet and Piano no.3, op.445*; Sonata for Voice and Piano no.5, op.293*

* World premiere

Composer

Jean Catoire is a reclusive prolific composer of a unique kind of sacred music whose full importance has yet to be recognised. Born in Paris in 1923 and nephew of the Russian composer Georges Catoire (1861-1926), Catoire was a student of Olivier Messiaen and the conductor Leon Barzin. The composer eventually rejected the aesthetics of Messiaen in favour of those of Bartok and Hindemith. From this point on he marginalised himself within the fashionable French musical circles. He found himself drawn to an altogether different sacred mysticism from Messiaen's and between 1948 and 1955 wrote more than 30 choral religious works. By the late 1950s his music was becoming increasingly stripped of embellishment to the point where it was anticipating the minimalist music of the late 1960s. Thus his first creative period (102 works of which 24 were destroyed) closed followed by two years of silence (1959-60). The second creative period (1961+) consists of 502 opuses for every standard instrumental and vocal combination plus works for synthesizer and Tibetan bowls. The volume is even greater when one considers that most of the works are over 30 minutes long, many lasting much longer (a few could continue up to 12 hours). Because he had to devote himself to much teaching and because of the labour and energy it took to write down what he calls his "auditive visions" (the works are seen, not heard), he had no time left to promote performances of his music. He realised too that musicians would be reluctant to play music that seemingly left no room for ordinary expressiveness. If one had to identify his sacred phenomenon of sound world with that of an established composer, it would be the music of Arvo Part. Suffering from ill health, he remains in Paris, doing some teaching and preparing his voluminous essays on the phenomenon of sound and other esoteric subjects for future publication. Catoire, who does not claim the title of "composer" but rather "transcriber", has stated that his works "...were realised with the objective of revealing sound in its pure state before it has passed through the filter of musical conception. The works are a juxtaposition of sounds characterised by a synthesis of structure and regular rhythmical values in a dynamic continuum, thereby creating elemental forms which represent the anterior, pre-sound values before their integration into any kind of musical conception or mould. This phenomenon of sound gives birth to a different sense of time and duration; it also lends to the structural elements a value and dimension beyond anything one finds in 'music' so-called."

Performers

Sarah Leonard is one of this country's most versatile sopranos. She has a wide repertoire, with a particular interest in 20th century music. Opera includes Dr. Faustus, Giaccomo Manzoni, La Scala, Milan; To Be Sung, Pascal Dusapin, Theatre des Amandiers, Paris; Dirty Tricks, Paul Barker, London; Das Madchen mit den Schwefelholzern, Helmut Lachenmann and Al Gran Sole Carico d'Amore, Luigi Nono, both at Hamburg Opera. Sarah works with many European Chamber Ensembles, and regularly gives song recitals. She has broadcast extensively, and has made over 30 CD's. These include 'When the heart is young' -songs by Franz Lehar, the 6 CD series 'A Century of English Song' with SOMM Recordings, and 'Neither' by Morton Feldman, Hat Hut Records. Future releases include Alistair Hinton's String Quintet with soprano, op.13, on Altarus Records.

James D'Angelo is a multi-faceted American musician living in England whose professional life encompasses that of a composer, pianist, organist, teacher, sound therapist and author. In fluenced by the music of the Medieval and Renaissance eras, the works of Hindemith, the structure and theory of Indian music and his experiences as a jazz musician, his music has its own pantonal, stylistic unity in which flowing and joyous melody and intriguing harmonic progressions are its chief features. His vocal music, including over 40 songs and a number of choral works, are especially appealing. Three of his extended, partially improvised keyboard works have been recorded on his own label. His Portraits of Krishna pieces have appeared recently on a Virgin Classics CD that includes works by Copland, Bernstein and Barber. An authority on the therapeutic application of music and sound, he has established workshops entitled Healing Vibrations: The Power of the Resonating Voice for the purpose of integrating body, mind and spirit. He is the author of the forthcoming book Healing with the Voice: Creating Harmony through the Power of Sound published by Thorsons. See also extended biography in "commentary".

Helen Tunstall is principal harpist with the London sinfonietta and performs with the major London orchestras and ensembles. Appearances this year include Paris IRCAM. the Hoxton, Athens, Huddersfield and Brighton Festivals, the Ensemble Moderne as guest and the BBC Proms. She records regularly for film, television and radio, recently recording with the choirs of New College Oxford and Wells Cathedral.

Stephen Bennett was born in San Francisco and took up the clarinet at an early age. In the USA he played with numerous orchestras including the San Jose Symphony, the Robert Joffrey ballet orchestra and the Mozart Festival Orchestra, launched his solo concerto career with the daunting Carl Nielson concerto and founded the successful woodwind quintet Westwind. Emigrating to Europe the mid-70s, he studied with the well-known clarinet soloists Karl Leister, Gervase de Peyer and Jack Brymer and played with such orchestras London Festival ballet orchestra, the Orchestre Chambre de Paris (France) and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonic (Germany). In London he formed the Alban and Philomela Trios (soprano, clarinet, piano) and the Philomela Quartet (violin, cello, clarinet, piano). In 1996 he formed the Heritage Ensemble to augment the Clarinet Heritage Society projects. His discovery of an undisputed clarinet masterpiece by the Danish composer August Heinrik Winding helped to inspire his first solo recording. He has given first performances of works by such composers as Carter, Reger, Mendelssohn Horovitz , Cherubini and Crussel. The well-known British composer Arnold Cooke wrote a concerto especially for him and this was broadcast and recorded by the BBC. A new concerto for Basset horn is currently being written for him by David Hoyland. He has recently been appointed the artistic director of the Clapham Festival of Music and the Arts.

Maxine Willis was a woodwind finalist in the 1992 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. After reading English at Brasenose College Oxford, she pursued a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Music. A virtuoso player on the flute, alto flute and the piccolo she performs regularly with the Continuum Ensemble, the Balthasar Consort and the Bournmouth Symphony Orchestra. She is involved in very varied recital and chamber music work which has included the premiere of James D'Angelo's three-movement work for flute and percussion entitled Fools in 1997.

Notes

Jean Catoire stands as a unique figure in twentieth century music. Working in isolation and without recognition for most of his creative life, he has produced a prodigious number of works that can, at best, be described as minimalist. When Catoire states that he is merely the transcriber of what he 'sees', a listener can sense this because it is as though the composer has no personality of his own. That he has somehow tapped into another dimension of musical time and space that draws the listener into that dimension as an act of meditation. This transportation into such a deep space beyond waking consciousness is partly created by the repetitive patterns as well as the very slow tempos marked. The absoluteness and purity of purpose of the music is further enhanced by the fact that it is in no particular way idiomatic for the instruments and voices. To a great extent he need not bother indicating which instruments should be involved in a performance. If anything in music can be described as 'archetypal', it is Catoire's works. Inherent in its structure is a profound sacred geometry as the music unfolds in its permutations of the basic materials. This applies to all his works in their evolution from those that are freely chromatic to those which contain only permutations of two tones.
In his programme notes for the recording entitled Extasia that he produced of Catoire's Requiem, Op. 573 (Virgin Classics 7243 5 45324 2 9), Malcolm Bruno states: 'Unlike most of his contemporaries, Catoire has maintained the language of triad and ritual repetition. But like the 'thin-bodied' sculpture of Giacometti's late period, there is an inexplicable attrition of pace in his mature work towards a continuous, uninterrupted stillness - a stasis which remains increasingly unchallenged. Catoire's musical thought is essentially Pythagorean; it is the laying bare of pure musical sound, in which a worldly concern for the language of words and the rhythms of speech are of no consequence. As a 'music of the spheres' it recognizes only the resonance and pulse of pure being perceived in sound.'
The Sonata for Piano No.9, Op. 204 (1971), with a special dedication to the composer/pianist James D'Angelo, is a very typical work of this period. It consists entirely of shifting triads juxtaposed chromatically in which the alternation of the major and minor third frequently occurs. On occasion in such works the two thirds will appear simultaneously causing a momentary 'blues' effect. The Sonata for Voice and Piano No.5, Op.293 (1973) is, to some extent, similar to the 9th piano sonata. As in almost all his vocal works, there are no texts and the singer must choose one or more vowel sounds for his or her part. In solo vocal pieces Catoire occasionally specifies whether the singer should be male or female. This highly chromatic work with much changing between the two thirds has less notes than Op. 204. One of its features is silence, points where Catoire uses a fermata (a long pause) over a double barline. This occurs in other works throughout his output. The Sonata for Clarinet and Piano No.3, Op. 445 (1976) has the same essential characteristics of Op.204 and Op. 293 but it is all greatly reduced - in this case to three chords with the fluctuating major/minor third. Catoire employs the great silences, too as in Op. 293. The Sonata for Solo Voice No.2, Op. 195 (1970) could be described as a kind of modern day plainsong with its naturally melismatic chromatic line fairly narrow in range and occasional pauses. It represents a distillation of the Catoire style of this time. All of the composer's works are a tour de force for the singer as they require such sustained breathing to achieve their effect. The Sonata for Flute and Harp No.6, Op. 382 (1974) and Sonata for Voice and Harp, Op. 401A (1974) is in stark contrast to the previous works. These could almost described as diatonic tonal or modal in character. For example, in Op. 382 the flute in the first variation plays nothing but the notes of the C major scale up until the 100th bar while the harp plays only open fifths occasionally adding an F sharp. Overall this work, which will be played in an abridged version, contains only three accidentals sparsely distributed over its very long span. It is quite demanding for the flautist for there are no pauses whatsoever unlike Op. 401A .
James D'Angelo August 2000