cbellamy@heraldsun.com; 419-6744
DURHAM – Composer Gwyneth Walker’s composition “Language of the Soul” will premiere in concert Sunday at the Nasher Museum of Art, but students in the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics string orchestra got to play a portion of the new piece Friday. They also met the composer, who offered conductor Scott Laird’s orchestra some pointers about how to perform the composition, and some thoughts on her philosophy of music and composition.
Trumpeter Tim Hudson of the Greensboro-based Carolina Brass commissioned the new piece, written for string orchestra and trumpet, and he performed the first movement of the work, titled “The Soul Speaks of Peace,” with the students. Hudson played melodic, pastoral lines above rhythmically flowing string parts. The movement has a call-and-response section between trumpet and strings, and a listener can hear the influence of the blues in portions of the trumpet part.
Walker complimented the students on how they played the piece. “Can you hire these people for Sunday?” she asked Suzanne Rousso, violist and artistic director of Mallarmé Chamber Players, who will perform Walker’s composition and works by other women composers Sunday. The concert is a collaboration with an exhibit now on view at the Nasher Museum of Art, “The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991.” Many of the compositions to be performed are from the 1970s and 1980s, when more women composers came into greater prominence, Rousso said.
Walker coached the students on how to fix the rhythm in a section of the piece. When musicians see accent marks in new music, Walker told the students, they often think it signifies anger. But “there’s nothing angry in my music,” she told the students. When they play a piece, Walker said, they should look at the title of the work, read any program notes available, and let that information guide their interpretation. As a composer, she tries to offer as many instructions as possible in her score, she said.
“Language of the Soul” takes its title from a statement from the philosopher Plato. In her program notes, Walker writes that the composition explores “several of the ‘messages’ which the soul might choose to speak: peace, wonder, freedom and joy.” Other movements are titled “Wonder,” “Free Spirit” and “The Soul Sings with Joy.”
Hudson had previously played Walker’s composition for brass, “Raise the Roof!” He met her about six years ago when Carolina Brass performed some of her music with Chapel Hill Community Chorus, and he decided later to commission her to write a piece for trumpet and strings.
Walker has written many choral works, and compositions for brass, string quartet and other ensembles. She has a doctorate in composition, and in 1982 resigned her position at Oberlin Conservatory, moved to a dairy farm in Vermont, and began composing full time.
“I just write music every day,” she told the students. “The life of a composer has these two extremes,” she said – the solitude of composing, followed by travel for premieres, when you might meet musicians who want to perform your work. “I love to write music – it’s the best part of my day,” she said, adding that if she were not in Durham for the residency, she would be working on a composition at her home.
She has a website, and stressed to the students the importance of organization and planning. (She does the binding for her scores herself, she said.)
Walker, now 64, said she began composing on the piano when she was 2. She would duplicate melodies on piano that her elder sister played, as well as tunes from the radio.
She asked if any of the students in the orchestra composed, and a few raised their hands. Walker urged them to learn what they can about music, but to find their own voice. “There’s a lot in the world of music to learn,” she said, but students should incorporate what they learn to create something that expresses them. “You want to sound like yourself,” Walker said.
“If you write music or play music for a living, that is a rich thing in your soul,” she said.
At Sunday’s concert, members of Mallarmé Chamber Players also will perform composer Libby Larsen’s “Fanfare for the Women” and “Up Where the Air Gets Thin”; Thea Musgrave’s “Niobe”; Joan Tower’s “Island Prelude” and “Platinum Spirals”; and Sofia Gubaidulina’s “String Quartet No. 2.”
Go and Do
WHAT: “Wonder Women,” a concert of music by women composers, put on by Mallarme Chamber Players
WHEN: Sunday, 3 p.m.
WHERE: Nasher Museum of Art Auditorium, Duke University, 2001 Campus Drive
ADMISSION: Tickets are $18 in advance, $20 at the door. To purchase, call 560-2788 or visit mallarmemusic.org.
