Isaac Shieh: Caprice Reimagined

Dai Fujikura had written previous works for solo horn, but ele was his first for natural horn, and it was also the first Shieh premiered in the set. Consistent with his process, Fujikura worked closely with Shieh and fashioned the work from fragments of Shieh’s readings of his draft sketches. The work opens dramatically, with loud bursts emerging from focused, energetic trills, before a contrasting melodic theme is introduced. Fujikura develops these two oppositional ideas throughout the work.

Michael Finnissy’s answer to the commission to respond to one of Gallay’s caprices was to write six caprices of his own. Finnissy leans into the timbral contrasts available on the instrument, creating a kind of dialogue between different voices on the natural horn. He draws inspiration from Gallay’s connection to the performance practice of Italian opera in 18th century Paris, and references vocal music of Rossini, Donizetti, and Offenbach in the set.

Timo Andres’ Loud Ciphers is a natural horn quartet whose individual parts Shieh overdubbed himself in the studio. Andres revels in polyphony and contrapuntal techniques in the composition, weaving together canons that build and decay, and toying with subsequent manipulations of the canonic material. Loud Ciphers is comprised of permutations of two types of material, percolating repeated figures and flowing chorale shapes that culminate in a soaring series of horn calls.

Grace-Evangeline Mason’s In the Garden of a Museum is inspired by a poem by American poet Stuart Dischell, “She Put on Her Lipstick in the Dark.” The poem is written in the form of a pantoum, a series of interwoven quatrains, and Mason organized the composition in a similar fashion, repeating musical phrases to align with representative portions of text. This internal organization gives the piece a ritualistic flavor, as the vocal quality of the natural horn is emphasized in sighing, incantation-like phrases.

Eastern philosophy, and specifically, Tibetan arts traditions, form a core inspiration for Rockey Sun Keting. Her work Chuān II is notated in graphic notation modeled after Tibetan Yang-yig scores which communicate through curved lines. The evocative piece illuminates the links between valveless horns across musical cultures.

Amanda Cole’s music often focuses on spectral concerns and the overtone series, so a work for Shieh’s project was a natural fit. Her Fabric of the Universe explores the open notes on the natural horn over an electronic drone accompaniment.

Georgia Scott’s identification as a disabled composer enhanced her collaboration with Shieh, and The Ghost in the Machine for natural horn and electronics is an outgrowth of that connection and an exploration of mind-body dualism, embodiment, and their implications for instrumentalists. The piece features a complex dialogue between live and pre-recorded elements which blurs the boundary between the two, echoing the nuanced relationship between components of mental and physical embodied selves.

Scott Wollschleger’s six movement YOU ARE PERFECT JUST AS YOU ARE is a tongue in cheek reference to the inherent limitations of the natural horn, restraints that Wollschleger turns into assets in the construction of the work. Like Andres, Wollschleger wrote for overdubbed horn ensemble, and each short movement places a sonic microscope on an ensemble prototype, from massed chordal swells, to staggered entrances that create a kind of klangfarbenmelodie, to Feldman-esque syntactical ministrations that call attention to different chord tones in a complex verticality. Throughout Wollschleger revels in the richness of the microtonal colors and shadings of the horn’s partials in the overtone series.

Inspired by the mastic tree, common in the Greek Aegean islands, Electra Perivolaris’ The Mastic Orchard leans heavily on the fragile higher register of the natural horn, a symbol of the ever evolving and cyclical nature of the biological life of that region. Dramatic gestural bursts and crescendos are capped by repeated punctuations in this portrait of a beautiful and stark ecosystem.

Lloyd Coleman’s Sgraffito is inspired by the Italian Renaissance painting technique of the same name which involves scratching a surface to reveal the colors lying beneath. Coleman’s work opens and closes with lyrical horn calls, with angular, increasingly agitated material in between.

In his composition process, James B. Wilson relished the opportunity to craft a virtuosic work that celebrates the natural horn’s “native pitches” of the overtone series, and the athleticism involved especially in performing intricate contemporary music on the instrument. Chroma-Maxima is exuberant and joyous, with infectious rhythmic material and an irrepressible spirit throughout its six and half minute duration.

Robin Haigh’s DOCK LEAF is the final work in the collection and is a lyrical ode to the horn’s roots amongst the natural world. We hear Shieh’s poignant, lyrical performance of Haigh’s simple, sincere melodies over recorded sounds of nature and chimes. It is a moving final message, amidst Shieh’s commendable efforts in expanding this time honored instrument’s repertoire, that it need not lose a connection with aspects of its functional past while advocating for ways for it to progress.

– Dan Lippel