A Far Cry presents the premiere of a new commission by Juantio Becenti that portrays Diné Bahane’, the Navajo creation story, in which “The People” (Diné) ascend through a series of mono-colored worlds into the current world of many colors, also known as “The Glittering World.”  This piece is also a telling of Becenti’s own creative journey; throughout, you'll hear him pull in musical quotes from the likes of Shostakovich, Debussy, and Schoenberg, all of whom inspired his compositional style. Paired alongside The Glittering World is another AFC commission: Ted Hearne’s Law of Mosaics, which premiered exactly 10 years ago this year. Similar to Becenti, Hearne plays with famous quotations from many different composers as he experiments with found musical material.

Ted Hearne (b. 1982)
LAW OF MOSAICS

When asked what creators are important to him, Ted Hearne notes an eclectic mix including Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Tribe Called Quest, Wu Tang Clan, Björk, Radiohead, Michaël Gordan, Steve Reich and American Minimalists. In his own works, Hearne reflects a similarly wide-ranging array of styles having worked with artists like Erykah Badu and Zeena Parkins, as well as ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Roomful of Teeth, Alarm Will Sound and many others. 

Experimenting with sound, Hearne has often worked with autotune and vocal processing, reflecting his interest in juxtaposition and the energy that comes from examining differences. He has noted in an interview, “Something that draws me to music is that it helps us think in the abstract, and it helps us reflect upon the world that we live in in a way that can be poetic or challenging or utopian. I think it can help us imagine new worlds.” 

Hearne’s note for Law of Mosaics follows:

"Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings."

"Meaning is a matter of adjacent data."

"The law of mosaics: how to deal with parts in the absence of wholes."

These passages, along with many others, are appropriated from a variety of sources and arranged by David Shields into his 2010 book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. It is a patchwork treatise on art and digital culture, and is an inspiration for Law of Mosaics - a new 30-minute piece for A Far Cry. 

The musical material from the first movement, Excerpts from the middle of something, is lush and climactic - but it is also a fish out of water, removed from surrounding music that might help it be better contextualized. It could follow a tense build-up, or precede a climax and resolution, but instead we hear it repeated and revised. As the material circles in on itself, it begins to make sense on its own, but never really "goes" anywhere.

The second movement, Palindrome for Andrew Norman, is constructed entirely of samples lifed from other pieces of music. Each plays an important or climactic role in the piece from which it is lifted, but is used here as a single building block in the construction of a symmetrical (and rather arbitrary) formal structure: the palindrome. Each sample is altered from its original composition in some way: it may appear backwards, or revoiced, or as a canon with itself, but an element of its essential character is always preserved.  Andrew Norman is a contemporary composer from New York whose 2010 string trio The Companion Guide to Rome is heard among the many snippets of source material in this movement.

In some way, the rich history of works written for the string orchestra informs and influences every performance by every individual string orchestra active today, whether they choose to perform those works or not. Climactic moments from "Adagio for Strings" and "The Four Seasons," slowed down and layered on top of one another explores what can happen when two "staples" of the repertoire (likely to be found on a Best Classical Hits CD) are stretched out and mashed up. 

The fourth movement, Beats, is derived from a song written by Philip White and Ted Hearne as part of their collaboration vocal/electronics duo R WE W WHO R WE. The explosive palette of White’s mixer feedback is used as inspiration for pushing the sonic and timbral limitations of the string orchestra.

Climactic moments from movement three, three times as slow as before is simply a reframing of music you have already heard. 

The warp and woof refers to the lengthwise (warp) and crosswise (woof) threads that together create the texture and foundation of a woven fabric. It is a fitting end for a piece that imagines the framing of musical content to be as integral to the structure of a work as the way that content is framed.

Juantio Becenti (b. 1983)
GLITTERING WORLD

“It’s really strange. I just had that desire, almost since I can remember,” Juantio Becenti recalled in an interview for the Navajo Times. Of Diné (Navajo) descent, Becenti grew up in Aneth, Utah, near the Four Corners, Navajo Nation. As a child he would stay late at school to practice on the piano there and took lessons from a teacher who traveled to give him instruction. Driven to absorb all he could, he would order CDs and scores for study, eventually moving toward composing around age twelve. By age fifteen, Becenti received his first commission from the Moab Music Festival. Since then, he has been commissioned by artists Dawn Avery (North American Indian Cello Project), Raven Chacon (Native American Composers Apprenticeship Program), Michael Barrett (New York Festival of Song), amongst others, and had his works performed by the St. Petersburg String Quartet, Chatter, the Claremont Trio at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Of his new work, Becenti writes:

“The Glittering World is a piece for string orchestra based on the mythological narrative of how the Navajo People came to be. According to the Navajo origin story, proto-humans emerged from a genesis-like void (described as little more than mist) and ascended from various mono-colored underworlds. With each migration these beings became increasingly more complex and "more human," forced to deal with their own nature as they moved from one world to the next. Each world is represented by a single color until these proto-humans, now demi-gods with their accumulated knowledge, emerge into the Glittering World or "The World of Many Colors." These precursors of the "Surface Dwelling People" (Navajo People) were tasked with laying the ceremonial groundwork with which to guide the Navajo People in their pursuit of harmony and beauty in all things in this current world. 

A major theme in the story of the glittering world is the ascension from one world into the next where the previous world, though initially harmonious, ultimately falls into chaos and is destroyed. I tried stating that concept most explicitly in part A. The row I used to build tension etc. is stated "properly" initially but then "wrong" notes begin to creep in here and there until it breaks down completely at the end. In Navajo thought, especially in weaving, there is a concept of a "spirit line". Navajo weaving is geometrical and there is an intentional "error" of an unfinished empty line in the geometrical pattern which allows the spirit to move in and out. Otherwise, they say, it would be essentially dead. 

I opted to use musical quotations from some of my favorite composers’ works as a means of representing the concept of a glittering world. In Navajo religious thought colors are used symbolically to represent the cosmos, deities, time, etc. Instead of trying to exemplify those ideas I decided to use musical quotations and moments as examples of bursts of light and joy in an internal world (not necessarily a cosmic one as the concept of the glittering world is in Navajo thought). For example, my first exposure to dissonance on a large scale was the Shostakovich string quartets when I was 17; immediately before I wrote my piece “Hane”. I acquired the Emerson Quartets recording of Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets and I was completely floored. Listening to those quartets brought me so much joy and that feeling is what I tried to highlight here. In terms of the cosmos I used the 12-tone row both as a nod to Schoenberg but again to Shostakovich who used it differently than Schoenberg.

I chose to quote Debussy’s “The Sunken Cathedral” to close The Glittering World because of the story behind that piece. It depicts the rising of the cathedral (world) through the haze and mist into a "glittering" statement of joy.  Learning about music has been a difficult yet rewarding journey for me as I am self-taught. When I first began writing I was 11 or so and I eagerly copied the composers I was listening to at the time, unsure if I'd ever be able to write anything comparable. The realization that I am able to appreciate the inherent beauty in music and in fact can write something along those lines (as I did with “Hane”) is a world realized. It's like the joyous bells ringing in the sunken cathedral. 

At its core this music is about celebration, and I hope the few musical lines I quoted will propel that idea forward.”

Kathryn J. Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.