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Scoring
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soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, piano
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Movements
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1. White Pillars
2. I'll Never Understand
3. A Little Girl
4. Dear Frank
5. I Walk Out
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Sound Files
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Commissioned by
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Oberlin College in honor of its sesquicentennial celebration
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Performances
Past performances are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at the top.
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Program Notes
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Music by Daniel Asia
Texts by Paul Pines
c 1988
Pines Songs is a song cycle of five poems and two fantasy
interludes. This version is based upon the piano and voice piece
of the same title, however the interludes were written specially
for this version; it was commissioned by the Oberlin Woodwind
Quintet, in honor of the sesquicentennial celebration of Oberlin
College.
The texts are by the writer/poet Paul Pines. He and I first met
at the MacDowell Colony, an artist's retreat in Peterborough,
New Hampshire. We became close friends, partly as the result of
a shared ferocity brought to the game of table tennis. I
requested books of poetry. I have so far written four works
based on his writings. The poems seem to bring together very
disparate worlds, uniting a wealth of emotional perspectives.
The imagery ranges from Ecclesiastics to the Blues, stating
something universal that is culled from the simple and mundane.
At the core of the work is man's uneasy place in the universe;
that of a curious bystander to his own inner world, living in a
physical world he also hardly understands. How these interior
and exterior worlds meet and interact is the enigma at the
center of these poems. However it is an enigma that is often
imbued with a wry and delicate sense of humor.
Like Pines' poetry, the music is of a somewhat eclectic nature.
Its language is that of a broadly extended tonality, that allows
for the most simple, as well as the most complex sonorities. The
result is a rather personal expression of a post-serial
impressionism, but whose rhythmic sense is, I think, purely
American. The piano sonorities of the earlier version have been
broadened, enriched, and "colored". The vocal line is
alternately declamatory or freely melismatic, with accents often
being placed like in popular music. The fantasy interludes
freely develop both materials that have already been heard, as
well as materials that appear only in later songs, thus leaving
a somewhat mystifying impression, that is only resolved at the
conclusion of the cycle.
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Reviews
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T. Pfaff, San Francisco Examiner:
Pines Songs favors a freely tonal idiom with a strong melodic profile.
L. Cavallaro, New Haven Register:
Pines Songs captured the many moods imaginatively, whether conveying gloom, mirth, pessimism, or surreality. 'White Pillars' reflected the strangeness effectively in both solo part and accompaniment, while the ending of 'I Walk Out To The End' had some lovely tonal colors.
J. Rockwell, New York Times:
The concert ended with Mr. Asia's 25-minute "Pines Songs" (1984), which consists of five settings of poems by Paul Pines and two optional instrumental interludes, played on Tuesday for the first time in this country. It sounded appealing, in its Impressionistic way.
B. Creditor, Quintessence:
Larry McDonald (of the Oberlin Woodwind Quintet) agrees with this writer that Pines Songs should be a major work in the wind quintet repertoire–a serious and well-crafted piece.
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