European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Sound Icon Celebrates the Music of Jonathan Harvey

May. 02, 2014

Sound Icon Celebrates the Music of Jonathan Harvey

On May 3, Boston’s Sound Icon celebrated the 75th birthday of the late Jonathan Harvey with a portrait concert led by Jeffrey Means. The program offered a particularly diverse survey of the composer’s works, from Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, a transformative electroacoustic piece that debuted in 1980, to Wheel of Emptiness, a work for sixteen players and electronics, composed in 1997.

Of the latter, Harvey described the work as an attempt to reconcile opposing musical forces, from “flowing, almost chaotic” material, against “cool, discrete objects, which have no connection with each other.” Harvey elaborates: 

‘Subjective’ and ‘objective’ are in dialectic and ultimately transcended. From a technical point of view, the harmony is based on a modulating sequence of “equal addition compressed spectra”... The microtones are supported by a sampler in the ensemble which plays the spectra, usually in sea-wave patterns wheeling round and round. The Buddhist notion of “emptiness” was foremost in my mind.

The program also included Advaya, for solo cello, keyboard and electronics, with soloist David Russell, as well as Death of Light/Light of Death, a quintet for oboe, harp and string trio after Matthias Grünewald’s “Crucifixion” from the Issenheim Altarpiece.

For more information on Jonathan Harvey, please visit www.fabermusic.com.

Details on Sound Icon can be found at www.soundicon.org.

Jonathan Harvey
Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980)
for 8 channel fixed media
9’ 

Death of Light/Light of Death (1998)
for oboe, harp, violin, viola, cello
17’

Advaya (1994)
for solo cello, electronic keyboard and electronics
22’

Wheel of Emptiness (1997)
for large ensemble and electronics
1(pic.afl).1.1(bcl).1(cbsn)-1.1.1.0-2perc-kybd(sampler, Emu E-Synth kybd).pno-str(1.1.1.1.1)
16’

News