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Tribute Concert to Fred Lerdahl at Carnegie Hall

Oct. 01, 2018

Tribute Concert to Fred Lerdahl at Carnegie Hall

On October 10, Columbia University's Department of Music presents a concert at Carnegie Hall in celebration of Fred Lerdahl, the Fritz Reiner Professor of Composition, who is retiring after 35 years of service on the Columbia faculty. The program features a selection of Lerdahl’s works, including Duo for cello and piano (2017), the New York premieres of String Quartet No. 4 "Chaconne" (2016) and Three Bagatelles for violin and guitar (2017), and the world premiere of Cyclic Descent for piano and large ensemble. The composer describes this new work:

Cyclic Descent (2018), for piano and large chamber ensemble, was commissioned for Steven Beck and the Talea Ensemble by the Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music. It comprises one movement lasting about 18 minutes and is dedicated to Steven Beck. The instrumentation is for solo piano with flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and contrabass.

The source of Cyclic Descent is a piano piece of the same name, the second of my Three Diatonic Studies. Consequently, Cyclic Descent has a more diatonic flavor than does most of my music, though it is hardly restricted to that. Formally it consists of seven cycles, beginning with a complete statement of the piano piece. String trills launch the second cycle overlapping with the end of the first, after which the piano often takes an obbligato instead of a solo role. The music gradually builds in energy and culminates in the sixth cycle, a quasi-cadenza for piano, after which the seventh acts as a coda.

This account, however, does not convey the overall effect of Cyclic Descent. Within each cycle, harmonic and linear progressions repeatedly descend in sequence. At the same time, the larger progression ascends, so that when the next cycle begins the harmonic regions reshuffle. Although I do not usually think about music visually, in this case, I imagined a modernist, intricate, multi-colored glass chandelier revolving slowly and inexorably, always sinking yet always renewing.

This exciting tribute concert to Fred Lerdahl features a number of world-class musicians and ensembles, including the Daedalus Quartet and the Talea Ensemble. 

Listen to Fred Lerdahl's String Quartet No. 2 (1982) here:


(String Quartet No. 2/Fred Lerdahl/Daedalus Quartet)


To learn more about Fred Lerdahl, please visit schott-music.com.

Fred Lerdahl
Duo (2017)
for cello and piano

String Quartet No. 4 "Chaconne" (2016)
for string quartet
19'

Three Bagatelles (2017)
for violin and guitar
9'

Cyclic Descent (2018)
for large ensemble
18'




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