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Sounding Off with Tim Sawyier

A Little Anti-Valentine's Music Anyone? 

“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.” –Samuel Butler

Valentine’s Day is February 14^th, and as Duke Orsino proclaims in the opening of Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love, play on!” Well, if I were Duke Orsino on Valentine’s Day, I’d say, “If music be the food of love, don’t! It’s fat enough this time of year!” Lovers have so much to listen to on Valentine’s Day—as in, anything—and they’re the people who least need “entertainment” that day. So this is a shortlist of classical listening for those who will spend Valentine’s Day having Chinese for one, and wine for three.

Gustav Mahler, “The Lonely One in Autumn” from Das Lied von der Erde. Don’t feel too bad for that lonely girl; you’re a lonely one in WINTER.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique.” Reflect on the beauty of life and love by listening as a tortured homosexual closes his symphonic career with a single dull gong-thud, as though intoning his own death. (He did in fact die nine days after the work’s premier.)

Ludwig van Beethoven “Fur Elise.” This piece is so famous it’s easy to forget that it’s about unattainable, obsessive love. Hard as he tries, Beethoven can’t escape the limpid chromatic theme representing his unrequited desires. At least the piece kind of evaporates at the end so you can be sure Beethoven never found what he was looking for. Sound familiar?

Giacommo Puccini, “Madame Butterfly” A Valentine’s Day must! Sensitive lady waits at home for thuggish boyfriend to return. He comes back with a floozy on his arms, because no one would have expected that. Butterfly kills herself. As true today as it was when it was written!

Gregorio Allegri, “Miserere Mei Deus.” Obviously this is a good choice because it has what sounds like the word “misery” in the title. It actually means, “Have mercy/compassion on me, God,” but hey, if you’re alone on Valentine’s Day, He is your one sure companion.

Maurice Ravel, “Pavane for a Dead Princess.” Talk about the one that got away! Maybe she would have liked you.

Igor Stravinsky, “Danse Sacrale” from Rite of Spring. This is the “sacrifice of the virgin” that closes the ballet. Should remind you that if you are a virgin on Valentine’s Day, someone someday might have the decency to make you dance into a frenzy and drop dead.

Happy (or whatever) listening! And seriously (for first time in this entry), take solace in the fact that Valentine’s Day really just isn’t that big a deal. Unless you are a Hallmark executive.

February 1, 2012

A Quick Look at the History of Chamber Music

Throughout the course of the Chicago Philharmonic’s season, the Chicago Philharmonic Chamber Players present numerous chamber music programs at churches in Park Ridge and Hinsdale.  Since each of these concerts will have their own program notes about the individual works in question, I thought a brief discussion of why chamber music itself exists in the forms we know it would be a nice introduction to these concerts.

The earliest Western music dates from the Renaissance, and was largely choral. It took the form of masses, motets, madrigals, and other settings for voices alone. Instruments only entered the picture to support, often just double the vocal lines of these compositions. It took time for the role of instruments to shift from mere accompanying roles to being stars in their own right.

The earliest pieces of chamber music were in fact much more simple than the complex vocal compositions of the Renaissance period. Instrumentalists’ first autonomous forms for small-scale performance were trio sonatas, that is, two instruments with an accompanying bass line and/or keyboard. This was the instrumental translation of the voices of a chorus, i.e. soprano, alto, tenor, and bass turn into two higher instrumental voices, a supporting voice, and a keyboard to provide harmonic underpinning and tie the three upper voices together. During the baroque period composers frequently wrote in such idioms, but with ambiguous instrumentation (any top line could be played by an oboe, flute, violin, etc). Indeed, Bach’s “Art of Fugue” was just written simply as fur independent parts that could be played on a keyboard, or by four instrumentalists, of any combination.

It was not until Joseph Haydn that chamber music forms became codified. He more or less “invented” the string quartet, comprised of two violins, a viola, and a cello. This clearly harkens back to the choral roots of music—two higher voices, a lower, but not bass voice, and a bass voice. With these four instrumental voices established, composers were free to develop a style that became almost conversational between the different instrumentalists.

“Chamber music” was initially so called because it was performed it was performed in, well, “chambers,” frequently those of wealthy patrons who hired resident composers to provide entertainment for their courts. However, “chamber” music at some point made a transition from people’s homes to concert halls. As the 18^th century drew on, composers were less frequently employed by wealthy patrons to produce entertainment. Haydn himself was the last major composer employed in such a capacity (in the Esterhazy Court). Beethoven and Mozart were at times the beneficiaries of support from wealthy patrons, but both deplored employment in their courts, and by the close of the 18^th century, the idea of a “court composer” was all but done with. Chamber music was no longer just for the amusement of the aristocracy.

A final development that brought chamber music to the concert hall was that of instruments themselves. Developments to the construction of string and wind instruments made them, for lack of a better word, louder, and the pianoforte became an instrument that could fill a hall (as opposed to harpsichords and other earlier keyboard instruments). This allowed groups of as few as three players to fill even the largest halls.

So that is a quick synopsis of how chamber music developed from Renaissance polyphony and found its way from the courts of the wealthy to concert halls around the world. It is admittedly incomplete, but I think effective as the broadest possible overview Hopefully with this knowledge you can better appreciate the experience of the Chicago Philharmonic Chamber Players performances, and every chamber music performance you hear.

December 31, 2011

During his third grade year, Tim Sawyier fell in love with the circus, but not with the jugglers or contortionists. That year, Tim’s dad took him to see a production of Cirque du Soleil in which an oboist performed while walking on a tightrope. When, the following year, it came time to choose an instrument, Tim emphatically said, “I want to play the black one with silver keys!” He was presented with a clarinet, and was justifiably outraged. “No, I wanted the one with the needle on the top!” He got an oboe, to his momentary and everlasting satisfaction. 10-year-old Tim thought, “This thing can’t be that hard, if you can do it while walking on a tightrope!” He has spent the last 15 years of his life proving himself wrong, but at least has more than a circus trick to show for his endeavors. Meaning, he still can’t walk on a tightrope.

Tim Sawyier graduated in 2008 from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music where he studied Richard Woodhams. During his time at Curtis, Tim was twice a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and appeared as a guest artist at New Mexico’s “Music from Angel Fire.” In 2006, he was named one of five of the Chicago Tribune’s “Overture Achievers: Rising Stars in Classical Music.”

Tim currently serves as principal oboe of the Dubuque Symphony and as the oboist for Chicago’s “Anaphora” Ensemble. He is also a member of the Chicago Philharmonic (for which he is also a program annotator), and has performed with the Louisiana Philharmonic and Richmond Symphony.

As a chamber musician, Tim has appeared on NPR’S “From the Top,” the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, at the Green Lake and Maud Powell music festivals, and won 3^rd prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. In his spare time he enjoys playing chess and tennis.

Tim has yet to follow up on learning how to walk on a tightrope, but still hopes one day to realize his dream of running away with the circus.