Partita for 8 Voices

Partita for 8 Voices is an a cappella composition by the American composer Caroline Shaw. It was composed from 2009 through 2012 for the vocal group Roomful of Teeth and was released on their Grammy Award-winning debut album October 30, 2012.[1][2][3] The piece was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music on April 15, 2013, making Shaw the youngest recipient of the award.[4][5][6][7] The work, however, was not premiered in full until November 4, 2013, at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City.[8]

Composition

Structure

Partita for 8 Voices has a duration of roughly 25 minutes and is composed in four movements named for Baroque dances:

  1. Allemande
  2. Sarabande
  3. Courante
  4. Passacaglia

Analysis

The score’s inscription reads: "Partita is a simple piece. Born of a love of surface and structure, of the human voice, of dancing and tired ligaments, of music, and of our basic desire to draw a line from one point to another."[9]

The piece combines functional harmonies with spoken narration and atonal vocalizations.[5][8] Each movement takes a cue from the traditional baroque suite in initial meter and tone, but the familiar historic framework is soon stretched and broken, through "speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies, and novel vocal effects" (Pulitzer Prize for Music jury citation).[10] "Allemande" opens with the organized chaos of square dance calls overlapping with technical wall drawing directions of the artist Sol LeWitt, suddenly congealing into a bright, angular tune that never keeps its feet on the ground for very long. There are allusions to the movement’s intended simulation of motion and space in the short phrases of text throughout, which are sometimes sung and sometimes embedded as spoken texture. "Sarabande"’s quiet restraint in the beginning is punctured in the middle by an ecstatic, belted melody that resolves quietly at the end, followed soon after by the Inuit–inspired hocketed breaths of "Courante". A wordless quotation of the American folk hymn "Shining Shore" appears at first as a musical non sequitur but later recombines with the rhythmic breaths as this longest movement is propelled to its final gasp. "Passacaglia" is a set of variations on a repeated chord progression, first experimenting simply with vowel timbre, then expanding into a fuller texture with the return of the Sol LeWitt text.[11]

Reception

At "Passacaglia"'s premiere in 2009, there was spontaneous applause and cheering at the explosive return of the D-major chord near the end.[12] At the premiere of the complete Partita for 8 Voices, Justin Davidson of New York wrote that Shaw had "discovered a lode of the rarest commodity in contemporary music: joy."[13]

References

  1. ↑ Deemer, Rob (April 19, 2013). "Caroline". NewMusicBox. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  2. ↑ "A Moment With Pulitzer-Winning Composer Caroline Shaw". Deceptive Cadence. NPR. April 20, 2013. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  3. ↑ Huizenga, Tom (January 27, 2014). "New Music Shines at Classical Grammy Awards". Deceptive Cadence. NPR. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  4. ↑ Tsioulcas, Anastasia (April 15, 2013). "Caroline Shaw, 30, Wins Pulitzer For Music". Deceptive Cadence. NPR. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  5. 1 2 Fetters, Ashley (April 16, 2013). "Hear the Weird, Lovely A Cappella Suite That Won the Pulitzer Prize for Music". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  6. ↑ Lowder, J. Bryan (April 17, 2013). "The Strange, Beautiful Music That Won the Pulitzer This Year". Slate. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  7. ↑ Woolfe, Zachary (April 17, 2013). "With Pulitzer, She Became a Composer: Caroline Shaw, Award-Winning Composer". The New York Times. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  8. 1 2 Tommasini, Anthony (November 5, 2013). "The Pulitzer Prize Was Nice and All, but a Work Is Finally Fully Heard: Caroline Shaw’s ‘Partita’ Has Premiere by Roomful of Teeth". The New York Times. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  9. ↑ Deemer, Rob (April 19, 2013). "Caroline". NewMusicBox. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  10. ↑ The 2013 Pulitzer Prize Winners - Music citation , Pulitzer Prize for Music, 15 April 2013.
  11. ↑ program note, Roomful of Teeth , Cleveland Museum of Art, 20 March 2015.
  12. ↑ premiere of "Passacaglia" 2009 Mass MoCA "Passacaglia", Roomful of Teeth, North Adams, MA, 26 June 2009.
  13. ↑ Davidson, Justin (November 10, 2013). "An Avant-Garde That’s Easy to Love: Three heartening moments from the new-music scene.". New York. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
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