Member Since: 25/02/2007
Band Website: chesterbiscardi.com
Influences:
My compositional activity continues along the path I began in the mid-70’s with a broader sense of integrating styles and exploring new materials. In the mid-70’s I was concerned with integrating the theoretical and technical elements of music with philosophical and literary ideas. For instance, At the Still Point, for orchestra (1977), and Mestiere, for piano (1979), use the technique of “frozen registration†to illustrate a poetic image: the “still point†where past and future meet in T. S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton; and the integrity of one’s life and work implied in the title of Cesare Pavese’s Il mestiere di vivere (The Business of Living). Tenzone, for two flutes and piano (1975), relies on the interplay of extended techniques and timbral devices between two flutes, mirroring a lyric interchange between two poets in medieval Italy. The dramatic tension in Trasumanar, for twelve percussionists and piano (1980), reflects Dante’s struggle to understand the sensual pull of being human and the spiritual aspiration to transcend human experience at the beginning of the Paradiso. All of these works also contain strong characteristics of Japanese music: transparent textures and delicate nuances; sounds frozen in space; circular musical forms, a kind of mobile fixity where tensions expand and contrast against a background of stillness.
In the 1980’s, I wanted to explore other materials and began to think in different harmonic languages. For example, my Piano Concerto (1983) acknowledges a lifelong passion for the music of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland and incorporates their sounds without imitating them. At the same time, I developed new structural bases, as in Piano Sonata (1986; revised 1987), which adopts the modular arrangement of a triptych lithograph by Jasper Johns. Incitation to Desire (Tango), for piano (1984), and Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman), for contrabass and piano (1989), follow these stylistic directions. In Traverso, for flute and piano (1987), I blend a 'Japanese landscape,†in the sense of stillness, with an "open landscape,†in the sense of American harmonies of the 1930's and '40's. The title of Resisting Stillness, for two guitars (1996), suggests a way of listening to the work and reflects my creative struggle at the time - a personal “pulling up from silenceâ€, as well as my interest in the power of pure sound wedded to lyrical line.
I am increasingly turning to text setting as one of my major compositional concerns. The Gift of Life, for soprano and piano (1990-1993), a song-cycle based on texts by Emily Dickinson, Denise Levertov and Thornton Wilder, along with numerous songs setting texts by Allen Ginsberg, Muriel Rukeyser, Carl Sandburg, in one way or another grew directly from my work with text and characters in Tight-Rope, a chamber opera I wrote with Henry Butler in 1985. Modern Love Songs, for voice and piano (1997-2002), written with William Zinsser, reflects our shared passion for American popular song, and the cycle that results sits somewhere between cabaret/standard tunes and art songs.
Record Label: Albany, Bridge, CRI, Intim Musik, New Albion, etc.
Type of Label: Indie