Chamber Music for 2-6

Chamber Music for 2 to 6

ADONAI MALACH for cantor, horn, and string trio (1985)

ADONAI MALACH (Psalm 93) was commissioned by Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in Milwaukee, as part of a 1985 conference of composers and cantors, where each composer was paired with a cantor and assigned a text from the Jewish liturgy. The challenge I set for myself was…

A DUE for Violin and Violoncello (2011)

A due for violin and cello, a single-movement piece of approximately 12 minutes, is comprised of what may be seen as a series of interconnected ‘terms of engagement’ between its two protagonists. Starting from a state of separation and great distance,…

ALL ROADS LEADING for Flute, Viola, and Cello (2022)

Being commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to create a new work for the major milestone of its 50th anniversary was both an honor and a special delight. My choice of the flute, viola, and harp combination for this composition was reached quickly and almost instinctively, motivated not only because I…

AMICHAI SONGS for mezzo soprano, oboe/English horn, viola da gamba and harpsichord (1985)

In the spring of 1984, two happy moments in my life converged together to bring about the creation of Amichai Songs. First, I was commissioned by the Eastman School of Music to write a work for the great mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani (1933–1989). Ms. DeGaetani, as it turned out, had just formed an ensemble…

BACH-SHARDS for string quartet (2001)

Prelude to Contrapunctus X from the Art of the Fugue

While composing BACH-SHARDS I found myself gravitating, intuitively and gradually, toward a dual goal. First, although the tension and dissonance inherent in certain moments of Bach’s own maze-like contrapuntal structures could quite easily and naturally lead one into a pungent contemporary terrain, I…

BIRDS OF PARADISE for Flute and Piano (2013)

Birds of Paradise for flute and piano (2013) intersperses music that is brilliant and energetic with the wondrous and songful. Its title notwithstanding, I did not set out to compose a “bird” piece — Messiaen’s music, which I admire immensely, would seem to render such an effort quite unnecessary. The title does allude,…

BIRKAT HADEREKH – BLESSING FOR THE ROAD II for Clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Violin, Cello, Percussion and Piano (2016)

Birkat Haderekh – Blessing for the Road begins its journey as a spacious, gently inflected solo melody, slowly unfolding as it gathers the full ensemble around it, carving out a distinctive musical “space.” Looking at this piece in its totality, the opening phrase is, at some level, emblematic of the entire piece, as…

CONCERTO DA CAMERA II for Clarinet, String Quartet and Piano (1987)

Concerto da Camera II is a work for six instruments which may be further grouped into three separate entities: clarinet, string quartet, and piano. In this combination, chosen by the work’s commissioning organizations (the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in conjunction with Mount Holyoke College), lies the work’s first challenge. While pairings…

EXCURSIONS for violin, cello, and piano (1980)

Excursions for violin, cello and piano, is a one-movement work of tripartite structure in which musical materials presented and explored in the first of three large sections are brought back in the last section. The traditional statement-contrast-restatement form so readily suggested by such a description, however, is not quite the mold in which…

THE FLIGHT OF THE BRAVE CHICKEN: ODE TO NINA after “The Brave Chicken confronts the Ogre,” four panels by Nina Frenkel (1972–2016) for bass clarinet/Bb clarinet and piccolo/flute (2018)

Brave Chicken was a character developed by Nina Frenkel, gifted illustrator, graphic artist, and beloved friend to many, who passed away at the age of 43 having lost a difficult battle with cancer…

GAZE for Soprano Saxophone and Piano (2021)

Gaze is a short work created for “Postcards from America”—a wide-ranging project initiated by saxophonist John Sampen together with composer-pianist Marilyn Shrude—and is derived from my larger Under the Sun’s Gaze – Concerto da Camera III, an ensemble work for 9 players composed in 2004. In this earlier work a soprano saxophone enters…

GLITTER, DOOM, SHARDS, MEMORY — STRING QUARTET NO. 3 (2012–13)

My third string quartet was composed at the invitation of the Pacifica Quartet, whose music-making I came to know intimately and admire greatly when they were resident performing artists at the University of Chicago (1999–2016). The piece was commissioned for Pacifica by Music Accord Inc., Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, and London’s Wigmore Hall. In…

INVOCATION for solo horn, chimes and timpani (1994, revised 1999)

As one of a number of composers, “friends of the orchestra” who were asked to contribute short pieces for the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I had looked forward with delight to writing a joyous little piece for the occasion. Just as I was beginning to jot down some musical…

LOGAN PROMENADES for Two Trumpets in C (2016)

Composers and architects often remark on the kinship between the fields of music and architecture. On my first visit to the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago in the spring of 2012, walking around and taking in the beautiful space that…

LOVE’S CALL for Voice* and Piano (2016)

Love’s Call (2016) is a setting for voice and piano of an English adaptation of a fragment from the Song of Songs. I extracted it from the libretto by Charles Kondek of my opera Between Two Worlds (The Dybbuk). The subtle adaptation/rearranging by Kondek of this deeply passionate, iconic Old Testament text creates…

LYRE OF ORPHEUS for String Sextet (2008)

Lyre of Orpheus was composed for Concertante, the New York-based string sextet, for its ONE PLUS FIVE Project, a three-year, six-composer commissioning project designed to create six string sextets, each featuring one of Concertante core players. This particular commission was made with the goal of giving center-stage to the ensemble’s first cello (Concertante’s…

MIRAGE (1990) for five players

Like many composers throughout the history of music, I consider my relationships with certain performers to be among the special treasures of my existence. Of these, my association with members of New York’s Da Capo Chamber Players, individually and as a group, has been especially rewarding and happy in a great many ways. Mirage is…

STREAM (2015) for Clarinet and String Quartet

The title STREAM encapsulates some of the essential characteristics of this 16-minute long composition for clarinet and string quartet: it suggests flow—whether gentle or forceful; it implies a journey, one that could take us onto unexpected terrains yet is always moving forward…

MOON SONGS – A Song Cycle in Four Acts for Soprano, Flute (doubling Piccolo), Cello, and Piano (2011)

The invitation from flute virtuoso Mimi Stillman to compose a work for her Dolce Suono Ensemble’s Mahler/Schoenberg 2012 concert series that could serve as an homage as well as a companion piece to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, one of the 20th-century’s seminal compositions, was as challenging as it was intriguing. It would seem almost…

O THE CHIMNEYS for female voice, ensemble, and tape (1969)

O The Chimneys is a setting of five poems by Nelly Sachs, the great German-Jewish 1966 Nobel Prize co-winner in literature, whose writing concerned itself almost entirely with the subject of the holocaust. Composed in 1969, the work was my personal way of saying, through my own art, ‘do not forget’. I selected…

A PRAYER for five players (1982)

A PRAYER is a short work written in honor of the seventy-fifth birthday of the late Paul Fromm, the great Chicago-based patron of 20th century music, as part of a “bouquet of compositions” especially composed for the occasion and presented in a concert commemorating the event on January 22, 1982…

PRIVATE GAME for Clarinet and Cello (1979)

The Da Capo Chamber Players’ invitation to a group of composers/friends of the ensemble to write a short piece incorporating, in any way desired, the group’s name into its format, turned out to be an interesting challenge. Repetition is the essence of comprehensibility. But — Da Capo, today? While the initial temptation was…

“SONG AND DANCE” Duo for Saxophone (soprano and alto) and mallet percussion (2007)

“Song and Dance” began its life as a nascent melody in the late eighties, employing a similar motivic cell as did three of my works written over a period of several years—East Wind, String Quartet No. 2 (Vistas), and Mirage. At the core of these three works is the simplest of melodic kernels:…

SOLILOQUY for Violin, Cello, and Piano (1997)

SOLILOQUY, a single-movement work of approximately 8 minutes, is an adaptation for violin, cello and piano of YEARNING, a work for violin and string orchestra composed for violinist Edna Michell and the late Lord Yehudi Menhuin in 1995. The adaptation was done in 1997 for the Peabody Trio, whose members have since performed…

SONATINA for Two Flutes (1960)

The Sonatina for two flutes was written in Tel Aviv, Israel, and represents an important moment in my life. Having begun composing at the age of seven, all my early creations involved either the piano or the human voice—singing or narrating—and thus could be realized in performance by me alone. When I was…

STRING QUARTET NO. 1 (1984)

The Mendelssohn String Quartet’s invitation to compose a work for the group has presented a tremendous challenge for me. The string quartet, after all, is not merely an instrumental combination of two violins, viola and cello: it is a genre. For any composer undertaking the composition of a work in this medium, the…

STRING QUARTET NO. 2 “VISTAS” (1988–89)

My second string quartet, “Vistas,” is a work cast in a traditional four-movement formal mold, with the outer movements, presenting and later returning to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and a scherzo-type third movement. While the four movements’ “proper” names — Maestoso con forza, Lento, Scherzo impetuoso, and Introduzione;…

TEN CHILDREN’S SCENES for Piano 4-hands (1965–66)

My Ten Children’s Scenes belong to an early body of compositions I created in my teens. I composed this set of pieces for young players as well as young listeners (and all other “young at hearts”), recalling the formative time in my life when I was learning Bartok’s Mikrokosmos, assigned to me by…

THREE FANTASY PIECES for Cello and Piano (1971)

The title Fantasy Pieces, unlike Fantasia, is often associated with fairly short, whimsical, probably charming, and in general “diminutive” pieces of music. One case in point is Schumann’s lovely Fantasy Pieces for cello and piano. In that sense, the title of my work may be slightly misleading, for it is composed of three…