Dark Days available now on New Focus Recordings

SCOTT WOLLSCHLEGER:
MUSIC FOR SOLO PIANO

For the better part of a decade, the music of Scott Wollschleger has been a focal point of Karl Larson’s repertoire. This close composer / performer collaboration has produced a number of large-scale works, including the piano concerto Meditation on Dust, the expansive American Dream (recorded by Bearthoven and released on Cantaloupe Music in 2019), and many more.

Over the course of two concerts during the 2017-2018 concert season, Larson performed each piece in Wollschleger’s substantial catalogue of solo piano music, propelling their collaboration towards a new recording project documenting this remarkable body of work. Dark Days, the first installment of this multi-album project, will be released on New Focus Recordings on April 23, 2021.

Program Notes by Scott Wollschleger

Dark Days (2017)
Somewhat by accident, Dark Days was written during America’s 2017 presidential inauguration ceremony. In an effort to ignore the event, I went on an internet blackout for 3 days. During that internet black out, I wrote Dark Days as a short study on a 4-note cluster which is perpetually redistributed in a hazy decaying harmonic field. At the moment I completed the composition, I broke my media fast and looked at the internet only to find I had composed the piece at the exact time that the official transition of power was taking place. It was at this moment I found the work’s title.

Tiny Oblivion (2016)
Tiny Oblivion is based on discarded material from my piano concerto, Meditation on Dust, which I wrote for Karl in 2015. In both works, my aim was to use the piano's unique ability to rapidly build complex clouds of sonority in order to highlight the fascinating resonance and decay that follows such an event. Often, at least to my ears, the decaying space between sounds conjures an image of deep space. The title is something of a dark humored acceptance and reference to the fact that our ultimate fate is to die and then eventually turn into particles that will forever break down into smaller particles, spreading out over unfathomable vast distances in an ever expanding and cooling universe. So for all the commotion associated with one’s life, we all in the end get to have our own little tiny oblivion.

Blue Inscription (2010)
Coincidentally completed on Valentines Day, Blue Inscription was my attempt to write a love song. The word “blue” in the title references both the Blues as a musical style and the fact that I literally felt my synesthesia shouting “BLUE!!!” when I composed the piece. The prominent use of pedal generates a hazy harmonic field with certain melodic notes standing out for a moment, then fading away. While writing the piece I kept coming back to the metaphor of a love song that keeps fading into the distance.

In Search of Lost Color (2010)
In Search of Lost Color is an expressionistic work focusing on the way harmonies decay and bleed into each other. The first two movements are short and are like a mirror of each other. The third movement is brief and violent. The forth movement is a slow, drawn-out song about hopelessness. In Search for Lost Color in one of my most violent and dissonant works and it is also perhaps my most virtuosic.

for Nils (2010 )
for Nils is an homage to my graduate composition professor Nils Vigeland. I studied with Nils from 2003-2005 and his influence is still with me today. The piece uses quotations of music by Charles Ives, Nils, and myself. The three different music personalities mix together and are juxtaposed next to each other. Rather than forming a musical conversation, the three characters form a sonic soup of harmony and color. for Nils utilizes an open form technique I call "larval form," in which the performer moves through a map of various musical constella- tions as he or she sees fit. 

Pages for Piano (2012)
Pages for Piano is a set of 7 aphoristic piano pieces, each of which is written on one single page of manuscript paper. The performer can pick and choose which movements they want to play, and tonight Karl will play all 7 of them. The set was written at a significant moment in my artistic development. During this time I was searching for a kind of music that would exist after the world ended. The music is a paradoxical mixture of tender private music paired with music that has been completely emptied and hollowed out of feeling and reference. Upon first encountering these works Karl said Pages for Piano were my “philosophy pieces”. I think this is a very ac- curate way to hear these fragmentary ephemeral works.

Gas Station Canon Song (2017)
I often feel the role of the artist is to uncover something beautiful and remarkable in places and things that are seemingly unremarkable, ugly, or easily overlooked. Art can transform our impressions of these negative spaces into something profound. The inspiration for Gas Station Canon Song came from a simultaneous feeling of tenderness and grotesqueness I experienced in a fleeting moment while getting gas along I-80. I wondered, can we find something beautiful about gas stations? I’m still thinking about this, and Gas Station Canon Song is a reflection on that question.

Secret Machine no. 6 (2012)
Secret Machines are a series of pieces based around the idea of schizophrenic musical flows that are cut and connected together to form little musical machines. Secret Machine no. 6 is derived from an ever-expanding distribution pattern, consisting almost exclusively of the piano’s white notes. As the piece progresses, the distribution pattern expands in range, dynamics, and resonance. Toward the middle of the piece the expan- sion ends, and the music contracts inwards until the end.

Secret Machine no. 4 (2007)
Secret Machines are an early series of solo and mixed chamber ensemble works based around different musi- cal processes and musical flows being cut and connected together to form little playful sonic machines. Secret Machine no. 4 is the shortest work in the series.

Soft Aberration no.1 (2012)
Soft Aberration no. 1 consists of 5 short, successive melodies disappearing and bleeding into one another. The work’s tiny melodic architecture of disappearing sounds is like a microcosm of the recurring form that is found in many of my works, especially those for solo piano. The lyrical nature of Soft Aberration no. 1 led me to expand the idea into what eventually became Soft Aberration no. 2 for piano and viola.

Brontal no. 2 “Holiday” (2008)
A friend of mine once told me that my music often generated an illusion of nostalgia for him. I think Brontal no. 2 fits into this category. The music is composed of a series of contrasting refrains, which I think of as sonic terrains being wandered through and returned to. As the piece progresses, the terrains are layered on top of each other to create a dreamy memory of themselves. Brontal no. 2 is subtitled “Holiday” because it was written for a holiday party. 

Brontal no. 6 (2014)
Written on my birthday, Brontal no. 6 is literally about nostalgia. The work presents a simple, static har- mony, often punctuated by what I think of as tiny, explosive “Tori Amos” gestures. These gestures briefly generate a beautiful resonance which quickly dissipates. Unlike typical motivic material developed and expanded throughout the piece, these punctuating 1990’s-sounding piano moments are treated as found sound objects, eroding as the piece progresses. 

Folding (2012)
Folding was a gift written for my friend and colleague Chris Cerrone. The piece utilizes an open form where the pianist navigates a series of cells, which I thought of like wind chimes. The performer is asked to “fold” the various cells into each other to create tiny rhythmic patterns. Folding can be played on any instrument, and the piece can be done for any number of instruments. 

November 29th (2008)
Like many of of the works on tonight’s program, November 29th is a diary piece written in single day. The piece’s musical language is something of a dialogue between Debussy and myself, alternating between these two musical characters. 

Music Without Metaphor (2013)
Music Without Metaphor is a nocturne written as a kind of meditation piece for myself. The title refers to the empty, lonely space I feel is special to the piano.