MASKS (2016)
For Tenor, Guitar, Piano, and Electronics with Optional Actor(s)
Duration ca. 17:00
PROGRAM NOTES
MASKS was originally composed for a concert celebrating Japanese music and culture. Although the piece does not attempt to imitate any Japanese musical sounds or forms — I would not feel qualified to do that — it is nonetheless influenced heavily by Noh, the venerable Japanese operatic tradition. In Noh, actors are masked. Their facial expressions are hidden, their movements wooden. The singing and emoting are typically left to the chorus, often positioned behind the actors. The performers are themselves a sort of “mask” for the singers behind them.
Masks takes this idea and extends it to the composition itself. The tenor is tasked in this piece with saying one thing (poems written by the gifted poet Daniel Neer) and representing something else (a story printed in the score) through body language, facial expression, turning electronic objects on or off, and other dramatic means. The staging of the piece is very open-ended: the lone tenor may be augmented by one or more actors and potentially a chorus of voices.
Commissioned and premiered by Daniel Neer. Premiered at the National Opera Center, New York, NY (March 2017)
SCORE PREVIEW
