Time Cycle - Lukas Foss

When The Bells Justle

Lukas Foss
Time Cycle
Adele Addison, Soprano
The Improvisation Chamber Ensemble
Leonard Bernstein
Columbia Symphony Orchestra

Cover Photo: Columbia Records Photo Studio - Henry Parker
Columbia Records Masterworks ML 5680

1961

The Improvisation Chamber Ensemble

Lukas Foss - piano

Richard Dufallo - Clarinet

Charles DeLancey - Percussion

Howard Colf - Cello

From the back cover: On Thursday evening October 20th, 1960, Leonard Bernstein addressed the Carnegie Hall Philharmonic audience: "My colleagues on the stage and I think so highly of Lukas Foss' Time Cycle that we would like to make a proposal: If you wish, we will repeat the whole piece for you... And if there are only twelve people in this house who want to hear it again we will play it for those twelve." Thus, Time Cycle became the first composition repeated by the New York Philharmonic at the occasion of its premiere.

Lucas Foss' Time Cycle was commissioned for Adele Addison by the Ford Foundation's Humanities and Arts Program. The work marks somewhat of a departure from the composer's earlier music, mainly because of the absence of the neo-classic or neo-baroque. The vocal writing is "Lied" rather than "Aria." (Foss' Song Of Songs", for instance, could be termed a series of arias.) Furthermore, tonality is clearly defined only in someplace, totally destroyed in others. Finally, from and content, organization and substance can no longer be distinguished one from the other. They have become synonymous. Each song develops its own serial devices (of which the twelve-tone row is the least frequently used).

The four songs are not tied to each other by either motive or row. Only a chord, a single sound – C#ABD#, which undergoes various alterations – serves as a unifying elements. Though there is no overall musical motive, there is a literary one: the "time-motive". Each poem refers to time, clocks, or bells. The relationship between music and words in the individual song goes beyond mood painting. The idea and structure of the poem is mirrored in the idea and structure of the music. Text and music are fellow conspirators. The first two poems are English, the last German. Each song is sung in the original language.

The Improvisation Chamber Ensemble was founded by Lukas Foss at UCLA in 1957. Foss directed his attention to the neglected and forgotten art of improvisation because he saw in it a possible new outlet for the many excellent performing musicians, a new hunting ground for the composer, and a challenge to the musical curiosity of the listener. After experimental public appearances on the West Coast, a national tour by the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble established Ensemble Improvisation as a form of music making of concern to composers and instrumentalists alike

Adele Addison was brought up in Springfield, Massachusetts and trained at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton and the Berkshire Music School at Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass. She has appeared as guest soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and other major orchestras. Last season the wide range of her musical activities included recording for the motion picture sound track of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" and singing the role of Melisande with the Washington, D.C. Opera Company.

Miss Addison is one of the artists selected under The Ford Foundation Program for Performing Musical Artists.

Lukas Foss, American Composer, conductor, pianist and Professor of Music at UCLA was born in Berlin in 1922. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, in 1942. Foss is perhaps best known for his operatic and vocal compositions which won him many of the country's major awards: The Prairie (Sandburg), Song Of Anguish (Isaiah), Song of Songs (to be released on Columbia Records). Parable of Death (Columbia ML 4859). Psalms and three operas. Other works include Odeand Symphony of Chorales for Orchestra, two Piano Concertos and a String Quartet (Columbia ML 5476). With his latest composition, Time Cycle, and his recent adventure into ensemble improvisation, the 38-year-old composer, known previously as a traditionalist, adds bold new dimensions to the wide range of his expressive talents.

We're Late
Improvised Interlude No. 1
When The Bells Justle
Improvised Interlude No. 2
Sechzenhnter Januar
Improvised Interlude No. 3
O Mensch, gib Acht