Premiere: 11 December 2008 at Boston University, Boston, MA
Ensemble conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya
Duration: 11’
Instrumentation: flute (doubling alto flute), clarinet, horn, 1 percussion (sizzle cym/wood chimes/marimba/4 tom-toms/vibes/ratchet/tubular bells), piano, violin, cello
Critical Reception:
“Ligeti’s influence was illustrated by Jonathan Blumhofer’s septet …einfach/schwer…?, conducted by Avlana Eisenberg: aviaries of extended techniques, nimbly woven together, occasionally coalescing into folkish, foot-stompable melodies—down-to-earth content launched into floating, sonic clouds.”
Matthew Guerrieri, New Music Box (28 September 2011)
Performance Note:
The piece that became …einfach/schwer…? began in Prague in 2006 as a composition for voice and Pierrot ensemble that I intended as a memorial work for the composer Gyorgy Ligeti and the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, both of whom died that summer. After encountering a number of creative roadblocks, I put the project aside until autumn 2007, when I again took it up as a doctoral student at Boston University.
Even after a year away from my sketches, however, I was unsure of what form the effort ought to take until a chance encounter with Nicholas Maw’s Ghost Dances shined a needed light on my creative path. The bulk of …einfach/schwer…?, then, was written in the winter months of 2007 and ’08, before I undertook some slight revisions in 2011.
In terms of form, …einfach/schwer…? is cast in two connected movements, which are framed by three shorter sections; the opening and closing ones share material, so there is a sense of arch form here that’s perhaps a bit reminiscent of Bartók. The primary materials are derived from the eleventh movement of Ligeti’s Musica ricercata (the one that involves all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale), though those connections are shrouded by various rhythmic, textural, and melodic transformations.
A word about the title: “…einfach/schwer…?” basically translates into “simple/difficult.” I meant for the moniker to refer more to the work’s tortured compositional process than anything else, though performers have brought to my attention that the description might apply just as well to the music’s rhythmic complexity.