Pentateuch
William Susman
About this work:
Pentateuch was composed at CCRMA. The work won a BMI award in 1985 and caught the attention of one of the judges, Earle Brown, which led to a Fromm commission. (Trailing Vortices in 1986).
Pentateuch was Susman's 2nd work for orchestra. His first was Movement for orchestra (1981). Both works exhibit a Eurocentric aesthetic and the formalistic sound world of Xenakis and Ligeti. Susman ultimately moved away from this approach by the late 80s.
Pentateuch is a divisi score with winds and brass in four, harp, piano, five percussionists, soprano solo, 3 choral groups (SATB), and strings (10, 10, 8, 6, 4)
The text is taken from the Torah through a numerological selection. Written when the composer was 23, he summed his age and used the number 5 to select verses 1-5 of chapter five of each of the five books of Moses. The text is sung in Hebrew with a transliteration by the composer.
The pitch material of Pentateuch was generated from a PDP-11 computer at CCRMA using a Gaussian distribution and mapped onto graph paper and then transferred to score. In many ways this work is the apotheosis of divisi scores. Susman demonstrated his virtuosity of orchestration in this grand scale structure written in a style that was coming to an end by the 80s. Much like Schoenberg's Pelleas und Mellisande and, Gurreleider sum up the late romantic scores of Strauss and Mahler so, does Pentateuch encapsulate the 60-70s orchestral works of Xenakis and Ligeti.
--
Much of Susman's work from the early 80s explores Fluid Mechanics and the photos from Milton Van Dyke's "An Album of Fluid Mechanics". Space, time, intensity and viscosity are properties of fluid mechanics. Susman drew correlations between these properties and those of acoustics applying them to music composition. An early use of repetitive rhythms and melodic lines can be heard that look forward to his work with Shepherd tones and subsequently the development of his sound in the 90s with montuños.
One such approach was creating a harmony in quarter-tones and clusters with quarter-tone intervals. This sound combined with a harsh and arresting rhythmic drive propel mnay of these early scores e.g., Streamlines (1984), and his grand orchestral divisi work Pentateuch (1983/84).
Many of the titles of these works from his 20s owe their names to fluid mechanics such as Trailing Vortices (1986) Streams (1984), Streamlines (1984), and Turbulence (1983) for solo flute.
It is apparent that the European formalistic and sonic tendencies of Penderecki, Xenakis and Ligeti all had a strong influence on Susman's early 20s. He ultimately moved away from this Eurocentric approach to a broader world view of sound and rhythm in the 90s and beyond.
Year composed: 1984
Duration: 00:15:00
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Orchestra with Soloist(s)
Instrumentation:
Instrumentation notes: Pentateuch is a divisi score with winds and brass in four, harp, piano, five percussionists, soprano solo, 3 choral groups (SATB), and strings (10, 10, 8, 6, 4)