Symphony No. 14
Gloria Coates
About this work:
String orchestra with timpani solo..
1. Lamentation: Homage to Supply Belcher (1750 - 1836)
2. Jargon: Homage to William Billings (1746 - 1800)
3. The Lonesome Ones: Homage to Otto Luening (1900 - 1996)
CD Notes by Kyle Gann:
"This new "Symphony No. 14" (2002) is an especial homage to Gloria Coates's native land, based as it is on early American hymns by two of New England's first composers, Supply Belcher (1752 - 1836, known in his lifetime as "the Handel of Maine") and William Billings (1746 - 1800). Scored for string orchestra and timpani, the work is typically outlandish, not only its glissandos, but for its use of quartertones (Coates provides a subtitle: "Symphony in Microtones"). Throughout, the strings are divided into two sections, half tuned a quarter-tone lower than the other half. This is less evident in the first movement, which begins with a bang but immediately turns soft, gliding endlessly through a hilly landscape of carefully calibrated glissandos. From these emerge Belcher's "Lamentation" in quite audible half-notes against Coates's default metre of 5/4. The lamentation fades back into the glissandos, and the movement ends with ethereal yearning on a low C and a very high B.
The second movement, "Jargon:homage to William Billings," brings the quarter-tones to life. The fierce dissonance, punctuated by pizzicatos, is appropriate to Coates's source material, which is itself the earliest Amrican instance of unrelieved dissonance: Billings's song "Jargon." Early Boston critics had complained that Billings's music was too consonant, and so the old tanner-turned-composer wrote a response in complete (though diatonic) dissonances:
Let horrid jargon split the air,
And rive the nerves asunder;
Let hateful discord greet the ear
As terrible as thunder!
Coates quotes the hymn once through in its original form, then illustrates the lyrics more vividly than Billings by playing it in quarter-tone dissonances. Movement three, "The Lonesome Ones," reprises a melody from Coates's "Symphony No. 5," a tritone line heard over and over in parallel quarter-tones, giving way to a texture of increasingly wide glissandos moving at different rates of speed in each string section." Kyle Gann's Notes for Naxos CD 8.559289
Version: Version 1.
Year composed: 2002
Duration: 22:35:80
Ensemble type: Orchestra:String Orchestra with Soloist(s)
Instrumentation: ,1 Timpani soloist(s)
Instrumentation notes: violins 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11
violas 1,2,3,4
Cello: 1,2,3
Bass 1
Solo Timpani