Book of Days
Chamber Ensemble
Daron Hagen
About
In 2011, my alma mater, the Curtis Institute of Music, commissioned a trio for clarinet, viola, and piano for the touring group called Curtis on Tour. The result was a Book of Days, a nostalgia-driven suite of seven thematically connected movements in a convivially conservative, mid-20th-century style inspired by my years there first as a student and then as a teacher.
I finished composing the first movement on a Monday; so, as a placeholder, and meaning nothing by it, I jotted that day atop the manuscript. Returning to work the next day, I began to think about the Babylonians, and how they named the days after the planets that they could see. I mused that nostalgia is a lot like looking out into space, and that feelings can be at once as close as one’s heart and as far away as the stars. I released myself from the burden of particularizing the emotions explored with descriptive titles by giving them the names of the days of the week. I soon realized that, by doing so, I was able to recall those feelings, both beautiful and stark, with more nuance.
After the composing was done, I wrote a program note brimming with anecdotes and ideas that I thought were important. Words, words, words — so many words. Too many. Returning to the suite to prepare it for publication in 2023, I realized that all those words were an attempt to explain feelings I had shared more meaningfully in music. So, I threw the words out. Once again, I felt free; free this time to forget, because, in the end, it is music that remembers everything — the things we can see and those we cannot.
Performance
| Daron Hagen |
Book of Days I. Monday II. Tuesday III. Wednesday IV. Thursday V. Friday VI. Saturday VII. Sunday |
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Duration
19:00 |
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Commissioning Year
2011 |
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Premiere
March 14, 2011 Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA |
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Recording
March 14, 2011 Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA |
Artists
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Daron Hagen Composition
Daron Hagen occupies a unique position in American music as both a concert music composer and as the auteur director of internationally-laurelled feature-length “operafilms” that combine his own music and screenplays, placing him on the vanguard of a new genre described by OperaWire as “a neo-Gesamtkunstwerk form of opera cinema where each and everything seen on the screen, from the cuts to the lighting to the pacing, reflect the internal motivations of the story.”
Since 1983 he has created 14 operas, 3 operafilms, 6 symphonies, 14 concertos, over 50 chamber, choral, and electroacoustic works, and over 300 artsongs. Commissions have come from the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, Seattle Opera, and a dozen other orchestras; concertos / roles for Gary Graffman, Jeffrey Khaner, Jaime Laredo, Kate Lindsey, Sharon Robinson, Paul Sperry, and Marni Nixon. His “ruthlessly honest and beautifully written” memoir, Duet with the Past, was published in 2019.
A Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo, he is a Guggenheim Fellow, recipient of the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize, two Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowships, the Bogliasco Fellowship, the ASCAP-Nissim Prize, and two American Academy of Arts and Letters Awards, among others. He has taught at Bard College, the Chicago College of Performing Arts, City College of New York, the Curtis Institute of Music, New York University, and the Princeton Atelier.
His music is widely recorded on labels from Naxos to Sony; and published by Peermusic Classical. He is represented by Encompass Arts. A graduate of Curtis and of the Juilliard School, he is married to composer-singer Gilda Lyons; they have two sons, Atticus and Seamus.
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Kelly Coyle Clarinet
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Ayane Kozasa Viola
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Ignat Solzhenitsyn Piano
Enjoying an active career as both pianist and conductor, Mr. Solzhenitsyn has won critical acclaim throughout the world for his lyrical and poignant interpretations.
In recent seasons, his extensive touring schedule in the United States and Europe has included concerto performances with numerous major orchestras—including those of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Paris and St. Petersburg—and collaborations with such distinguished conductors as Blomstedt, Dutoit, Gergiev, Previn, Sawallisch and Schwarz. Mr. Solzhenitsyn has given many recitals in the United States and in major musical centers of Europe and the Far East.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn is conductor laureate of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and principal guest conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. A 1994 winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has been featured on numerous radio and television specials. Mr. Solzhenitsyn joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2004.
100 for 100
100 for 100 celebrates contemporary music with a showcase of bold, original compositions and fresh perspectives.
