Charles H Ruggiero

Flute

Chobim - Six Jazz Compositions in Honor of Frederic Chopin and Antonio Carlos Jobim, Versions for Soprano Saxophone, Bassoon and Piano and for Flute, Bassoon and Piano, 2011, rev. 2012 (Ruggiero Publishing Company)
Instrumentation, Program Notes

Chobim - Six Jazz Compositions in Honor of Frederic Chopin and Antonio Carlos Jobim, Versions for Soprano Saxophone, Bassoon and Piano and for Flute, Bassoon and Piano, 2011, rev. 2012 (Ruggiero Publishing Company)
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Instrumentation: S Sax (or Fl), Bsn, Pn

Duration: ca. 24 min.

Chobim - Six Jazz Compositions in Honor of Frederic Chopin and Antonio Carlos Jobim (2011, rev. 2012)

Dedication (see program notes)

Program Notes for the Soprano Saxophone, Bassoon, and Piano Version

I have enjoyed and been inspired by the music of Frederic Chopin and Antonio Carlos Jobim for more than 50 years. In the late 1950s, when I was first discovering the riches of classical music, I stumbled upon a performance of Chopin's "Heroic" Polonaise in A-flat Major by JosÃ© Iturbi that was included on an eclectic RCA Victor two-LP record album that my dad happened to bring home one day after work. In those days, it wasn't uncommon for department stores, grocery stores, and even gas stations to sell sampler albums at "giveaway prices" (for a couple of dollars, or less), presumably to get people interested in the catalogs of such leading record companies as RCA and Columbia. The RCA album containing Iturbi's "Heroic" performance, 60 Years of "Music America Loves Best," begins with Vest la giubba sung by Enrico Caruso and includes several other captivating performances, including Variations on Themes from "Carmen" played by Vladimir Horowitz, Sergei Rachmaninoff performing his Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, "Take the 'A' Train" played by the Duke Ellington band, a sizzling rendition of the Ritual Fire Dance by Artur Rubinstein, Mario Lana singing "Be My Love," Benny Goodman's classic recording of "And the Angles Sing," an NBC Symphony/Toscanini performance of the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin, and much more! I remember playing the A-flat Polonaise over and over on my father's primitive record player, and I'm sure that Iturbi's passionate rendition of this piece, along with the other mysteriously powerful performances on the album, was an early factor that contributed to my decision to follow a career in music and to become a composer.

In the 1960s I bought and devoured an LP recording of the Chopin polonaises by Alexander Brailowsky, paying particular attention to the Polonaise in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 44. And years later, as an instructor of composition and music theory at Michigan State University, I would play and study some of Chopin's smaller works, particularly the preludes, mazurkas, and nocturnes, finding much to like and learn from.

I had heard some of Antonio Carlos Jobim's music before 1964, when the hit album Getz/Gilberto, which featured Jobim playing piano, was released in the United States, but I hadn't really paid much attention to it. Ever since Getz/Gilberto, my knowledge of and admiration for Jobim's creations has grown steadily. When I was active as a jazz performer, from time to time I would pick a Jobim piece to study, to try to better understand the unique elements of the composer's style. After studying "Insensatez" ("How Insensitive," is the English-language title), it became clear to me that some of Jobim's music is quite similar to some of Chopin's music. I sense both a musical (melodic and harmonic) and emotional connection between the music of these two masters.

With the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth in 2010, which roughly coincided with the 50th anniversary of the "bossa nova craze" in America, I decided to write this composition in honor of these two wonderful composers, Chopin and Jobim.

In much of my music I synthesize ideas, techniques, and materials from Western classical compositions, avant-garde "art music" of the 20th century, and jazz. I've titled this work "six jazz compositions" because, more than in most of my other works from the past three decades, jazz elements are dominant in the six pieces of Chobim, making for a style that may be accurately characterized, I hope, as relatively accessible. But this is not to say that I intend for these pieces to be in a popular or "easy-listening" style. Jazz, unfortunately, is not at all a popular form of music today in any part of the world, and several of the six movements of Chobim are quite challenging for listeners (not to mention the challenges these pieces pose for performers!).

Although all six movements invoke the music of both composers, three movements (I, III, and V) are based specifically on pieces by Chopin:

Mvt. I. Dark Samba

Mvt. III. Bossa Nova Sentimental [Note: This is the Portuguese word, pronounced, approximately, sen-chee-men-tau.]

Mvt. V. Bossa Ã la Brubeck

The three even-numbered movements are particularly indebted to Jobim compositions:

Mvt. II. Nocturne-Etude - One Blue Note, Quietly (more or less)

Mvt. IV. Nocturne - Changing Topics: Jazz Conversations After Hours

Mvt. VI. Waltz - Three Souls in Perfect Time

Every movement of Chobim began, essentially, as an arrangement of the Chopin or Jobim composition that the movement is based upon. Each of these six "arrangements" then was used as a primary source of material (motivic ideas, rhythms, harmonies, textures, etc.) for each of the corresponding jazz compositions (i.e., movements) of Chobim. I used essentially the same compositional process for all six movements: the initial version of each movement evolved via hundreds (in several cases, thousands!) of developing drafts. In other words, I wrote at least several hundred different versions of each movement until I arrived at the fully evolved pieces included in the final score; consequently, in most (perhaps all) cases it is difficult to identify by ear (or even by studying the score) the Chopin or Jobim composition that provided the original seed of the movement. This is intended. While I hope that during performances traces of each movement's musical DNA will bubble up to the surface from time to time, I do not want the listener to hear these movements as arrangements, parodies, or variants of the Chopin and Jobim pieces, but rather as distinct and autonomous compositions with strong genetic links to the music of both composers.

Chobim, which was composed mostly during August of 2010, January and the last three months of 2011, and March of 2012, is dedicated to my very talented Michigan State University faculty colleagues, saxophonist Joseph Lulloff, bassoonist Michael Kroth, and pianist Deborah Moriarty. This work also is dedicated to my wife of 42 years, Pat, who I hope will enjoy these jazz pieces and forgive me for not always being the most enjoyable person to live with when I'm working intensely on a compositional project!

Charles Ruggiero - Mar. 16, 2012 (rev. June 1, 2012)

Additional Program Notes for the Flute, Bassoon, and Piano Version

Early on, before I had completed the first draft of any of the movements of Chobim, I decided to make two versions of the composition, the first for soprano saxophone, bassoon, and piano, and the second for flute with the same two other instruments. In these two versions of the work, the saxophone and flute parts are very similar except for a number of passages that are written an octave higher in the flute part and a few other differences intended to make each of the parts more idiomatic and effective. The bassoon and piano parts are virtually identical in both versions.

Throughout the periods when I was composing and revising this work, I kept in mind that the saxophone-flute part would have to work equally well for both instruments, and, happily, now that the composition is completed, I feel that that neither version of the part gives the impression that it has been adapted from the other. This is to say that I think of each version of Chobim as authentic and original, not as an arrangement of the other version.

The flute version of Chobim is dedicated to my son-in-law, the very talented Brazilian flutist, Danilo Mezzadri.

C. R. - Mar. 16, 2012

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Large Chamber Ensemble, Boppish Blue Tinged, 2010 (Ruggiero Publishing Company)
Instrumentation, Program Notes

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Large Chamber Ensemble, Boppish Blue Tinged, 2010 (Ruggiero Publishing Company)
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Instrumentation: One player per part: Fl, Ob, Bb Cl, T Sax (doubling Sop Sax), Bsn, Hrn, C Tpt, Trb, Tuba, Perc, Pn (doubling Cel), Harp, A Sax, Vln 1, Vln 2, Vla, Vlc, DB, Cond

Duration: ca. 19-20 min.

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Large Chamber Ensemble - Boppish Blue Tinged (2009)

Dedicated to Joseph Lulloff and Raphael Jimenez

Program Notes

Boppish Blue Tinged

The title of this concerto, Boppish Blue Tinged, is meant to be suggestive rather than unambiguously descriptive. Tinged refers, in part, to trace influences from jazz and other twentieth-century American musical genres that may be heard throughout the concerto, but especially in the first movement. One of my goals for the chaconne-like opening movement is to create variable textures and composite rhythms that suggest some of those created by the inspired improvised interplay of the great jazz combos (like the piano-bass-drum trios lead by Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, etc., and the quartets and quintets of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Gary Burton, and so many others.), but its not my intention for much of this composition to sound like traditional jazz or any other familiar style of music.

Although its not based on a blues form or harmonic progression, I hope the second movement, Blue, conveys the kinds of emotional meanings that often are such an important part of blues performances. If the attitude of the first movement morphs from something like confident energy to menacing force, then the blue mood of the second movement might be thought of as sorrowful or soulful or, perhaps more accurately, seeking solace and enlightenmentbut such linguistic translations of musical phenomena, I feel, always must be taken with a grain of salt.

Boppish, the last movement, like much of the music of the tragically self-destructive Charlie Parker and other troubled bebop masters, is intended to be infectiously animated and life affirming. Although little melodic or rhythmic material is shared among the different movements of Boppish Blue Tinged, and each movement is more-or-less complete in itself, the third movement is, nevertheless, intimately connected with the music and emotions of the previous two movements of the concerto. All three movements, in fact, are based on the same fundamental musical foundations and form a three-movement emotional arch.

To suggest some of the emotional meanings (a vague choice of words, to be sure) of this concerto, I have fashioned several questions for each movement.

Tinged: Tinged with what? Why does desire often lead to pain? Why do vitality and power sometimes overwhelm our better selves? Is the purpose of certain truth too often intolerance?

Blue: When and why do weeping for joy and weeping to wash away our pain meet?

Boppish: Why boppish? Why not the march or the hip-hop beat? Where (to what spiritual dimension or level of enlightenment) does the Parker train lead us? (March 3, 2010)

Dig 2: From Tunes My Grandmother Heard, for large chamber ensemble (17 players), 2009
Instrumentation, Program Notes

Dig 2: From Tunes My Grandmother Heard, for large chamber ensemble (17 players), 2009
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Instrumentation: One player per part: Fl (doubling Picc), Ob, Bb Cl (doubling B Cl), A Sax (doubling Bari Sax), Bsn, Hrn, C Tpt, Trb, Tuba, Perc, Pn (doubling Cel), Harp, Vln 1, Vln 2, Vla, Vlc, DB, cond

Duration: ca. 25:00 min.

Dig 2: From Tunes My Grandmother Heard (2009)

Dedicated to Susan Richardson Cook Wyllie (1893-1972)
Program Notes

Why, you might ask, would a serious composer writing in 2008 choose to base a new composition on American popular music from the period of 1902 to 1918? There are several reasons I've done this. First, this composition, Dig 2, is part of an ongoing project that began with my trio, Collage-1912, and continued with my saxophone quartet, Dig, in which I explore the relationships between twin interests of mine, arranging and composing. Each of these three compositions (which, with equal validity, could be thought of as elaborate and fanciful arrangements) includes borrowed material that is presented in a more-or-less straightforward manner (i.e., arranged for a particular instrumental ensemble) but also transformed, in some cases so radically that connections with the source material are very much obscured. The process of moving from arrangement to composition (and back) in these works fascinates me.

Another reason Ive used popular songs and instrumental pieces from the first two decades in Dig 2 is that this music provides a means (or so I believe) to connect and explore in my work two vast bodies of musical literature that I very much admire: music of some early 20th-century avant-garde composers (Debussy, Ives, Ravel, Stravinsky, and others) and the jazz of the first half of the same century, much of which borrowed heavily both from early 20th-century popular music and contemporaneous European art music.

Finally, I simply like much of the American popular music of the first few decades of the 20th century, and developing compositional projects that involve this literature gives me a good excuse to study it, play it, and play with it.

The Movements

Each movement of Dig 2 is based almost entirely on two songs or instrumental pieces (Dig 2 could be described as an "entertainment in four double arrangements"), and each movement is dedicated to one or more individuals or groups. Any printed programs distributed for performances of Dig 2 should include the movement titles; the titles, dates, and composers names of the source compositions for each movement; and, the dedications for both the entire composition and each movement.

Movement 1: Afterthoughts and Reminiscences

Based on Somebody Sole My Gal (1918) by Leo Wood and After Youve Gone (1918) by (Henry) Creamer & (Turner) Layton

Dedicated to Charles Ives, Creamer & Layton, and Gil Evans

Duration: ca. 4:10

Movement 2: Set to Rag

Based on Tiger Rag (1917?) attributed to Nick La Rocca and Alexanders Ragtime Band (1911) by Irving Berlin

Dedicated to Michigan State Universitys Musique 21 Ensemble

Duration: ca. 4:40

Movement 3: Melancholia

Based on Poor Butterfly by Raymond Hubbell (1916 and My Melancholy Baby (1912) by Ernie Burnett

Dedicated to Dr. Andreas Sidiropoulos

Duration: ca. 3:50

Movement 4: Thank You, Mr. Handy

Based on The St. Louis Blues by W(illiam) C(hristopher) Handy (1914) and The Memphis Blues by W. C. Handy (1909, 1912 & 1913)

Dedicated to Professor Raphael Jimenez

Duration: ca. 6:25

Duration of the Entire Composition: ca. 20 minutes

About Susan Richardson Cook Wyllie

Few people have had a greater influence on my development than my maternal grandmother, Susan Richardson Cook Wyllie (1893-1972). For much of my childhood, Grandma Wyllie lived with my family in Fairfield, Connecticut, near where she, my mother, and I were born and raised. For many years, while she was living with us, I thought of my grandmother as a unique combination of grandma, second mother, teacher, babysitter, playmate, and co-conspirator (when my parents werent home, we often broke the house rules together).

Grandma Wyllie was one of the sharpest persons Ive ever met; she was resourceful, energetic, quick-witted, and full of basic wisdom. Although she was forced to leave elementary school at an early age, never to return, she did eventually teach herself how to read (as an adult, reading was something she enjoyed doing), but throughout her life, Grandma Wyllie regretted her lack of formal education and was self-conscious about not being able to write much more than her name.

Both of Grandma Wyllies parents came to America from Scotland, and despite being born in Connecticut, my grandmothers speech would often slip into a distinctly Scottish brogue, especially when she would get excited about something (which was often). Her mother, Margaret Richardson, died in childbirth when my grandmother was only two years old. After that, Grandma Wyllies childhood was traumatic. Her coal-miner father, Charles Cook, apparently an alcoholic, was not able to provide for his large family, some 13 children (I dont think there ever have been any coal mines in Connecticut!), and the family decided that my grandmother would have to leave school after the third grade, to work. By the age of 10, Grandma Wyllie found herself working in a soap factory from six AM to six PM, six days a week, earning literally pennies a day. These early years certainly took their toll on her, but Grandma Wyllie wasnt a fundamentally dour or bitter person; to the contrary, she often was a fun-loving ball-of-fire, at least she seemed so to me at times.

Grandma Wyllie had no musical training, but she loved to sing, especially when she was young, and she claimed to have had a very good voice and to have performed in church-sponsored operettas when she was a young woman. At dances and parties that she attended when she was a teenager and young adult, surely she would have heard many of the pieces that this composition, Dig 2, is based on.

I think one of the reasons I fell in love with my wife, Pat, is that she got along so well with my grandmother and even shares some of her qualities and mannerisms. In honor of my grandmother, my wife and I named two of our four children after her, Charles Cook Ruggiero and Susan Elizabeth Ruggiero.

Variations On and By, for flute, oboe, and piano, 2006
Instrumentation, Program Notes

Variations On and By, for flute, oboe, and piano, 2006
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Instrumentation: Fl, Ob, Pn

Duration: ca. 12:00 min.

Variations On and By - for Flute, Oboe and Piano (2006)
The Ruggiero bass is part of a melodic-harmonic formula that was very popular among Italian musicians during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Grove Music Online dictionary lists more than 30 renaissance and early baroque composers who wrote vocal or instrumental pieces on the Ruggiero formula. In the late 1960s, upon reading about the Ruggiero bass, I decided that someday I would compose a set of variations on itnot thinking, of course, that it would be some 27 years before I would begin and complete the project!
The most characteristic form of the Ruggiero bass is an eight-measure diatonic melody in G major, but for Variations On and By, I have used a Mixolydian version of the bass. The Ruggiero-bass theme is not stated literally at any point in this composition; hence, the beginning of the work is labeled Variation 1. But anyone familiar with the Ruggiero bass will recognize fragments of it in each of the 12 variations. Those listeners who do not know the theme will (I hope) mentally construct a version of it as they hear a performance of the composition. Variations 1 and 11, both of which are hockets (i.e., pieces based on what is sometimes described as a musical hiccupping effect), serve as bookends for the composition. In the final variation, parts of several earlier variations are reprised.
Many of the techniques used in Variations On and By come from medieval and renaissance music (hocket, canon, etc.), but a few of the variations are fashioned primarily by the manipulation of pitch-class sets that have been derived from the Ruggiero bass. I hope, however, that the listener will perceive Variations On and By as a unified and stylistically consistent whole, despite its mix of ancient and modern elements. (July 30, 2006)

Echoes of 'Piano Red', for flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), and alto saxophone, 2006
Instrumentation, Program Notes

Echoes of 'Piano Red', for flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), and alto saxophone, 2006
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Instrumentation: Fl, Bb Cl (doubling B Cl), A Sax

Duration: ca. 14:30 min.

Echoes of Piano Red - Flute, Clarinet (doubling Bass Clarinet), and Alto Saxophone
Echoes of Piano Red is a three-movement work inspired by the music of Piano Red, whom many consider to be jazz musics preeminent composer. (Piano Red is one of the less-known nicknames of Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington.) While I have not tried to copy Ellingtons style in Echoes of Piano Red, listeners familiar with some of the music of the Maestrodrummer Louis Bellsons appellation for Ellingtoncertainly may hear echoes of Ellington in this composition. Echoes, of course, can distort and even obscure an original sound, as in the extreme transformation that occurs when someone sings loudly in an immense walled space.
In much of the first movement of Echoes of Piano Red, the three musical protagonists (the flute, bass clarinet, and alto saxophone), create webs of more-or-less repeating patterns that are intended to create a sense of agitated forward momentum. Imagine three hurried travelers weaving in and out of each others paths, making progress, but occasionally getting a bit entangled.
Anyones Dream, the second movement, is rather dreamlike, in that its tempo and mood change somewhat frequently and capriciously. The harmonic language of Anyones Dream is more dissonant than that of the other two movementsan anxious dream, perhaps?
The middle section of Play and Laugh, the final movement of Echoes, is intended to sound something like a joyous and at times mirthful group-improvisation with at first two, and then all three, players improvising over tonal changes (jazz harmonies); however, none of the parts call for any actual improvisationthey all are fully notated. Each of the three parts should have its own distinct, relaxed, and spontaneous sounding swing feel (nuance of rhythmic interpretation).
Echoes of Piano Red was composed for the Eclectic Trio: Joanna White, flute, Kennen White, clarinet, and John Nichol, saxophone. Funding for this commission was provided by Central Michigan University. (July 2006)

Il foco, for solo flute, 1997, rev. 1999
Samples, Instrumentation, Program Notes

Il foco, for solo flute, 1997, rev. 1999
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Samples:
Excerpt - Ruggiero's IL FOCO
From - Faculty Recital
Danilo Mezzadri, flute
(Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication is not permitted.)

Duration: ca. 8:40 min.

Il foco - for Flute (1997)

The modern composer of music will not need to have any notion of the rules of good composition, apart from a few universal principles of practice. . . . He will use the major and minor accidentals at his own free will, confounding their signs at random. . . . It will do no harm, however, if the modern composer should have been for many years a player . . . and also copyist for some noted composer, and should have kept the original manuscripts of his operas, serenades, etc., stealing from them and still others ideas. . . . He will quicken or retard the tempo of the arias to suit the genius of the virtuosi, covering up whatever bad judgement they show with the reflection that his own reputation . . . [is] in their hands. . . . If the modern composer should give lessons to some virtuosa of the opera house, let him . . . teach her a great number of divisions and of graces, so that not a single word will be understood, and by this means the music will stand out better and be appreciated. . . . If the impresario should later complain about the music, the composer will protest that he is unjust in so doing, as the opera contains a third more than the usual number of notes and took almost fifty hours to compose. If some aria should fail to please the virtuose or their protectors, he will say that it needs to be heard in the theatre with the costumes, the lights, the supernumeraries, etc.

Benedetto Marcello (from Il teatro alla moda, 1720; as translated in Oliver Strunk's Source Readings in Music History)

Thousands-perhaps tens of thousands-of singers who have studied voice at colleges or conservatories in the past 100 years, have performed, practiced, or heard their classmates offer renditions of Benedetto Marcello's recitative and aria, Il mio bel foco.* This music has held up remarkably well under the strain of such prolonged pedagogical attention. As a student at the New England Conservatory, I studied Il mio bel foco in voice class and heard it butchered by several other non-singers in the class. This was during the 1960s, and although I considered myself to be one of those "advanced" musical thinkers who was interested in the music of Varèse, Webern, Ives, and Thelonious Monk, I couldn't deny the attractions of Marcello's ancient recitative and aria-especially their quintessentially bel canto attributes and direct emotionality.

When my daughter Susan expressed some interest in having a piece written for her by her father, it was almost inevitable that I should turn to Il mio bel foco for material, since Susie had, by that time, given several fine performances of this music at various vocal recitals and competitions, performances which had planted some kind of seed in my composer's ear and imagination.

Given his satirical commentary on the music of some of his lesser contemporaries, I'm sure that Marcello would have been flabbergasted and more than a little miffed to hear my "variations" on Il mio bel foco, for I've done many of the things that he ridicules in the above passages from his famous Il teatro alla moda. I have indeed used the major and minor intervals rather freely, and have plagiarized extensively-from none other than maestro Marcello himself. I have used accelerandi and ritardandi plentifully and have thrown in "a great number of divisions and graces." And, yes, I caution both the player and listener that Il foco will sound better when performed in a large hall ("in the theatre") rather than in a small space that has dry acoustics. . . . Why, one might muse, have I followed Marcello's mock advice so faithfully?

Somewhat in the manner of Mahler's view of the Viennese waltz, I both am captivated by the charms of Marcello's music, and, at the same time, fully realize that his time is long past, and that his music, despite our nostalgic musical yearnings, cannot be the music of our time and our culture ("our" referring to that vaguely defined group of people, worldwide, who are interested in "classical art music"). So in Il foco Marcello's beautiful vocal melodies are stated, revised, stretched, chopped up, interrupted, intensified, obliterated in a way, it is hoped, that reflects forcefully our stylistically diverse and rapidly malleable world culture. Just as, when watching TV, we can instantly switch channels (for better or worse) to view vividly contrasting images and hear dramatically divergent sounds emanating from almost any part of our planet (and even from the outer space surrounding our planet), in Il foco the flutist presents the listener with changing materials and musical styles, both of which sometimes transform rapidly, even abruptly and impetuously.

Benedetto Marcello, like all Western composers of the past millennia, certainly understood the expressive power of dissonance, dissonant melodic and harmonic intervals such as the ninth, seventh, tritone, etc. that can delay-sometimes rather unexpectedly-and therefore strengthen and make more interesting the progression of musical events in a composition. So it's not inconceivable that Marcello, were he able to come back to visit us at the end of the twentieth century, could understand one of the major premises of this composition: that stylistic dissonance can allow the "modern composer" (Marcello's phrase) to satirize and distort, but also to transform, intensify, and even enhance, musical materials borrowed from the vast and still alive tradition of Western art music.

* Some scholars now claim that all of Marcellos operas actually were written by other composers. See Eleanor Selfridege-Field, Marcello, Benedetto, Grove Music Online (The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 1992). http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.html?from=search&session search id=679351099&hitnum=1§ion=opera.004480 (accessed June 4, 2007).

(July 3, 1997; rev. June 4, 2007)

Compositions and Arrangements