Charles H Ruggiero

Flute

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Large Chamber Ensemble, Boppish Blue Tinged, 2010
Instrumentation, Program Notes

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Large Chamber Ensemble, Boppish Blue Tinged, 2010
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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 it’s not my intention for much of this composition to sound like traditional jazz or any other familiar style of music.

Although it’s 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 enlightenment”—but 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 I’ve 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 You’ve 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 “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911) by Irving Berlin

Dedicated to Michigan State University’s 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 weren’t home, we often broke the “house rules” together).

Grandma Wyllie was one of the sharpest persons I’ve 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 Wyllie’s parents came to America from Scotland, and despite being born in Connecticut, my grandmother’s 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 Wyllie’s 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 don’t 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 wasn’t 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 it—not 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 music’s preeminent composer. (“Piano Red” is one of the less-known nicknames of Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington.) While I have not tried to copy Ellington’s style in Echoes of “Piano Red,” listeners familiar with some of the music of the “Maestro”—drummer Louis Bellson’s appellation for Ellington—certainly 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 other’s paths, making progress, but occasionally getting a bit entangled.
“Anyone’s Dream,” the second movement, is rather dreamlike, in that its tempo and mood change somewhat frequently and capriciously. The harmonic language of “Anyone’s Dream” is more dissonant than that of the other two movements—an 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 improvisation—they 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 Marcello’s 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)

Songs from Emily Dickinson, for soprano and chamber ensemble, 1974
Samples, Instrumentation, Program Notes

Songs from Emily Dickinson, for soprano and chamber ensemble, 1974
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Instrumentation: Voice (sop), Pn, Fl (doubling Picc, Bass Fl, & Melodica), Perc, Hpsd, 2 Vln, Vla, Vc, DB (doubling bowed Vibraphone), cond

Duration: ca. 21:00 min.

Jazz Compositions and Arrangements, (ca. 75 works), 1965-2006