Goldbeater's Skin, by Christopher Cerrone

Goldbeater's Skin, music by Christopher Cerrone & texts by G.C. Waldrep
for percussion quartet and mezzo-soprano
Performed by Sandbox Percussion with Elspeth Davis
Recorded in a warehouse in Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Film by Four/Ten Media www.fourtenmedia.net
Audio recorded, edited, and mixed by Mike Tierney www.miketierneymusic.com
Commissioned by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting and the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
More info at www.christophercerrone.com/gol...
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Recording made possible through the generous support of the Alice F. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.
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ABOUT THE PIECE:
Goldbeater’s Skin is a seven movement song cycle based on poetry by G.C. Waldrep from his collection of poetry of the same name. G.C.’s poems are often deeply imagistic; the source of each reference would be impossible to trace; yet each poem leads inexorably to a potent and dramatic conclusion. As I sifted through the collection, I chose poems whose references overlapped to create connective tissue; some references are more specific than others, but almost all of them are concerned with companionship-whether deep friendship, or love. The challenge of writing a work for voice and percussion quartet is obvious: four drummers are much louder than one voice, and I wanted the musicians in the quartet to have moments to shine as well. I constructed a series of interludes (two proper and one faux interlude), each focused on a single kind of idiophone-wood; metal; then, appropriately enough, skin.
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ABOUT THE COMPOSER:
Winner of a 2015 Rome Prize and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, the Brooklyn- based composer Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. He has received commissions from the LA Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, eighth blackbird, and the Calder Quartet, among others and his opera, Invisible Cities, was heard in a ground-breaking production from The Industry. Christopher Cerrone holds degrees from the Yale School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, and is published by Schott NY and Project Schott New York.
More info at www.christophercerrone.com/bio
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ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:
Elspeth Davis is a Brooklyn-based mezzo-soprano specializing in contemporary chamber music. This season, she sang György Ligeti’s Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel with Sandbox Percussion at PASIC. Ms. Davis will be performing it again over the summer at Trinity Wall Street, in a program that also includes Christopher Cerrone’s companion piece, Goldbeater’s Skin. She'll also be performing a premiere of Eleanor and Hildegard, by composer Kevin Clark, with The Sound Ensemble in Seattle, as well as a repeat performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, with her Two Cities duo partner Melissa Wimbish. You can also listen to her every (well, almost every) Friday, as a cohost of the music podcast Opera After Dark.
More info at www.elspethdavis.com
Lauded by The Washington Post as “revitalizing the world of contemporary music” with “jawdropping virtuosity,” Sandbox Percussion has established themselves as a leading proponent in this generation of contemporary percussion chamber music. Brought together by their love of chamber music and the simple joy of playing together, Sandbox Percussion captivates audiences with performances that are both visually and aurally stunning. Through compelling collaborations with composers and performers, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum and Terry Sweeney seek to engage a wider audience for classical music.
More info at www.sandboxpercussion.com

[@timc7543]

1. APOCATASTASIS
For the instruments are by their rhymes,
as Kit Smart wrote. Walking out yesterday
the bud’s promise seemed a crystalline
hallucination, spring’s early flowing stone,
the maimed sycamores climbing in geometry
grey as steel, as smoke, as the sky
that hangs low as stiff washing from the lines.
Pity small life, the stem that pushes
up from this hard surface, the insensate
bravery. If we anthropomorphize the world,
the night reduces to our capacity for hope
and all tender fallacies. Thus purity.
Thus metaphor’s gift, the ice that spools
and circles at skin’s surface. My love,
there is no winter but the winter of the heart.
Perhaps this cold will pass. Perhaps
that bridge was not a harp at all.
2. INTERLUDE 1: WOOD
3. IN MY DREAM
In my dream, my companion and I stood in a snowy field.
Nothing to mar the new crust, not even
evidence of our arrival.
In my dream my companion and I stood a few feet apart, but together,
at the center of a snowy field.
We stood that way for a long time.
4. INTERLUDE 2: METAL
5. MY COMPANION AND I
My companion and I walk down to the lower of the ponds
formed by the stream fed by the spring.
Ice pools within the plane of its expression.
By the race, a clutch of mallards.
The constricted flow creates friction which creates heat
so that a bed of algae opens, even in winter.
Phenomenon: stab of pale beaks in the cold water.
Seven today, four males, three females.
Yesterday there were six.
I cannot help myself - before I know it
I have assigned them a number.
We walk across a low causeway.
My companion is whistling again. He goes a little ahead of me,
his glance moving from side to side
drinking it all in,
the ducks, the ice, the pond,
snow in the branches of the hemlocks and white pines.
He throws back his head and laughs.
From here the ram is inaudible, to my ear at least.
Up a steep hill. My breath comes hard,
visible in the noon sun. I feel the blush of cold-sting in my cheeks
(we know only the architecture of this motion).
I consider the possibility that the room of blue sand may be subterranean.
I consider the possibility it may not exist at all -
I cannot help myself. Before I know it
there is something like delight.
6. INTERLUDE III: FATAL EXCEPTION
I do not want story. Story has had enough.
What happens next is an impossible preposition.
What happens next is where to put the clause.
What happens next is my giving up.
What happens next is frost.
Outside what happens, nasturtiums still blaze.
What happens next is Jonathan.
What happens next is soap.
What happens next is the honeycomb.
What happens next is (night).
Outside what happens belongs to narrative.
What happens next is a strong wind.
What happens next is jail.
What happens next is childbirth.
What happens next is sphere.
Outside what happens, geometry is pure.
What happens next is unthinkable.
What happens next is stylus.
What happens next is distortion.
What happens next is Art.
Outside what happens, sorrow plays coy.
What happens next to Hale-Bopp is falling.
What happens next to wine is meat.
What happens next to carving is aspen.
What happens next to edge is park.
Outside what happens is my own private Arthur.
What happens next is already gone.
7. AGAINST THE MADNESS OF CROWDS
Reckon the haste of one wall burning.
There is no thickness there is no terror there is
A transparency like oxygen like fire over this bright space.
And will the ashes that rise meet the ashes that fall.
On a light breeze. In this ruined garden.
Is this not physics is this not too much to ask.
This simple question.
For there is a language of flowers as Smart wrote.
There is a language of clouds, and of their wispy orthography
but it is not comforting.
A prayer for a new image, yes:
have we not studied, have we not pasted our rations
in their strict enrollments their proper homologies.
And here, the arrangement of humors.
What I feel in my ribs now is only an echo.
I stand at one distance, I open my wallet
press flesh against cured hide
and I am ready. The blue of the gentian is nothing to me.
The calla, the violet of the iris are nothing
compared to the sky you bring
with your coming when you come with your singing and your sighing
with your counting backward from one hundred
when you come. Is this not too much to ask,
the venation and the marrow
the clandestine order and meaning of all signs.
So while the ashes that rise meet the ashes that fall
I will be the world, for a little while. As such waiting.
The rose of each lung blooms inside.

[@alfredduckett]

My goodness what goodness this is. BRAVO Mr. Ceroone, SBP , and and those who commissioned the work.

[@LunyMilky]

So imersive, so good

[@Pretzels722]

Gorgeous

[@ozmorse7250]

what happens next is soap

[@Doutsoldome]

Very nice!

[@tasfa10]

great!

[@colindebaggis1262]

Wow this is incredible, obviously lol

[@omarius2]

just when I thought I could never listen to anything written after 1910...

[@gpl4908]

Beautifull ! What are the words about?

[@timc7543]

I have no idea. I've always found Waldrep's poetry to be impenetrable. And I know I'm not alone.

[@nestorandreoli7596]

Where's the drum lesson?