Hear University of Kentucky guitar director Stephen Mattingly in concert!
(NOTE: This concert is presented as part of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Guitar Workshop in association with the Greater Cincinnati Guitar Society. Non-participants can purchase concert tickets. Concert admittance is included for participants of the CCM Workshop. Registration for the CCM Workshop is available HERE)
Dr. Mattingly will perform a program of exciting new compositions for the guitar!
Program
Thursday, July 18th, 7:30pm
Werner Recital Hall, University of Cincinnati
Two Young Fish, after David Foster Wallace (2023)....................Matthew Cochran (b. 1976)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1965)......................................................................Roberto Gerhard (1896 – 1970)
Part I: The Bridge – Pablo – Pilar – Reconnaissance Part II: The Moon of May Part III: Verdict on Pablo, Un galán y su morena – The Bell – La muerte y la doncella – The Bridge
El Tambor de la Agonía (1994).....................................................................Emiliano Pardo-Tristán (b. 1960)
A Closed World of Fine Feelings and Grand Design (1997)...............Graeme Koehne (b. 1956)
PROGRAM NOTES
This Machine Kills Fascists: celebrating unapologetic awareness and compassion in the post-truth era.
Woody Guthrie displayed the evocative phrase “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar in protest against authoritarian rule sweeping Europe in the 1930s and ‘40s which extinguished individual freedoms and threatened humanity itself. My reference to Guthrie’s famous words is employed not as political rhetoric but rather as a call to something larger than a political landscape where personal greed and corporate interests supersede basic needs of the whole.
Cultivated around central themes of non-violent, artistic response to authoritarian aggression, my intentions for this concert program embrace Schopenhauer’s concept of compassion as the basis of morality. These selections offer contemplation around the contrasts between a society where individuals collectively honor and respect one another versus one in which corporations are citizens and individuals are chattel to the elite.
I dedicate this program to the memory of my father. He was a proud Marine and Vietnam veteran who, on his best days, approached a world of contradictions, greed, and malice with an open mind and open heart.
Two Young Fish, after David Foster Wallace (2023), Matthew Cochran (b. 1976)
Two Young Fish is inspired by David Foster Wallace’s essay This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.
David Foster Wallace delivered a commencement address titled This is Water to the Kenyon College class of 2005. Opening with a parable about two young fish, Wallace illustrates the importance of being mindfully aware of the world around us.
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
Building upon the fish parable, Wallace develops his position that an education has little to do with knowledge; that its real value is in the “awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: This is water.”
In the tradition of commencement addresses, DFW offers advice on living and the importance of education. He posits that education “…isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” Learning how to think is summarized as an individual freedom. Its essence is “…being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think.”
You can bring your awareness to the complete address in original audio and transcripts, which are widely available online.
Casting elegantly wandering lyricism and playful motives, Matthew Cochran masterfully captures Wallace’s spirit of curiosity and message of compassion in Two Young Fish. Listen as hesitantly questioning gestures yield to breaching melodic lines over the gently restless currents of accompaniment. Matt’s adventurous writing evades closure and invites us to keep learning, keep choosing, keep swimming.
Matt’s piece represents to me a confluence of artistic collaboration generously shared over three decades. Our mutual appreciation for David Foster Wallace’s seminal novel Infinite Jest is a source of inspiration. It was while reading this work that I developed the deeper meaning of this project. Written in 1996, Wallace’s remarkably prescient writing imagines a personal device that so captivates and entertains its viewers that consciousness is surrendered to the point of death. Echoes of Wordsworth’s response to the first Industrial Revolution in his poem “The World Is Too Much With Us” align in my reading of Infinite Jest as a confrontation with our recent digital revolution.
In a world rich with constant access to self-affirming diversions, our complacent minds fall prey to the chorus of absolute falsities, so-called fake news, and alternative facts. This program invites you to set aside the distractions of modernity, and courageously become more aware, more curious, and less certain about what is presented as truth.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1965), Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970)
Roberto Gerhard quietly developed his compositional craft through the first half of the 20th century, elegantly blending familiar melodic contours and tonalities older than his native Catalonia with modern styles and technique. Echoes of Gerhard’s mentors Enrique Granados and Filipe Pedrell resonate in his compositional dialect conveyed through serialism and atonality adopted from Arnold Schoenberg during studies with the influential Austrian composer in Vienna and Berlin throughout the 1920s.
Upon his return, Gerhard found his Spanish homeland under threat of fascist ideologies swelling throughout the continent. Escalating tensions between the fascist Nationalists and socialist Republicans ultimately led to the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Though by 1944 George Orwell would describe the term fascist as “almost entirely meaningless,” its broad tenets are observed in many forms of bigotry. Then and now, fascism is the forcible, often brutal, suppression of individual rights through authoritarian rule in exaltation of an idealized monolithic group such as a supreme nation or race. Therefore, nationalism and racism are other maladies of thought closely related to fascism.
Gerhard resisted fascist encroachment on the artist’s life and immersed himself in an active career teaching, composing, and hosting music conferences throughout the war years. Allegiance to the Republican cause and their Social Music Council, whether overt or implicit in its support of the resistance, forced Gerhard into exile when fascist dictator General Francisco Franco overthrew the democratically elected government in 1939. After a short period in France, Gerhard settled in Cambridge, England where he spent the remaining decades of his life continuously evolving his style in concert works and incidental music for radio and television. His extensive collaboration with the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) includes multiple film scores, notably an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s seminal novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Personal experiences with the Franco regime and its impact on Spain undoubtedly inspired Gerhard as he composed incidental music for the film. Produced by the BBC in 1965 as a four-part series, the work is originally scored for guitar and includes several references to Spanish idioms. Motifs from de Falla’s El amor brujo (1924) and his Homenaje (1920) are relevant examples. Two movements, Un Galán y su Morena and La Muerte y la Doncella are direct quotes from his own song-cycle Cantares (1957) for voice and guitar.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in May 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, which Hemingway covered as a foreign correspondent. Written in 1939, as the Nazi invasion of Poland ignited World War II, the novel warns of the dangers unchecked fascist aggression brings upon society. Hemingway’s protagonist, Robert Jordan, is an American professor embedded with anti-fascist guerrillas, joining thousands of volunteers who fought for the resistance. Jordan must travel behind enemy lines in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains and destroy a bridge, preventing fascist advancement around the city of Segovia. In these endeavors Robert joins a band of resistance fighters led by Pablo and his wife Pilar who represent moral and ethical struggles of armed conflict. Internal strife jeopardizes the mission, leading to an uncertain end.
Hemingway’s title references a John Donne poem “No man is an island” from a collection of meditations and prayers published in 1624. Considered against the carnage of the Spanish Civil War and impending Nazi genocides, Hemingway underscores Donne’s observance that each individual is inexorably linked to all humanity.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Víctor Jara’s Hands (2014), Marc Satterwhite (b. 1954)
Víctor Jara (Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez, 1932-1973) was a multi-talented Chilean artist and teacher. He was active as a poet, theater director and, most famously, as a singer/songwriter and one of the founders of the Nueva Canción (New Song) movement in Latin America. In his heyday he was one of the most popular musicians in Latin America, and his songs were-and still are-performed by many important artists around the world as well. Jara was an outspoken activist for social justice, which is reflected in much of his work. He often spoke on behalf of Salvador Allende, the president of Chile who was deposed in the US-backed coup of September 11, 1973, which ended democratic rule in Chile until 1990.
The day after the military takeover, Jara was arrested and, with many other people, taken to the Estadio Chile, a sports stadium in Santiago. He was beaten and tortured before he was shot, and his body dumped outside the stadium. His hands had been destroyed, so that even if he had not been murdered he would never have been able to play the guitar again. The stadium was renamed the Estadio Víctor Jara in 2004.
These two pieces are a small tribute to Jara and his legacy. Estadio Chile (Toccata) attempts to at least suggest the brutality of the coup d’état and its aftermath, while the Canto elegíaco is, as the title suggests, simply an elegy. I originally thought I might include some direct references to Jara’s music, or at least to the Latin-folk style of the Nueva Canción, but ultimately decided against it. Although I love his music and that of his peers, it is not a style I have ever worked in, and I thought it might be wiser not to attempt to appropriate a musical language so different from my own.
Victor Jara’s Hands was written for my friend and colleague, Stephen Mattingly, and is dedicated to him. Writing for guitar is a daunting task for non-guitarists, and he not only gave me a great deal of excellent advice, he loaned me a guitar so I would have an instrument to try things out on. –Marc Satterwhite
El Tambor de la Agonía (1999), Emiliano Pardo-Tristán (b. 1960)
Panamanian composer Emiliano Pardo-Tristán is an acclaimed composer lauded by the American Composers Forum and the Presser Foundation. He studied at the Royal Conservatoire Superior in Madrid and has lived in Philadelphia since 1992 where he earned a Masters in classical guitar and a Doctorate in composition. Dr. Pardo-Tristán is a multi-faceted educator with teaching positions in classical guitar, music theory, and composition at several prestigious institutions including New York University and Temple University among others. He is an active composer, performer, and researcher with a focus on Panamanian folk music and the mejorana, a guitar-like instrument native to Panamá.
Professional orchestras such as the Delaware Symphony, the Grand Rapids Orchestra, and the Panamá National Orchestra have presented his music, which also includes an array of instrumental and vocal works. His compositions often draw upon elements of Panamanian music, subtly nuanced in a unique stylistic voice evident of its place straddling post-modern and pre-apocalyptic eras.
Pardo-Tristán represents an artist of his time and place. Noting momentous events that shaped modern Panamanian identity, El Tambor de la Agonía (The Drum of Agony) is dedicated “A los panameños que murieron en la invasión de 1989” (to the Panamanians who died in the invasion of 1989). The work is an elegy to Panamá’s civilians who were tragically killed during the United States’ military invasion, launched as Operation Just Cause on December 20, 1989. Central to U. S. conflict in the strategic region was the rift between Panamá’s authoritarian de facto ruler, Manuel Noriega.
Born into poverty in 1934, Noriega became closely aligned with the socialist cause by the mid-1950s. Thereafter began his lucrative career as a CIA asset; one that began with meager payments in 1955 to over $200,000 annually by the 1980s. Through this period his cooperation with the United States survived the 1964 massacre of Panamanian students who were protesting broken agreements to fly the Panamanian flag in the Panamá canal zone. Relations with the United States pivoted in 1986 when the New York Times investigation confirmed Noriega’s widely-suspected alliance with drug trafficking and other international intelligence agencies. President Reagan’s diplomatic calls for the dictator to step down and face criminal changes in the U. S. eventually escalated to military response when former CIA director President George H. W. Bush took office in 1989. Documented invasion plans were already in place when Noriega declared a state of war with the United States on December 15, 1989. While military action may have been inevitable, it was certainly triggered when Panamanian defense forces killed a U. S. Marine lieutenant in the days following Noriega pronouncement. Timed ironically similar to Washington’s Christmas night crossing of the Delaware, the offensive was cast across the twelve days Christmas and continued through New Year celebrations. Operation Just Cause was noted by Human Rights Watch for causing an “inordinate number of civilian victims, in violation of specific obligations under the Geneva Conventions.” Civilian casualties are cited between 500-600 Panmanians and 3 U. S citizens. Despite an operation costing $164 million, 23 U. S., and 314 Panamanian military lives, Noriega initially escaped capture and sought refuge at the Vatican’s embassy in Panamá City.
Respecting the diplomatic sovereignty of the Vatican embassy, U. S. negotiators serenaded the mission with unyielding volumes of rock music, which Noriega hated, blasted around the clock from loudspeakers surrounding the mission. U. S. military DJs cultivated a playlist and took requests that included “Give It Up” by K. C. and the Sunshine Band, “No More Mister Nice Guy” by Alice Cooper, “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath, and predictably, “Panama” by Van Halen. Though President Bush and his advisors stopped the block party calling it undignified, it worked. As an avid opera fan, Noriega finally surrendered after 10 days of the impromptu music festival hosted by the world’s largest military. To this day there are no known casualties resulting from the loud music. It may forever remain a mystery what song finally coaxed Noriega’s surrender, but I suspect it was “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley.
El Tambor de la Agonía is a reference to the popular Panamanian children’s song Al Tambor de la Alegría (To the Drum of Joy). Melodic and rhythmic motives from the original unfold across six sub-titled sections which translate to Nostalgia of the Drum, Anguish of the Drum, Song and Dance of the Drum, Bewilderment of the Drum, Fugue of the Drum, and Agony and Death of the Drum. Pardo-Tristán cleverly evades simple variation on the tune and, in contrast, recasts, interrupts, and deconstructs its motivic elements across an evolution and erosion of functional harmonic principles, calling upon traditions of Bach and Ives, with the occasional hint of Hendrix. Stylistic mingling of Panamanian contours and rhythms with Western art music devices and harmonic structures eloquently conveys the struggle this work commemorates.
As founder, president, and artistic director of the Panamá Guitar Festival, Pardo-Tristán assembles an international roster of concert artists and students who study and perform in the old-city neighborhood that was burned during the 1989 invasion. The Panamá National Theatre, where the festival is held, has been restored to its original splendor with grants from China diplomatic missions.
A Closed World of Fine Feelings and Grand Design (1997), Graeme Koehne (b. 1956)
Graeme Koehne was raised on musical influences as vast and varied as the Australian outback. While traditional music studies frame his works in the Romanticism of Chopin and Tchaikovsky, his style embraces popular music and illustrates his eclectic influences of the Bugs Bunny Show, 1960s TV themes, and James Bond films. Koehne garnered recognition early with the 1982 Australian Young Composers Award for Rain Forest (1981), an orchestral work with tints of Ravelian color indicative of his later orchestral works and ballets. After graduate studies at Yale with Louis Andriessen and Virgil Thomson, Koehne became lecturer at the University of Adelaide where he had studied with Richard Meale.
Originally composed for a collection of short piano works, A Closed World… is a musical portrait of someone Koehne describes as “a slightly naïve, wonderfully sensitive, and somewhat introverted individual.” Koehe portrays these characteristics in contemplative progressions layered upon rich chordal voicing stretched over gently broad metric pulses. He expanded the guitar version of the ternary work with idiomatic arpeggiations and lyrical appoggiaturas.
Artistically, Koehne reacts against audience disaffection with modernist style, which itself came from a reaction to the imposing modern world. My intention is that this work’s musical portrait of an individual provides personal introspection and some solace reflecting on the intensity of the preceding program.
Stephen Mattingly has been warmly received by audiences as a soloist and founding member of the Tantalus Quartet. As a recipient of the Theodore Presser Award, he recorded and published critical editions of the complete guitar chamber works by Franz Schubert. His first solo recording, Passages, was released on SoundSet Records in 2016.
Stephen enjoys a vibrant career as Associate Professor of Music at the University of Louisville, where he directs classical guitar studies. His students have won top prizes in international competitions and serve in teaching positions at high schools and colleges. He is a member of the Kentucky Arts Council Performing Arts Directory and has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Silesian Guitar Autumn in Poland, the Panamá Guitar Festival, the Tampere Festival in Finland, the Guitar Foundation of America Convention, and the Iserlohn Guitar Symposium in Germany, among others.
In addition to his performing and teaching engagements, Stephen is the Director of the University of Louisville Guitar Festival and Competition. Alongside this role, Stephen is the chairman of the Guitar Foundation of America Board of Trustees.
The Greater Cincinnati Guitar Society was founded in 1959 by Warren E. Coffey. It is currently headed by Sarah Wilke. The GCGS hosts both internationally-lauded concert artists as well as regional performers. We feature regular meetings for members as well as the Bravo members' guitar ensemble. Charter members included: George J. Marks, R.J. Di Salvo, Juanita Coffey,Dr. Mathias Vega, Wayne Gatwood and Raymond Hopmann. Past Presidents and prime movers of the Society include: Bob Mercer, Garrett Curtis, Judy Handler, Rodney Stucky, Renee Odom, Richard Goering, Amy Brucksch among many others.
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