Works for Voices and Instruments
Molly Paccione, clarinet, Jenny Perron, piano/ Michael Campbell, piano/ Western Illinois University Singers; James Stegall, conductor/ Nurit Tilles, piano/ Terry Chasteen, tenor voice; Molly Paccione, clarinet; Moises Molina, cello; Andrea Molina, piano
In all the pieces, I try to define what is beauty. I don’t know whether this is possible or not. . . , but it’s a definition I work towards. Anyway, there are no angry pieces. －Paul Paccione
Paul Paccione’s (b 1952) compositions balance a love of “abstract” sound combinations with a vivid sense of lyricism. His teachers have included Harley Gaber, Kenneth Gaburo, William Hibbard, and Eric Richards. His music reflects an interest in tonal color, exact pitch placement, and a reverence for the mystery of unhurried long durations.
The first two characteristics are found in the work of Anton Webern and all three characteristics can be found in the work of the late American composer Morton Feldman. The music of these two composers has been studied in depth by Paccione and has had a strong impact on his own compositional thought.
Rhapsody (arranged for clarinet, 2005), for clarinet and piano: For the ancient Greeks, a “rhapsody” was a “stitch song” performed by a traveling poet/minstrel, who stitched together the parts of poems/songs both from memory and through improvisation. Composition for Paccione is a similar process—an intertwining of both remembered and newly discovered musical ideas and sounds that are synthesized to form new “constellations.”
“Stations–To Morton Feldman is dedicated to the memory of composer Morton Feldman. The title refers to points of arrival and departure, both as a tribute and as a suggestion of the musical mood and structure. The work is both an homage and an appreciation of what Morton Feldman felt was significant in his own work: a concern with things that are very quiet, things that do not have much overt sense of motion, which serve to create a sense of stasis, where discrete gradations of color and harmony act in subtle variation. In Stations, repetition, rather than serving a more traditional structural function, serves simply as a reminiscence or reflection.”
Inscape: Three Choral Settings from Gerard Manley Hopkins (2007): “All the world is full of inscape,” wrote the nineteenth-century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Hopkins used the term “inscape” to describe the distinctive unifying design or pattern of each individual thing in nature and in art. Hopkins stressed that his poems were written to be heard: “take breath and read with the ear,” he wrote. Paccione’s settings of three of his poems are a musical realization of the lyrical qualities of Hopkins’s poetry.
A Page for Will (2003) is a simple, touching miniature study in tonal context: two notes rotate steadily throughout the entire work, as widely-spaced, sustained tones re-define the “meaning” of the two-note ostinato figure. (One is reminded somewhat of the chords that surround the continuously pulsing tone in Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude.)
Three Motets: Arabesques (1999), for four prerecorded clarinets: The clarinet Motets are highly contrapuntal in a traditional vocal motet style. In composing this work, special attention was paid to the timbral characteristics of the instrument, as well as this particular instrumentalist’s ability to sustain long lines and her own personal tone quality. The interweaving of these arabesque-like lines creates a pervading imitative texture throughout the work.
Five Songs from Christina Rossetti (2003): The selected poems in this song cycle represent a passage through time, as symbolized by the cycle of the seasons. The composer’s vocal setting of these lyrics was influenced by the English folk ballad. Melody reigns supreme throughout, ceaselessly renewing itself, seamlessly passing from voice to instruments. Each of the songs occupies a lyric world all its own—one that freezes a moment in time—capturing and preserving it.
Postlude from “Planxty Cage” (1993) is an excerpt from a much longer twenty-minute work for solo piano, titled Planxty Cage. The music to the Postlude occurs in the closing measures of this longer work.
Paul Paccione: Our Beauties Are Not Ours
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Track Listing
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Rhapsody
Paul Paccione
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Stations-To Morton Feldman
Paul Paccione
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Inscape: Three Choral Setings From Gerard Manley Hopkins: I. Heaven-Haven
Paul Paccione
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Inscape: Three Choral Setings From Gerard Manley Hopkins: II. Spring and Fall
Paul Paccione
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Inscape: Three Choral Setings From Gerard Manley Hopkins: III. At the Wedding March
Paul Paccione
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Page for Will
Paul Paccione
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Three Motets: Arabesques: Motet I
Paul Paccione
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Three Motets: Arabesques: Motet II
Paul Paccione
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Three Motets: Arabesques: Motet III
Paul Paccione
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Five Songs from Christina Rossetti: I. Listening
Paul Paccione
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Five Songs from Christina Rossetti: II. A Dirge
Paul Paccione
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Five Songs from Christina Rossetti: III. Bird Rapture
Paul Paccione
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Five Songs from Christina Rossetti: IV. The Key-Note
Paul Paccione
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Five Songs from Christina Rossetti: V. Spring Quiet
Paul Paccione
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Postlude from Planxty Cage
Paul Paccione
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