DONALD SCAVARDA ONCE COMPOSER
editHIS LIFE AND BACKGROUND
editDonald Scavarda, (son of John Scavarda, from Turin Italy, and Anna Jedda, a Michigan native) was born in 1928 in Iron Mountain, Michigan. Scavarda was a leading figure in the founding of the ONCE group of graduate student composers at the University of Michigan. These composers altered the course of music history with path breaking new music works in the 1960s.
Donald Scavarda’s interest in music emerged just before college. Scavarda’s background was mostly shaped in his college years, except for piano lessons taken during his high school years, under Mrs. R. C. Hanna.
HIS FORMAL EDUCATION:
editDonald Scavarda composed three early works: Five Pieces for Piano in 1948, the Sonata for Violin and Piano, in 1949, and String Quartet, in 1950. These early pieces were composed in a dissonant, post-Bartókian vein. In 1951 Scavarda received his Bachelor’s Degree in Musical Composition from the University of Michigan.
In 1952 Scavarda composed a Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra for his Master’s Thesis. The following year he received a Fulbright Scholarship to Hamburg Germany where he studied with composer Phillip Jarnach. During that time his Fantasy… was awarded the BMI First Prize for 1953. [1] Scavarda returned to Ann Arbor in 1955 and entered the doctoral program in musical composition to study under Ross Lee Finney, then composer-in-residence at U-M.
Two significant events shaped the future for young U-M composers. First, in 1958 German avant garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, lecturing at U-M, encouraged them to find their own venues for performance of their works. [2] Second, Roberto Gerhard replaced Finney who went on Sabbatical. Gerhard’s presence provided a powerful stimulus. These and other catalysts conspired to result in the formation of the ONCE concert series. In the summer of 1950 eight composers from Gerhard’s class [3] congregated to form the initial group. The first ONCE concerts took place in February 1961 for two concerts.
HIS COMPOSITION:
editScavarda’s first major work was partially completed in this time frame. In the Autumn Mountains (1959-61), a song cycle, was planned to consist of several settings of haiku songs by the Japanese lyric poet Hitomaro (8th century). The work was completed later.
Scavarda composed the Groups for Piano (1959) at Tanglewood where he was studying with Leon Kirchner. For this work Scavarda posed the question that had been germinating in the composer’s mind for awhile: “How short can a piece be and still be perceived as complete and coherent?” [4]
The work was structured in five segments, or ‘groups.’ The organization is symmetrical with time units of 7, 8, 10, 8, and 7 in order. [5] The work is only 55 seconds long and even exceeds Webern’s historic brevity. Weingarten’s study of this controversial work reveals that “…every note is given its own specific dynamic, [frequently], and with supportive contrasts.” [6]
Donald Scavarda’s Sounds for Eleven followed in 1961. Weingarten notes (p. 32) that Scavarda explored the indeterminate sense of time whereby certain instrumentalists would hold a note, once opened, for as long as the breath would allow. This was a role played by the winds. For each individual performer, this technique would result in varying lengths of time for each passing collection of sounds, due to the individual instrumentalists’ varying breath capabilities. Hence, the unfolding sense of time is plastic. Here, Scavarda dispenses with fixed time signatures in his score, allowing proportional notation to frame the action along with decay curves and silences. [7] His inclusion of silences obliterates any possible sense of rhythmic contour.
Conversely, the percussion instruments are required to allow their sounds to decay over time. New notes would be struck only upon the completion of the decay. Here we have interaction between the two types of instruments to convey the feel of a living organism: growth opposing decay. Each instrument has assigned to it its own unique dynamics independent of that of the others. One discerns the progress of the work as unfolding intersection and interaction, the push and pull in the life cycle of a vital, living, breathing organism.
Scavarda prefaced his score with an insightful observation: “It is a condition of living things that they grow and decay simultaneously.” [8]
Roger Reynolds said to Emily Weingarten “Sounds for Eleven is really a monumental achievement, really an extraordinary and visionary act, and it made a tremendous impression on me.” [9]
After Sounds for Eleven there followed a work for which Scavarda is most famous: Matrix for Clarinetist, published May 1962 in the University of Michigan’s Generation Magazine. [10] It is the first published work that requires playing multiphonics. / . The score provides instructions and special fingerings and embouchure positions necessary for producing a wide assortment of ‘multiphonics’[11] [12] on the clarinet. Scavarda realized that, with this set of isolated sounds, he could not simply apply a classical, or standard, form of sequencing such sounds. He needed a new form. Scavarda met with University mathematics and engineering faculty to study this problem of form. A matrix field was the eventual solution.
Scavarda also realized that the longer sounds would most effectively reveal the complete character and evolution of a complex sound, so the grid favored the use of sustained sounds. Also, some sounds generated harmonics, rather than multiphonics. Some sound patterns slid from high to low, and some low to high in a web of glissando-like patterns.
The piece was premiered in 1962 by John Morgan in East Lansing, Michigan. Reviewer Alfred Frankenstein wrote that “Scavarda’s piece has real stature.” His remarks unleashed a huge demand for the Matrix… score. [13] The work has had an impact on new music. Parts of the score are used in clarinet practice texts. Composers finally were able to understand the sounds and the scoring for the new multiphonics field.
Scavarda composed filmSCORE for Two Pianists (1962) and GREYS, A Filmscore (1963), in which he redefines and expands the entire concept of musical notation. He explores the physical properties of film itself by producing a visual music using an abstract film along with instruments to create a sense of motion. To achieve this, Scavarda transformed photographic images of common objects into variously colored discs which seem to be illuminated from within. In FilmSCORE for Two Pianists the film-objects move at various speeds, in every direction and through all dimensions. The climactic section contains 12 separate, independent layers of visual objects. It is a very dense section. [14] This work produces a new aspect of cross-disciplinary art, as each art-form (photographs and sounds) informs the other.
Similar film techniques were used by Scavarda for GREYS, a film for visual imagery with electronic realization. However, the score in GREYS is not to be used for notational or instrumental, interpretive purposes. It is constructed as a multi-layered single directional, continuous flux of varying densities and speeds. At its most dense the film contains 18 layers of material. The electronic realization was furnished by Gordon Mumma. By disconnecting erase heads on the tape recorder used in the construction of the electronic work Mumma was able to superimpose various sound sequences. [15]
Also in 1963 Scavarda composed Landscape Journey for clarinet, piano and 8mm color film. With this work he continued to explore fresh aspects of clarinet multiphonics, combining them with a wide variety of keyboard and inside-the-piano sounds. The result is a series of finely differentiated timbres. The abstract, rapidly changing colors of the film becomes a visual extension of the instrumental timbres.
Scavarda also composed a film, Caterpillar (1965) with narrator and sonic interjections (including a quote from Beethoven’s Violin Sonata) for the 1965 ONCE Festival. The film contrasts the beauty with the ugliness of man. [16]
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For the ONCE MORE Festival in 2010, Scavarda provided CINEMATRIX (composed in 2002), a filmSCORE presented both in silent form and as a visual aural combination for multiple instruments. Finally, a work using a grid containing multiple colored square cells in motion, and six instrumentalists with conductor, Sounds for Seven (2010).
As a pianist, Scavarda performed the world premiere of his Landscape Journey; also he conducted, besides his own Sounds for Eleven, the premiere performance of Philip Krumm’s Music for Clocks (1962) for the 1962 ONCE Festival, George Cacioppo’s Advance of the Fungi (1964) and Robert Ashley’s In Memoriam…Crazy Horse (Symphony) (1963) for the 1963-4 ONCE Festivals.
Scavarda’s more recent works include over 400 drawings and paintings. Scavarda is in the process of completing three projected new films. “Blood of Christ” is an abstract film with accompanying electronic sound. “Marathon” is a highly compressed, high energy metaphor. [17] Concerto for Orchestra also is a filmSCORE. Scavarda has completed a highly abstract painting he titled String Quartet. The painting itself serves as the score for the performers of a string quartet and is its ‘notation’.
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External References:
editTai, Paul. Liner notes for Music from the ONCE Festival: 1961-1966. New World Records 80567.
Firant, Laurel. "ONCE upon a time in Ann Arbor: Festival revisits groundbreaking music movement" "annarbor.com". Friday, October 29, 2010
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References
edit1. Scavarda, Donald. Composer notes. “New sounds, New forms, New ideas…” Program Booklet to Music from the ONCE Festival 1961-1966. New
World Records (5) CD set 80567-2. 16 Penn Plaza, #835 New York, NY. 10001-1820. p. 128.
2. Miller, Leta. ONCE and Again: the Evolution of a Legendary Festival. .Program Booklet to Music from the ONCE Festival 1961-1966. New
World Records (5) CD set 80567-2. 16 Penn Plaza, #835 New York, NY. 10001-1820. p. 28.
3. Alongside Scavarda, composers Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, Gordon Mumma, and Roger Reynolds were the five leading founding
members. Three others: Gregory Kosteck, Sherman van Solkema, and Bruce Wise were in the original group, making eight founding members
altogether. Kosteck and Solkema left early. Wise stayed for two years, then left. Others followed later by about 2-3 years, including
George Crevoshay, Philip Krumm, and Robert Sheff (a.k.a. “Blue” Gene Tyranny).
4. Weingarten, Emily. The Music of ONCE: Perpetual Innovation. Student Paper, U-M. July 2008. p. 15. note: This paper has been privately
published at LuLu Marketplace. Also see Scavarda (ibid) p. 128.
5. Miller ibid (PAR). p. 27.
6. Weingarten. (ibid) p. 15.
7. Miller ibid. p. 55.
8. Scavarda ibid. p. 130
9. Weingarten. Ibid. p. 36. Actually, here, Weingarten is quoting from Hitchcock’s review in “Current Chronicle,” The Musical
Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oxford University Press, April, 1962), p. 247.
10.Weingarten. Ibid. p. 47.
11.The idea of multiphonics has been attributed by some writings, (including Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians Ed. Kuhn,
Laura. Schirmer Books. New York. 2001.) to Bruno Bartolozzi in his book, New Sounds, 1967. See Baker’s’… entry on Bruno Bartolozzi.
Baker’s… contains no entry for Donald Scavarda.
12.Also, See Miller, p. 60, ibid.
13.Interview with Scavarda. The term multiphonics was not yet in use then.
14.Scavarda. Ibid. p. 130.
15.Interview with Donald Scavarda.
16.Miller ibid. p. 63.
17.Miller. Ibid. 76 SUM
18.Scavarda. “New Sounds…” ibid. p. 133.
© Copyright James L. McHard May 3, 2011