Pierre Schroeder
The Four Seasons
© 2008 Pierre Schroeder (759348079420)
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A musical suite based on the four seasons of life, childhood, adolescence, maturity and wisdom. Written for orchestra, in a tonal and chromatic framework, with the feel and energy of improvisation and jazz.
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Notes:
The Four Seasons is a musical suite based on the four seasons of life, Childhood, Adolescence, Maturity and Wisdom. While life, in its infinite forms, rarely agrees with generalization, it certainly goes through different chapters to which we can all relate. Like the pages of an open book, “The Four Seasons” is an attempt to translate the essence of these cycles into music.
Although the music is written for orchestra, the leading piano of the first 3 movements, has an improvised feel to it, with a phrasing that comes from Jazz. While retaining the energy and freedom of improvisation, it allows for a musical composition and interaction with the orchestra, that can only be achieved with written music.
Instrumental timbres as well as sampled sounds and percussion are used in a tonal and chromatic framework. Sampled sounds are not redundant nor complementary to traditional instruments, but fully part of the music, treated with the same care in regard to volume, timbre and placement. To the composer, the emotional impact of a child’s clear laugh can be as great as a clever violin phrasing. Within the orchestral setting, “The Four Seasons” features solos by piano , soprano, violin, cello and flute.
The Four Seasons
Season One – Childhood, the source, the Mother.
It is written like a fugue, in almost continuous sixteenth notes, past the intro. The rhythm is the pulse, like the heartbeat that never stops.Notes:
It is very basic purposely, with some bursts along the way - the size of child events, to illustrate the simplicity of childhood, for a contrast with what follows.
Childhood unfolds like a music box, where interest –given the simplicity of the rhythmic and harmonic material, comes from the orchestration: the percussions are like a rainbow of colors around a piano and strings continuous crescendo. The soprano voice joins the dance, with step by step syllables first (staccato), before becoming melody (legato).
Season Two – Adolescence, the stream, the friend.
This movement is passion, lyrical and extremely contrasted. The piano takes the lead over groove percussions, with jazz accents. Drastic changes of mood from arousal/ awareness, trough earthy desire, wonderment and intimacy, eventually lead to a climax, and conclude with a single violin line playing extremely high over low pizzicato bass and cello, with no middle register.
Season Three – Maturity,the river, the lover.
This season begins with a cello solo, which personifies maturity, with its deep tone, rich and powerful voice. Strings, piano and woodwind join in and build up into a full piece, with four themes and variations. They progressively overlap creating polyphony and polyrhythm over very active percussions. The movement builds up in texture and energy, becoming increasingly more complex, as more and more elements are joining in. This is arguably the most challenging period, both for the performers and the listener, as the fine line between organization and confusion, sophistication and clarity becomes blurry.
Season Four – Wisdom, water & beyond, the loved one.
It is a slow moving adagio written for 3 flutes, 3 percussion, strings and soprano. The strings set the tone, with a theme borrowed from Adolescence, but stretched in reoccurring waves, slightly different each time. Like the days of a life gone to reverie, emotion and contemplation.
The flutes represent all the events, past and present, sparkles of memory, ideas and desire. They speak freely, sometimes loud and clear in the foreground, sometimes very remote, often in contrast to the strings The piece eventually builds to a climax, before coming to an almost still blanket of harmonies, in which the soprano sings the last statement.
Bio:
Pierre Schroeder, studied piano in his native France, and graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston. After moving to Los Angeles in 1985, he won a number of national and international music competitions for choral works, chamber and full orchestras, which were performed in Palos Verdes (Hesse Park), Los Angeles (Leo S.Bing Theater, L.A. County Museum of Art, Gindi Auditorium), San Francisco (Herbst Theater), Saint-Paul (Orchestra Center Auditorium) and Dublin (National Concert Hall of Ireland). He was the winner of the 2005 Art Song Competition of the American Composers Forum and the Schubert Club, with a premiere performance by Isabel Bayrakdarian during the Schubert Club's Saint Paul 2005 Summer Festival.
Pierre has composed electronic and orchestral scores for short movies and animated films as well as educational movies and documentaries. His credits include the soundtrack of “America the Bountiful” a six part series, winner of the 1993 Telly Award for outstanding documentary, aired on PBS and the History Channel, and “Flee”, a short subject selected at the 2002 Mill Valley Film festival.
His previous CD “Atlantis” was released by Centaur Records (CRC 2639) in February 2004. “Pagan Mass”, his first album was released in February 2002 (CRC 2543). Pagan Mass was formally distributed by the Public Radio Music Source.
These recordings have aired nationwide in the US, and in Western Europe. Pierre’s new recording “The Four Seasons,” was awarded a Subito Grant from the American Composers Forum.
The Performers on The Four Seasons
A 16 piece orchestra of professional studio musicians from the Los Angeles area was gathered for the recording. Players are drawn from local orchestras, universities and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The soloists are professional musicians who pursue their own careers in various formations, ranging from classical to avant-garde and eclectic music.
Harry Manfredini, conductor, earned a Bachelor of Music degree from DePaul University and a Master of Arts degree from Western Illinois University, where he subsequently taught theory, orchestration, and conducting. He completed his doctoral courses at Columbia University, in New-York.
Harry has scored over eighty films. His major feature credits include the Friday the 13th series for Paramount Pictures. Wishmaster and The Omega Code were number one independent film of 1998 and in 1999 respectively. Amore' and Follow your heart are examples of his lighthearted love story scores.
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All Music Guide, reviewer
author: James ManheimThis set of musical four seasons has nothing to do with those of Vivaldi, Haydn, or Piazzolla. The title of this musical suite refers instead to the "four seasons" of life: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and wisdom, in the words of composer Pierre Schroeder. French-born, Schroeder lives in Los Angeles and has written music for films. That background shows in the evocative, programmatic quality of this 52-minute suite, but Schroeder's music is anything but typical film music; his methods of realizing his goals are unique. The work is notable for using elements of jazz piano and electronic pop while remaining stylistically distinct from the source genres of those influences. The elements of The Four Seasons are: 1) a small group of strings and winds, playing solo and together, 2) a jazz-inflected piano with percussion, 3) a digital sampler, used to provide background sounds appropriate to the theme of the movement involved (sounds of children's voices in the first movement, for example), and 4) French-language texts for each movement except "Maturity," which is textless. What makes the suite consistently absorbing is Schroeder's manipulation of these elements, which ebb and flow in prominence as the work proceeds. The text, where present, enters only toward the end of a movement, serving as a kind of quiet summary. It has a textural equivalence with the sampled sounds in the first two movements, weaving in and out of the background behind the acoustic instruments; in the final movement it is more independent. The jazz element diminishes over the course of the work as the hidden protagonist ages. There are fascinatingly small details as well in the way this novel idea is worked out, and the generally tonal idiom, based in jazz extended harmony, makes the music accessible for any listener. Jazz is an accent, however, not the essence of the work. The performers deserve kudos all around, but special notice should go to soprano Annie Kim, who executes an unfamiliar concept and a difficult part (in the first movement she has to deliver childlike shouts, quietly, at the top of her range) with confidence and flair. Strongly recommended, especially for those interested in jazz-classical fusions; this is one of a new kind