Choruses and Instrumentalists from Western Connecticut State College
Liner notes:
His later works have become individual creations, each an end in itself, and each an attempt to break new ground, within the composer's concept of structural and organizational control. Richard Moryl was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1929 of Polish ancestry, studied composition with Frederick Breydert, Iain Hamilton, Boris Blacher, and Arthur Berger. His earlier compositions were influenced by Hindemith, a style which he abandoned years ago. He feels that he has been influenced by every piece of music and art he has seen, heard, or performed; and his attitude toward the Arts in general has always been very eclectic. He has received the usual fellowships and grants, including a Fulbright, Tanglewood and Bennington scholarships, a Kellogg Grant, and numerous commissions and composition prizes. His recent works represent the full maturity of Moryl's abstract lyric style, and his unique talent for combining sound textures. With these works he has taken a significant step forward in his creative pursuits; namely, that he has gone beyond technique and theory to new, heightened expressive powers. His melodic shapes are free and floating, they are released from conventional tonality, and at the same time tightly controlled by an acute aural imagination.
MULTIPLES uses a small string orchestra with harp, piano and percussion. The work attempts to deal with the various multiple possibilities available to the stringed instruments. At times, solid bands of sounds, consisting all the pitches contained within vertical intervals, present a doubtful borderline between tone and noise. The basic sonic material differs in width and spatial placement, and widens, contracts, divides, branches out, and merges together as the piece progresses. The aspect of timbre involves the exploration of the various string sonorities, and possible ways of attacking the notes employed, MULTIPLES is an aural bath of both beauty and enjoyment; it is one of the most successful of the "Sound Object Generation Form." In a recent analysis of Moryl's "Multiples", by Charles Whittenberg in Perspectives of New Music, it was said: Moryl uses a "free" assortment of expressive articulations and directions containing a high yield of "noise" or multi-pitch effects; and most important of all, nonpitched percussion and/or "clusters", parabolas of glissandi and other "free" and highly idiomatic uses of not only pitched percussion, but of the total ensemble ..." And about his general style, from the same article: The subtle sense of order that this writer hears in all of Moryl's music is the result of nonrigorous application of principles of rigor, i.e., a content-defined pitch area operating over a spectrum of combined "plucking, zapping and zonking." The latter are not perceived as "sound effects" versus a "row", but as unity and diversity; ....this is a clue to Moryl's uniqueness."
CONTACTS, for piano and percussion inside the piano, takes advantage of the tremendous flexibility of the piano, and its ability to function as a sounding board and reverberation chamber, when struck on the strings, metal supports or wood frame. The inside of the piano is a sound world in itself, depending on the sympathetic vibrations of the strings when the dampers are released. This work uses the inside of the piano as an orchestra, capable The quasi-jazz section which is briefly interjected, contributes in an unique way to the musical sense in the overall structure of the piece.
CHORALIS: Written in 1969, it is scored for 2 SATB choruses, 3 trombones, 2 string basses, 4 percussion, jazz drummer, and organ. The work is antiphonal in nature, and calls for the choruses to be situated in front of the stage on either side of the instrumental group. It would seem that vocal music has somehow remained unaffected, until recently, by the profound transformations which instrumental music has lately undergone. Many of the younger composers feel that the "meaning" of the text has lost its importance and have fashioned their compositions according to their own aural imaginations. This work is a case-in-point: the singers have no actual text to present. They whisper, hiss, talk, and make various sounds which are not a part of the usual choral vocabulary. The conductors, (there are three), the individual singers, and groups of singers are allowed a consider-able degree of freedom, within various nixed limitations. The work ends with the choruses bellowing, note for note, Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, against a mélange or dissonance. The ending is a tour-de-force in the old sense of the word. It is done on a grand scale, with a great deal of emotional impact: which may be missing from much of today's cerebral contemporary styles.
FLUORESCENTS: Written in December 1969, on a commission from Middlebury College in Vermont was performed the first time in February 1970 at Middlebury. Scored for a mixed chorus of at least of at least 24 voices, 2 percussion with chimes, and organ, the work is a variable cloud of sound which seems to cover the entire breadth of the sound spectrum…
DESTO RECORDS, 1860 Broadway, New York, N. Y. 10023 RECORDED BY DAVID JONES AND MARC AUBORT
