DESCRIPTION:
Kyle Gann (b. 1955) — Summer Serenade (2014) for organ
Carson Cooman, organ

Kyle Gann (b. 1955) is an American composer and musicologist well-known for his work and scholarship on the "Downtown" American music movement and post-minimalism. Gann's output as a composer is varied and deeply expressive; his pieces range from microtonal electronic works, to mechanical piano music, to scores for traditional ensembles. While his harmonic language is usually quite luminous in its use of tonal and modal elements, much of his music contains rather complicated (but intelligible) rhythmic dimensions with multiple tempo layers existing simultaneously. Educated at the Oberlin Conservatory and Northwestern University, Gann has been a faculty member at Bucknell University and Bard College. His musicology books on Conlon Nancarrow, John Cage, Robert Ashley, and other subjects have been widely acclaimed.

"Summer Serenade" (2014) was composed for organists Carson Cooman and Gerhard Stäbler. The starting point of the music is the beautiful closing chord of Gann's ensemble work "Catskill Set," which the composer realized was voiced perfectly for the organ. From there, the music unfolds very gradually and tranquilly: with a warm, leisurely, and languid summer spirit.

The composer writes: "Technically speaking, the piece follows a paradigm I invented for myself that I call 'relenting minimalism.' That is, the bulk of the piece is rather austerely static, but after it exhausts its various possibilities the music relents and begins to release a tune that seemed to have been implicit all along. I delight in using 'normal' musical materials in unusual contexts, and the nine chords that appear (all transposed over pedal drones on D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, and Ab) are all basically either minor, dominant, or major seventh chords with various added notes. Thus there is a bebop-like reliance on ii-V-I progressions jumping among various keys, brought into focus near the end by a simple (if rhythmically odd) melody. Starting at m. 219 the five continuous lines begin to wobble by half- and whole-steps, erasing the previous differences among the chords. An apparent disjunction between modernist strangeness and tuneful 'normalcy' is thereby mediated."