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After Fallen Crumbs (1987)
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Alvin Singleton studied composition at New York
University and completed his graduate work at Yale University. A 1971
Fulbright Fellowship enabled him to spend a year studying with Italian
composer Goffredo Petrassi at the National Academy of St. Cecilia in Rome.
Singleton went on to spend the next dozen years in Europe, primarily in
Vienna, before returning to the United States at the request of music
director Robert Shaw to become composer-in-residence of the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra from 1985 to 1988. He has also served as resident composer at
Spelman College from 1988 to 1991 and was composer-in-residence of the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra during the 1997-98 season.
Commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Meet the Composer
Orchestral Residencies Program, After Fallen Crumbs is dedicated to
the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and was introduced on January 9, 1988 by
the Atlanta Symphony under Michael Palmer, The piece derives its opening
thematic material from an earlier Singleton work for male chorus called
Fallen Crumbs, a statement about world hunger, the title of which is
based on a line from a Hindu proverb: "An ant can feed a family with
the fallen crumbs of an elephant." As the pieces have similar sentiment
and use material common to both, After Fallen Crumbs seems a logical
title for the orchestral work. Singleton comments:
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Although After Fallen Crumbs uses a line from Fallen Crumbs,
the orchestral piece is very different and explores a whole different avenue
of sound, so I hope listeners will let the music speak for itself. A person
can listen to After Fallen Crumbs and need never to have listened to
Fallen Crumbs, so my hope is that audiences won't listen for things
in the music that don't actually exist. I want listeners to come to terms
with the music in its own language and to understand what the proposition of
the music is. Music is only program music when it has words or a story to
go with it. And this doesn't except for this one line, which is not really
used in the develop.m.ent of the piece. It's quoted and further along, it's
requoted.
The musical quotation from Fallen Crumbs is used to create a fanfare of trumpets, trombones, timpani and lower strings which opens the piece. The fanfare, which is very majestic, is followed by a quiet passage with more layers of instruments playing. At this point you have the woodwinds, violins and violas all playing away as if each were in a little quiet room in the same building. And then the piece opens up again with the brass and a duet between two trumpets that can be seen as a real shoot-out. They're both blowing away lines that one could imagine were improvised. The piece ends with a soaring away of the upper strings in a very mechanical rhythm. In fact, if you look at the string players, it's sort of a beautiful choreography. Then they all end on the same note -- a unity.
Suggested recording: • Program notes by Lawrence Duckles  |
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