Guitar Studio to Premiere Five Enormous Guitar Duets
Oberlin composition professor Stephen Hartke, a prolific, award-winning composer of major works of every variety, is a friend to the guitar. I played some of his works—a short solo, a lovely trio for soprano, guitar and cello and a lengthy masterwork for soprano, four flutes, four bassoons and four guitars (Sons of Noah)—I played it “side-by-side” with three of my students at that time. Hartke has his first year students try writing for the guitar—we always provide an in-class demo of the instrument and its idiosyncrasies (myself, one of my students, or, this year, our faculty composition department colleague, Jesse Jones, himself a guitarist.)
Stephen Hartke, Oberlin Composition Professor. (photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones)
This year, however, Hartke gave his students a major assignment on the guitar: to write a “suite”—a multi-movement work for two guitars. Each of the five students in this class wrote one, and I assigned them to my student duets, already formed from an earlier Guitar Ensemble project. The results first showed up in class on our last day of the semester. Each duet demonstrated some progress on their respective pieces and the composers and Prof. Hartke and I asked questions and generally workshopped the pieces for a couple of hours.
Our goal is for all the pieces to be performed on stage on a special concert during the spring semester. I am incredibly excited about this sudden emergence of literally an hour’s worth of new guitar duet music. This post will introduce the composers, briefly describe each work in its nascent stage, and offer a preview of what will come at the project’s conclusion.
We began with composer Matthew Brown, whose “Two Lives: Suite for Twin Guitars” is (so far) a 27-page, two-movement work. The movements are labeled 1. Laughing and 2. Loving. It was bravely presented by Damian Goggans and Nicolas Wakeman.
Composer Matthew Brown with guitarists Damian Goggans and Nicolas Wakeman.
Next up was composer Aaron Nichols. His “Suite Tooth” was comprised of five movements: 1. You’re not you, 2. sour/sweet/gone, 3. Life in the galaxy, 4. Take a break, and 5. Taste the rainbow. Comprising a remarkable 42 pages of music, my students looked at it glassy-eyed with concern over its monumental breadth. But the music they were able to bring to class was fun to play and lay well on the instrument. I look forward to hearing this entire work on stage!
Composer Aaron Nichols with guitarists Aleksandr Lapshin and Josie Stone.
Next up was composer Chloe Arnold. Her duo was called “A Suite of Influence”. She wrote this eleven-page work in four movements entitled 1. Israel, 2. Honduras, 3. Kenya and 4. Guam. It was presented by guitarists Nik Divall and Grigor Ylli:
Composer Chloe Arnold with guitarists Nik Divall and Grigor Ylli.
Next up was composer Jackson Hunt. His duo, not quite finished yet, consisted of three unnamed movements, totaling about 15 pages of music. It was played by guitarists Sara Baunoch and Rio Manzanares. We look forward to seeing it finished!
Composer Jackson Hunt with guitarists Sara Baunoch and Rio Manzanares.
Finally, composer Oliver Hecht worked with guitarists Aleksandr Lapshin and Josie Stone on his in-progress suite. Still unnamed, he was clearly modeling on the Baroque suite; the two movements so far ready, featuring some 11 pages of music, were named Prelude and Sarabande.
Composer Oliver Hecht with guitarists Aleksandr Lapshin and Josie Stone.
This project, obviously still in the assembly stage, holds great possibilities. It is the most new guitar music ever to emerge at one time from the composition studio here, and the works are obviously serious, major efforts on the part of their composers. I am thrilled and honored to have our two studios work together like this, and very much look forward to seeing how it unfolds as they all prepare for the premiere performances. Thanks again, Stephen Hartke, for the assignment!
