Missing Words III (2017)
for Cello and Piano
Commissioned by Christopher and Parry Karp
Listen
I. Rollschleppe (Escalator-Schlep)
“The exhausting trudge up a stationary escalator.” (from Schott, Schottenfreude)
II. Mundphantom (Mouth-Phantom)
“Feeling that the thermometer is still under your tongue after it’s been removed.” (from Schott, Schottenfreude)
III. Straußmanöver (Ostrich-Maneuver)
“The short-term strategy of simply denying reality.” (from Schott, Schottenfreude)
IV. Schubladenbrief ((Desk-)Drawer-Letter)
“The letter you write but never send.” (from Schott, Schottenfreude)
Recorded by Parry Karp (cello) and Christopher Karp (piano) (on Missing Words, New Focus Recordings)
Duration: 18 minutes
Program Note:
Missing Words III” (2017) is the third in an ongoing series of compositions composed in homage to Ben Schott’s book, Schottenfreude (Blue Rider Press/Penguin Group), a collection of newly created German words for the contemporary world. The German language has the capability to create new words through the combination of shorter ones and can express complex concepts in a single word for which there is no direct translation in other languages. Such words include Schadenfreude, Doppelgänger and Wanderlust, and these have been adopted into use in English. With his new book, Ben Schott proposes new words missing from the English language that we can choose to adopt into our own vocabulary.
In my work, I take four of Schott’s words, and their various conceptual associations, as points of creative departure for the imagined worlds in each movement. In some parts, the music responds playfully to the definition of a word, such as in “Mundphantom,” which evokes a thermometer and the phantom feeling of it under one’s tongue after it has been removed. In others, such as in “Rollschleppe,” my thinking about the trudge up a stationary escalator drew me to darker and more complex places emotionally and metaphorically, musing on struggle, humanity and the mechanized world. In all, the music stands on its own, and takes varied paths away from each starting point.
The first movement responds to the word Rollschleppe, which Schott directly translates as “Escalator-Schlep” and defines as “the exhausting trudge up a stationary escalator.” The second movement evokes Mundphantom (Mouth-Phantom), which Schott defines as “feeling that the thermometer is still under your tongue after it’s been removed.” The third movement builds upon the concept of Straußmanöver (Ostrich-Maneuver), which Schott calls “the short-term strategy of simply denying reality,” and the fourth movement evokes the writing of a Schubladenbrief, or as Schott calls, “the letter you write but never send.”
“Missing Words III” was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, Parry and Christopher Karp. The movement titles of Missing Words, and their translations and definitions, quote text from Schottenfreude by Ben Schott. Copyright © 2013 by Ben Schott. Used by permission of the author. All rights reserved.
– Eric Nathan