Parker Quartet | Anthony Cheung commission with Fleur Barron

The Parker Quartet and mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron will be working with composer Anthony Cheung on a commission for string quartet and mezzo-soprano which will be an 18- 20 min piece around the theme of Asian representation.

Program
Brahms (arr. Parker Quartet): Im Herbst from Fünf Gesänge, Op. 104
John Luther Adams: The Wind in High Places
Anthony Cheung: New Work [PCMS Co-Commission]
*****
Mahler (arr. Cheung): Der Einsame im Herbst from Das Lied von der Erde
Brahms: String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat major, Op. 67

Note from the composer:

I have been immersed in the luminous, image-driven poetry of Chinese-American poet Arthur Sze (b. 1950) for the past few years, having already set several of his poems in my large-scale song cycle, “the echoing of tenses.” Resoundingly admired in poetry circles and winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry, his first ten collections spanning five decades of work were published as “The Glass Constellation” in 2021. Arthur’s lyrical, evocative work is infused with natural imagery, and though quietly contemplative, is charged with the careful power of observation, timing, and placement, challenging the established western order of word hierarchies in favor of multiple image-driven possibilities, a practice gleaned through the close study of Tang dynasty masters. 

“Ecopoetics” has only recently become a defined literary movement or genre, but it has roots throughout the history of poetry. And long before the movement arose, Sze, one of its best known figures, was writing on the intersection of culture, society, and the natural world that explored the synchronicity of disparate images, historical events, and peoples. Now more than ever, his patient and lyrical work speaks to me in a globalized world that is trying to make sense of humanity amidst irreparable loss and destruction. This work, and the music that I hope to create in its light, shows that the quiet practice of reverent observation can have a charged ethical imperative. Between ancient and modern China, his home in Santa Fe, and countless recollections of historical events and geographical places and place-names, these poems intersect sequences of images that have no established hierarchical order, much like the ancient Chinese poems that inspired them and the Native American cultures that inform them (he is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he mentored several generations of Native American poets). And as a cataloger of experiences, whether they are “scientifically" observed or humming with erotic love, Sze’s perspective is uniquely Asian-American, combining traditional Chinese poetics and Taoist practices of non-attachment with contemporary issues. I also find that his verse, lends itself beautifully to musical settings — there is a mellifluous and spontaneous flow that is deeply musical in nature. 

I would like to set a group of poems that encompass the range of his practice, opening with “Oracle-Bone Script,” with conjures attunement and the vibrating of tones, and continue with several nature and love poems. In between, I intend to set as shorter interludes a selection of poems by Victoria Chang (b. 1970), another much admired poet with whom I collaborated in “the echoing of tenses.” Her work has more directly addressed topics that are close to me and my family history, including post-generational trauma, and diasporic confusion and displacement. But in her recent collection “The Trees Witness Everything,” she gets closer to nature than in any of her previous work, using the formal constraint of the Japanese waka in order to leave images both pared down and open-ended. The spare and simple beauty of these poems is also indebted to another keen observer of nature, W.S. Merwin, whose titles are directly borrowed. I intend to set Victoria’s poems as interludes, static and austere in contrast with the more overtly melodic and even romantic tone of Arthur Sze’s work. As a whole the cycle will be written to best showcase the expressive lyricism of Fleur Barron and the Parker Quartet, to put these texts in conversation with one another and uncover new layers of meaning within them. These poems and pieces are about the power of observation and how they might shine a light on the beauty and fragility of modern humanity interconnected with the ceaseless cycles of nature.

—Anthony Cheung