Cygnus Ensemble

You missed the concert, but you can click on the titles to hear the works on this program--

Hear Matthew Greenbaum's  Nameless

May 1,  2009
8PM

Advent Lutheran Church 93rd & Broadway, Manhattan

designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany

Cygnus & Momenta String Quartet, with sopranos
Elizabeth Farnum, Julie Bishop, and Priscilla Smith
with Conductor James Baker

Matthew Greenbaum's Nameless for Cygnus + String Quartet and three sopranos

Nameless bears an inscription from the single greatest work of Jewish Philosophy, The
Guide to the Perplexed of Moses Maimonides (1120-1190).

The Guide to the Perplexed, written in dialogue with Muslim theologians, argued the existence of Deity by negation:  Whatever is Deity can’t be described; what can be described is not Deity.  Hence, the title Nameless.

Nameless is a long, wordless psalm.  It is not descriptive; rather, it is a series of images—reflection, ecstasy, reverence, idyll and dance--expressed through fugue, chorus dialogue and aria.  These are signposts for the listener that point outward to musical expressions of the ineffable in every culture and time.

"The negative attributes have this in common with the positive, that they
necessarily circumscribe the object to some extent, although such
circumscription consists only in the exclusion of what otherwise would
not be excluded.  In the following point, however, the negative attributes
are distinguished from the positive. The positive attributes, although not
peculiar to one thing, describe a portion of what we desire to know, either
some part of its essence or some of its accidents; the negative attributes,
on the other hand, do not, as regards the essence of the thing which we
desire to know, in any way tell us what it is, except it be indirectly........"
Moses Maimonides,
Guide to the Perplexed   LVIII

Hear   Greenbaum's setting of R. W. Emerson's  Wild Rose, Lily, Dry Vanilla
(Cygnus with Haleh Abghari, live at the Society for Ethical Culture)
This Emerson setting is, like much of Nameless, an idyll.  If you like this, you'll love Nameless.

with works for Cygnus--

Elliott Carter's HBHH (oboe solo)
Maurice Wrigth's  overflowing stream (sextet for Cygnus)
Ryan Olivier's   American Gumbo (sextet for Cygnus)
Mena Hanna's     The Swimmer (Cygnus + soprano)
Melissa Pausina's  Promise (for two guitars)

and works for the Momenta--