Alan Theisen (b. 4 October 1981; Port Huron, Michigan) is a Ph.D. graduate assistant in the Department of Music Theory at the Florida State University.
Composing since the age of sixteen, he has produced a steadily growing body of work distinguished by its musical energy and concentration of expression.
Representative works by Theisen include a Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, Variations on a Theme of Gretchaninov, Eclogue for flute, and the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra (premiered by soloist Lawrence Gwozdz and the Szczecin Philharmonic in 2004). Recent compositions and commissions include Ritorno for flute and cello and a Triple Concerto. Noted composer Dimitri Terzakis commends Theisen's oeuvre as being "the product of a unique talent."
As a saxophonist, Theisen has toured the United States and Canada with the Sax-Chamber Orchestra, performing at two World Saxophone Congresses (Montreal - 2000, Minneapolis - 2003). He studied the instrument with internationally-recognized performer Lawrence Gwozdz and participated in masterclasses with famed saxophone pioneer Jean-Marie Londeix. No stranger to the podium, Theisen has been a guest conductor with several ensembles.
In an effort to showcase both his own original compositions and pieces by other contemporary composers, he founded the Intégrales New Music Festival in 2005. Now an annual event, Intégrales NMF features world-premiere performances by nationally recognized musicians. Intégrales has expanded to include musical collaborations with artists, authors, and dancers.
Theisen wrote his undergraduate thesis on György Ligeti's Piano Etudes, and has authored several papers on topics including Elliott Carter, film editing, composition as analysis, and Michael Brecker.
Other interests include mathematics, film criticism, and philosophy; in addition, Theisen has performed the role of Oberon in a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, for which he also wrote the incidental music.
Theisen lives with his wife (and puts up with their two cats) in Tallahassee, Florida.
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Sunday, June 19, 2005
The Greatest American Hero
With the passing of so many composers, conductors, and performers as of late, the usual line-up of eulogies and commemorative speeches has begun. I have often wondered why genius is lauded only when that person passes, as if commending a body of work (or even a single work) as being of superior quality is embarassing or shameful.
I for one will not wait to celebrate one of my heroes. I do not need his passing, a special birthday, or an anniversary to pay my respects to the greatest American composer: Elliott Carter.
By now, several readers have perceptibly slumped in their chairs in front of their laptops and have begun to frantically click and seek another blog to read. This is fine and somewhat expected. Carter's music is not for everyone...and who needs to read words about music when the music doesn't cut it? For me though, and countless others, the music does indeed "cut it" (and then some).
My sophomore year of college I listened to Carter's Second String Quartet (my first excursion into Carter's catalogue). The piece was a collision of lines, fragments, times, atoms, and dreams. I thought: "This is how music should be!" I sat in awe of 25 minutes contracted and expanded into seconds and hours, melodies without themes, harmonies without boundaries, chasing what Alban Berg called "ecstasies of logic". I had heard my professors describe Carter's music as "academic", "cerebral", "thorny", and "ugly". Frankly, after a deep personal listening to the Quartet, I couldn't see how so many musicians could remain ignorant and hostile toward such beautiful music.
Yes. I used that word: "beautiful".
Not "mathematical" or "contrived" or "harsh". Beautiful.
I could spend the remainder of my essay delving into hexachords, long-range polyrhythms, etc., but this is not my intent. Certainly these elements are important when discussing advanced music, but I'm talking gut reaction here. Carter's music sinks its claws into a sonic sphere and never lets go. It expects us to follow a complex argument, when other music doesn't dare to make us fire a single brain synapse. A piece like Symphonia shocks, whines, complains, and screams; but it also sighs, whispers, bubbles, and coos. When other composers in the latter half of the 20th century lost the guts to explore the chromatic language, Carter re-invented polyphony in an elegant way that Webern had only touched upon. There can be tension and release without the "sacred" triad - Carter proved it. Once again, music could enforce a Beethovenian drama while not giving up and groping for past rhetoric. In Carter's musical world, history becomes a building block, not a cop-out.
Music is an art form that deals with time as much as it deals with sound. Far too many composers have neglected this fundamental aspect of music, but Carter took it and ran wild.
I'll be forever grateful for Carter's compositions. They excite my emotions, my intellect, and my musicianship. Carter's pieces are as grand of a historical burden on me as are Bach's fugues, Haydn's symphonies, Debussy's miniatures, and Mahler's sound worlds; the impulse to compose is never greater yet never scarier than after I hear an Elliott Carter composition.
Thank you, Mister Carter. Your output is a four-star meal in a world of McDonalds music.
posted by Alan Theisen
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