Tina Davidson - Program Notes

Fire on the Mountain (1993), for vibraphone, marimba and piano, was commissioned by the Philadelphia ensemble, Network for New Music. Shortly before I began to write, I dreamed I was taking a photograph of a large white horse who was lounging outside on a couch. When I looked through the camera all I could see was white, and it took me some time to realize that I was too close to the horse. As I stepped back, I looked up into the distance; the clouds suddenly parted and the setting sun shone on the peaks of the mountains like hot embers of a smoldering fire. This piece is about love and fire, the looking up and seeing it on the mountain, glowing and hot, and knowing this is where I need to go -- into the heat of the fire, which is myself. It is about bringing the passion of life home; the urge to renew oneself, and to integrate and combine with others -- to bring the sacred and profane, the intangible and the tangible together in a wonder and a beauty.

I Hear the Mermaids Singing, for viola, cello and piano, was commissioned and premiered by Fidelio Trio in 1990. Mermaids are a symbol of intuitive female wisdom, connection and sexual wholeness. These are not the mermaids of literature who lure sailors to an erotic death, but the mermaids of our own deep sexual nature, who are at ease with the water, the dark depths, the unknown and the fathomless. They are natural, untamed, and their eerie songs echo in both tenderness and playfulness.

Lullaby, (1987) scored solo instrument (or voice) and open instrumentation, is part of a larger work called Descending Figure with Lullaby. It is simply the song I imagine we all sing to our children, amid the distant noise of the outside world, cradling and surrounding them with a protective love.

Bleached Thread, Sister Thread, (1991), for string quartet, was commissioned for the Mendelssohn String Quartet and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. My ideas for this work began with a poem by my sister, Eva Davidson, which is about relationships spun with fine yet ordinary durable thread. These are old relationships, wracked by time and painful distances. My piece continues from her poem into a new time, this time, where the ties of the past support the present, and reveal a dark rich fabric full of color and boundless energy. It is life and relationships renewed. "Bleached Thread, Sister Thread " starts out of nothing; whispering and rubbing wood against strings, it slowly becomes sounds and then harmony. Passing through musical scenery, sometimes almost wildly, the piece grows in strength and vitality, cooling off only to heat up again. Finally the piece lifts off, detaches itself from the earth and ascends in a glowing circular fashion. A residue remains, almost an after image.

Bleached Thread

  "All bleached Thread is called Sister's Thread.
  It will make you yarne.. for the finest sister thred
  that can be sowed with." (OED)

  In the boxed garden, October already;
  for us city dwelling the next-of-doors
  light on buildings is stronger than usual
  pocked with definition, the resulting sky more blue.

  We are proximate, sistering above one another
  in the separate apartments of your home
  disquieted by heart deterioration,
  your undarned valve taxed for the unborn.
  So the diuretic detail from downstairs
  is the indent in your calf, water retention
  over the phone even though I hear the clearing
  of your voice through the floorboards.

  It is like sand between our teeth,
  the generations of women's voice unable to tell
  one to the next for drama's sake or truth's sake
  what was gathered or what was learned;
  and now you and I will tell each other
  what we know, that to be distant
  is sometimes closer than to be near.

  Bleached thread, sister thread,
  watching you work your shadow garden
  your body pregnant, primitive,
  squared over the ground, you point out
  ornamental ground cover: purple Leadwort, Alyssum
  and always the heart will eat at us a little.

© Eva Davidson

Blue Dawn (The Promised Fruit), for flute, English Horn, bassoon and piano, was commissioned by the Sylmar Ensemble in 1990. The work is both a departure and an arrival. Blue is the color the Navahos associate with the fructifying power of the earth, the water and the sky. Dawn is a moment of happiness and promise. And Eve gives Adam, not the apple of death, but the apple which brings them out of the dreamtime of the Garden. The forbidden fruit, for me, is the promised fruit -- the promise of life.

Transparent Victims (1987) is for soprano, alto and pre-recorded saxophones (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone). It was written specifically for the talents of Marshall Taylor and is dedicated to those children who, deprived of their voices and awareness, wail silence.

the god of my childhood wears black robes,
has horns
on his head and carries an ax in his hand,
how in the
world was I still able to slip past him? all
my life I have been creeping stealthily through
my landscape, under my arm the little bit
of life I keep
thinking I have stolen

-- Mariella Mehr, "Steinseit" (Stone Age)

Cassandra Sings (1988), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet using harmonies in a dissonant but richly suggestive of their tonal centers in passing. The title refers both to the solitary prophetess of ancient Greece whose predictions were never believed, and the composer's daughter. 'I was thinking about the hope I had for her future and how it related to the past,' she has written. 'For me the myth is not complete; Cassandra of old is overwhelmed and destroyed by the truth, the new Cassandra is transformed by death and born into a new time, this time, the time of my daughter -- a time of telling the truth and being heard.' The work opens with an arresting, long-limbed melody on the cello, prologue to a propulsive syncopated section which is tense and resonant. A fantastical stretch of ghostly effects ends in a chaotic, upward-scuttling motion. After a sudden calm, the rapidly-figured motions slowly return, but now are more clear and affirmative; the work becomes joyous, open and peaceful.