Bates
Liquid Interface
Mason Bates was born in Philadelphia in 1977. He composed Liquid Interface
on a commission from the National Symphony Orchestra in 2006 and it was
first performed the next year by that orchestra under the direction of
Leonard Slatkin. The score calls for 3 flutes, 3 piccolos, 3 oboes, English
horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon,
4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, prerecorded “electronica,” percussion,
harp, piano, and strings.
*****
Mason Bates grew up in Virginia, where he studied piano with Hope Armstrong
Erb and composition with Dika Newlin. He earned degrees in composition
and English literature in the Columbia-Juilliard program, where he studied
with John Corigliano (Liquid Interface’s dedicatee), David Del
Tredici, and Samuel Adler. Bates composes music for electronica, acoustic
instruments, and very often an eclectic combination of the two; his works
have been performed by orchestras and ensembles across America and all
over the world.
Bates includes this note with the score of Liquid Interface: “Water
has influenced countless musical endeavors—La mer and Siegfried’s
“Rhine Journey” quickly come to mind—and after living on Berlin’s enormous
Wannsee I formed a new take on the idea. In the course of barely two months,
I watched this huge body of water transform itself from an ice sheet thick
enough to support sausage vendors to a refreshing swimming spot heavy with
humidity. If the play of the waves inspired Debussy, then why not examine
the phenomenon of water in its variety of forms?
“Liquid Interface moves through all of them, inhabiting an increasingly
hotter world in each successive movement. Glaciers Calving opens
with huge blocks of sound drifting slowly upwards through the orchestra,
finally cracking off in the upper register. (Snippets of actual recordings
of glaciers breaking into the Antarctic, supplied by the adventurous radio
journalist Daniel Grossman, appear in the opening.) As the thaw continues
these sonic blocks melt into aqueous, blurry figurations. The beats of
the electronics evolve from slow ‘trip-hop’ into energetic ‘drum ‘n’
bass,’ and at the movement’s climax the orchestra blazes in turbulent
figuration. The ensuing Scherzo Liquido explores water on a micro-level:
droplets splash from the speakers in the form of a variety of nimble electronica
beats, with the orchestra swirling around them.
“The temperature continues to rise as we move into Crescent City,
which examines the destructive force as water grows from the small-scale
to the enormous. This is illustrated in a theme-and-variations form in
which the opening melody, at first quiet and lyrical, gradually accumulates
a trail of echoing figuration behind it. In a nod to New Orleans, which
knows the power of water all too well, the instruments trail the melody
in a reimagination of Dixieland swing. As the improvisatory sound of a
dozen soloists begins to lose control, verging into big band territory,
the electronics—silent in this movement until now—enter in the form of
a distant storm.
“At the peak of the movement, with an enormous wake of figuration swirling
behind the soaring melody, the orchestra is buried in an electronic hurricane
of processed storm sounds. We are swept into the muffled depths of the
ocean. This water-covered world, which relaxes into a kind of balmy, greenhouse
paradise, is where we end the symphony in On the Wannsee. A simple,
lazy tune bends in the strings above ambient sounds recorded at a dock
on the Wannsee. Gentle beats echo quietly in the moist heat. At near pianissimo
from this point, the melody floats lazily upwards through the humidity
and, at the work’s end, finally evaporates.”
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