Broad Band of Light
a suite for mountain dulcimer and orchestra
Solo mountain dulcimer, Piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, Clarinet in Bb, Bassoon, Horn in F (1 and 2), Trumpet in Bb, Trombone, Timpani, Percussion, Strings
I – Always Turning Toward
II – Unfrozen Still
III – Spin A Single Strand
IV – Nodding In The Wind
V – Rooted and Shaken
Timing: Approximately 22:10
Program Notes
My acquaintance with Steve Seifert is an old one; I first met him when his teacher grew ill and he stood in at literally the last minute to perform the premiere of my first dulcimer concerto, “Blackberry Winter,” in the fall of 1997. Though unaccustomed to the concert orchestra environment, his stage presence and skill made him a big success even at such a young age. He subsequently performed on the Warner Bros. recording of “Blackberry Winter” and has since performed the piece with many orchestras around the country. As he’s grown as a seasoned performer, so his extensive fan base teaching at festivals and via the internet has grown with him. This enabled the very creative commission of this piece – it is, so far as I know, the only fan-based commission of an orchestral piece in existence. People from all over donated to have a new piece written for Steve, and the Tucson Symphony was gracious enough to premiere it in 2012.
When we first met to discuss this piece, Steve was interested, above all else, in pushing the boundaries of what a dulcimer could do. A beautiful, tender instrument with a proud American folk tradition, the dulcimer is fairly primitive. It’s a form of diatonic zither with three strings, one usually used for melody and one or two for drone. But Steve has amassed technique far beyond the norm, and when he laughingly called himself a “musical bastard of sorts,” I knew exactly what he was asking for; he is influenced by so many types of music that he was interested in moving into styles and techniques unfamiliar and, yes, challenging enough as to be vaguely uncomfortable. That’s an area where a lot of artists thrive, including myself, and so this piece slowly began to form. An ardent fan of Wendell Berry, I wanted this piece to be of the images and moods of an ever-modulating earth, and so I borrowed terms of a working Kentucky farm, where dulcimer is indeed the state instrument. In the first movement, “Turning Always Toward,” I suffused the dark earthy modal melody and odd-metered time of the American folk tune, “Kitchen Girl,” with a classical opening giving into the call from the woods. The second movement, “Unfrozen Still,” has to do with the use of space and time and allowing Steve to improvise in a new way over a bed of tonal orchestral instruments. Steve wanted to experiment playing in the Baroque style, much like the fully chromatic lute did in the Renaissance, and showcase his skills in the lightning-fast center movement, “Spin a Single Strand.” Always gravitating toward hymns, I found the traditional spiritual “Talk About A Soul” in my personal hymnbook and combined it with an ethereal group of simple triads to set off and finish the substantial fourth movement, “Nodding in the Wind.” Finally, the movement “Rooted and Shaken” takes the traditional fiddle and banjo tune “90 Degrees” to a rousing and relentless Celtic treatment until the hymn once again enters quietly in the winds and brass. It is my hope that the piece moves in many moods and textures, much like the many different colors in a broad band of light. All the titles denote movement, and all the movements indicate reverence to mother earth and to the ultimate spiritual father of us all.
