Robert Beaser’s Folk Songs Premieres at Aspen Music Festival

Folk Songs, Robert Beaser’s new work for orchestra, saw its world premiere August 3 in Aspen. Commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival and School, the work reflects Beaser’s lifelong interest in folk music, “from Leadbelly to Alan Lomax.” Folk music is familiar territory for Beaser’s compositions. His flute and guitar work Mountain Songs re-imagines seven Appalachian folk tunes in different contexts; his Souvenirs, for clarinet or piccolo and piano, appropriates disparate folk song “shreds and patches” that are utilized in portions of the work amongst the new material. Beaser describes Souvenirs as sounding “in some spiritual way like folk songs—somewhat akin to Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs Without Words,’ only different.”

Folk Songs grows out of Souvenirs, adapting and reordering material from it while presenting it in a new setting—string orchestra, harp and timpani—with new music. The songs range in topics from the classically American to the contemporary American, featuring the Appalachian shanty tune “Lily Monroe” (which also features in Souvenirs) alongside original songs titled “Y2K” and “Ground O”—“O, not ‘zero,’” insists Beaser, who lives in New York, “so titled because I could not bring myself to admit that I was writing a 9/11 piece at the time.” The five songs of Souvenirs comprise a work that marks moments in American folk music and history, just as readily as it does Beaser’s compositional output.

Robert Beaser
Folk Songs (2007)
timp – hp – str(11.6.8.7.5)
15’

To learn more about Robert Beaser’s life and works, please visit www.schott-music.com.

For more information on the Aspen Chamber Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival and School, please visit www.aspenmusicfestival.com.