Description
Video
Robert Chumbley: Cries & Whispers, performed by Aebersold & Neiweem
Duration
Premiere
October 28, 2016
Florida International University
Miami, FL
Piano Duo Chipak and Kushnir
Chicago Premiere
June 10, 2017
Music Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL
Aebersold and Neiweem Piano Duo
Commissioner
Instrumentation
Program Notes
When I was asked by the Dranoff 2 Piano Foundation and the Chicago Duo Piano Festival to compose a companion work for Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, my thoughts immediately went to Beethoven himself. Specifically, my interest was centered on his growing deafness, perhaps the most critical issue in his life. I wondered about what people who lose their hearing over time actually hear as their deafness declines slowly as Beethoven’s did.
I researched Beethoven’s notebooks and writings as well as medical journals on deafness. I learned that those people so afflicted hear things in echo (or as if in a tunnel), and/or scratchy noises, or loud banging eruptions of sound, among other symptoms. I was then inspired to re-create these aural effects musically. The piece opens with both pianos creating overtone effects that ring incessantly and then move to musical depictions of other hearing loss presentations.
I composed Cries and Whispers as a work to stand alone, not always to be programmed with transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies. However, the pairing of my work with the monumental Ninth Symphony (composed when Beethoven was profoundly deaf) is a particularly powerful one.
‒ Robert Chumbley