Music of Arlene Zallman: Sei la terra che aspetta. Variations on the Villanella Alma Che Fai? by Luca Marenzio; Trio 1999 "Triquetra"; East, West of the Sun; Sei la terra che aspetta; Nightsongs (review)

In the last few months of her life, American composer Arlene Zallman began to collaborate with friends and family on her first compact disc, a compilation of her compositions from the preceding fifteen years. The resulting collection features polished performances by a wide range of musicians. The liner notes include the composer's descriptions of individual works as well as reminiscences of Zallman from her daughter Minna Proctor and composers Allen Anderson, Ross Bauer, and Martin Boykan. The combination of Zallman's own perspective with those of her friends and colleagues contributes to the richness of this seminal recording of a composer who existed outside the musical marketplace.

All the works on the recording reflect Zallman's expressive use of a highly chromatic musical language and the importance of poetry to her compositional process. Minna Proctor wrote in the liner notes, "For all of her wondrous fluency with the language of music, my mother was passionate about words. They were her muse" (5). Zallman drew from a diverse body of texts including the Italian poet Cesare Pavese (1908-50), the Shih-Ching(Chinese Book of Songs), Plato (c. 429 bce-347 bce), and German poet Joseph Frieherr von Eicchendorff (1788-1857). In this collection, only East, West of the Sunand Nightsongsfeature sung texts; however, all the works on the recording except Trio 1999 "Triquetra"are based on or inspired by poetry. For example, when composing the first piece, Variations on the Villanella Alma che fai? by Luca Marenziofor piano, Zallman painstakingly translated the text by Cesare Pavese and spent weeks deliberating the meaning of the first word, "alma," which she eventually decided represented a sigh (5). She then based the variations in part 1 on the evolution of Marenzio's setting of the text, focusing particular attention on the melodic phrases. On this recording, Lois Shapiro's clear articulations help the listener to grasp the fragmentation and recreation in part 2 of the melodic and harmonic figures that characterize the original villanella.

The second piece, Trio 1999 "Triquetra,"illustrates an additional set of influences—the classical forms of trios by Haydn and Beethoven, as well as architectural ornamentation. The three movements make reference to the musical forms of sonata form, rondo, and scherzo. The themes of the trio and the textures of the three instruments evoke the intertwining arches of the architectural ornament triquetra. As in the trio, East, West of the Sunfeatures a chamber group, though the instruments change from movement to movement. These choral songs present Zallman's compositional range, as they include closely knit tonal and highly chromatic canons, chorale-like sections, and lyrical duets between voices and instruments. In the set of seven songs the varying texts played a crucial role in her creation of the imagery and moods in the music. Zallman describes how a single phrase from the Shih-Ching, "twixt door and screen," defines the sparse and spacious musical depiction of country life in "Town Life" (17). In contrast, she uses the repetition in the text and music of "Three Strophes with Negligible Variation" to reference the never-ending flow of gossip (18). The musical setting of the final movement, "Nahuatl: Aztec Song," illustrates travel in a world of sleep and its counterpart, earthly reality, through increasingly intense interactions between voices and solo cello (20). This recording features the Wellesley College Chamber Singers in the Houghton Chapel on Wellesley's campus, where the same choir originally sang East, West of the Sunfor Zallman.

The...