Stephen Scott - Minerva's Web/The Tears of Niobe (1990)

Posted By : capt.evil1 | Date : 05 Nov 2009 05:46:20 | Comments : 3 |

Stephen Scott
(b. Corvallis, Oregon, 1944)

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Scott is an American composer who studied with Homer Keller at the University of Oregon. He has taught music at Colorado College since 1969, and has been a full professor there since 1989. He has also taught at Evergreen State College and has served as visiting composer at the Aspen Music School, New England Conservatory of Music, Princeton University, the University of Southern California, and at several universities and conservatories in Australia and Europe.

Scott's "Minerva's Web", composed in 1985, is scored for an ensemble of 10 musicians at one piano plucking the strings or bowing them with loops of material like strings and cloth. The effect is somewhat like slowly evolving waves of a giant harp at times, and like the smoother waves of an electronic synthesizer. In all, this richly harmonic and tonal music is appealing with its surprising "celestial" and joyously rhythmic textures.

The title refers to Ovid's tale (in the "Metamorphoses", Book VI) of the weaving contest between the goddess Minerva and the mortal Arachne, and also refers to the web-like layout of piano strings and the arrangement of the ideas ("indices") in the composition. Scott was later to use another tale re-told in the Metamorphoses as the basic image for his "The Tears of Niobe" composed the next year, also for 10 performers working the inside strings of a piano. ~ Allmusic

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Track list:

1. Minerva's Web - 26:35
2. The Tears of Niobe - 25:45

Scored for grand piano bowed and plucked by ten musicians,
performed by the composer with the Colorado College New Music Ensemble.