Official site of composer Andrea Clearfield. Biography, list of works with audio, score samples, reviews and program notes, photographs, upcoming performances.
Scored for: horn and piano Duration: 14 min. Premiere: 6/94, International Horn Symposium, Kansas City.
Froydis Ree Wekre horn, Andrea Clearfield, piano Commissioned by: Froydis Ree Wekre Published by: Angelfire Press. Contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music for score and parts.
Froydis Ree Wekre, internationally renowned Norwegian hornist, commissioned this piece when we were both working at the Sarasota Music Festival. I wanted to write a work for her that would have a relationship to the north, the woods, mythology and the essence of the wolf. Songs of the Wolf was inspired and influenced by the evocative poetry by Manfred Fischbeck (Movement I-see poem below) and the story “La Loba” (Movement II), included in the best selling book Women Who Run With the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
REVIEWS
…a remarkable work…like most great works, it is one which reveals more and more with each subsequent hearing. Ms. Clearfield has a thorough understanding of the capabilities, both technical and expressive, of the horn and piano and makes use of them.…a cohesive and convincing piece of music. This work indeed deserves a place among the standard horn and piano repertoire.”
-Catherine Mayer, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Fall, 1998
“…My personal favorite was the most recent and the least conventional: Andrea Clearfield’s Songs of the Wolf. Clearfield, a young composer from Philadelphia, gives the horn an imaginative role in this piece, yet the special effects — glissandi, falling off notes at the end — while evoking animal noises, only serve the musical ends. The music moves, develops, and builds, remaining tuneful but not trite. Carr and Nishimura play this music with an understanding of the gestures that held me through the piece.”
-Jean Rife, Women of Note Quarterly, May, 1997
“Andrea Clearfield’s Songs of the Wolf is a masterpiece. Full of content, the music sends the horn soaring into the altissimo, and propels it with equal force into the subterranean haunts of the basso, letting the soloists remain captivating throughout. With a dark and complex programmatic story line which lures the imagination into the realm of myths, it is easy to see how the subject served as a wellspring of inspiration for the composer…this piece will be on every aspiring hornist’s audition list. It’ll be a shoe-in for that coveted chair!”
-Charles Rutan, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Summer, 1998
“American composer Clearfield has created a full-length programmatic piece describing a dark, brooding, at times foreboding look at the wolf and its environs. A fast-paced series of tableaus of differing nature highlights the aura of the piece. Stopping, muffling, and scooping are some of the aspects which add character to this unique work.”
-John Dressler, Horn Call Journal, Publication of the International Horn Society, No. 28.2, February, 1998
“The centerpiece of this next release, deservedly so, is Andrea Clearfield’s Songs of the Wolf… Ms. Clearfield shows a keen understanding of the capabilities of the horn, even writing for effects unheard before by this reviewer. Ms. Clearfield musically portrays many moods connected with the idea of the wolf: nobility, playfulness, savagery of the hunt and loneliness of the hunted, even to the effect of baying at the moon. It is hoped that this is not the only work Ms. Clearfield will write for the horn…”
-Catherine Mayer, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Winter, 1998
“Clearfield’s work is probably the most intense work on this disc. Programmatic images of two poems regarding wolves and the terrain surrounding them are convincely “told” by Ms. Carr. Sections of wild abandon followed by subtle almost creeping motion is beautifully rendered… most impressive..”
-John Dressler, Horn Call Journal, Publication of the International Horn Society, November, 1996, Vol. 27, #1
“I don’t think I can imagine Froydis Ree Wekre presenting a recital without a world premiere, and I was certainly not disappointed by Songs Of The Wolf by Andrea Clearfield, a beautiful and intense new work…””
-Horn Call Journal, November, 1994
“It’s a pleasure to see the greatly gifted Andrea Clearfield represented on the excellent Songs of the Wolf CD (Crystal Records CD 678). Clearfield’s two-part work is deeply romantic in the best contemporary sense of that term, highly idiomatic and expressive.”
-Harry Hewitt, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Summer, 1997
Songs of the Wolf
Artwork by Thore Hansen
Scored for: horn and piano
Duration: 14 min.
Premiere: 6/94, International Horn Symposium, Kansas City.
Froydis Ree Wekre horn, Andrea Clearfield, piano
Commissioned by: Froydis Ree Wekre
Published by: Angelfire Press. Contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music for score and parts.
See preview score pages: SONGS OF THE WOLF I (PDF)
YOUTUBE (Froydis Ree Wekre, horn and Andrea Clearfield, piano)
Watch at 9’30”, Hazel Dean Davis, horn and Elaine Rombola Aveni, piano
LISTEN
RECORDING
SONGS OF THE WOLF
Froydis Ree Wekre, horn
Andrea Clearfield, piano
Crystal Records, CD 678
www.crystalrecords.com
Purchase on iTunes
NOTES
Froydis Ree Wekre, internationally renowned Norwegian hornist, commissioned this piece when we were both working at the Sarasota Music Festival. I wanted to write a work for her that would have a relationship to the north, the woods, mythology and the essence of the wolf. Songs of the Wolf was inspired and influenced by the evocative poetry by Manfred Fischbeck (Movement I-see poem below) and the story “La Loba” (Movement II), included in the best selling book Women Who Run With the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
REVIEWS
…a remarkable work…like most great works, it is one which reveals more and more with each subsequent hearing. Ms. Clearfield has a thorough understanding of the capabilities, both technical and expressive, of the horn and piano and makes use of them.…a cohesive and convincing piece of music. This work indeed deserves a place among the standard horn and piano repertoire.”
-Catherine Mayer, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Fall, 1998
“…My personal favorite was the most recent and the least conventional: Andrea Clearfield’s Songs of the Wolf. Clearfield, a young composer from Philadelphia, gives the horn an imaginative role in this piece, yet the special effects — glissandi, falling off notes at the end — while evoking animal noises, only serve the musical ends. The music moves, develops, and builds, remaining tuneful but not trite. Carr and Nishimura play this music with an understanding of the gestures that held me through the piece.”
-Jean Rife, Women of Note Quarterly, May, 1997
“Andrea Clearfield’s Songs of the Wolf is a masterpiece. Full of content, the music sends the horn soaring into the altissimo, and propels it with equal force into the subterranean haunts of the basso, letting the soloists remain captivating throughout. With a dark and complex programmatic story line which lures the imagination into the realm of myths, it is easy to see how the subject served as a wellspring of inspiration for the composer…this piece will be on every aspiring hornist’s audition list. It’ll be a shoe-in for that coveted chair!”
-Charles Rutan, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Summer, 1998
“American composer Clearfield has created a full-length programmatic piece describing a dark, brooding, at times foreboding look at the wolf and its environs. A fast-paced series of tableaus of differing nature highlights the aura of the piece. Stopping, muffling, and scooping are some of the aspects which add character to this unique work.”
-John Dressler, Horn Call Journal, Publication of the International Horn Society, No. 28.2, February, 1998
“The centerpiece of this next release, deservedly so, is Andrea Clearfield’s Songs of the Wolf… Ms. Clearfield shows a keen understanding of the capabilities of the horn, even writing for effects unheard before by this reviewer. Ms. Clearfield musically portrays many moods connected with the idea of the wolf: nobility, playfulness, savagery of the hunt and loneliness of the hunted, even to the effect of baying at the moon. It is hoped that this is not the only work Ms. Clearfield will write for the horn…”
-Catherine Mayer, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Winter, 1998
“Clearfield’s work is probably the most intense work on this disc. Programmatic images of two poems regarding wolves and the terrain surrounding them are convincely “told” by Ms. Carr. Sections of wild abandon followed by subtle almost creeping motion is beautifully rendered… most impressive..”
-John Dressler, Horn Call Journal, Publication of the International Horn Society, November, 1996, Vol. 27, #1
“I don’t think I can imagine Froydis Ree Wekre presenting a recital without a world premiere, and I was certainly not disappointed by Songs Of The Wolf by Andrea Clearfield, a beautiful and intense new work…””
-Horn Call Journal, November, 1994
“It’s a pleasure to see the greatly gifted Andrea Clearfield represented on the excellent Songs of the Wolf CD (Crystal Records CD 678). Clearfield’s two-part work is deeply romantic in the best contemporary sense of that term, highly idiomatic and expressive.”
-Harry Hewitt, Penn Sounds (A Periodical Serving Pennsylvania Composers), Summer, 1997
ARTICLE
On Kristen Fowler’s concert of horn music as a channel for trauma and activism
TEXT
SONGS OF THE WOLF
Poem by Manfred Fischbeck
Snow night came
Unannounced
A sea of doves
Descended from everywhere
A white feast of silence
The never resting
The asking ran home
Stumbling and snowblind
Knocked at the door
Abandoned
The father house of dreams
Hours of dog sleep
Hours of listening into the darkness
On softly ringing chains of waking
Dying wind
Plays on the sinking forest organs
Echoes echoes
The songs of the wolf