Rapture

Program Note by the Composer

I completed Rapture at my home in Pittsford, New York on January 9, 2000. Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, it is dedicated to that orchestra's music director, Mariss Jansons.

It should be noted that the title of this score is not "The Rapture;" the piece is not connected to any specific religious source. Rather, I used the word "rapture" to convey a sense of spiritual bliss, religious or otherwise. With the exception of my Christmas work, Karolju, this is the most unabashedly tonal music I have composed. I wished to depict a progression to an ever more blinding ecstasy, but the entire work inhabits a world devoid of darkness -- hence the almost complete lack of sustained dissonance. Rapture also is an exercise in gradually increasing tempi; it begins quite slowly but, throughout its eleven minute duration proceeds to speed up incrementally until the breakneck tempo of the final moments is reached. Although much of my music is associated with grief and despair, Rapture is one of a series of more recent scores -- such as Compline (1996), Kabir Padavali (1997), and Concert de Gaudi (1998) -- to look "towards the light."

The work is scored for an orchestra of three flutes, three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, harp, timpani (two players), percussion (three players), and strings. The percussion battery consists of bass drum, five triangles, tam-tam, Chinese cymbal, suspended cymbal, chimes, glockenspiel, and antique cymbals.

Christopher Rouse

© 2000 by Christopher Rouse
These program notes can be reproduced free of charge with the following credit:
Reprinted by kind permission of Christopher Rouse

Raves for Rapture: New Orchestral Score Cheered in Pittsburgh

Boosey & Hawkes Newsletter

A mood, a title, a response: all of these pertain to Rapture, Christopher Rouse's newest work for orchestra. Rapture made its debut on May 5, 2000 at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, with rising conductor Mariss Jansons leading the Pittsburgh Symphony. Mark Kanny of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote that Rapture "was greeted with sustained applause and cheering. In its expert achievement of its goals, the piece shows why Rouse is one of America's leading composers."

Continues Kanny, "The composer's program notes say the title conveys 'a sense of spiritual bliss, religious or otherwise'.... Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony and dedicated to Mariss Jansons, Rapture shows off the orchestra collectively and individually. Its resplendent scoring is both rich and bright. Rouse writes for virtuoso orchestra, with solos within sections and not just for principal players. He achieves an especially brilliant outburst at one point by having four trumpeters play multiple cross rhythms, and uses the percussion particularly well."

Andrew Druckenbrod of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called Rapture "an exceptional 11-minute work with powerful tonal underpinnings and swirling dynamic shifts.... Good compositions stimulate the mind and allow for multiple readings, thoughts, and feelings. That's exactly what the invigorating Rapture did with its well-paced structure, vibrant solos and lush string writing. The piece swelled from lambent music to joyful surges, never becoming repetitive or predictable."

Even as new scores appear, recent Rouse works are rapidly becoming international staples of the contemporary repertoire. The 2000-01 season brings paired performances of his Symphony No. 2 (in Atlanta and Paris), his percussion concerto Der Gerettete Alberich (Glasgow and Paris), and his Violin Concerto (with the New York and the Rochester Philharmonic orchestras). Iscariot turns up in Winterthur, Switzerland, Contrabass Concerto in Zurich, and Flute Concerto in Vienna.

Next on the horizon from Rouse is a Clarinet Concerto, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Eastman Philharmonic. CSO principal clarinettist Larry Combs will perform with the orchestra under noted Rouse champion Christoph Eschenbach. In contrast with the lush and consonant Rapture, Rouse has described his music for the Clarinet Concerto as "prickly and ornery." Clearly, in the house of Rouse's imagination, there are many rooms.

Music Manual

Vienna, Austria

Dwarf-Dance

"When Richard Wagner left the Götter to vanish in the Dämmerung, the dwarf Alberich finally hopped onto the stage.

"[quote from CD booklet]," explains Christopher Rouse about his motivation for Der gerettete Alberich. Therefore this work is neither concerto nor instrumental drama; much more, Rouse forms a study in character and voice in sublime Klangfarben and fluid dialogues: from the closing chords of the opera follows the surprise and disillusionment about the only life-form in scraping ideas and raining-down drum figures.

"Before calming sound-scenes from discreet opera quotations, marimba motives dot Alberich's forehead with sweat, as he thinks about his way forward. Then his ego triumphs in an orgiastic and often dissonant heavy metal dwarf-dance with drumset, which the magnificent soloist Evelyn Glennie (to whom the work is dedicated) takes on with the same virtuosity as all other percussion instruments. Because Rouse considers the figure of Alberich irreverently, it becomes a modern symbol of grotesque power fantasies, and the Götterdämmerung becomes a nightmare.

"Complementing this is also the Violin Concerto, a critical diagnosis of the times in sounds that vibrate restively in the Barcarola and have a violent mimicry in the Toccata. Rapture creates an almost foreign effect in this environment; its rapturous polyphony, like a tonal hologram, provides for unsuspected listening experiences.

"Leif Segerstam has prepared sensuality in Rouse's style in the best possible way for the ears, and this recording therefore has reference status."