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Composer(s)
Hilary Tann
Performer(s)
Frantisek Novotny, violin;ebra Richtmeyer, alto saxophone; Kirk Trevor, conductor;Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
In 1947 South Wales, the
coalmines were still open,
the landscape was green,
yellow and brown, the
mountaintops were bare, and
the sky was close. This is
where Hilary Tann was
born and raised, in the town
of Ferndale high up in the
enclosed valley, Rhondda
Fach. Inspired by the natural
world around her, much of
Hilary Tann's music can be
illustrated as the composing
out of images and landscapes. To understand
this compositional process, it is essential to
see Wales through the composer's eyes. She
explains, “When I think about the Wales that
I know, I think of the rock close to the surface;
I think of the detail that one can see at
one's feet and then the sudden vista that
opens up as one reaches the mountaintop and
looks across the plateau; and I think of the
mist curling up the side of the mountain.”
Tann began writing music at age six
because she had a waltz-like melody in her
head and she wanted to remember it. She
became a cellist in the Glamorgan Youth
Orchestra as well as in the
National Youth Orchestra of
Wales, and later attended the
University of Wales in Cardiff
to study music. Leaving
Cardiff as the first woman to
graduate with a first class honors
degree in composition, she
later became one of the first
women to graduate with a
Ph. D. in composition from
Princeton University in the
United States. Remaining in
America, Tann joined the editorial
staff of Perspectives of New Music and
was an active member on a number of
Executive Committees for the International
League of Women Composers (ILWC) from
1982 to 1995. Instrumental in the merging of
the ILWC, American Women Composers, and
the International Congress of Women in
Music, she remains a composer member of
the unified International Alliance for Women
in Music. Hilary Tann lives in the southern
foothills of the Adirondack Mountains and is
the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at
Union College in Schenectady, NY.
Further understanding about Hilary Tann
as a composer can be drawn from her experience
as a Welsh immigrant to America who
found her way back to Wales via Japan. While
living and working in the United States, a
deep interest in the traditional music of Japan
led to study of the shakuhachi, an ancient
Japanese vertical bamboo flute. She was
entranced by its clear lines and varied textures.
While studying the shakuhachi seriously,
Tann's own voice began to reveal itself.
Llef was composed in 1988 as a duet for
shakuhachi (later flute) and cello. The name
comes from a minor-key Welsh hymn tune,
and is translated from Welsh meaning, “a cry
from the heart”. A cry from the heart (mura -
iki) is also a shakuhachi technique, and Llef
contains three such cries. For Tann the name
has double meaning, for it was the first composition
she chose to give a Welsh name.
To further her study of traditional Japanese
music and continue to develop her unique
voice, Tann traveled to Japan in 1990 to teach
at Kansai Gaidai University. She describes, “I
came to Japan from America as a Welsh
woman, and I found aspects of where I was in
Japan between Kyoto and Osaka to contain
elements of Welshness: close communities,
smiling in the streets, chats with neighbors,
small markets, well-kept gardens, and the
mist of an island country.” Her studies in
Japan further influenced her understanding of
silence, stillness, and image. Hilary Tann
believes the bone, sinew, and vein of her work
is a synthesis of her Welsh heritage, Japanese
influence and study, and time in the United
States. Among many works reflecting this
synthesis is the large orchestral piece, From
Afar, included on this recording, and her
recent Shakkei, a diptych of two contrasting
landscaped images for oboe solo and small
chamber orchestra. She remarks, “I prefer to
think of myself as a world citizen. I live in
America, but my heart and my music is
Welsh.”
The CD, Here, The Cliffs, is a retrospective
recording of Hilary Tann's orchestral
music from 1994-2004, performed by the
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Kirk
Trevor, conductor. Image is immediately captured
as each title reflects the picture and
motion within a given landscape. Tann's connection
with Wales is heard in three of the
five selections while, of the remaining two,
one recalls her current home in Upstate NY
and the other her time in Japan.