Update Title: DE62BCA8-5438-4711-9A6D-3103384A59FE

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The co-operation and support I've received from my colleagues in the orchestra and the confindence expressed in my abilities by Mr. Slatkin have given me the courage to pursue a different aesthetic direction in my own music, a direction I might never have taken without such assurance.  My music in recent years has often been highly programmatic, typically drawing its inspiration from literary sources.  The orchestral work I'm currently writing as part of my residency requirement is, on the other hand, decidedly "absolute"; that is, it contains no extramusical associations.

Musical borrowing has also played a signigicant role in my instrumental compositions for more than a decade. [Of the two earlier works performed by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Shadows cites material by Stravinsky, Britten  and Mahler, while The Glass Bead Game quotes no fewer than six other composers: Liszt, Schoenberg, Dallapiccola, Penderecki, Vaughn Williams and Shostakovich.] The tonal language of those pieces involving quotations has been determined in large measure by the tonality of the borrowed fragments around which the entire work or a single section was built.  Thus my music has tended to be quite eclectic, mixing atonal passages with those based firmly in the major-minor tonal system.  The work now being completed for the orchestra utilizes no conscious quotations, and the tonality--best, if vaguely, described as "freely chromatic"-- is consistent throughout.

Past pieces have been characterized by a delicacy of gesture, a sensitivity to timbral subtleties and an "eastern" approach to the handling of time and space.  As a consequence, they have been essentially monophonic and have relied heavily on a large and exotic collection of percussion instruments to initiate and sustain events.  By comparison, the latest composition is primarily polyphonic in conception and employs no percussion whatsoever, not even timpani.

Finally, recent works have frequently consisted of a series of individual and relatively short movements, each of which was complete in itself.  The residency piece, however, is a single-movement composition dominated by several diverse ideas that evolve organically throughout.

Such a radical departure from an aesthetic I have long embraced by no means implies a repudiation of my earlier efforts.  Because of  my current position with the Saint Louis Symphony, I have a unique opportunity to investigate compositional techniques and procedures that, while certainly not innvative, present new challenges for me in my growth as a composer.  When told of my plans to explore markedly different paths in the work commissioned by the orchestra, one friend asked incredulously, "You're experimenting with the Saint Louis Symphony?"  However, the imperative to "experiment," to broaden one's horizons, whether as listener, performer or composer, is what the Orchestra Residency Program is all about. --Claude Baker

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Review

Full orchestra version:
 
"The sonorities are rich in color, the structure is episodic; the dynamic flow stems from bold contrasts of texture and volume level; the foreground material consists not so much of melody but of figuration. Awaking the Winds is easy to absorb and pleasantly dark in mood...it teems with evocative imagery." -- James Wierzbicki, St Louis Post Dispatch

"...the pacing is quiescent, and there is a justified fixation on the sound of each sonic event, rather than its import in a dramatic context. Eventually, this succession of carefully detailed and sonic events seems restive, creating a need for structural counterpoint and contrast. And when the wind is finally awakened (it is difficult to avoid the textual allusion of Baker's title), the music both satisfies and imparts new focus to the previous slow pacing." --Timothy Vincent Clark, St Louis Riverfront Times

Chamber orchestra version:
 
"Baker shows a fascination for the coloristic gestures, especially harmonics that establish eerie textures or slide into nothingness. All sorts of instrumental techniques are explored on this traversal, which includes tumultuous free patterns and intersecting lines of intriguing personality. [The Cleveland Chamber Symphony] played the score with great transparency, allowing Baker's ideas to come forward or take their place within the evolving framework." -- Donald Rosenberg, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Awaking the Winds....is not typical Baker music. His usual lyricism is submerged this time, lurking rather than bursting forth. The music is eerie and urgent...it is of almost a threatening, matters-are-about-to-boil-over nature. The strings seem on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There's excitement to the music, evocatively played by the [Indiana University New Music Ensemble}..." -- Peter Jacobi, Bloomington (IN) Herald Times

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