CFAMC Listening Page #2

First issued December 12, 2004

A monthly musical offering by a composer member of the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers.
Both your listening and comments are encouraged.

Lawrence R. Mumford

Set Free

A piece for orchestra

Program Notes

Set Free is a one-movement character piece for orchestra, with optional added solo electric guitar and solo alto saxophone. Its raw materials are abstractions of American folk and popular music, and it derives its rhythmic core from root music patterns that are distributed among various sections of the orchestra.

A minimum of three percussionists is necessary, playing 4 timpani, marimba with hard mallets, and snare, crash cymbal, sizzle cymbal, and wood block. (The electric guitar and alto saxophone parts may be substituted by a solo muted trumpet and an English horn, respectively.) Performance time is approximately 7:30.

Composer's Statement of Faith

As a Christian I believe that the composition of new music is a command of the Lord (Ps. 149). Jesus regarded music so highly that he sang before Gethsemane (Mt. 26).

I also believe, as Bach did, that our Creator is the source of all musical inspiration. And while I respect the diversity of 21st-century styles, I have found that my personal preferred musical expression uses materials that are distinctively American.

My pieces draw primarily from 3 sources: materials from the popular and film music traditions; post-minimalist treatment of ostinato melodic/rhythmic cells; and common-practice European symphonic forms, which were further developed by domestic composers like Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein. Using the principles of extended functional tonality or modality, I give various sections of the orchestra abstractions of popular patterns, which may support clear, often syncopated melodic statements or fragments. Large pieces can be constructed this way, and the method is not different from that used by a European common-practice composer who created an entire movement from simple materials that represented his region’s root music.

Quod Deus Vole Volo. (What God wishes, I wish.)

Composer Biography

The composer is a member of A.S.C.A.P. with music published by six different companies. His original theme music plays daily on radio in over 50 cities across the country, and he has received numerous performances by several orchestras in the western United States. He has written for films produced in Hollywood and surrounding areas, and has also placed music on a Billboard #1 album and Record of the Year. He is a recipient of the Culver Prize in Chamber Music, and many other awards.

He received a doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Southern California, and a Master’s in Composition from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. His writing has been shaped by personal association with art music composers George Walker and Morton “Skip” Lauridsen; Hollywood composers Earle Hagen, David Raksin, and J.A.C. Redford, and successful popular songwriters. Most of those named above have also been his teachers.

A resident of Irvine, California, he has been teaching music composition, theory, and various other music courses at universities in both Orange and Los Angeles counties for the last several years.

- - -  SOLI DEO GLORIA!  - - -

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