TITLE: Edges (1999)
COMPOSER: James Mobberley (b.1954)
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
James Mobberley has recently been named Curators' Professor of Music at the Conservatory of Music of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he also founded the Conservatory's Music Production And Computer Technology (M-PACT) Center, and serves as Coordinator of the Composition Programs. He was the Composer-in-Residence for the Kansas City Symphony from 1991-99, and holds this same post with New Ear, Kansas City's professional ensemble for new music performance. Major fellowships include the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Foundation, Meet the Composer's New Residencies program, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His music has received over 500 performances on five continents, and appeared on a dozen recordings, including a recent all-Mobberley orchestral release by Albany Records.
MOVEMENTS: Three
PERFORMANCE TIME: 21' 30"
INSTRUMENTATION: 29 Instruments
EDITIONS: Available for Purchase
COMPOSITION SKETCH AND MUSICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Edges is inspired by several events in my life over the period of 1995-97. Two are near-death experiences, while the third is the sudden passing of one of my closest colleagues and best friends, Professor Robert Cooper. The first movement, Back from the Edge, is a chronicle of the battle that I waged with "flesh-eating strep", which nearly cost me my life in spring, 1995. A fragment of a line from French playwright Jean Genet's "Prisoner of Love" served as additional inspiration:
"Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay in memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me."
In a sense, my life has re-emerged from where it lay, for a while, silent, in memory.
Movement II, Postcards, is inspired by my mentor and friend, composer Donald Erb, who had his own near-death experience about a year later in the same Ithaca, New York hospital (a bizarre coincidence). I know that he shared many of the mental aberrations I experienced during the recovery process, and Postcards reflects the strange visions, the elusive but more and more frequent moments of clarity, and the eventual return to reality that such experiences create. For me, in retrospect, these thoughts were like vivid postcards of other realities, sent to me by another part of my mind and filtered through the pain, the fear, and the medications that I had been given. There was also a highly obsessive quality to my thoughts during the recovery, which is reflected in the primary melodic material which simply refuses to disappear, though it changes colors, dynamics, and tempos at every turn.
Postcards -- real postcards, that is -- also played a role in my experiences. While recovering, I received a post card (often of questionable taste) every two or three days from Don. When it was his turn to be in recovery, it was my turn to send him postcards (equally questionable)...they seem now to me to be a lifeline to reality from people who are eager to welcome us back.
A quote was inspirational for this second movement as well, this time from Hermann Hesse's Damien:
"In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified."
The final movement is a reflection on the amazing, wonderful, and sometimes difficult life of my colleague, Robert Cooper. Robert had, without a doubt, the speediest metabolism of anyone I have ever known. Lunch with Robert could be defined as both of us eating for the first five minutes and Robert watching me finish eating for the last forty-five. Robert had two computers in his office and a phone; often all three were busy at once, while he carried on at least one additional conversation with whomever was present. Yet Robert had great depth too. He was a living example to students and colleagues, especially in facing life's travails with courage and conviction. He was also funny as hell. I suppose that Robert's pace was impossible to sustain, and in fact he died suddenly at the age of 45 on September 18, 1997. No quotations needed with this movement. This one's for you, man.
- Note Written by James Mobberley
SELECTED RECORDINGS
Currently available from the James Mobberley- mobberleyj@umkc.edu
RELATED WEBSITES:
University of Missouri - Kansas City - http://www.umkc.edu