Ann Southam was a close friend and musical collaborator for almost 30 years. I began performing her music in 1981, and have recorded a number of her major works for piano – with three sets on Centrediscs alone: a 3-CD set of Rivers in the Canadian Composer Portrait Series; a 2-CD set of Pond Life, which included pieces she wrote for me; and now Glass Houses Revisited. As well, I included individual works by her on Northern Sirens (York Fine Arts), Ings (Welspringe) Virtuoso Piano Music of Our Own Time (JLH Lasersound), and Mystic Streams (Welspringe).
Southam composed Glass Houses in 1981, and revised them for me in 2009. With Ann’s support and encouragement, I revised and edited them in 2010. We chose the new title Glass Houses Revisited for the recording and I was able to play them for her a few days before her death. She loved all my changes and wanted me to be added as “co-creator” in these notes. I was touched by her trust in me but I agreed to be credited with only editing and revising. Her exquisite and luminous creations are her very own. She was working on program notes for the pieces and in one of her last emails to me on November 15th, 2010 she wrote: “It was wonderful to see you yesterday and I’m still blown away by the way you play Glass Houses. They’re your pieces, for sure!!! Many thanks and lots of love, Ann”.
Ann Southam began writing the program notes a few days before she passed away. Sadly, they stop in midsentence: “I have called these pieces Glass Houses in order to identify them as minimalist music. The best known composer of this style of music at the time of their composition (1981) was Philip Glass. Subsequently the minimalist music of Steve Reich, with its processes of gradual changes, has become of considerably more interest to me. The tunes in Glass Houses were inspired by, but do not imitate, Canadian east coast fiddle music. Generally speaking, these tunes are spun out, one new tune at a time – e.g. tune #1X4, #2X4, #3 etc., #2,3 – until all tunes are present, at which point they wind back to the beginning. From time to time the process is interrupted, in the interests of rhythm. The left hand is an ostinato (drone). As a youngster I loved to listen to Don Messer and his Islanders on the radio. They came on at lunchtime,” Ann Southam.
Glass Houses Revisited has fiendishly difficult ‘etudes’ for pianists. Fingers become whirling dervishes entering a mystical and ecstatic trance through suddenly shifting patterns and moods. The dizzying tempi, speed and control required from the performer make them extremely demanding and require virtuose pianistic skills. Technically, the two hands must be able to play completely independently because the pieces are based on a mathematically precise order. The interpreter must also have an intuitive grasp of the phrasing and flow of the music as well as the technical control of rhythmic articulation. The technique you need to perform these pieces is similar to the Ligeti etudes, as well as the fast fingering of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, with a hint of Bach’s most dense counterpoint. There is a sense of adventure, courage and stamina required for this excursion into Ann Southam’s Glass Houses Revisited. There are no indications of dynamics, phrasing, fingering, pedaling, or other directions in the score. When I asked her for some suggestions about these pieces, she said: “I trust your musical judgment completely.” Bringing these pieces to life has been a unique, personal and intimate journey. The score to each piece of Glass Houses Revisited is a sheet of music showing a left hand ostinato or loop pattern. This ostinato can consist of 7 eighth notes, or 9, 11, 13, 15 up to 33 notes. This numerical sequence is repeated from the beginning to the final end pattern. It has to be memorized and plays independently from the right hand. The score gives the performer a series of melodic patterns for the right hand of varying rhythmic cells and repetitions. For example, if the left hand has an ostinato pattern of 13, then the right hand plays in groups of various numerical combinations. The performer has to follow the number of repetitions indicated in the right hand patterns. However, the hands must feel totally independent of the dueling rhythmic sequences. The individual notes must be played together and cleanly in spite of the frequent changes and shifts. There are also numbers which show where the first note of the right hand pattern should link up with a particular note in the left hand. This is extremely difficult
because at such a fast tempi, the music needs to be memorized so that the hands can play with absolute control and without tension. Any loss of concentration or lack of focus on the part of the performer can derail the performance and the flow of music is lost.
Each of the Glass Houses Revisited has its own distinct mood. Ann called piece #13 “Broody and moody”, with its bursts of controlled emotion. Piece #5 is joyful and cheerfully hunts for middle C (a favorite saying by Ann). There is an overwhelming happiness in these pieces. They are weaving and embroidering various melodic motifs “that reflect the nature of traditional women’s work – repetitive, life-sustaining, requiring time and patience.” (Ann Southam).
- Christina Petrowska Quilico
While a great deal of her work has been electroacoustic music on tape, she had, in recent years, become increasingly interested in composing music for acoustic instruments. The piano continued to be a particular favourite. Ann Southam’s works have been commissioned through the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the CBC, and have been performed in Canada, Europe and the USA. She was a member of the Canadian Music Centre, the Canadian League of Composers and a founding member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. She was honoured with the Order of Canada, and with the Friends of Canadian Music Award in 2001.