With the recent Oberlin Student Composers’ concert still fresh in everyone’s minds, the audience at the Oberlin Faculty Composers’ concert last Tuesday night waited expectantly, wondering what possible innovations Oberlin faculty had in store for them.

First on the program was Composer-in-Residence Jeffrey Mumford’s eight aspects of appreciation (2000), short duets for violin and viola, each bearing more than attractive tempo and character designations.

“Sae Shiragami, the violinist and Eliesha Nelson, the violist, are good friends of mine from the Cleveland Orchestra and I’m enormously grateful for their performance tonight,” Mumford said.

The pieces were built on fast, sudden contrasts. Low, slow and melodic phrases followed high and sharp outbreaks. The two instruments were often echoing each other and clashing harmonically. Long sustained notes in the violin supported the melodic movement in the viola and vice versa. Pizzicatos were always present, as well as sudden screeches, trying to interrupt an emotional phrase. Ostinato and motto perpetuo moments also helped the split-second changes in character.

An unexpected unison struck minutes later, along with a steady, offbeat rhythm that brought a surprising order. Frequent syncopations were reminiscent of a restless chase. The pieces bore different personality traits, broad and warm or exuberant and expressive or capricious and quirky, but always dominated by a superior idea.

“I’m interested in cloud images,” said Mumford, “and I tried to incorporate some of their quality in the music. When one observes the clouds’ movement, one’s attention always shifts between background and foreground, for example. Another thing I had in mind was the way clouds’ forms always change — it’s a continuing interruption or even drama.”

The piece was written in 1996 for Robert Mann (who was the first violinist of the Julliard Quartet at the time) and for Mann’s son, Nicholas.

“Robert is an amazing champion of new music and a composer himself,” said Mumford.

Conservatory Professor Gary Lee Nelson’s Progeny was in a DVD format, with Christine Gorbach’s paintings providing its base. They vaguely reminded me of thin slices through a rock — black and white veins with bright yellow-orange spots thrown artistically in the center or on the side. A screen was rolled to the edge of the scene and the lights went out in Warner. It was rather spooky.

Electronic music started and 3-D balls began to roll on the screen, meant to be a spherical version of the paintings. The music was busy and buzzy. It created a ringing sound shade, which was sometimes “punched” from within when a higher or lower voiced melody found its “way out” from inside the texture.

The balls seemed to move in a never-ending motion – sweeping and sparkling in all shades of gray, yellow and orange-red. Along with the music, they were pushing each other to the sides, merging or separating from each other, like a wild screensaver. Before the slow disappearance of the music at the end, sudden symmetry and order struck in the rolling balls.

And then it was all gone.

The last piece in the program was Verge, composed by Michelle McQuade Dewhirst and passionately performed by violinists junior Jeffrey Young and first-year Virginia Smith, violist first-year Christopher Gollmar and cellist first-year Steuart Pincombe.The beginning was strong and categorical.

Pincombe’s low, robust, long notes on the cello drew the listener’s attention right away. Slow vibrato and the relationships between the pitches, which were less than the conventional half and whole steps, were the most prominent characteristics of the piece. Intense and exuberant — almost wild — sections interacted with calm melodies.

For most of the time, the viola embraced the pizzicato as its own. Every instrument had its own solo sections and some lovely duets, including one between Young and Pincombe. Their involvement in the dialogue was pleasurable to follow — the glissandos in the pizzicatos were very witty, and several big crescendos and their culminations were natural, powerful and convincing. The piece ended quietly.

“I think Dewhirst intentionally looked for a certain repetitiveness or monotony, because it will allow her to explore better the relationship between notes, which are less than half steps,” said sophomore composition major Pei-Jung Lee. “The relatively slow tempo of the piece helps the listener to perceive all the smallest distances between the pitches,”

The ensemble perfected Verge in less than a week, but it sounded like it was performed at least a dozen times, genuine and secure to the final decrescendo.

Young said, “I particularly like the sound worlds that the piece created and its dynamic energy.”

Imaginative and charmingly short, the Oberlin Faculty Composers’ concert was a breath of fresh air for all who attended it just before the hectic week of midterms.