Inner World David S. Lefkowitz

• 1 I. War and Passion 05:03
• 2 II. Love and Peace 03:31
• 3 III. Peace and Hope 05:53
• 4 I. Conception 05:52
• 5 II. Meditation 07:04
• 6 III. Conversation 07:07
• 7 IV. Integration 07:21
• 8 E duo unum 06:32
• 9 Inner Voices 05:20
• 10 At Onement 07:25
• 11 Duet for Violin and Viola 04:32
• 12 Within - Without 07:14
• Total Runtime 01:12:54

Info for Inner World

Music originates in the “inner world” of the composer. Great music emanates from this private psychic space within the composer, and inspires us to explore our own inner worlds, if we let it.

What is this “inner world?” The world itself is demonstrably outside our selves and outside our bodies. So the expression “inner world” is a metaphor. But if we wish to describe what goes on within each of us at the psychic/emotional/spiritual level, the concept of an “inner world” helps us understand the deepness that we feel within us. Most of us intuit this confluence of unconsciousness, ‘hard-wired’ instinct, emotion, memory, ‘heart’ and mind-stream and that, among many other diverse activities, makes us who we are, and enables us to respond to music.

In the psychoanalytic sense, we develop an inner world when we, as adults, have correctly integrated and internalized those powerful external people and forces which make us who we are. For example, our mother becomes the “internal mother,” which makes us feel stable and competent, loved and loving. We likewise internalize our nationality and our culture: they contribute strongly to who we are and how we view others.

Successful artists share their inner worlds with us, and whether we realize it consciously or unconsciously, their art enables us to perceive glimmers of their inner worlds. And by absorption and reflection, our experience of this art enables us to experience parts of our own internal worlds.

As it is with poets, painters and sculptors, so it is for composers: their inner worlds erupt in an outpouring of what we call “art” to be shared by audiences, readers, gallery and museum-goers in so special a way that it can feel spiritual. For some of us this experience substitutes for religion. Sometimes this experience works successfully enough that we as listeners feel links with our own inner structures, our own inner worlds. We sense commonality with the artist in this link, and indeed experience a kind of communion.

This is an album of music, and music is a special case. Among the arts music has the advantage of a special, distinct aspect: its physical origin, mode of transmission and delivery system is air. Music generates sound waves which travel through air and make it vibrate. This is the same air that we breathe. But what is the source of this link? Think past the immediate answer: the ears and the lungs. Remember the inner world. Assuming you believe there is a world within us, as described above, what is the path to reach it? Over the centuries we have posed many suggested paths: the great religious traditions, psychotherapy, yoga, drugs. And music.

Neuroscientists and practitioners of Christianity, Hinduism, Sufi Islam, some forms of Judaism, and certainly Buddhism tend to agree that the surest route to deep introspection (and to an integration and understanding of the inner world) is meditation. And for most contemplative traditions, it is concentration on our breathing, the intake and exhalation of air which sustains human life, that takes us there. Breath, pneuma in Greek, also means spirit. Soul. Life force. Breath, spirit, inner world, soul, essence of being… all related.

So breath serves not only as the medium for the transmission of music, but as a rich metaphor for life itself and a metaphor for our individuality and our commonality. This breath, this pneuma, takes the composer inside where he or she contacts his or her inner world and shares, through breath and air, that inner world with us. When the composer successfully engages components of the inner world or creative/emotional “mind,” we say the composer is “inspired.” The word “inspired” derives from the Latin in + spirare, meaning “to breathe in,” or “infuse into the mind,” or “suggest by divine agency.” And there you have it. Once inspired the composer writes instructions for musicians to make the air vibrate, and the audience breathes it in – through every pore. I invite you to experience the rich inner world of my friend David Lefkowitz. May this music, this communion, also help us experience the nuances of our own inner worlds as we listen. (Text by Martin Perlich)

Serena McKinney, violin
Katie Kadarauch, viola
Paul Coletti, viola
Silu Fei, viola
Carter Dewberry, cello
Elinor Frey, cello
Ralph Williams, clarinet
David Fung, piano
Julie Long, flute
Andrea Thiele, harp
Lynn Vartan, percussion, marimba
David S. Lefkowitz, conductor, composer

David S. Lefkowitz
a native of New York City, studied music composition at The Eastman School of Music, Cornell University, and University of Pennsylvania, where his principal teachers were Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, George Crumb, and Karel Husa.

As a composer David S. Lefkowitz has won international acclaim, having works performed in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Ukraine, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Israel, and Egypt. He has won national and international competitions, including the Fukui Harp Music Awards Competition (twice), and the American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers (ASCAP) Grants to Young Composers Competition. In addition, he has won prizes and recognition from the National Association of Composers, USA (NACUSA), the Guild of Temple Musicians, Pacific Composers’ Forum, Chicago Civic Orchestra, Washington International Competi tion, Society for New Music’s Brian M. Israel Prize, the ALEA III International Competition, and the Gaudeamus Music Week. He has also been a Meet-The-Composer Composer in Residence.

Recent commissions include works for Melia Watras of the Corigliano Quartet, ’cellist Elinor Frey and pianist David Fung, violinist Petteri Iivonen, soprano Ursula Kleinecke and Colloquy, harpist Grace Cloutier, quintets for Pacific Serenades and the Synergy Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Cantor Joseph Gole and the Cantor’s Assembly, the Harvard Westlake Orchestra, and by the Beijing City Opera Company (China's largest and best Beijing Opera company) to write the music for a thirteen-minute solo dance-drama; the resulting BR/EIDGING OPERA for small chamber orchestra has been well received by audiences and artists on both sides of the Pacific. He has music published by MMB Music, by Yelton Rhodes Music, Zen-On Music, Whole>Sum Music, and Lawson-Gould/Warner-Chappell Music. He has recordings available or soon to be available on Yarlung, Fatrock Ink, Japanese Victor, Yamaha, and Albany record labels.

As a theorist Lefkowitz has researched “meta-theoretical” issues such as the process of segmentation (a Component of post-tonal analysis) and the internal structure of set-classes, he has written extensively on Schoenberg’s piano music, and also has done work on music theory pedagogy, culminating with his textbook Music Theory: Syntax, Function, and Form which is expected to be published soon.

Professor Lefkowitz' personal web page can be found at: www.davidlefkowitz.com

This album contains no booklet.