Undersong is the third album I recorded during the pandemic. It seems odd to write that, since I did not feel creative or energetic for much of it. Looking back, though, this has been a period of exploration and transformation.
All of the music on this album consists of musical forms that have a refrain. Glass, Schumann, Couperin and Satie constantly revisit the same material in these pieces, worrying at it, shifting it to different harmonies and into different rhythmic shapes. Working with this music in the fall of 2020 was a constant reminder that in my afternoon walk in Green-wood Cemetery, I was quite literally treading a familiar path every day, a path that nonetheless had changed almost imperceptibly every time I left the house.
Undersong is an archaic term for a song with a refrain, and to me it also suggests a hidden text. Glass, Schumann, Couperin and Satie all seem to be attempting to find what they want to say through repetition, as though their constant change and recycling will focus the ear and the mind. This is music to get lost in.
In The Undersong, Emerson wrote about what the word meant to him. He makes me think of how constrained we are by time, dimly conscious of forces around us that have vastly longer, slower beats.
To the open air it sings
Sweet the genesis of things,
Of tendency through endless ages,
Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,
Of rounded worlds, of space and time,
Of the old flood’s subsiding slime,
Of chemic matter, force and form,
Of poles and powers, cold, wet and warm
The rushing metamorphosis
Dissolving all that fixture is,
Melts things that be to things that seem,
And solid nature to a dream.
- Simone Dinnerstein, November, 2021
This audio recording is from the live stream concert that I gave for Music Worcester, which was streamed on January 8, 2021. I would like to thank Adrien C. Finlay, the Executive Director of Music Worcester, for helping to bring this into being during a most challenging time for both artists and arts organizations. Over the years, Music Worcester has presented many projects that are dear to my heart. This recording is no exception.
-Simone Dinnerstein