Stephen Charles Mayer
Stephen Charles Mayer, composer and pianist:
music is an act of friendship
I was born in Brooklyn, New York (1943), amidst towering maples, thousands of starlings and mysterious lightning bugs in summer. At times the birds would scatter in their hundreds silhouetted against the sky.
My parents took me for piano lessons at the Third Street Music Settlement in New York City. In the schools’ bookstore I became enchanted with the black dots that prodigiously covered the pages of Liszt’s piano music (like the birds in the sky)– and on the then new medium of TV, the grandiose Les Preludes that accompanied the space adventures of Flash Gordon. My music would always retain a love of this kind of cinematic sweep and adventure as well as overt populist melodic appeal.
I was particularly fortunate in an aunt and uncle, whom during my childhood I visited during holidays. They lived in the then remote woods of Bergen County, New Jersey, where in their loving company I felt free to contact the wonders of nature. Though not strictly speaking musical, I consider this the fundamental experience that made me an artist.
education
I received a bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies and Masters in Music Composition from Brooklyn College CUNY, with additional studies at Brandeis University, although more pertinent for my purposes than these theoretical studies was a brief stay at the University of Ghana playing gong-gong in the Ghana Dance Ensemble Orchestra — and at Brooklyn College where I read Pindar, Sophokles, Homer** and other ancient Greek masters with the late poet Vera Lachmann, in the original Greek. In her circle was the composer Tui St George Tucker with whom I worked as assistant for seven years and the pianist, Grete Sultan, with whom I studied for twenty years. These three women were my principal teachers.
As a young adolescent I spent two summers at Camp Rising Sun, a special camp gathered around idealistic social concerns. This experience is remembered in my first Cello Sonata, and materially represented in “A Sacred Symphony.” The Symphony and its supplements resulted from a conscious experiment in utopian community. Both works can be heard in YouTube postings (see Works page).
concerts
I debuted as a pianist and composer at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1976 playing my own music, Tucker, Ives and Schubert , with subsequent recitals at Town Hall (1978) in music for quartertone pianos, and at Merkin Hall (1983) in New York. I presented a concert entirely of my own work at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York (1987) serving both as pianist and conductor. My “America’s Symphony” was performed at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia (1998) in another concert of my own work. Other chamber works were regularly presented at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, well known concert venues in New York City.
chamber music
With pianist Simon Juny Jung, I founded the Simons’ Pond Music Festival, a chamber series in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, which presented over fifty concerts both in the rural countryside, and in the major aforementioned concert venues in New York such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Locally in Pennsylvania, I appeared on the National Public Radio programs and in several entire broadcasts of my work. Two CD’s of my chamber music are available produced by the Simons’ Pond Music Festival.
symphonies
My orchestral music includes the “seven symphonies of the River”, a series of seven individual symphonies and supplements to them, in a kind of Thucydidian survey in music of contemporary life. The symphonies are listed in the catalogue below though largely unperformed. They are not ideological in the sense of Eisler’s work, but are both political and dispassionate. Jose Clemente Orozco seems to me a soul brother, though I compliment myself immensely with the slightest comparison to him.
church work and teaching
I have written several works that arose from my work as a teacher– including “Tom Thumb”, “Sacred Songs“, and the “Yigdal” overture for piano and band, as well as a collection “The Book of Choirs” of liturgical music for use in local churches and synagogues that arose from my work in liturgy. This book and my first cello sonata are both illuminated manuscripts.
I worked principally as a liturgical musician serving as Music Director at Astoria Center of Israel from 1989 until 2014, and also as organist and choir director at several churches. Among works written for churches where I served are my “Peter Claver”, “Pax Christi Mass”, “Monastic Chant “ in two books, “Sacred Madrigals”, and the “Sacred Symphony.”
Thus I tried, often successfully, to reinstitute the ancient practice of providing contemporary music for churches and schools for use in everyday life.
“The hard task is to love, and music is a skill that prepares man for this most difficult task.”
John Blacking (How Musical is Man? p. 103)
The Sacred Symphony Supplements posted on this site are recordings made by congregation members of St. Gerard Majella Church in Hollis, Queens New York (1992 – 1996) of the Spanish language Choir presenting music of folk and popular traditions in the Mass. The improvisational nature of this music, and the intimate social situation necessary to accomplish the often deeply moving results, remain with me these many years later as a peak experience of my life. It was truly a meeting with other human beings on the plane of completely dedicated service.
I did not sanction these recordings of the Mass as Music Director of the church. When asked about recording, I declined in the belief that our experience of the Mass was too intimate for display and that we should all be completely in the moment. I had in mind the Orphic Mysteries from which the Mass was in part descended. Never the less, congregants made several recordings which surfaced twenty years after I left St. Gerard’s.
I have presented these tapes on YouTube both as music and as examples of the vibrant life of New York City in that period.
I also taught piano, and score reading for some years in rural Pennsylvania at the Blackbear Conservatory.
community
I remain as President of the Simon’s Pond Music Festival, which gives concerts and curates a collection of contemporary art, as well as manuscripts of poetry and music. The Festival this year published a CD by Simon Juny Jung of Chopin, Ravel and Barber, and an edition of the poetry of Ming S. Liu (“Leaves in the Courtyard.”) We have presented the work of writer Robert N. Harris whose prose I utilized in supplements to Catawba Symphony. The Simon’s Pond Festival has also curated a collection of paintings and drawings by Korean artist, Hosun Lee. These are artists whose work remains essentially unknown at present, but represents, in my view, a meaningful contribution to our human journey.
A number of my works are posted on YouTube (see links below) or will be shortly– including the song cycles “Songs of Emily Dickinson”, “Stone Voices”, “Deploration on the death of Tui St. George Tucker,” “A Remembrance of Grete Sultan, ” “Songs of Ming Liu”, and the vocal quartet “Three Verses from the Song of Songs.”
s.c. mayer
** it may not be generally understood that these poets were also composers and performers
My work is in collections which may be found at the links below:
The Wayne County Historical Society, Honesdale, Pennsylvania
this collection is not directly accessible on the internet. It is best to contact the Research Librarian.
Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina
http://collections.library.appstate.edu/findingaids/ac214
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