Communal

Like Haney’s Star of the Sea, Chuck Dotas’ Communal draws motifs from the Missa Ave Maris Stella of Josquin. Dotas’ intent, as he puts it, is “to explore and emphasize the similarities—rather than the differences—between various musical idioms and, by extension, seemingly disparate cultures.” Dotas picks up on the linear impulse of Renaissance polyphony and draws it into the fabric of the improvised jazz solo. Moreover, the antiphonal give-and-take between subgroups that is common in 15th-century music has influenced numerous modern composers, particularly Meredith Monk, whose minimalist style is invoked by Dotas. This piece also utilizes the duduk, an Armenian instrument resembling the ney, a double reed instrument found throughout Arabic culture. In Communal the treatment of the incipit on an Armenian duduk references the long and complex interaction between Arabic and Christian cultures. (Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion.) With this awareness in hand, we can better understand Dotas’ goal in Communal: the hope for interaction between present-day cultures in open conflict, represented musically by the transformation of the Christian mass melody into the rhythms used during recitation of the Qur’an.

(c) Jason Stell and Chuck Dotas