“Eberhard” was not meant to be the last recorded composition of Lyle Mays. It was a new beginning, a reawakening of Lyle’s musical drive and a refocusing of his passion and energy that for the previous ten years had been devoted to other interests.
After only a single premiere performance at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival in 2009, “Eberhard” existed solely as a MIDI instrument demo with orchestration and performances taken directly from Lyle’s sequencer, produced with the help of Bob Rice. This remained the case for ten years during which time Lyle was retired from the music world. Hardly anyone other than a few of Lyle’s closest friends and collaborators knew the piece existed, let alone had heard it.
Lyle’s struggle and eventual succumbing to illness was a tragic journey that was intricately and directly intertwined into the process of making the record. It added a sense of urgency and depth of significance to all parts of the process. The first sessions took place in August 2019, and the final session in mid-January 2020, just weeks before Lyle’s passing. A preliminary final mix of the full track was played for Lyle on his deathbed. In his final hours he was giving mixing notes and making sure I was taking them down.
For me, “Eberhard” will always bring up strong bittersweet feelings. While I had known Lyle for more than a decade, this was my first opportunity to work directly with him on a music project, and in that sense it was a dream come true. I learned as much from working with him on “Eberhard” as I had in years of email correspondence, long phone calls and musical mentorship. Seeing the master at work and feeling the strength of presence and focus he put into every aspect of the project was a profound experience. However that excitement was equally and tragically matched by the sadness I felt in seeing his illness destroy that source of energy and passion bit by bit over the course of several months. As it is with many of those that crossed paths with Lyle, either through his music, his sharp wit, at the billiards table or in any other walk of life, I am still grieving for a teacher and mentor who exhibited such genius and informed so much of who I am as a composer, musician, and listener. And he had so much more to give.
The composition of “Eberhard” to me exemplifies the concept of balance. The arc of the piece encompasses such a wide range of dynamics, emotions and sonic textures, yet is never overextended in any single direction. Voices and instruments seamlessly blend in and out between foreground and background, drawing the listener’s focus not to any single performance but to the broader composition itself. There is a depth of complexity in the simplest sounding parts of the piece, and simple rules governing the most seemingly complex sections.
More so with this piece than his other works, I believe Lyle relied on his uncanny sense of musical poetry. His ability to extract so much emotion and drama from the development of simple ideas has always been extraordinary. While in much of his previous work his voice comes through in intricately composed and cleverly constructed motivic development, “Eberhard”, especially the opening sections, turns his effortlessly poetic improvisational voice into the composition itself. The lines between improvisation and composition are blurred here—although there isn’t any featured improvised parts in the score until the sax solo, one can envision Lyle freely improvising/composing the opening piano, fretless bass, vocal and mallet parts directly into his sequencer in a flash of inspiration with minimal edits. As Lyle has said before, “if you can’t improvise, you can’t compose.”
Beyond the parts already dictated in the MIDI demo, Lyle recognized he didn’t have to write for any particular band or ensemble and he reveled in the opportunity to expand upon the orchestration without restraint. While not all of his new ideas came to fruition, the added textural and emotional depth he was able to achieve with the addition of subtle cello quartet textures and in his vocal writing throughout the piece is a hint at what could have been in store for potential future Lyle Mays musical output.
In our discussions about “Eberhard”, Lyle often made reference to the overall balance of the piece. The big band coda (planned to come at the climax of the tenor solo) was scrapped because it would throw the balance of the form out of whack. Some of Bill’s guitar ideas, though absolutely awesome on their own, slightly altered the emotional impact of certain sections and were cut or edited so that the dramatic balance of the piece was maintained. Balance was a foremost consideration in crafting the percussion parts and in Lyle’s direction to Alex in the studio to help shape the dramatic arc of the form, using all kinds of shakers, gongs, cymbals, and thunder sheet.
As students of Lyle’s work know, Lyle vehemently rejected the notion that music could only be described by the traditional Western values of melody, harmony and rhythm. Lyle instead took on a much more multifaceted view—dynamics, timbre, orchestration, drama, form, texture, motivic development, and what he called ‘a sense of poetry’ all were equally or more important factors in his compositional consideration than the ‘big three’. Even with something as simple as the ‘Eberhard Riff’ that enters around halfway through the piece (that is of course so much more than just a 'riff'), the dynamics, orchestration and dramatic nuance in each repetition give it a new emotional function and directionality within the form of the piece, all of which was specifically notated and ‘musically engineered’ by Lyle. Doesn’t hurt that it’s catchy as hell, too.
Lyle told me in one of our sessions at his home studio that he had been playing with this idea for decades (it was played in live performances from the early 80s) but had never found the right ‘home’ for it within a composition until now. In the context of this piece as a tribute to Eberhard Weber it all clicked into place—the riff had finally found it’s ‘home’.
There are no hard edges to this piece—it moves through its various scenes with entirely smooth and natural transitions, a testament to the compositional mastery in and of itself. The end result is the feeling of being transported on an epic journey that after thirteen short minutes ultimately lands you right back where you started. But in those thirteen minutes you experience so much—a cascade of musical perspectives and emotions, expansions and contractions, tensions and releases—that perhaps it’s best to be still and reflect on that journey for a bit. The final minute of the piece (after what Lyle called ‘the shortest recapitulation ever’) is a chance to recognize and acknowledge the emotional journey that came before, and to emerge on the other side refreshed and perhaps a bit more enlightened.
Of course, Lyle would say most descriptions of his work are bullshit. What matters is the listeners' reactions to the music itself, unmarried by outside biases subconsciously gathered by reading someone’s inherently flawed (and likely tragically uninformed) drivel. Words can’t and never have done Lyle’s music justice. It’s something that needs to be experienced, again and again. There is something new to discover every time—a new motivic path to follow, new emotional arcs and orchestrated textures to explore. The emotion I feel now as much as I did the first few times I heard the piece is awe. The other primary emotion I feel now, more than before, is gratefulness. And finally, there is sadness. Maybe less sadness than before, or maybe just as much but a slightly different kind. The grieving process is unique for everyone, but I don’t think anything has helped my grieving more than seeing people’s lives transformed by Lyle’s last musical project—some just for thirteen minutes, some for much, much longer than that.
As with any artistic project undertaken in America during the Trump era, at some point during one of the sessions the question arose about how Lyle felt about the current state of affairs. He answered that the ugly and hate-fueled politics of the time were one of the primary drives behind him deciding to make “Eberhard”—to outshine the ugliness in the world with a gift of beauty. This was his form of protest—creative protest—which he had been exhibiting all his life. Lyle was a rebel if nothing else. Fortunately his form of rebellion has left us with some of the most beautiful, inspiring and timeless musical works in recent times. I’m eternally grateful for all I’ve learned from him and all the time I was able to spend with him. I miss him dearly.
- RYAN ANDREWS (AUGUST 2021)
Photo credit: Beth Herzhaft