This page currently contains just a sampling of program notes, which can be copied from the site to accompany performances of my music. Periodically other program notes and essays will be added, so check again soon or contact me with any requests for specific documents.
PROGRAM NOTES
[The Artist's Studio] [Classical Walpurgis Night] [Fractured Colloquy] [Guitar Quartet] [String Quartet]
This is a piece about a piece that has never been written, and never will be. It is a scattered collection of manuscript scribblings; sketches of a non-work born of common stock, yet disparately realized. Imagine a romanticized instantiation of a compositional process, in which a few granular ideas explode into larger and larger chunks of music, ultimately yielding a polished final product that seems to have been organically conceived and executed. This final product, assembled as a score or consumed by an audience, hides from view the punctuated dynamism of its creation.
What if we were to dismiss the finished piece, exchanging it with glimpses of moments leading up to its completion? What if, on a timeline of creation, we cut off the last segment, but retain the constructed teleology that precedes it? A stylized version of the process itself would be presented in lieu of the product. Presented without explanation, the process would be repackaged as the product, and the music possibly lambasted for its compositional transgressions. But what would happen if the composer wrote a program note explaining all of this, begging our indulgence through a series of “what if” questions? Would we then be more willing to accept the somewhat paradoxical situation of the “snapshot” of the process of creation being substituted for the “real” music? Would we accept, then, a situation in which the “composition” was “the process of composition?”
Perhaps. It may be that my first attempt at writing these program notes (contained in paragraphs one and two above—you are now reading the transition to the second attempt) inadequately describes what is going on in my piece, or does not facilitate access to the music. I have not even mentioned the paintings that “inspired” the piece. So now I will try again, and this time I will write as if this piece (which is not a piece) were a finished work.
The Artist’s Studio is as an elaborately constructed sonic allegory with origins in the world of the visual arts. The title has been appropriated from a painting by Vermeer (1632-1675) of the same name, but the content of the work owes its direct inspiration to a painting by Velázquez (1599-1660) entitled The Maids of Honor . Both paintings portray the artist in the act of painting. For the sake of clarity, I will briefly describe the basic representational content (as opposed to the technical content) contained in the painting by Velázquez:
A scene depicting a young princess being attended by her maids dominates the foreground of the painting. She is clearly being prepared as the subject of a portrait that is presently in the process of being painted. Velázquez himself is situated on the left side of the painting, facing the viewer, ostensibly pausing for a moment from painting a portrait of the princess to his left. He is pausing to acknowledge the presence of his patrons, the king and queen of Spain, who can be seen in a mirror behind him. On the same wall as the mirror we notice several finished paintings. In fact, the artist’s studio is a gallery of finished artwork. The work-in-progress of the painted Velázquez cannot actually be seen, given our vantage point, but we do see the back of a portion of the frame and structural scaffolding, which gives an indication of the size and scope of the finished work to come.
Velázquez, by offering a painting of a moment in the painting of another work, is showing that the process of production can be just as interesting, if not more so, than the product itself. In fact, the process can be reconstituted as a product possessing great intrinsic value.
I was interested in creating a temporal, musical analogue to this depiction of the creation of a work. Now that I have provided some historical motivation for my piece, The Artist’s Studio, as if to substantiate and validate the act of its composition, I would like to construct and apply to the work a “programme” with commentary. What is happening now, then, in my current attempt to write these program notes, is an act of interpretation. I will be applying a narrative to the piece in which I may or may not believe, and which I hope will be seen as only one of many possible ways of encountering this process/piece (which is also not a process piece…).
- The pianist is the composer. The piece opens with the pianist trying to compose the piece in progress. Some ideas are “good”, some are “bad.” The bad ideas frustrate the composer/pianist, who then rejects the material. At times the rejection is violent, as if crumpling and destroying the manuscript while kicking a chair or something; sometimes only slight modifications are necessary, and it is a good thing that the composer writes in pencil.
- Gradually the composer begins to conceive of the piece as being appropriate for a chamber orchestra. The composer explores a variety of avenues, replete with “interesting” orchestrational choices, false starts, and odd configurations of the material.
- Things are bad, and it’s time to step back and breathe… The pianist composes himself, and tries a different approach. All the while, the composer dreams about his new coil binder, and how this will change everything.
- After indulging in a self-gratifying piano solo (just for fun—this would never be allowable in a real piece of music), the composer finally settles on what seems to be a good idea. This idea had been tentatively proposed through improvisation before, but now it is ready to be seri-ously composed. The pianist/composer plays through the material in a number of interesting ways, but quickly finds that he does not know how to continue. With increasing frustration, he tries to orchestrate and play his way out of the idea, but cannot avoid repeating himself (an unusual situation for a composer…).
- Full rejection is the only solution (perhaps the composer is drawing from “life experience”). Now the work is finished, but as in the Velázquez, the audience only sees the back of the canvas. Through the coil-induced haze of the percussion’s bull-roar-frame, we catch glimpses of what the final piece might be like. The view is oddly jagged, and time is compressed because the audience is not seeing the piece from a frontal vantage.
- In a martial spirit, the pianist/composer wishes to have done with the work, and proceeds to take the music in a different direction. Once again having second thoughts, the composer backs off from the material. This time, however, as he retreats, the composer suddenly realizes that the musical materials should be reconfigured as a string quartet. Thus it is that the most fully formed idea in the piece leaps from the torso of the larger “work,” and takes its place as an embedded, separate entity on the far wall of The Artist’s Studio .
Classical Walpurgis Night is a symphonic poem inspired by lesser-known passages from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. The composition is not a typical Faust-piece, in that it has little to do with the characters of Faust or Mephistopheles, at least directly. Instead, the actions and thoughts of an obscure character, named Homunculus, have been extracted from the text and adapted to form an account of his quest to come into being.
The tale of Homunculus is a miniature epic embedded in the larger drama of the second part of Goethe’s Faust. Homunculus is created in Part II, Act II (Laboratory scene) of Faust, and after a sequence of fantastic episodes, he returns to the elements to be reborn. In these episodes, Goethe examines various modes of creation, using Homunculus as the vehicle for discussion.
Classical Walpurgis Night is not explicitly a recreation of the complex Homunculus narrative in Goethe’s work. It is, rather, the composer’s reaction to the synthesis of creative processes explored vis-à-vis the character of Homunculus—physical, chemical, sexual, psychological, mythological, and theological.
There are four sections (not necessarily divided in this way by Goethe) of the Homunculus story that are central to Classical Walpurgis Night. The first is the primary coming into being of Homunculus. The essence of Homunculus was created in a laboratory, coaxed to life from within a primordial alembic. After the alchemist’s flash of “inspiration” that opens the piece, disorder and unfocused energy permeate the musical fabric. Periodically, bits of recognizable material emerge from the background. The music builds through a process of accretion until Homunculus coalesces into a discrete entity. He has no body, but possesses a brilliant mind. Like most people, however, he seeks what he does not have—in his case, corporeal substance.
What follows in the text, after the initial “birth” of Homunculus, is an account of his quest for a body; his quest to become. Prior to embarking on that journey, Homunculus peers into the sleeping Faust’s mind, and relates to Mephistopheles a dream that Faust is having; this constitutes the second scene of critical importance to Classical Walpurgis Night. Faust’s dream is of the act of sexual creation, and the coupling of the mythical and the mortal—specifically, Faust is dreaming of Leda’s impregnation by Zeus, who accomplished the task while in the form of a swan. The music in this section, although not explicitly programmatic, does follow the contours of the dream as seen by the voyeuristic Homunculus. The musical materials of Homunculus appear in expanded forms to implicate him in the seduction and rape of Leda. Goethe does not allow Homunculus to view the actual rape, however, emphasizing the unknowable aspects of creation. A veil descends to hide the scene—but Homunculus knows enough to fill in the blanks. Perhaps life is possible only through violence?
The third section of the Homunculus chronicle takes him to a place in time and space called “Classical Walpurgis Night.” The part of the text bearing this name is one of the most difficult segments of Goethe’s Faust to comprehend. It is allegorically complex, combining many disparate elements of Greek mythology and Greco-Roman history (the “Classical”) with their Nordic/Germanic counterparts (the “Walpurgisnacht”—the May Day witches’ Sabbath). The key passages in the “Classical Walpurgis Night” scenes, relevant to this musical encounter with the text, focus on Homunculus’s search for the origins of life through interviews with historical and mythological characters. This search for primal knowledge demonstrates Homunculus’ most Faustian trait.
Two theories of creation are discussed in conversation with the philosophers Anaxagoras and Thales. Anaxagoras advocates a violent, volcanic theory of creation (which Homunculus initially favors), while Thales promotes a placid, water-based creation theory. After weighing the relative merits of these theories and witnessing the destructive tendencies of volcanism, Homunculus suspects that water is the true source of life. The music in this section of Classical Walpurgis Night exhibits a competition between omnipresent waves of murky string sounds, and sharp outbursts from the rest of the orchestra. These vie for dominance until the string waves finally engulf the other material and assimilate it, now exhibiting features of both creation theories.
While all of this is happening, another process is unfolding that is related to the final section of the drama central to Classical Walpurgis Night. Homunculus befriends Proteus, the shape-shifter, whom Homunculus accompanies on his final drive to become. The Protean principle of variation governs the final development of the musical material of Homunculus. The transformation of Homunculus becomes more apparent in the music and in the story as he travels with Proteus. Goethe concludes the tale of Homunculus by combining many of the modes of creation already explored into a single climactic scene. In the distance, Homunculus sees the beautiful Galatea riding atop the shell of Aphrodite. The growing excitement of Homunculus is evident to onlookers, as his test tube pulses with light, ever increasing in intensity. Finally, Homunculus shatters his glass vessel against the shell of Aphrodite, and his essence is spilled into the sea, allowing the possibility of his rebirth. The journey of Homunculus began in the laboratory, and is ultimately renewed in the ocean, nature’s “test tube.”
Fractured Colloquy is something of an autobiographical piece, the first new work composed during a period of serious illness. Mind and body were at odds with one another, and one way to listen to this piece is to imagine overhearing a confrontation between them. Both parties have an interest in their mutual survival because of their interdependence, which is why they struggle to communicate. The oboe presents one train of thought, juxtaposed with a contrasting view in the piano. At times the players are insistent on repeating their ideas, with elaborations; at other times, sincere attempts are made to reconcile their differences. Commonalities are found, alongside disputes rhetorically highlighted. The results of the incomplete and fragmented dialogue may be progress of some sort, but it is unclear whether the ultimate destination is resignation or hope—perhaps a mixture of the two.
What one expects to hear and what one remembers hearing are intimately related. While listening to a new piece of music, a delicate interplay occurs between the projection of the mind’s ear and the reception of sound. Expectations are sometimes fulfilled, are at other times unfulfilled, or more commonly, are met somewhere in between recognition and surprise. Stark contrasts in music can be an effective way to play with expectations, but it is the murky region of partial fulfillment that occupied me during the composition of my guitar quartet.
The quartet is deeply influenced by the mbira dza vadzimu music of the Shona culture of Zimbabwe. This influence can be heard in several ways—the homogenous sound of multiple guitars and the compound melodies that emerge from their interaction are reminiscent of the mbira aesthetic. But there is also a harmonic similarity between the guitar quartet and some mbira music that accounts for the simultaneous sense of familiarity with the present and uncertainty about the future. Performed as part of traditional spirit possession ceremonies, a cyclic mbira song can last all night, with a basic harmonic sequence being repeated again and again, yet without necessarily any literal repetition of the music. As I listen to this music, I may think that I know where I am in the sequence, but over time that awareness diminishes and my sense of expectation and memory become intertwined. While there are certainly melodic and rhythmic components that impact the experience of this music with their repetition and elaboration, there are also some intriguing features of the repeated harmonic pattern that contribute to the weaving together of expectation and memory.
I have adapted several of these features for use in the quartet. The first is an interval palindrome, used throughout the piece on different temporal scales. The palindromes are between the “primary” notes of each harmonic position. The effect of including these palindromes is that similar patterns of intervals can be heard in different parts of the piece, each reminiscent of the other. Another feature is that the series is embedded within itself, going backwards and skipping one position (see the example below, which shows a single iteration of the 144-position series with these properties that I used in the piece). This contributes to a sense that what has already been heard is still to come in some form, and what is about to be heard is already a memory. It is possible to become lost in the cycles within cycles.
Example
The italicized numbers are the intervals between harmonic positions; the notes beamed together are positions from the series embedded in retrograde augmented groups of three. For instance, the group of three notes marked with a bracket and “11” can be found beamed together going backwards at “11RA.”
I was making spaghetti one evening—which is scary enough, as my cooking talents peaked with “Eggs Plylar”—when the pot started to boil over. I removed the pot, but neglected to turn down the heat, making it so that each time I returned the pot to the stove, the water would once again become frothy and spill everywhere. The food was terrible, of course, but my ineptness led to me to write the first movement of this string quartet, which is hopefully more palatable.
My string quartet is composed of nine short movements played without pause. Many of the movements were similarly inspired by culinary disasters or other events that were visually intriguing to me. The eighth movement (which was the first to be written), for instance, was started immediately after I watched ten minutes or so of St. Elmo’s Fire. It wasn’t that the movie really affected me (at least, not positively), but it led me to think about the actual ball-lightning phenomenon of St. Elmo’s fire, of which I then became interested in creating a musical representation.
I will not keep describing the original ideas for each movement, however. The genesis of a piece of music may be interesting (or in my case, mundane), but at some point in the process of composition there often ceases to be a clear correlation between the motivating forces and the work as it stands. Perhaps this is just a consequence of abstraction; in any case, you may not be able to hear any tell-tale anecdotal evidence in the music at all, especially now that it has been sifted through 18 months of revision.
The piece has turned into something quite different from my first notion of a collection of images. The nine movements of the String Quartet, while retaining some distinguishing features, are now tied together as a single entity. The “features” from any one movement are replicated in a transformed state in several of the others. The overall dramatic shape has less to do with a narrative compilation than it does with the issues of musical clarity and obscurity, and the various continua on which these parameters reside (such as pitched/non-pitched; scratch-tone/air-sounds; rhythmically aligned/unaligned, etc.). For example, the first movement uses standard, unadulterated bowed sounds, but by the time we reach the ninth movement, the bow is no longer even used. The paths that the musical parameters follow are not usually linear, however. In fact, they tend to lead to and away from sixth movement, at various velocities and trajectories. This sixth and largest movement is something of an ur-movement, retrospectively addressing material from the previous movements while simultaneously projecting variants of the music to come.
It should be noted that many extended techniques are required to play this piece, and in fact the performers had to learn several new types of notation, which indicate bow speed and bow pressure. I am greatly indebted to the Cape Cod Experiment, who premiered the piece, for investing so much time and learning all of the difficult things I asked them to do. They also provided much valuable feedback, for which I am grateful. I hope you enjoy this string quartet, which started out as and may yet become a true “pot-boiler.”