As part of the 2011 calendar project I’ve created with Steve Robb, I’m sending out a miniature composition for solo harp every month.
Each piece is 30-40 seconds long, written to match that month’s story and photograph. This video is January’s.
Interestingly, it didn’t begin life as being intended for January. My original plan was to match it to what Steve and I have been calling the “13th” image and story.
The process of creating matched pairs of stories and photographs resulted in many more than the 12 we needed. The final selection came about not just on the basis of how much we liked them but also to achieve a balance within the subjects we had (water, outback, domestic, and so on). After the selection process, there were stories and images we liked leftover for the only reason that they didn’t fit.
So when it came time to make an ‘example’ video to show how the combination of music, story and photograph would work, we relished the chance to use a 13th story and image, rather than anticipating (and therefore ‘spoiling’) any of the 12.
The 13th photograph, of a small stone pile or cairn in the outback, had been given the story “He’d known. Forgiveness flooded her heart.” In my imagination, the cairn was left as a wordless message of unconditional acceptance, to be understood only by one other person. I set out to write music for this woman’s moment of realization.
After I finished, though, I realized it didn’t fit. The qualities of the music didn’t align with the composite qualities of the story and image. It was then that I understood I’d somehow written January’s music. The piece exuded innocence, simplicity but also something contradictory, a kind of joy that comes from having seen something of life. The January photograph has a toy barnyard on a window sill in a sunroom, but it doesn’t have the meaning of a child’s toy, more something for the child who’s always in everyone no matter what age they are.
The music I had written, I realized, was inadvertently like the photograph in that it has a simple surface texture, much like a piano sonata Mozart would write “für Anfänger” (for beginners), but conceals a knowing for anyone caring to look. The piece sounded best with its current asymmetrical phraseology and irregular accompaniment; I’d discovered that any attempt to iron out these peculiarities made for a weaker piece. Any regulation of the arpeggio accompaniment took away its curious melody that breaks surface every now and then, most noticeably in the last few seconds after the main melody yields primacy. This was curious to me because it somewhat resembles the kind of tune the great Estonian choral composer Veljo Tormis would write, yet he’s not a composer I’ve paid conscious attention to. But I must know his music sufficiently to recognize resemblance – very curious.
The ‘tension’ between simplicity and sophistication, between innocence and maturity is reflected in the story I wrote for it – “Always make room for simple joys.” A child doesn’t need to be told this. Adults do.
The brevity of the piece makes it hard to grasp in just one hearing. Myself, I had to listen to this piece again and again to understand what I had written. If you like it the first time, play it a few more times. I found that after it became an old friend, it was like listening to a story an old friend would tell.
Music for a calendar in a larger perspective
Where do these miniature pieces fit into my overall compositional oeuvre? They’re part of the larger composition Harp and Wind Quintet, one of my perpetual works-in-progress. When heard in concert, these miniature pieces will be embedded in a larger musical fabric made up of various combinations of harp, flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn and bassoon. At the moment, each piece sounds like it has no proper beginning or end, like someone opened the door to a room in which music was already playing, and then closed the door on you. In concert, it will probably sound like you’re walking from room to room, hearing whatever music happened to come at you as you walked through and whether you lingered.
Related Pages
You can see all 12 images and stories for “Then, gently, the world began anew.” at its Facebook page.
As for the music that ended up being used for the ’13th’ story and image, it was an excerpt from “Untitled #2, for Amir”, which I had written back in 2009. You can watch the video here, and hear the entire original piece here.
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Lyle
I like this piece and have listened to it several times. I am going to continue listening to it during January.
I can’t yet put my finger on the message that I seem to receive with the final E-G. I will let you know when it becomes more obvious to me.
Congratulations. I look forward to February, but thankfully there is time to absorb January first.
As ever – Dobbs
Dear Dobbs, my deep thanks for your thoughts and support. I feel honored that a renowned musician of your caliber is listening to my music! Well, the E to G brings the piece back to exactly the same note as it starts with, so if the music were played as a loop, its top and tail are congruently joined. (One reason for the subtly syncopated first note of the right-hand melody is to expose the left-hand G). I wonder if the message you’re receiving has anything to do with … circularity.
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