Halbierte Abbildung, The Story Continues! Part 3

Halbierte Abbildung has not turned out to be as non-tonal as previously planned. It is, rather, a-tonal. There are sections that have cropped up that turned out to be in d minor, Bb major and modal structures recurrently influence its direction. Traditional harmonies riddle the work.

This is not because I wanted to do the old saw where we have the nightmare/nuclear holocaust non-tonal dissonant music answered by the happy ending in C Major. The story of the Phoenix has been told enough for now.

The tonal music is part of the logic of the work. Indeed, these are not references to 18^th and 19^th Century common practice. Reference is often, (though not always) something just tacked on. The tonal material here is integral to the identity of the music.

The association of dissonance with angst, horror and depression strikes me, at best, as hokey but generally simply as primitive and childish. Not everything needs to be powerful, but indubitably the most robust method of producing emotion is as the product of reason. An A Major chord can be as desolate as a C minor so long as they flow from a logic that is a kind of mapping procedure of drama onto the template of the musical fabric.

When a character in a play weeps it may be comical or sad or nothing much at all, depending on the context. Our response depends on the reasons for the weeping. Context, more than anything, generates emotion. Logic, too, governs not just the organization of music (the difference between noise and music is organization) but its expressive impact as well.

I find many parts of Halbierte Abbildung to be beautiful. If a musician were to regard the score without listening to it in their mind’s ear, they would see sections of unrelenting sharp dissonances. This musician would assume it to be a harsh work mean enough to set one’s teeth on edge.

This is no such thing. Many components are lonely, haunting, spectral and romantic. Certainly it would be difficult to mistake much of it for Cole Porter, nonetheless its lyricism is obvious.

And yes, I use the word “much” as the last movement continues the trends set in the first movement but with a greater generative ferocity. So much that Jazz (or, for the sake of purists we will say “Jazz-sounding”) music flowers out of the abiding premeditated musical substance.

I am happy with this composition.

Nature Holds Hands With Man

So here we are at the end of the world. Or at least, as was a popular phrase in Science Fiction movies in bygone years, “The End of the World As We Know It.”

And, frankly, I don’t feel fine.

Nature has teamed up with its old nemesis, Man, to inject a little drama into the history of the world. Or perhaps they plan to bring the whole story to a screeching, agonizing end. We’ll have to stay tuned to see how it comes out.

The mechanism is attached to the warming of our climate through ad hoc, even impulsive, industrialization. This will give rise to failed crops, starvation, disease, flooding and the inevitable political spasms known popularly as wars. (Perfect drama for celestial sweeps week).

On the positive side, we don’t have to worry so much about that overpopulation problem we’ve been fretting about for the last forty years. That will be taken in hand quite readily.

That Nature and Man should become such perfect bedfellows would, in other circumstances, be a cause for rejoicing, but their distinctive, grandiose cleansing program, set on sterilizing the biosphere of the most troublesome of the planetary inhabitants, ironically will create more panic than merriment.

“Will,” future tense, as circumstances haven’t deteriorated enough to freak out the man on the street. By the time he gets scared it is just a matter of time before the elites start loosing sleep. Eventually, when they are uncomfortable enough, we might get some action on handling the predicament.

The dungaree-ed dub thumping college student peacenik will whine that by then it’ll be too late. We need action now! That’s crap, though. It’s been too late.

This is a done deal.

We cannot follow Barney’s admonition to Andy and “Nip it in the Bud.” It is time, now, to deal with the reality. Just as any adult (real one, mind you) must deal with reality. The dynamic duo of Nature and her idiot child have sealed our fate.

Any crisis, even fatal ones, can be managed. There are several steps and the result will be a horrible catastrophe…but one that is not as heartbreakingly excruciating. For many of the population (a painless way of describing actual people with feelings and throbbing hearts) the situation is terminal. But it is possible for human culture to endure.

And we won’t use labels such as “Global Warming.” Yes, it’s accurate. More freakin’ accurate than “El Niño!” (Remember a few years ago El Niño was the darling scapegoat of a moronic media?) But labels seem to somehow make it all a little unreal. We do best with nameless threats. Let’s not call it anything.

Nature now holds hands with Man. This is not the utopia we wanted nor is it the tender and downy union we had hoped. The menace accelerates like water down a pipe. Hold your nose; here comes the cold water.

The calamity is on top of us. We are living in it. These are the early days of The End of The World As We Know It.

Correggio's Danae

Recently I was looking at Danae, by Correggio. Antonio Allegri Correggio (1489—1534) was a rather sad fellow, fretful and disheartened who is said to have denied himself happiness in its many forms. He was rather different from Raphael, who was a happy party boy who screwed around every chance he got. Correggio was a contemporary of Leonardo and was generally admired, even liked, by other painters (not necessarily a given!).

Danae is a strange painting. Muted, greenish colors, darkness next to an open window…and let’s not forget the angel doing something with that naked lady’s blanket! I’ve got to admit that I don’t know the story of Danae. I imagine there are several Danae’s and each has a story, but I’m happy as well not to know. For, even though I can look it up easily enough, if I knew the story, that might take some of the charismatic weirdness from this image.

The attitude of the nude (nude woman, not spirit. After all, all the humanoid figures here are naked), is intriguing. Legs spread; massive long arms, head tilted down, eyes looking at nothing (is she high?), and seemingly uncomfortably propped up in bed.

The angel (with a diminutive penis) is not looking at her. He’s looking up. At God? At a fill light?! This muscular, winged youth, who inclines his body toward Danae, is at once also detached from her.

Is he offering her the sheet to cover her nakedness or is he pulling it away? It looks like she is pulling it back but whatever they are doing, they both seem only half interested.

Half interested, as opposed to the cherubs, the fat baby angels who are involved in something that has their total occupation. Are those kids playing with an arrow?

There is a light source out of frame to the right. The window, which occupies the left of the picture, does not seem to admit any luminosity. Outside we see a distant little building with two arches and the impression of hazy hills. The sky is a murky aqua.

The composition is solid. The fat babies in the lower right balance the window in the upper left. They do so imperfectly, adding a pleasing dynamic. As well, the larger figure of Danae is roughly the same size as the window, while the angel is roughly the size of the fat babies. One of the winged bambini leans back while the angel leans forward. The shadow side of the figures is toward to window, which is light. This is a composition of point and counterpoint.

This serenely erotic tableau of muted colors is full of interlocking relationships. There is a whole story with the pillows and the bed, a big story with the textures…and this is to ignore the most obvious point and counterpoint, the angel leaning forward while Danae leans back (in a state of cool receptivity?). The little willied angel looks up while the naked lady looks down. One can go on and on.

This appears at first glance a simple picture, but its intermingled composition of dynamic opposites makes it so much more. This is the work of a master.

Halbierte Abbildung in Progress Part 2

A considerable amount of time has elapsed since I began work on this. I began in the last week of November and here this piece and I are in the first week of January and I am not yet done. I was stuck for an ending and in my search found that the ending was two movements away.

It is now a symphony. Not a terribly long one. The first movement is just over 35 minutes. The second, scored for brass alone, is almost seven and the last movement is presently about 22 minutes long and will go on for something like ten more minutes. If I were to get exhaustive in the development the piece could go on for more than an hour and a half, but I’ve chosen only to hit the highlights, as it were, and chop down the machinery to only the most interesting and potent material.

That said, there is a certain amount of fabric that is repeated, at times with only slight variation. I’m not sure why this happens. And it always amazes me that I, the creator, am ignorant of aspects of my creation. This very thing that I have written has mystery. Mystery I do not comprehend.

A composer directs a fluid. The music flows, following a course that is quite natural, a fate innate, inherent to it own tissues, dictated by its own internal forces. The music’s journey is governed by its specific logic to a fateful state of equilibrium. Once the machination of the material…the engine, is built and started…the vehicle of the composition caries it to its logical conclusion. I may nudge it here and there along the way but only to steer it away from stagnant waters, sudden deaths, fragmented or staid harmonies and other dramatic mortal pitfalls. I direct it slightly for its health.

I compose a lot of symphonies and was looking forward to writing something that wasn’t another symphony…but the material demanded a full development and it is a certain type of vanity to deny material its natural tendency.