Emily Dickinson said it so memorably:
Musicians wrestle everywhere -- All day — among the crowded air I hear the silver strife -- And — waking — long before the morn -- Such transport breaks upon the town I think it that "New Life"! In the last few months, we have seen musicians wrestle mightily in these unprecedented conditions. We have all been exploring how we could continue to make music in the virtual realm. In many cases, that has meant trying to figure out how to recreate the things we would normally do, now on new and less familiar platforms - in video, Zoom calls, livestreams etc. But other creative folks have sought Dickinson's "new life" by creating things that did not exist at all before, and likely never would have existed, if we hadn't found ourselves in this peculiar set of circumstances. Back in the early days of lockdown and quarantine, composer Graham Gordon Ramsay found himself "waking — long before the morn —" from very unsettling dreams. And as a sort of creative catharsis, Graham started to write miniatures for organ, titling them Introspections. Over the last few months, I have been living with the Introspections and practiced them on my frequent visits to the empty church. In mid July, we recorded the first 4 of the set, and have been releasing one of them on YouTube every Thursday for the past four weeks. Graham also happens to be an excellent videographer, so this project offered an opportunity for him to blend visual and musical expression. Since the pieces were written at night, we filmed in a darkened church, hopefully with the added benefit of seeing King's Chapel from a less familiar perspective that suits this music. In this week's release, Introspection #4, I think Graham's video editing does a particularly admirable job of showing the viewer exactly what is happening in the music: The piece begins with a repeated figure in the pedals. One of the defining characteristics of much of Graham's music is that it has very specific rhythmic notation that can be very challenging for the performer to sort out in his poor head, but does not end up sounding complicated in performance at all. As an example, this opening pedal figure repeats in counts of 8, but is notated in the time signature of 7/8, meaning that it moves to a different place in the bar every time it is repeated. The hand enter in a rhythmical pattern of their own, eventually a freer, gentle solo voice is added in the left hand. Then, all of a sudden there is a gentle "bell-like" motif, also in a perfectly logical rhythmical pattern of its own that is ridiculously tricky for the player to place correctly in context of the counter-rhythms of the other voices. But again, when you listen to the final result, it does actually seem to make sense (after all the suffering and generous curses hurled at the composer). There is a certain shift in dynamics, and now you get the pedal motif under big chords for full organ with the instruction "shake the room" right in the score! And then, all of a sudden, the big noise goes away, and we are left with a pensive, soft coda, with lots of silences and room for introspection. Listen and watch Introspection #4 here. Here is the playlist of the four pieces released so far. As I write this, Graham has recently finished writing Introspection #5. It is still uncertain how long the whole series will be, will we have 6, 7, or 8 pieces when we are done? So the series will go on a little hiatus for the time being, as Graham has to write the remaining pieces, I have to learn them, we have to record them, and he has to edit the videos. Art takes time! We are planning some Zoom discussions in the fall, of these pieces in particular, with the general perspective of ways to listen to new music in general, sometimes a tricky endeavor. At press time, it is unclear whether it will be a weekly series for one Introspection at a time, or just one or two sessions where we listen to multiple examples. As they say in the business, stay tuned! Heinrich Christensen Music Director Comments are closed.
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