Seven Studies in Harmony and Resonance
Year composed: 2003
Duration: 30′
Instrumentation: solo piano
Movements:
I. Strong, Joyous
II. Delicate
III. Sonorous
IV. Meditative, Still
V. Playful, But Driven
VI. Fleeting
VII. Transcendent
Notes:
The hierosgamos is an ancient principle which reveals the ultimate wholeness concealed among pairs of apparent opposites. Literally “sacred marriage”, this mysterious union involves a simultaneous moment of creation and dissolution between the self and the other, a coterminus spiritualization of matter and a materialization of spirit. In the language of alchemy, Carl Jung spoke of a “chemical wedding”, where the “yang and yin” of things is purified back into an original unity.
In this large work for piano, I attempt to show how opposing characteristics and materials ultimately derive from a single source. Two seemingly contradictory properties of the piano are very important to me: first, the piano is a huge (horizontal) harp, with its strings under many tons of pressure and capable of incredibly powerful resonance. Second, the piano is essentially a percussion instrument, and not a sustaining instrument, as many eighteenth and nineteenth century composers tried to make it. Reconciling these two aspects led me to use the harmonic series and a predominately motoric and continuous percussive texture.
These seven etudes principally address the study of harmony and harmonic resonance. The overtone series (up to the sixteenth partial) and its inverse provide the pitch material, while I use the piano itself as the basis for the choice of fundamentals: the lowest note, A0, the highest note, C8, and the exact middle, E4. The architecture of the piece is derived from this construction, with the first and last movements based upon the lowest and highest pitches respectively, and the middle fourth movement on the middle E4. I further divide the piano’s eighty-eight keys into zones of eleven half-steps, and use these areas as secondary relationships throughout the work. Movements two, three, five, and six form sharp apparent contrasts with the beginning, end and middle, even though, as with the hierosgamos, they are all created from the same originating material.