Six Pieces for Orchestra

for chamber orchestra (p, fl, ob, 2 cl, bcl, bsn, 2 hn, 2 tpt, tbn, timp, 2 perc, strings)

Total duration - approx. 14 min.

These pieces are inspired by Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, a collection of “meditations on the art of writing” he was preparing for the 1985-86 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard.  Unfortunately, Calvino died before the lectures could be delivered or even completed.  The memos where titled: “Lightness”, “Quickness”, “Exactitude”, “Visibility”, “Multiplicity”, and the unfinished, “Consistency”.  Six Pieces for Orchestra follows in Calvino’s footsteps by examining each movement from the vantage point of the multiple questions and intricacies that exist within each movement.  Chief among these questions is the idea of duplicity, and that at all times a thought or ideal is infinitely closer to its opposite than anything else.

“Brevity” immediately sticks out as the longest work, but the title is more than just an ironic misnomer.  The piece is composed of a relatively small amount of material, repeated with only slight changes for the entire piece.  The question to be asked is whether brevity is indicated by length of performance, or by the amount of music material presented.

The next piece, “Narrowness”, deals with the distance between notes.  The initial melody is a succession of major-sevenths, which is both far apart in wavelength, but very close in pitch class.  The question about narrowness is whether aural perception is more important than intellectual perception.

“Coherence” is modeled on the idea of Klangfarben Melody.  The first part of the movement is presented using a variety of instruments and registers, and the second part is presented in one instrument and one register.  Must a melody be relegated to a single instrument, or can it be spread throughout the entire orchestra almost incoherently?  Is coherence important to music or can a lack of coherence be a unifying factor?

“Stubbornness”, as the name implies, deals with inflexible groups of instruments unwilling to change to accommodate each other.  “Stubbornness” is also about competing motives.  The question about “Stubbornness” is whether or not obstinate elements can actually work together.  Perhaps the driving question for all the pieces, “Stubbornness” asks, “can an idea exist without opposing or contrasting ideas?”

The fifth movement, “Accountability”, is a constant cloud of texture and sound built upon a sustained chord that is transferred from instrument to instrument.  Based on the idea of a firing squad, (if a group of men fire upon a person, with one of the guns filled with blanks, then no one is accountable, since no one knows who was firing real bullets), the continuous chord is sustained through a random succession of entrances and exits.  So which instruments are overall responsible for the resulting sound?  Are none responsible, or are all responsible?

“Consistency” is derived as a reprise of the earlier movements; a finale that not only stands on its own, but connects each of the five previous movements together.  The question about “Consistency” is whether the other movements stand together cohesively without it, or if the attempt at consistency actually makes the picture more muddled.  Does this movement end the piece and connect all the dots, or does it just bring up more questions?

Read by the Hartt Symphony Orchestra December 21st, 2004.  Hartford, CT.