Symphony in Scenes: Skychange. Some more musings
Today I will premiere my first symphony, entitled “Symphony in Scenes: Skychange,” with the Salina Symphony in Kansas.
I’ve written some program notes to accompany the piece, and they are in the program book as follows:
Symphony in Scenes: Skychange
Completed 9 September 2022
“the sky changes when they are [wed]”
– William Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act IV, sc. 1
The Path(s) we take through the garden, and ones we chose that brought us to this time and place where we now forge a new path together through the infinite future. A single Lotus blossom reminds us of the ones who are not with us who too changed the world both ours and many others and left too soon; we play music when words are not enough. Life is made of Moment(s) strung together to make a life so beautiful; we are still unsure if the moment has passed when it becomes clear the sky has changed. We move together under the moon, we wonder is that the same moon that shone last night together, we breathe together, lose ourselves in Rhapsody.
These notes don’t tell the full story, and that is on purpose. I had very clear pictures in mind for this music, and I could be much more descriptive, but I wish to leave some things up to the audience to create the world for themselves. The idea of SKYCHANGE is that there are moments in our lives which redefine our world, or change our perception of the world around us. The sky looks different. These moments may be shared experiences or very lonely experiences. It could be the way a sun’s rays pierces the clouds, or the way the a mountain peak is reflected in a perfectly still lake. Important lifetime events such as births, deaths, or marriages change our perspective as well. The calamitous as well as the glorious moments have a way of shaping our lives whether we like it or not, whether we realize it in the moment or not.
The music for this symphony had its genesis in the music I wrote for my own wedding, which took place on a beautiful summer day in 2010. I had the privilege to marry the most incredible superwoman I know, Joanna, in her father’s idyllic backyard, surrounded by friends and family. He had prepared the garden with flowers set to bloom in early July, and though the Northeast was mired in an early heatwave, the day of our wedding saw temperatures dip to the 80s, only to climb back to the 100s a day later. Even the weather smiled upon us that day.
Our actual ceremony was programmed like a concert, with music I wrote, a composition by my uncle, and several songs written and sung by our friends. We didn’t have a concert band, we asked our friends to play, and the result was even more meaningful and intimate to us.
PATH(S) comes from two pieces I wrote for the wedding, the promenade of family followed by the bride’s entrance. The paths literally taken were long and winding, as the various family members had to process down from the terrace, under a flowering arch, between two ponds, and through the tables of guests to our wedding spot by one of the lotus ponds.
LOTUS was the hardest to write. In the year prior to our wedding, Joanna’s mother suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. She was an impressive and brilliant woman- medically, scientifically, and musically; a gifted oboist who was admitted to Juilliard but chose the path to becoming an MD, who played the piano for family and holiday gatherings, and who decided to pursue the harp as an adult (but would not play in front of anyone). We didn’t know how to acknowledge and address this huge loss and I felt that where words couldn’t express our feelings, perhaps music could. I was studying conducting and composition at Michigan, and really struggling to get my emotions onto the paper. Finally my teacher at the time, Kristin Kuster, told me to “put myself in the space and time where the music was to be performed, and then write down what you hear.” There was one perfect evening in my apartment where I was able to do just that. I sat down at the midi keyboard connected to my computer and hit record. And then I played the piece. With one single play-through, I nearly completed the whole piece (just a few edits and corrections had to be made).
Where we stood to get married, one single lotus flower bloomed on the day of our wedding.
I also wrote sketches for other music that wasn’t performed (which found their way into the third movement of the symphony), as well as exit music which start the final movement.
Turning small pieces into a symphony –
Working Lotus from a piano solo to a strings+harp work was always my intent. I thought of Mahler’s Adagietto from Symphony No. 5, his love letter to Alma. I knowingly reference the Adagietto through the opening material in this movement (ascending 3 notes), as well as throughout my entire symphony.
During the pandemic, my colleague and good friend Jonathan Yates (who played Lotus as well as the other music from the keyboard at our wedding), premiered an orchestrated version of the Promenade which I made specially for a streaming performance for winds/brass/percussion with the Norwalk Symphony.
I also orchestrated the Bride’s music and called it “Between the Ponds.”
At this point, I had roughly 3 completed movements of a larger work:
1. Promenade
2. Between the Ponds
3. Lotus
I knew I was heading towards a larger work, but wasn’t sure yet how this would all fit together. The exit music I had written was only about a minute long – apparently it is much slower to walk everyone in than out from a wedding! Furthermore, knowing the affect I was creating with Lotus, I felt it was impossible to go directly into a celebratory finale without some kind of emotional and musical transition.
I turned to the sketches I had written and not used for the wedding. These were going to be turned into a musical duet in form of a love song. Some of the music literally came from the rhythm of the words “you are so beautiful.” I knew this movement had to serve as a transition from the depths of sorrow of Lotus to the transformation still to come. On the day of our wedding, after Jonathan played Lotus, there was stillness in the air, interrupted by the croaking of frogs and the sound of wind in the trees. Lost in our thoughts, we all gradually emerged to come back together to an Earthly time and place. This movement had to accomplish that, and so it began to take shape. At the ultimate moment of transformation, I once again looked to Mahler for inspiration, and recalled a moment in the third movement of his Fourth Symphony which marked or foreshadowed the ascent to a spiritual world beyond our own.
Having thus transformed, I felt ready to add the last movement, Rhapsody. But now I was faced with the quandary of having only about 1 minute of prior music to turn into a symphonic movement, and the proportions would be complete off. In spirit of our wedding, and also in the idea of celebration and rhapsody, I turned to two dances that are partner dances: Argentinian Tango and Jungle Swing. Joanna and my first dance was performed to an Argentinian Tango by Astor Piazzolla, so I used his opening 4 bar sequence as the underpinning of this entire orchestral tango. We also had many other dances at our wedding, including some Swing and other classic American dances. The way I shaped these dances is from an orchestral and musical approach, and I vary the phrase and meter lengths so often that it would be very hard to dance to, but I couldn’t help but put my own personal touches and style on the forms. The movement rounds out with a return to the exit music, followed by recapping the bride’s music from earlier, now in epic fashion.
So now I had a five-movement symphonic suite on my hands, but something didn’t feel right. Each movement could almost stand on its own, which made it a suite, but the timing wasn’t correct. As a composer and performer, I am very sensitive and concerned about pacing of a work, and I wished to have a cohesive final product. I realized that I could combine the Promenade with In Between the Ponds and create a proper sense of grandeur to the first movement, and then the pacing would make much more sense. With the idea in the back of my mind that I wanted this music to both be personal, with each movement achieving an appropriate internal arc as well as ensuring that the overall work had the right trajectory, I began to work on combining the two movements. The first two movements became a larger singular A-B-A work and became Path(s). I felt closer to achieving large-scale unity.
As the work began to feel more cohesive, I searched for the right title to convey my intent and help people understand the music. Various ideas were thrown about, including “Wedding Album” or titles that included the words “summer” or “garden.” I had thought about acknowledging Samuel Barber’s beautiful work “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” but it ended up not feeling right. And then I came across the Shakespeare quote I include in the original program notes. SKYCHANGE sounded perfect. This is what my piece is about: the moments in life when the sky changes for you. And yet, Skychange alone did not convey the weight of the entire piece, among other reasons because it has a modern vibe to it, and much of this music is neo-romantic, so it didn’t fit right. Stravinsky has a symphony called “Symphony in C,” which is a wonderful work written in a neoclassical style. I realized that by calling my work “Symphony in Scenes,” I could both capture the large scale unity of the work while also highlighting that each movement captures specific imagery and emotions.
Finally I will point out that the last movement, Rhapsody, is in many ways different from the first three. Whereas the first three movements each have an important directional aspect (all look and move forward), the last movement is much more about living in the moment. It is also powered much more by rhythmic motion than the harmonic motion that underpins the earlier movements. When we have finally undergone the transformation in the third movement, it was necessary to musically show that the sky had indeed changed.
In another post perhaps I will talk about the difficulty of conducting your own music. You have to put on a conductor hat, while still analyzing the composition and wondering what you should have written better. You wonder if the balances are right, as people are still learning the notes and rhythms, and perhaps things are OK after all.
This is my first symphony. I am trying to soak it in. I am so appreciative of the fact that the Executive Director of the Salina Symphony, Adrienne Allen, encouraged me to program my own music in my first season as Music Director of the SS.
I am already thinking of the next pieces I will write.