Present Affections (2000-2003)
For violin & piano, professional level. $20, including piano score, violin part, demo recording. Order here. Six movements, all deriving their melodic material from the first, played without break. About 35 minutes for the entire piece.
By the end of the 17th century, most writers held that the purpose of music was to arouse the "affections," discrete and rationalized states of the human psyche; these states were musically rendered by various manipulations inspired by the principles of rhetoric. In his last published work, Traité des passions de l'âme (Passions of the Soul, 1649), Descartes puts forth his list of the essential affections ("passions"): wonder, love, hate, desire, joy and sadness. The influential German composer and theorist Johann Mattheson, in Der volkommene Capellmeister (The Complete Music Master, 1739), built on the work of Descartes and drew analogies between the affections and certain dance types, e.g. the gavotte manifesting "jubilant joy" and the gigue "hot and hurried eagerness." Composers generally restricted a section or movement of a work to the expression of one affection, resulting in the single-mindedness typical of a movement in the Baroque style. Present Affections, loosely modeled on a Baroque solo sonata, takes a similar approach - evoking, with a touch of humor, some common contemporary human states that have earned colorful mass-media labels.
I. Recitativo (cantus firmus) This violin solo with minimal accompaniment begins with a 4-note motto (G-Ab-G-F) which will appear frequently in subsequent melodies and prominent bass notes. This is followed by a sequence of seven short phrases; the rhythm is loose and inflected by the performer, typical of recitativo. These seven phrases, in order, are resources of melodic material for the rest of the work, 2 or 3 per movement-- a sort of cantus firmus. Movements III through VI each begin with a reprise of the phrases that will contribute their melodic materials.
The "affections" rendered in the following movements might be those endured by a single person in a 24-hour period; the themes of the recitativo itself might be taken as the mind that will later find itself in these various states.
II. Sleep-deprived (aria languida) The melodic content of this lush and enigmatic ode to drowsiness is taken from the first two phrases of the recitativo. It is in a modified da capo form typical of aria. The harmonies presented in this movement, especially in the first section, provide the basis of the harmony in the remaining movements.
III. Multitasking (variazioni frenetiche) The melodic content for this movement is taken from the 2nd and 3rd phrases of the recitativo. The notes G-E-Ab embedded in the middle of the second phrase are those of the famous "Muß es sein?" ("Must it be?") motive from the last movement of the Beethoven String Quartet in F, op. 116. This frenzied and occasionally violent movement imagines a fatigued and over-scheduled parent, trying desperately to keep up with car pools and homework, wondering "Must it be???" It concludes with a lengthy quotation of the ending of op. 116.
IV. Dressed to Kill (gavotte à la jazz) Ready for a night on the town, in both evening wear and attitude. In rounded binary form, like most stylized dances, this crazed boogie takes its melodies from the 3rd, 4th, and 5th phrases of the recitativo. There are many showy, leaping lines for the violin, and the appearance of the Big Spender theme removes all doubt as to the elemental nature of this affection. The mood of the opening theme is altered drastically at its return in the second half, with somber, jazzy harmony and floating melodic rhythms negating the earlier seductive confidence; perhaps this movement foreshadows the next.
V. Significantly Otherless (musetta lacrimosa) There is some irony in turning a pastoral dance for the bagpipes into a study in melancholy, but the typical droning 5ths in the bass seemed a suitable embodiment of unwanted solitude. The 5th and 6th phrases of the recitativo provide the melodic material, with the bass ostinato derived from the G-Ab-G-F motto. In rounded binary form, this movement is essentially a piano solo with the violin, playing the role of the absent companion (largely in canon), playing only on the repeats of each section. In the contrasting middle section, the mood of quiet, static frustration erupts briefly into angry self-pity.
VI. Burnout (gigue psychotique) This typical closing dance of a Baroque suite, vivacious and imitative, here embodies the relentless momentum of external forces that are out of control and lead to the only possible conclusion: cracking up. The long theme of this movement is assembled from phrases 6 and 7 of the recitativo, with lots of repeated notes and syncopations to suggest the unraveling of an adult reduced, by the end, to a confused and petulant child.
