Emotive Transformations (2018)

by James Lee III (b. St. Joseph, MI, 1975)

 

The composer has written the following program note about his piece:

Emotive Transformations is inspired after having experienced the loss of my father in November 2016 to pancreatic cancer.  One does not really understand how others experience grief until they have also lost a loved one.  Since 2016, I have also witnessed the loss of other friends and family and especially the loss of nearly six-month-old baby of a young couple in November 2018.  This work musically conveys ideas of various stages of grief, which include shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance.  In addition to musically addressing the loss of a loved one, this work also addresses the strong emotional transformations that one experiences in life as a result of various circumstances.  

 

Throughout Emotive Transformations there are two main ideas.  The first is a two-note ascending figure that undergoes various developmental phases.  The second is a rhythmic figure of two notes that functions as a musical sigh and it also goes through various developments.  These two contrasting aspects of this work are contained within a structure that loosely suggests a sonata form of the first movement of a symphony.  Here there are suggestions of two contrasting themes with a transition connecting them, a closing theme, development and recapitulation.  The main two 

melodic and rhythmic ideas are combined near the end of the composition, which moves to a climactic and exuberant moment in which one celebrates the strong desire to see their loved one in a future resurrection that will result in an eternal life of bliss.

Shéhérazade

(Three Poems for Voice and Orchestra on Texts of Tristan Klingsor, 1903)

by Maurice Ravel (Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, 1875 - Paris, 1937)

 

As a young man, Maurice Ravel belonged to a group of progressive young artists known as the "Apaches," who got together weekly to discuss their new work.  One of his friends in this group was a young poet, painter, and composer named Léon Leclère (1874-1966), who adopted the strange pseudonym of Tristan Klingsor, combining two different characters from Wagner’s operas (Tristan from Tristan and Isolde and Klingsor, the evil sorcerer from Parsifal).  In 1903, Klingsor published a book of poems titled Shéhérazade, of which Ravel selected three to set to music.  The subject of these erotic poems is a longing for an exotic Orient that is more imagined than real.

           

As Klingsor later recalled:

 

His love of difficulty made him choose, together with "L'Indifférent" and "La Flûte Enchantée," one whose long narrative made it appear quite unsuitable for his purpose:  "Asie."  At that time, he was engaged in a study of spoken verse, aiming at emphasizing accents and inflections and magnifying them by melodic transposition; to fix his design firmly, he insisted on my reading the lines aloud.

 

 This heightened sense for "accents and inflections" was particularly timely after the premiere of Debussy's opera Pelléas and Mélisande (1902), which had revolutionized word-setting in the French language.  The Apaches, as one former member recalled, "did not miss a single performance [of Pelléas], and waged the battle in the front line, in other words, the topmost gallery."  In their subtle treatment of the text and its refined orchestration, Ravel's songs are obviously indebted to Debussy's opera, yet contain some distinctly un-Debussy-like features, such as the monumental climax in the first song.

           

The first song, "Asie," is longer than the other two combined.  The difficulty alluded to by Klingsor is caused by the long list of images the poet wishes to see in Asia:  a sequence of isolated episodes that had to be shaped into a coherent musical whole.  Ravel surmounted this problem by doing two things simultaneously:  while giving each episode its own poetic expression, he superimposed a gradual increase and decrease in tension over the individual lines.

The second song, "La Flûte Enchantée," has, not surprisingly, a prominent solo flute part (sometimes shared by two players).  While her master sleeps, a young servant listens to her lover's flute sound.  It is a languorous scene, full of mysterious allusions.

          

In the last song, "L'Indifférent," the narrator invites a feminine-looking boy into his house but the young stranger declines and goes on his way.  It is a song filled with an intriguing ambivalence, ending the cycle on a mysterious note.

Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 (1878)

by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, 1840 – St. Petersburg, 1893)

 

Those who are curious about what composers wanted to express with their music may think we have all the answers in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.  After all, didn’t the composer write down a detailed program about the meaning of each movement in his work?  Everyone who loves Tchaikovsky and the Fourth Symphony, in particular, should know this fascinating document, contained in a letter dated March 1, 1878, and written by the composer to his friend and benefactor Nadezhda von Meck (to whom the symphony is dedicated). 

 

In this letter, he identified the “main idea” of the piece as “Fate, the force of destiny, which ever prevents our pursuit of happiness from reaching its goal...”  The four movements are described as attempts to escape that fate by taking refuge in dreams and various distractions before settling for “rejoicing in the joys of others.”  Yet no sooner had Tchaikovsky written down these thoughts than he felt them woefully inadequate.  So, in a postscript to his letter, he practically took back everything he had said earlier.

           

The feelings described in Tchaikovsky’s program cannot be more than a first step toward understanding the composer’s imagination.  In addition, some of the images Tchaikovsky used derive from musical sources in the first place:  when he spoke about “Fate,” he didn’t mean “Fate” in general but “Fate” as it was said to have been portrayed in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  Similarly, when he talked about “the joys of others,” he probably thought about the people rejoicing to the sound of folk dances in Beethoven’s Sixth, or perhaps about the millions embraced by Beethoven in his Ninth.  These seemingly extra-musical images came to Tchaikovsky filtered through a musical tradition in which they were thought to have found expression.

          

In his finale, Tchaikovsky “embraced the millions” by quoting the Russian folksong, “In the fields there stands a birch-tree.”  Combining “The Birch-tree” with a vigorous and dynamic first thematic group, Tchaikovsky developed one of his most rousing symphonic finales out of that simple little song.

         

Of course, the Fourth Symphony’s program—all those feelings about fate, relating to people, and the rest—had a more immediate personal significance, one that Tchaikovsky didn’t need to spell out to his friend.  Mme von Meck knew all about the turmoil Tchaikovsky had gone through at the time of writing the symphony:  1877 was the year of his disastrous marriage to Antonina Milyukova, which only lasted a few days.  Tchaikovsky’s correspondence with Nadezhda von Meck (he was never to meet her in person) also began in 1877; the knowledge that there was someone who could truly understand him only made the outburst of his emotions more intense.  Still, we cannot separate the music from the verbalized emotions or tell which one came first.

 

Ultimately, what makes Tchaikovsky’s Fourth a masterpiece is neither the presence of a program nor the successful musical expression of one.  Its impact is due, instead, to the sheer musical power of its themes, the force with which they are developed, and the boundless imagination displayed in tonality, rhythm, orchestration, and musical character.