Beyond science, there is, for lack of a better word, magic - a place full of things that we know, but don't fully understand. Dreams, more than any other phenomenon, straddle the boundary between science and magic; and despite the best efforts of Western science, especially psychology, there remains something elusive, something magical about the world of dreams. It is a world better represented in other cultures: in the traditional dream-reading of Southeast Asia, the see/dreamers of pre-Columbian America, the visions of medieval European mystics, and the creation myth of the Australian Aborigines. "Dreamtime" is the name given to the Aboriginal story of creation, or more precisely, to the time in which that creation took place. It is a time that is both past and present. That sense of ambiguity lies at the very heart of Virko Baley's Dreamtime. "We live in two worlds simultaneously," says Baley, echoing the view of each of these cultures. One of them may be described simply as Newtonian, in which the arrow of time exists. The other is dreamtime . . . This duality can be heard, or felt, in virtually every gesture in Dreamtime. The whole work revolves around a set of enigmatic intervals: major and minor seconds, mostly, and various augmented chords, especially the tritone. The germ of Dreamtime, and one of its recurrent motifs, is this pair of tonally ambiguous chords, played simultaneously. The upper chord can be read as two tritones: C and F#, G and C#. But it can also be read as two perfect fifths: C and G, F# and C#. The tritone, the so-called "diabolus in musica," was considered the most excruciating (and perhaps sinister) of dissonances in medieval Europe. The interval of the perfect fifth was, well, perfect. The lower chord can be similarly viewed as a pair of dissonant minor seconds (A and Bb, E and F) or as two more perfect fifths (A and E, Bb and F). Dreamtime is a mercurial, moody piece; its nocturnal passages are often set off by more angular and energetic moments, as in the alarums that start the piece [in the original Dreamtime] and then reappear as the basis for Adams Apple. Virko Baley is a composer who follows no particular compositional school. Obviously aware of and fluent in many of the musical "isms" of our time, Baley has chosen to follow his own instincts, and has created a distinctive, personal style. Baley's harmonic sense has led him away from the usual harmonies built on the interval of the third to something more closely akin to the quartal harmonies (built on fourths) that are often associated with Bartok; a result of this in works of both composers is a deliberate blurring of tonality. Much of Dreamtime is freely tonal, but it's impossible to determine whether a passage is major or minor. It's both, and therefore neither. Baley revels in the resulting tonal ambiguity, and matches it with a textural quirk: the melodies are often quite beautiful, but the overall ensemble sound can be unsettled, and unsettling. The work's atmospheric scoring - the fleeting wisps of melody, the subdued and exotic percussion - give the piece a surreal texture, and make for fascinating repeated listenings. Dreamtime divulges its secrets slowly, in its own time. Dreamtime began as a response to "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," a story by Delmore Schwartz, and the title eventually came from Traumzeit ("Dreamtime"), a book by Hans Peter Duerr. Like its literary source material, Baley's piece occupies the gray area between science and magic; the written score contains enough complexity to satisfy the most rigorous academic, but Baley's approach is ultimately an intuitive one. Somewhere between the written page and the ear, an alchemical reaction takes place; there is a strange and appealing dichotomy between the complexities of the written score and the immediacy and beauty of the actual sound
Palm-of-the-Hand. The most self-referential and perhaps most humorous of the 19 movements. Its short, loping theme barely disguises a parody of the main blocks of Dreamtime: the busy triplet figures; the open, quasi-religious chords; and of course, the minor seconds. There is even a mock-serialist tone row in the violin part at the end of the movement, and the piece ends with two simple minor chords (G and G#) played simultaneously in the same low piano register. This leads directly to the next movement. Kozak Mamai. Another reference to Baley's Ukrainian heritage: Kozak Mamai is a Ukrainian folk-hero, a sort of musical Johnny Appleseed. One of the most popular characters in Ukrainian folk art, Kozak Mamai is usually depicted as a troubadour; one such painting adorns the cover of Baley's Orpheus Singing recording. "He is a sorcerer, a poet, a pied-piper -- and a seducer of sorts," Baley explains. "Probably a bit of a charlatan, too". Baley chose a Western Ukrainian folk song as the basis for this genial movement. The opening, marked "whispery," features an unusual amount of unison playing in the strings and winds. Eventually, as the flute and clarinet continue to develop the folk melody, the strings pursue a different rhythm, and some of the harmonies echo the stacked fourths of Bela Bartok's folk-derived works. The movement reaches a momentary repose, followed by a sharp, rhythmic conclusion. The Heart of Glass. The heartbeat is heard immediately, in the cellos. The romantic, lyrical surface of this final movement hints at deeper mysteries, at the potentially shattering power of melody or lyricism, perhaps. "Lyricism has, after all, the power to seduce, disguise and delude, " Baley notes. The clarinet and cello take their accustomed roles sharing melodic material... The violin joins in; as has so often happened in this piece, the beauty of the melody is offset by the motoric, unsettling percussion patterns beneath the surface. The heartbeat soon dissolves as the 4/4 rhythms of the earlier bars give way to a dreamlike stretching of time, to 5/4, 6/4, 9/4, and so on. The instrumental texture becomes more transparent, evoking for one final time the haunted atmosphere of dreams, of magic. The piece ends with two more simultaneous chords , different from those heard [in other movements], but clearly related aurally. The ensemble settles on these two minor second chords, bringing [Heart of Glass] to a beautiful but appropriately ambiguous close. Kolomyika, a dance . . . A kolomyika is a Western Ukrainian dance song, familiar to some American listeners through its appearance in the repertoire of various klezmer bands. Baley fuses elements of both dance (represented by body percussion) and song into one part - the violinist's part. A kolomyika is traditionally a satirical song, and that element of humor or parody can certainly be seen in the violinist's almost ludicrously difficult task:The furious disjointed theme almost sounds like digital samples of violin, voice, and percussion strung together. The rest of the ensemble provides percussive support (hardly needed) and occasional harmonic or melodic shadows (hardly noticed). "The violinist," Baley points out, "is a one (wo)man band." Adam's Apple. Baley describes the inspiration of this piece as a "jovial nightmare" - perhaps a fitting description of this movement from the players' point of view too...we hear again the long term hockets and perhaps now in retrospect see a link with the one-man, or one-woman, hockets in the violin part of "Kolomyika". The first nine bars are identical to the beginning of "Through a Glass Darkly" [the opening movement of the original Dreamtime for seven instrumentalists], but where Part I stops and becomes a mysterious nocturne, "Adam's Apple" continues its grotesque dance. The piano almost immediately plunges headlong through series of major and minor seconds... leading the rest of the ensemble through a classic, if shortened, sonata-allegro form.
John Schafer is the author of the book New Sounds: A Listener's Guide to New Music, and is Music Director of WNYC, New York Public Radio.