Intrada Aria Mobile: Dances
This duo concertante for cello and piano is a paraphrasing of material from 3 different movements of my Violin Concerti Nos. 1 and 2. This work (together with the recently completed Piano Concerto No. 1) completes a circle of works utilizing the same or portions of the same materials. I think of it as a sort of "Borrowed Goods Suite" of 3 movements consisting of musical confiscations (possibly thefts) of other works, traditionally referred to as paraphrases or transcriptions. This sort of musical hijacking has always been quite common in practice and has had many precedents (from the more standard and composer-approved Piatigorsky/Stravinsky, Beethoven's "Eroica", Liszt's countless reworkings, to Bach's redoing of Vivaldi and of his own works, such as the transformations of the celebrated D-minor Concerto, to more recent examples of Berio and Bernard Rands).
The Intrada is in three parts: the introduction of the theme, which is a processional, followed by a cadenza essentially for solo cello, leading into the return of the processional which builds gradually to a climax. This Intrada is a straightforward transcription of the first movement (same title) of the Violin Concerto No. 2. Other than obvious octave transpositions and double-stop revoicing, it is a fairly faithful cello version of the same material. The piano part will remain the same for the piano reduction of the Violin Concerto with a few optional simplifications.
Aria is a complete rewriting of the Lux Aeterna materials from Violin Concerto No. 1. The Aria is considerably different from the parallel movement (original) and thus would qualify as a genuine paraphrase.
Mobile: Dances is a clearly functional metamorphosis of the finale, Agon, of the Violin Concerto No. 1 -- different, in that it is Calder-inspired, in the sense that each element of the piece is a clearly defined sculpture -- but set in motion by each performer -- and the amount of motion varies slightly from performance to performance. In the Violin Concerto, this aspect was realized, or frozen, from the beginning like a photograph, one captured version out of a number of possible versions. In the Violin Concerto "the Agon is a wake, a reaffirmation of life inspired by the wake in the book (and film) 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors'. It is in this movement that a patchwork of melodies is formed, creating a lamination of various abstract dances that occur simultaneously as a result of canonic chasing."
The spirit, if not the letter, of this suite is baroque-ish. Troping is used as a structural device and plays an important role --, as does a considerable degree of tongue-in-cheek fun. All three are fashioned with notes from the original material. It is a piece of music in love with other pieces of music. This work is written for Maria Tchaikovska, and dedicated to W. Howard Hoffman.