Larry Sitsky: The Fourteen Days of Bardo Thodol: Sonata No. 2 (1979) - The Dawning of the Peaceful Deities

Abstract

"I have had the great pleasure of being associated with David Cubbin on both a personal and a professional level, and this work is in homage to him as a mu ician and friend. The notion of writing a second flute sonata had been with me for a number of years, and mentally it had been very thoroughly worked out, so that when I finally sat down at my desk to capture the work on paper, the process took only a matter of days. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has fascinated me for a long time, and the vivid descriptions therein of the Karmic visions, plus the expressed notion of the liberation of the soul via sound gave me the poetic basis of the work, which then naturally fell into the two movements, the first being 'The Dawning of the Peaceful Deities' and the sec-ond The-Dawning ·of the Wrathful Deities'. On a more practical level, I made a study of Tibetan Buddhist chant, and this contributed some of the musical basis of the work. The chant is heard in its purest form at the very beginning and the very end of the sonata. It was with some sense of shock that I realised that twenty years had gone by since I wrote my first sonata for solo flute; this new sonata is testimony to what changes have occurred since in my musical thinking as well as in those elements that have remained constant. One of the latter is my love for the flute and for its continued development as an instrument encompassing those facets of the human psyche that fascinate me the most. The work was commissioned for the National Flute Competition of 1979 and my brief was to write a piece which would be challenging musically as well as incorporating new techniques for playing the flute. Certainly the use of new devices could lead to a gimmicky piece with little or no musical merit; I sought to avoid such dangers by fairly tight control of the structure. At first hearing it is the novelty of the sound that probably seizes attention. The sounds can be summarised as follows: (a) Extensive use of portamento. These graphically notated 'sliding' tones were initially inspired by studying and listening to authentic Buddhist chant. The microtonal 'wailing' of the men's voices ( even if an accidental by-product of the singing) evoked in me a powerful emotional response. (b) Multiphonics. This relatively new technique, now becoming more and more part of the everyday arsenal of the flute player, requires knowledge of special fingering as well as a different feel to the embouchure. The resultant 'chords' are not equally balanced: some notes are louder than others. The score encourages the player to assist certain notes by humming them simultaneously with blowing. Although multiphonics appear in many flute pieces as 'effects' (interruptions to a 'normal' way of playing), in this work multi phonics are an absolutely essential feature. Lengthy phrases composed exclusively of multiphonics make their appearance. It should perhaps be stated that the multiphonics feature microtonal intervals, and thus their musical shapes are closely allied to the microtonal :;!ides of the portamento sections. (c) Playing and singing simultaneously. This is usually employed on the same note. Beats almost ine\ 1tably result, since the blown note and the sung note will not be at precisely the same pitch. The idea of such beats was also inspired by hearing the massed voices of the Buddhist monks. ometimes the player is asked to sing notes differing in pitch from the blown note. (d) Percussive tapping.of.the flute keys. Once.again, the impulse for this effect came from hearing woodblocks accompanying the Buddhist chant. Here, however, the tapping assumes an importance beyond accompanying, and creates a rhythmic pattern and an additive contrasting colour of some significance. Most often, the tapping is used with a particular note, to give it a sharper attack. Sometimes, however, the tapping is independent and occurs while a note is held; or else it is used to create notes not normally on the instrument (tongue blocked key slap). Both the chant and the multiphonic sections are slow, so it was imperative that fast, free wheeling, rhapsodic sections be introduced for the sake of variety. The chant sections are characterised by the reiteration of one note as a kind of tonal centre; the key tapping also emphasises the notion of repetition of one pitch. It seemed natural for the rhapsodic sections to feature fast repeated notes as a central device, thus giving cohesion. These fast rhapsodic sections also have an intervallic cohesive structure of their own, but it would be pointless to elaborate on this without a score. Ifwe iabel the slow,portamento sections as Chants, the multiphonic sections as Chorales, and the fast sections as Rhapsodies, the following structure emerges over the two movement span of the sonata: (a) First movement: The Dawning of the Peaceful Deities Chant I, Chorale I, Chant II, Rhapsody I, Chant ID, Rhapsody II, Chorale II (b) Second movement: The Dawning of the Wrathful Deities Chorale ill, Rhapsody III, Chant IV, Rhapsody IV, Chorale IV, Rhapsody V, Chorale V, Chant V It is quite clear that there are five sections of each type. Chants I and V are closely related, giving a feeling of return to the starting point. The Rhapsodies gradually evolve throughout the sonata, and so Rhapsody V is he longest and most elaborate. In the centre of the work, Chorales II and ID are the longest; in fact, Chorale ID is a kind of continuation of Chorale II. The Chorales also have their own growth pattern, tending to get louder with each appearance. Chants II, III and IV are evolutions of Chant I, using ornamental figures and octave displacements as departure points from the basic Chant of the opening." -- Larry Sitsky Show more