Notes de programme

The Unbelievable Glory of Mr. Sharp is a chamber opera which I composed on commission from the Canadian Opera Company when I was their composer-in-residence in 1988-89. Together with Toronto librettist Ken Keobke we created a dark story of contemporary inner-city violence which I scored for two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone and bass, accompanied by a chamber ensemble of clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano/synthesizer and percussion.

The premiere performances took place at the Tanenbaum Opera Centre in Toronto on May 16, 17 and 18, 1989. Conducted by Clyde Mitchell and directed by Tom Diamond, the work starred Christopher Coyea as Robert Sharp, Gary Rideout as Snake, Brian McIntosh as Smack, Tania Parrish as Lily, Rebecca Hass as Mrs. Kliptz and Christiane Riel as June/Moon.

These are the synopsis notes from the premiere:

The Unbelievable Glory of Mr. Sharp takes place on a dingy downtown street. Two small-time thugs, Snake and Smack, lounge in front of Mrs. Kliptz’s barbershop as Lily, a newspaper girl, enters with the latest headlines of a series of hairdresser killings. Robert enters and eyes June the prostitute. June has seen Robert before and she invites him to her apartment, but he is too shy. He is further discouraged by the appearance of the Moon, which tries to steer him away from his destructive cravings for glory.

Distant screams announce another murder. Robert alone witnesses the weapon being dropped in a garbage can. He recovers it as Snake and Smack return, enthralled with the violence. They mistake Robert for the killer and pay homage. Robert takes on their sarcastic “Mr. Sharp” as his new name. Snake and Smack decide that he has come to murder Mrs. Kliptz. Acting as his sentries, they in fact imprison him with the choice between revealing himself and killing the old woman.

After Robert has left the shop, Snake and Smack congratulate him, but they discover that Lily has returned and may have overheard the conversation. Robert sends Snake and Smack away while he takes care of Lily. Snake and Smack return and find her gone. But all has been a pretence, and Robert hides from them with June.

June sees the knife and screams. Robert is angry that her cries might expose him and poises the knife to kill her. The opera finishes with Robert’s decision and the consequence of unbelievable glory.

Music for the Open Air was commissioned by clarinettist Stanley Fisher through the Canada Council commissioning programme, and was completed in April, 1990.  The thematic materials and the formal shapes employed in this work were inspired by the beautiful scenery found in the Eastern Townships of Québec, and hence the title is intended to suggest the impression of a series of landscapes. 

 This is particularly evident in the contemplative first movement, “À la campagne”, with its spacious and open-ended themes.  These recur in various guises in subsequent movements and infuse the work with an organic quality. 

 The second movement, “Whitewater riverrun”, is also a musical impression of a scene, but this time that of a wild ride down a frontier river.  To underscore this spirit, I have embedded in the texture the French-canadian folksong, Le Prince Eugène, collected by Marius Barbeau, and noted to have been commonly enjoyed as a paddling song by the voyageurs who explored the waterways of Québec.  This theme rises to the surface of the contrapuntal web of this movement three times, each in a quicker tempo than the previous by means of diminution. 

 The third movement, “At Gary’s Rocks”, was inspired by a tape recording lent to me by the folk-culture scholar, Ian Tait.  On this recording, which Ian made in 1979, the 93-year old Willie Lavallée of Sherbrooke sings with much emotion a local ballad about several boys who drown while breaking up a log jam at Gary’s Rocks.  This movement I treat as a lament in the form of a quodlibet wherein the ballad is intertwined with St. Thomas Aquinas’ Gregorian chant, Adoro te, and the famous hymn, Old One Hundredth set in long values. 

 The final movement is a scene of celebration—a “Fêtes d’été” of swirling dance and laughter.  The first theme here outlines the characteristic fourth of the head-motive from the first movement and contributes the significant strand in the variegated musical layers.  Later the principal theme of the first movement recurs in combination with a variation on Gary’s Rocks and inverted statements of Adoro te, and the work ends in a frenzied rush.

I composed After Dark…, my first work for solo piano, for Angela Cheng at the request of CBC producer Frances Wainwright, who offered this com­mission to me in the spring of 1990.  I wrote the bulk of this piece in February and March of 1991, immediately after having finished my orchestral tone poem In the Garden of Gaea which was premiered in Toronto, March 25, 1991.

Frances’s suggestion of writing a solo “rhapsody” greatly influenced my approach to this piece.  I started with the traditional concept of a rhapsody as a rather extravagant musical flight of fancy—irregular in structure—and in one continuous movement usually suggestive of some kind of romantic inspiration.  I then took the idea of “night” and considered the shades of extraordinary experi­ence possible in the absence of light, in the realm of pure imagination.  I thus created four “scenes” and joined them without a break to form one continuous movement. 

The first of these scenes, “Procession of the Night Things”, is a placid and spacious unveiling of the main motivic materials or characters explored in the course of the work.  Next follows “The Dance of Dionysus”, a fast and impetuous revelry, an asymmetrical dance full of the unexpected and caprice….  Serving to release the tension of the second movement, “Spacious, a Dreamscape” is a slow, free recitative wherein sleep overcomes and memories invade the empty spaces of the mind.  This pushes directly into the “Circle of the Elves” where finally, before the first light of dawn, there is a mad rush to complete the festivities and rituals of the night.

My new concerto for harpsichord and string orchestra, Les oiseaux sauvages, was written at the request of Bishop’s University for the opening concert of the University’s newly-created concert space, Bandeen Hall.  I composed it especially for soloist Hélène Panneton, who made many thoughtful and much-appreciated technical suggestions, and the Orchestre de Chambre de l’Estrie under the direction of Marc David.

 Although the bulk of this composition was written in December of 1991, the materials had been brewing for well over a year.  During that time, I sketched out portions of the piece in between work on my Violin Concerto, my symphonic poem In the Garden of Gaea, my piano solo After Dark…, and my concert aria Innocence, all written this past year as part of my research work supported by Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche (Fonds FCAR).  In some of these works, I explored the integration and development of pre-existent materials such as local folksongs, hymns and bird songs, using various new techniques which I devised in the realms of pitch-language modulation and thematic organization.

 In Les oiseaux sauvages, I have taken several of my transcriptions of bird songs, such as those of the wood thrush, chickadee and robin, and transformed them into themes and motives which serve as material for further development throughout the piece.  I have also made use of the Québec folksong Le Rossignolet sauvage in a similar manner, and its head motive of three repeated notes is heard in a variety of forms during the course of the work.

 Even though Les oiseaux sauvages appears to be a free-form, single-movement fantasy, it actually consists of two distinct movements connected by a solo cadenza.  The slow-moving first movement, “Le réveil”, is a musical portrait of pre-dawn awakening; while the second movement, “La danse des oiseaux”, is a fast and spirited celebration of simple joy and, I hope, of the elegant beauty of our new concert hall.

A. P. MacDonald
January 12, 1992

Innocence was commissioned by the Guelph Spring Festival as the imposed piece for the 1992 National Vocal Competition. For this work I chose three poems by William Blake which explore the theme of “lost and found”:

1. “The Little Boy Lost” from Songs of Innocence;

2. “A Little Boy Lost” from Songs of Experience;

3. “The Little Boy Found” from Songs of Innocence.

I decided to place the settings of these three poems one after the other in a continuous fashion so as to create a single-movement work in three sections—a feature which I also exploited in my recent Violin Concerto, op. 22, my piano solo After Dark…, op. 24, and my harpsichord concerto, Les Oiseaux Sauvages, op. 25.  After planning a structural scheme in terms of tempo, texture and tonal centres, I went about setting the poems for high voice (soprano/tenor) and piano.  I then rearranged the work for the lower voices (alto/baritone/bass) to meet the competition’s requirement that the work be manageable by any voice type.

With the composition of Innocence I set out to create a dramatic work for voice and piano which would be independent of a larger work (such as an opera) and which would thus be a world unto itself.  In choosing three different poems on a single subject by the same poet, I was able to explore a variety of moods while maintaining a unity of poetic style.  My response to this structural arrange­ment allowed for many musical contrasts in the manner of a dramatic concert aria—an objective which I believed would be quite suitable for a piece in which com­pe­ti­tors need to exhibit both their technical and interpre­tive prowess.

The work was completed on November 9, 1991 and received its premiere on May 6, 1992 by all the semifinalists. These perfor­mances were recorded for broadcast by the CBC.

I was first inspired to compose The Jam at Jerry’s Rocks after hearing a recording of the Sherbrooke folksinger, Willie LaVallée, who, at the age of 93 was recorded in 1979 by folklorist Ian Tait.  Upon hearing Mr. Lavallée sing his version of the Canadian folksong, Jerry’s Rocks, I realized the possibility of doing a very special set of variations on this song which would make use of Mr. Lavallée’s voice as a source of sonic materials.  I took this recording, plus a new recording of soprano Eleanor Gang singing the same song, to Les ateliers UPIC in Paris and manipulated them to create an electroacoustic composition derived entirely from vocal sources.  I then combined this with further variations on the song scored for live soprano and clarinet.

 The text is a tragic ballad set in the backwoods of nineteenth-century Canada.  It recounts the story of how shanty-boy foreman Monroe and his co-workers drown while breaking up a log jam on a rough river and the effect of the calamity on the other shanty-boys and Monroe’s grief-stricken lover.

 The work also exists in a version for 4-channel tape alone, later mixed down to digital stereo format. As well, I rearranged the piece for baritone, piano and stereo electroacoustics in 2015 for Jeremy Huw Williams and Paula Fan.

I was first inspired to compose The Jam at Jerry’s Rocks after hearing a recording of the Sherbrooke folksinger, Willie LaVallée, who, at the age of 93 was recorded in 1979 by folklorist Ian Tait.  Upon hearing Mr. Lavallée sing his version of the Canadian folksong, Jerry’s Rocks, I realized the possibility of doing a very special set of variations on this song which would make use of Mr. Lavallée’s voice as a source of sonic materials.  I took this recording, plus a new recording of soprano Eleanor Gang singing the same song, to Les ateliers UPIC in Paris and manipulated them to create an electroacoustic composition derived entirely from vocal sources.  I then combined this with further variations on the song scored for live soprano and clarinet.

The text is a tragic ballad set in the backwoods of nineteenth-century Canada.  It recounts the story of how shanty-boy foreman Monroe and his co-workers drown while breaking up a log jam on a rough river and the effect of the calamity on the other shanty-boys and Monroe’s grief-stricken lover.

The work exists in a version for 4-channel tape alone, later mixed down to digital stereo format. As well, I rearranged the piece for baritone, piano and stereo electroacoustics in 2015 for Jeremy Huw Williams and Paula Fan.

I composed Les Voix Eternelles as a musical depiction of the voyage of the soul after death.  The title translates as “the eternal or everlasting voices”, and although I thought of these as representing the “life essence” or “soul”, in French it also has a double meaning in that “les voies éternelles” can also mean the “eternal roads or ways”, referring in this context to the actual voyage of the soul.

It’s funny, but I have always wondered what happens to the soul at the point of sleep or death—I imagine something kind of tiny, like a bee buzzing about, searching, searching ever upward….  I guess the first section of this work is my own “Flight of the Bumble Bee”, a moto-perpetual of insect-like chromatic triplets in the woodwinds climbing ever higher to a climax of repeated chords and a seemingly impenetrable wall of metal percussion—which, nevertheless, gives way to a state of calm and beatitude.

Here, in this Adagio section, a recurring figure in metal percussion gives a sense of solemn ritual as it punctuates woodwind phrases of a melody which I had originally composed for soprano in a setting of a poem by William Butler Yeats entitled “The Everlasting Voices”:

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still;
Go to the guards of the heavenly fold
And bid them wander, obeying your will,
Flame under Flame, till Time be no more;
Have you not heard that our hearts are old,
That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,
In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still.

The “everlasting Voices” cannot be stilled, however, and they race forward to celebrate in a grand danse fantastique (which is followed by a series of earlier images, now experienced afresh, with a new sense of awareness).  The “searching” music also returns (now in the strings, lending a large arch-form to the work), but instead of “searching”, the lines are inverted so that there is a sense of convergence to a stable “point”.

Suddenly this “point” explodes into a joyful affirmation of hope, a certain realization of the ultimate goal.

Notes will be forthcoming.

In 1992 I was asked by the Quatuor Claudel of Montréal to write a new string quartet for them to honour the namesake of their ensemble, Camille Claudel.  I accepted with great delight—moreover as they had recently made a stunning recording of my clarinet quintet Music for the Open Air with clarinettist Michael Dumouchel.  In the summer of 1992 I made a trip to the Rodin Museum in Paris with the sole purpose of viewing the large collection of sculptures by Camille Claudel there, and immediately was struck with the concept for this new quartet.  I envisioned a multi-movement work with movements inspired by different Claudel sculptures, and yet with the work as a whole realized as a single entity based on a central theme which I imagined as the essence of Claudel herself.  Inspired by her sculptures La Vague, La petite Sirène (also known as La Joueuse de flûte),La Valse and L’Abandon , I constructed three movements which would capture the spirit of these beautiful pieces.  Even though each movement evokes a different sculpture, the Claudel theme is present in each in some form or another—always changing, yet always imprinted with her unique spirit.

Quatuor pour Camille: Quatuor à cordes No. 2
Andrew P. MacDonald
Op. 30 (1993)

En 1992, le Quatuor Claudel de Montréal m’invita à composer un quatuor à cordes à l’honneur de la sculpteuse Camille Claudel.  C’est avec un immense plaisir que j’ai accepté, surtout qu’elles avaient, tout récemment, fait un enregistrement absolument extraordinaire de ma quintette pour clarinette tirée de Musique de plein air avec le clarinettiste Michael Dumouchel.  Avec l’idée de ce quatuor en tête, à l’été de 1992 je décidai de visiter le Musée de Rodin à Paris et de voir la merveilleuse collection de sculptures de Camille Claudel; immédiatement, l’inspriation me vint pour le concept de ce nouveau quatuor.  J’eus la vision d’une œuvre à mouvements multiples dont chaque mouvement serait inspiré par une sculpture différente de Claudel.  En revanche, l’œuvre en tant qu’un tout serait une seule entité basée sur un thème central que j’ai imaginé être l’essence même de Claudel.  J’ai par la suite, construit trois mouvements inspirés de ses sculptures La Vague, La petite Sirène, La Valse et L’Abandon (le troisième mouvement alternant entre La Valse et L’Abandon).  Même si chaque mouvement évoque une sculpture différente, le thème de Claudel est continuellement présent sous une forme ou une autre—changeant continuellement tout en étant imprégné de son esprit tout à fait unique.

Notes will be forthcoming.

Notes will be forthcoming.

Commissioned by the CBC for Veronica Tennant and James Campbell, Green Steps in Sunshine was premiered by them on August 3, 1994 at the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Ontario.  This piece was composed as a joyful celebration of life, inspired by the optimism of Canada’s most lyrical poet, Ralph Gustafson.

In creating this work, I assembled five of Ralph’s poems that emphasized images of green, sun and nature into a sequence alternating action with serenity.  I was attracted to the elegant simplicity of his poetic ideas and his musical treatment of the language.  The title is, of course, drawn from the poetry itself, but whereas the “green steps” are on the surface an outdoor staircase, I intend them also as a picture of a youthful dance, the first steps of wonderment, swirling in simple sunshine.

 Underscoring this theme of child-like innocence is a melodic yet virtuosic playfulness in the clarinet part which involves some improvisation as well as vocalizations and physical movement.  The narrator too has opportunities to celebrate the sacred earth with playing simple percussion and engaging in improvisatory dance.

MacDonald’s The Great Rock In The Sea was commissioned by Newfoundland’s 1994 Sound Symposium through the Canada Council’s Commissioning of Canadian Composers programme as a new work for the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. The Great Rock In The Sea is a symphonic poem composed of motives from old Newfoundland folk melodies woven throughout. The world premiere was given by the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra, directed by Marc David, at the 1994 Sound Symposium in St. John’s, Newfoundland on July 15, 1994 and was recorded for broadcast by the CBC.

Eros was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and premiered by that orchestra under the baton of Bramwell Tovey on January 26, 1995 at the Winnipeg New Music Festival. Written in 1994, this short character sketch is set in three sections (slow, fast, and ending with a slow maestoso) which are played without a break.

 The ancient deity Eros was the result of the secret union of Aphrodite and Ares.  Although in Hellenistic times he became a pretty child responsible for mischief in love relationships, he was originally a dignified and hand­some youth. I try to capture both of these characteristics in my composition which exhibits recurring thematic elements undergoing continuous develop­ment. The ever-present melodic semitone as a “sigh” motive lends a sense of yearning towards some unattainable goal. This sigh-semitone finally finds gratification, however—with all the bells and whistles going, and a tip of the hat to Tchaikovsky! The work soon closes with the quiet fluttering of wings as Eros disappears in the early morning light….

In the fall of 1994, CBC producer Neil Crory arranged for the CBC to commission me to write a piano concerto for Audrey Andrist and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, which received its premiere performance in Vancouver on September 15, 1996 conducted by Mario Bernardi.  The concerto opens with the piano presenting the primary thematic material which subsequently recurs throughout the piece in many different guises.  The movement builds up steam right to its conclusion, at which point the soloist bursts into a cadenza of gargantuan proportions, which serves as a transition into the ensuing Adagio.

In the second movement, “A Cavatina for Ludwig”, I allude to the opening of  Beethoven’s “cavatina” from his Op. 130 quartet.  I present this allusion first in the original string quartet scoring, where alternate subphrases are also presented by the complete string section and solo woodwinds.  Using this material as a foundation, the movement continues with that type of soloistic frisé and fioriatura piano writing which one often encounters in Beethoven’s slow movements.  Materials from the first movement are then reworked, and new themes to be explored more thoroughly in the last movement are introduced.  The Adagio concludes with a last allusion to the cavatina theme which fades into the upper reaches of the piano.

 The last movement, Allegro vivace, returns to the first movement’s F tonality with a riotous clamour of bells and irregular beat groupings, like some joyful, uninhibited dance.  The first movement’s main theme returns here also, now suitably dancelike, to provide a springboard for jumping into the following sections.  The movement surges relentlessly forward to a short cadenza which propels into the final Presto.

In The Eagle’s Eye was written between September and December of 1995 at the request of the Gryphon Trio, who commissioned it with the generous assistance of the Laidlaw Foundation.  Inspired by the trio’s name, I set about composing a piece in which I tried to imagine how experience might be perceived from the perspective of the window to this creature’s mind.  In The Eagle’s Eye is an exploration of the perception of distance and magnification, as this magnificent bird, soaring high in the sky, discerns movement below and focuses the image with its prodigious visual acuity (with a resolving power of up to eight times that of humans!).  This action is realized musically throughout the work as motives expand, contract and fragment, providing resolution of detail and metamorphosis of image.

 The work is set as one movement in four major sections (slow-fast; slow-fast) with moods varying from the ecstacy of high altitude to vicious, but necessary closer to the earth. I dedicate all the rushing of wings and the pure contemplation of soaring above the clouds in this piece to the members of the Gryphon Trio, Annalee Patipatanikoon, Roman Borys and Jamie Parker.

Hymenaeus was commissioned in 1996 by my friends Tom Gordon and Mary OKeeffe as a wedding gift for violinist Céline Arcand and violist Jean René.  Hymen was the Greek god of weddings and a hymenaeus is, in fact, a wedding song.  My composition is in two parts:  a slow processional (prosodos) followed by a lively dance (epithalamios) to accompany the revelries which would take place outside the closed door of the marriage chamber.  This piece exhibits the results of many of my investigations into ancient Greek music through the use of diatonic and chromatic tetrachords, as well as enharmonic ones with quarter-tone pyknons.  One may also find many examples of Greek poetic metres, the rhythmic foundation of all ancient Greek music.

Notes de l’auteur pour Hymenaeus, op. 38

Ce sont mes amis Tom Gordon et Mary O’Keeffe qui m’ont commandé Hymenaeus comme cadeau de mariage pour les musiciens Céline Arcard et Jean René.  Hymen était le dieu grec des mariages et un hymenaeus est un chant présenté lors d’un mariage.  Ma composition est divisée en deux parties: un hymne processionnel (prosodos) suivi d’une danse pleine d’entrain (epithalamios). Cette musique accompagnait les fêtards qui célébraient juste à l’extérieur de la chambre nuptiale. Cette composition est le résultat de mes nombreuses recherches effectuées récemment sur la musique de la Grèce antique en utilisant des tétracordes diatoniques et chromatiques ainsi que des pyknons enharmoniques quart de ton.  On peut également retrouver plusieurs exemples dans les mètres de la poésie grecque, base rythmique de toute la musique antique grecque.

Pythikos nomos was composed in 1996 with the generous financial assistance of the Conseil des Arts et Lettres de Québec.  Written for oboist Lawrence Cherney and the Penderecki Quartet, it received its world premiere on January 14, 1999 in Montréal.

The Pythikos nomos or “custom of the Python [story]” was originally a programmatic outline for a musical improvisation on the five sections of the story of the battle between Apollo and the guardian of the Delphic oracle, the giant serpent Python.  First heard at the great music competitions of the Pythian Games at Delphi in the early sixth century B.C.E, the pioneer of this genre, the great aulete Sakadas of Argos, won the prize at the first contest in 586 B.C.E.  I’ve taken the surviving ancient documents surrounding this subject and set the five movements for oboe, English horn and oboe d’amore with string quartet.  These “oboe family” instruments are the modern-day descendants of the ancient aulos (actually auloi as they were played in pairs), a double-reed instrument which also came in various sizes.  Besides having a good source for this story in the Homeric “Hymn to the Pythian Apollo”, there are also a number of ancient texts on the subject, including Pausanias’s Description of Greece (c. 160 C.E.), Strabo’s Geography, (c. 64 BCE – 27 CE) and the Onomastikon by Pollux of Naucratis (c. 150-200 CE).  I’ve translated the passage from Pollux as follows, with some explanatory notes in parentheses:

Concerning the five of the Pythian contest:

The aulos-type Pythikos nomos is divided into five parts:  peira (to attempt by way of test or trial), katakeleusmos (a summons or challenge), iambikon (a fight), spondeion (processional music used at libations to honour a god, and at the signing of treaties), and katachoreusis (a dance of victory).  The nomos re-enacts the battle between Apollo and the dragon.  In the peira Apollo surveys the place to see if it is worthy of such a battle.  Then in the katakeleusmos he calls out to the dragon.  And in the iambikon they fight.  The iambikon includes both salpinx-like (trumpet-like) notes struck with great force, and the “tooth” technique used to represent the dragon grinding its teeth after it has been shot with arrows.  The spondeion exhibits the victory of the god, and in the katachoreusis the god dances the “epinikia” (a dance upon the defeated one).

The music I’ve composed for my interpretation of the Pythikos nomos comes from what I could glean from these texts.  Some interesting ancient Greek musical features I’ve used here include:

 a) rhythms from ancient Greek metres, such as the dactylic (— ˘ ˘), the iambic (˘ —), the spondaic (— —) and the paeonic (— ˘ ˘ ˘, or other combinations of  five beats);

b) the Greek tetrachord: three genera of pitches encompassed within the perfect fourth: the diatonic; the chromatic and the enharmonic.  The pyknon (or “crushed” intervals at the bottom of the tetrachord) in the diatonic genus simply consisted of a semitone followed by a wholetone (like the bottom half of our phrygian mode), in the chromatic it had consisted of two semitones, and in the enharmonic genus two quartertones!

c) a number of extended instrumental techniques (which the ancient players probably used!) such as multiphonics (or chords on a wind instrument), quartertones (requiring special fingerings), bending notes, and breathing through the instrument;

d) quotation of an actual piece of ancient Greek music—the most famous one, the Delphic Hymn, by Athenaeus.  In 1893, during the excavations of Delphi in which the entire modern town was moved to a new site and the original sanctuary was uncovered, the French Archaeological team found two hymns or paeans to Apollo on the outer wall of the Treasury of Athens.  Inscribed in 127 BCE during a pilgrimage of artists from Athens, these are comparatively extensive pieces (the “Beethoven Symphonies of Ancient Greek music”!), one set in vocal, the other in instrumental notation.  Although the stones are somewhat broken, the compositions are almost complete, and give us a good idea of what Hellenistic music sounded like.

Free Flight, my concerto for cello and orchestra, was commissioned by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra with the financial assistance of the Canada Council.  Created in celebration of the Orchestra’s 25th anniversary, Free Flight was written for cellist Alexander Baillie, conductor Simon Streatfeild and the musicians of the MCO, and I dedicated the work to these dear friends.

The transcendence of reality is a common enough theme in Greek mythology and one which I find musically appealing in its parallel to my personal treatment of the transformation of musical ideas.  As with a number of my recent works, Free Flight is inspired by the world of ancient Greece and reflects my current preoccupation with the techniques of the music of that time.  Hence, one will find an abundant use of the tetrachord scale fragment with its pyknon emphasizing small chromatic and quarter-tone collections, as well as Greek metres such as the iambic, dactylic and paeonic.

In this concerto for cello, the soloist narrates a version of the Daedalus and Icarus myth in a world without words.  The classical three-movement concerto design is subjected to a programmatic treatment, with the first two movements being character sketches of the wily (and somewhat sinister) inventor Daedalus, and his reckless son, Icarus.  In the well-known myth, Daedalus, banished from Athens for the jealous murder of his brilliant student Talos, lives exiled in Crete creating wonderful things for King Minos (including the Labyrinth at Knossos).  In attempting to depart, however, Daedalus is imprisoned by Minos who is unwilling to part with such a rare treasure.  Not to be restrained, Daedalus makes wings of feathers and wax for himself and Icarus to fly free from the palace walls.  Despite the warning to stay close to his father, Icarus tests the limits of his wings and soars upward.  As the story goes, he flies too close to the sun, his wings fall apart as the wax melts, and he plunges into the blue sea.

In my version of the myth, the rashness of the youth’s behaviour does not result in his death by drowning, but rather by heart failure as he races upward into the deepening blue sky.  In the last movement, “Events in Rarefied Air”, I see the adolescent bucking authority, impetuously disregarding his father’s warning, and soaring higher and higher to the limits of experience.  He becomes giddy and effervescent, intoxicated by the gradual deprivation of oxygen, and then suddenly expires at the apex of his experience!

I’ve always been moved by the tragic story of Icarus, who tried to escape from the imprisonment in Crete which he and his father, the clever inventor Daedalus, suffered at the hands of King Minos.  Of course, the wings of feathers and wax which Daedalus designed for them did, in fact, work—Daedalus himself arrived safely on the island of Ikaria in the Sporades and then flew on to Sicily to complete his escape.  But his young son Icarus, after hours of flying carefully by his father’s side, was suddenly seized by an impetuous curiosity and boldly soared into the upper reaches.  As the story goes, the blazing sun softened the wax binding his feathers and alas, the poor lad plummeted into the unforgiving sea.  In this single movement for cello and piano, I’ve tried to capture something of the lyrical pathos of this tale, and at the same time a sense of soaring through the air, as though suspended high above the blue Aegean.  Icarus is dedicated to Alexander Baillie and Marc-André Hamelin and is, in fact, a fragment of my cello concerto, Free Flight, which Mr Baillie premiered with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in 1997.

Notes will be forthcoming.

The Great Square of Pegasus was commissioned by Société Radio-Canada/CBC as the imposed test piece for the 1997 CBC/SRC Young Performers Competition for strings.  As the problems involved in writing one piece for four different instruments are numerous, I chose instead to compose four unique pieces, each of which would be ideally suited to its instrument.  Even though the four are all interconnected motivically and structurally, each is thoroughly idiomatic—indeed, each is a work of virtuosic display complete in and of itself.

After much reflection, I settled on the idea of combining my love of composing with my interests in Greek mythology and amateur astronomy.  My many late night outings last summer burned in my memory the constellation Pegasus, the most prominent part of which is the “Great Square” with its four bright stars easily perceived as corners.  For my composition, each instrument’s piece takes the name of one of the stars of this square:  “Markab” for violin, “Algenib” for viola, “Alpheratz” for cello and “Scheat” for double bass.

Each piece takes us on a ride through the Pegasus myth starting with his birth from the decapitated body of the Medusa just after she was slain by Perseus, followed by his stamping open the Hippocrene Spring atop Mount Helicon, sacred to the Muses.  It is said that all who drank from this spring were bestowed with the gift of song.  In the next section the hero Bellerophon captures Pegasus with a magic bridle.  Tamed, the winged Pegasus takes Bellerophon aloft and they soon battle and defeat the fire-breathing Chimera.  Overweening confidence, however, leads Bellerophon to attempt a flight to Olympus to sit among the gods. The venture soon ends in disaster as Pegasus, sensing his rider’s hubris, rears and throws him.  Pegasus then enters Olympus alone and Zeus takes him as his thunderbolt carrier and immortalizes him as a constellation.

In The Great Square of Pegasus I explore ancient Greek compositional techniques such as tetrachords with semitonal and quartertonal pyknons, both irregular and regular poetic metres and ancient melodic patterns in the context of my own musical language.  There’s also a special relationship among these pieces which was an added challenge I imposed upon myself—for composing is also an exercise in problem-solving!  Although these “stars” are separate entities in the night sky, they also mean something to us as a group.  Hence I decided at the outset to compose all four solos so that they could be played together as a quartet (albeit a busy one!), with the obvious inclusion of a few rests in the parts.  Gestures and motives heard individually in the solos take on new meaning in the quartet version with such things as close imitations moving through the points of the “square” and special harmonic and textural effects which lend added dimensionality.

 The story of Pegasus became a favourite theme in Greek art and literature and in late antiquity the horse’s soaring flight became an allegory for the soul’s immortality.  It is now regarded as a symbol of poetic inspiration and I hope that my musical poem will both challenge and inspire performers and audiences alike.

The original version of my “Phoenix” sonata, commissioned by David Stewart with the generous financial assistance of the Canada Council, was premiered by Mr Stewart in Bergen, Norway on August 15, 1997.  The revised edition, expanded to include a sizable bipartite slow/fast movement, was premiered by Nancy Dahn and Timothy Steeves in St. John’s on July 8, 2002 at the Sound Symposium new music festival.

 From ancient Egypt, through Herodotos, Milton to the present day, the phoenix has been the symbol of rebirth.  In my composition I set out to explore that idea as applied to a theme which is constantly changing, but always recognizable.  Although the opening fantasy, built on successive variations on the violin’s initial solo phrase, is seemingly free in form, it is actually a tightly-knit construction of a simple handful of motives, where the principal theme repeatedly disappears and returns in a renewed guise.  Contrasting with the fluid, fioratura-type gestures of the opening movement, the following adagio is a simple cantalina based on the second principal theme of the work, a four-note motive of interlocking thirds first stated and explored in the opening movement.  The adagio gains momentum and power and finally blazes directly into the presto finale.  Here there is a new rhythmic twist on that same four-note theme, and a gradual expansion of the work’s primary theme, the angular melody from the work’s opening which now, transformed and radiant, rises to dizzying new heights–as the Phoenix returns and soars from the ashes.

The Winds of Thera, written in 1997 for accordionist Joseph Petric with the generous financial assistance of the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, is scored for accordion and string quartet and is one of the best-known of my Greek-inspired compositions.

In one of his calmer moods, the mythical Triton once gave the Argonauts a clump of earth which when dropped into the sea grew into the island of Thera, now known as Santorini. In this work I try to evoke the music of the wind as it inspired me when I last visited Santorini in 1995. Stimulated by the wonderful sounds of the accordion, I’ve based the movements of this piece on various exotic wind instruments, each of which has an associated myth.

The first, Rhombos, is also known as the bullroarer. It was an ancient instrument which produced a whistling sound as the player whirled an object at the end of a rope.  Although it was employed in the cults of Dionysus and Cybele and was thought to possess magical properties,  it was also favoured as a toy for children.

The second movement refers to the daughter of Pan and Echo, Iynx, who was transformed into the wryneck bird by Hera.  Besides its use in love-charms, the wryneck also gives its name to the ancient traverse flute, the plagiaulos, whose soft, wind-like sound imitates the voice of this bird.

The final movement, The Conch of Triton, evokes the mighty blast of the conch. Triton, that unpredictable merman, was a master of conch-shell trumpeting who would invoke the awesome powers of the sea at the slightess provocation.  He was apt to be jealous and very dangerous if he lost his temper.  The wildness of his conch calls was often identified with the howl of the wind on a stormy night near the sea.

The Pleiades, also known as the “Seven Sisters”, is a tiny constellation prominent in the winter skies of the northern hemisphere.  As an amateur astronomer I first viewed this beautiful galactic cluster in late autumn a few years ago, and immediately knew that there was a piece of music in it.  A perfect opportunity to realize this inspiration arose when the Trio Lyra, with generous financial assistance provided by the Laidlaw Foundation, commissioned me to compose a work for the scintillating combination of flute, viola and harp.

The formal design of the Pleiades Variations is demarcated by seven sections, each of which is a variation on a simple seven-note theme of ascending fourths.  The treatment of the theme is organic, with the material taking on the qualities needed for the mood of each section.  Each variation is named after something relating to the folklore surrounding the Pleiades and the variations are placed in three groups to form distinct movements. 

The first variation, “Heliacal Rising”, evokes the mysterious mood of the constellation’s appearance near dawn.  This first rising in spring has marked since ancient times the opening of the sea-faring and farming seasons in the Mediterranean world (the Greek word ‘pleio’ means “to sail”, hence ‘pleiades’).  This ‘variation’ contains the first statement of the theme (in harmonics in the viola and harp) and is paired with “To the Ships”, a section which moves forward with the anticipation of adventure. 

The second movement consists of the next three variations, each of which is a character sketch of the better known of the sisters.  In “Merope”, which features solo flute, this sad daughter of Atlas and Pleione was shamed for loving a mortal.  The middle variation, “Maia” features solo harp and reflects the contentment of the happy mother of Hermes.  Solo viola closes the movement with the sorry lament of “Elektra”, who from her lofty perch watched in dismay the destruction of Troy, the city founded by her son, Dardanus. 

The finale is made up of two fast variations.  The first of these, “Orion in Pursuit” pictures the lusty Boeotian hunter bounding across the night sky, his giant feet stomping as he chases the unattainable sisters.  This leads directly into the final variation, “Harvest Time: Heliacal setting”.  The morning setting of the Pleiades in autumn signified the season’s end for sailing and the time for gathering the fruits of the earth.  This is a dance of the harvest celebration, the revelries continuing as the Pleiades flee towards the approaching dawn.

I dedicate this work to my friends Suzanne Shulman, Mark Childs and Erica Goodman.

Triangulum is a concerto grosso written for I Musici de Montréal, commissioned by the Orford Arts Centre with the generous assistance of the Canada Council.  Whereas a concerto grosso typically has the same group of soloists as a concertino pitted against a larger group of players, or ripieno, my composition features various trios of soloists drawn from the whole ensemble.  At each solo trio statement there is a different triangular formation which we can hear spatially and by timbre, and notice visually.

This idea was inspired by the constellation Triangulum which the ancients considered to have been arranged as a delta shape to honour Zeus, as delta is the first letter of the genitive form of his name.  Ps-Eratosthenes in the third century B.C. writes in his Constellations that Hermes placed this rather bright constellation above the fainter Aries the Ram which ancient Greek mythology has immortalized as the original owner of the golden fleece.  This magical beast saved Phrixos and Helle, children of the cloud-fairy Nephele, from being  sacrificed by spiriting them off across the sea.  Although Helle fell off at the point which was thereafter named the Hellespont, Phrixos arrived safely and promptly sacrificed the ram to Zeus.

 In my composition I try to capture the spirit of these things on various levels.  Circlot, in his Dictionary of Symbols writes that, “In the geometrical symbolism of the cosmos, all circular forms relate to the sky or heaven, all squares to earth and all triangles to fire and the urge towards ascension inherent in human nature.  Hence the triangle symbolizes the communication between heaven and earth.”  Empyrean, the first movement of Triangulum, describes the highest heaven, the sphere of fire in ancient cosmology, the abode of God.  As well, triangular is the shape of the three-cornered contest or treaty between the members of the ever-changing trio.  This is followed by the Hymn to the Deltaic God, a simple song of praise to the once omnipotent Zeus.  Prominent in this movement is the use of quarter tones and the perfect fourth, both fundamental elements in the enharmonic tetrachord of ancient Greek music.  The finale, The Flight of the Golden Ram, describes the dramatic flight of Phrixos and Helle, with all the swooping and exhilaration such a voyage would bring!

The Eleusinian Mysteries, for solo harp and gamelan, is a concertante-type work which celebrates one of the most significant religious rituals of antiquity.  Based on the universal cycle of regeneration as recounted by analogy in the myth of Demeter and Persephone, the mysteries at Eleusis attracted initiates from all over Greece (and later the Roman Empire) to take part in a secret cult which claimed to remove the terror of death with the guarantee of a happy afterlife.

Although practice of these mysteries, along with that of all other pagan religions, was finally prohibited by the Christian Roman emperor Theodosius in 393 AD, and the temple at Eleusis was destroyed three years later by Alaric the Visigoth, the cult had experienced a successful existence of almost 2000 years prior to thse events with excavated artifacts from the site dating back to Mycenaean times.  The earliest written testimony is contained in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter of c. 600 BC which relates the story of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, her mother Demeter’s fruitless search for her, and their subsequent happy reunion.  It is easy to understand the general appeal of this agricultural faith, with its simple explanation of the transition from winter to spring, of want to plenty, and of death to rebirth.

Celebrated in the autumn month of Boedromion, at the time of sowing, the main purpose of the Eleusinian festival was to introduce to the rites new members, or “mystics”, as the initiates were called (the Greek work “mustes’ means those initiated into a secret cult).  The participants first bathed in the sea for purification, then each sacrificed a piglet.  Following this the sacred (and secret) objects kept in the Eleusinion above the agora in Athens were returned to Eleusis in a great public procession of initiates along the Sacred Way.  Upon arrival at Eleusis (a 20 km walk from Athens!), the initiates, gathered in the Telesterion, or Hall of Initiation, experienced over the next few days a number of preparations for the climax of initiation, the Dromena.  This was a torch-lit reenactment of the Demeter-Persephone myth, interspersed with “Legomena” or invocations and culminating at the return of Persephone with the Deiknymena, or the showing of the sacred objects in a sudden pool of bright light.  Great rejoicing and dancing followed as everyone threw their torches into the air.

My composition consists of three movements which highlight the three main events of the festival:  Rites of Purification, Along the Sacred Way, and Dromena.  Although the gamelan is of Indonesian origin, I feel that it gives a ritualistic quality to the work which I highlight through use of the modes and rhythm patterns found in ancient Greek music.  The harp soloist is the mystic Hierophant, or high priest, spinning an intricate web of sound as she reveals the musical spirit of these secret eternal mysteries.

 This work is dedicated to Erica Goodman, Blair MacKay and the Evergreen Club.  May this life and the next be good for them.

My second concerto grosso, Hermes of the Stars, was written for the strings of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and commissioned by the CBC.  Inspired by that great master of the form, Handel, the work exhibits certain Baroque gestures within the context of a late twentieth-century harmonic palette.  The five soloists are the principal players of each section who, remaining in their usual places, emerge individually, in small groups and more frequently as a quintet as the work progresses.

The title, Hermes of the Stars, refers to my ongoing interest in ancient Greek culture, but whereas in my first concerto grosso, Triangulum, I employed archaic techniques involving quarter-tones, the present work features melody inspired by ancient models, organically developed using modern techniques.  The two movements of the work also express aspects of the persona of Hermes.  The first movement, “Quicksilver”, is mercurial in its many changes of tempo and mood.  Mercury (as Hermes was later named by the Romans) had the quickest movements of all the known planets.  It appears only near dusk and dawn, in the space between earth and sky, because its orbit is inside ours.  When the planet would disappear beyond the horizon, the ancients believed that Hermes had donned the Cap of Hades, which by conferring invisibility allowed him to escort souls to the Underworld.  Hermes is an unpredictable, shadowy figure, never too far from the border separating Heaven and the Underworld.  In the seventh-century BC Homeric Hymn to Hermes, he is depicted as a precocious child, adept as a robber and night prowler, skilled as a musician and inventor, yet erratic as an agent of dreams.

 Because Hermes was so fleet and mobile, and could easily slip past the checkpoints that marked the realms of the gods and spirits and the world of mortals, the Greeks assigned to him the heraldic qualities of the Assyrian god Nabû.  Thus, the second movement, “The Messenger of the Gods”, begins with a slow, ceremonial procession celebrating his being made the herald of Zeus, where libations are offered accompanied to the music of a spondeion.  This is followed immediately by a rapid finale in the form of a “cunning” thematic fugue, grand in the Handelian sense, yet exhibiting the same clever, geometric quality which led Zeus to give Hermes the task of arranging the stars in the heavens.  In the third-century BC treatise Katasterismi (The Constellations), Eratosthenes says that, “The fifth wanderer [planet] is the “star” of Hermes, “Stilbon” [shining one], small and bright.  It was given to Hermes because he ordained the arrangement of the heavens, the positions of the stars, the calculation of the seasons and the appearance of weather signs.”

In Book VI of The Odyssey, Homer describes the Phaiacians who dwelled on a remote island near the ends of the earth, protected by the storm-tossed sea from marauding invaders, and seldom visited by ships of commerce or other travelers.  Great-hearted Alkinoös, the king of this blessed land, was a loving father to his five sons and his one daughter, Nausikáa of the white arms, and could refuse her nothing.  So, upon receiving a nocturnal visit from Odysseus’ protector, the goddess Athena, who had told her to go to wash her clothes, Nausikáa went to her father at dawn and begged him to allow her to gather the family garments and take them to the river to launder.  He granted her per­mis­sion, ordering the servants to ready a wagon with large wheels and a canopy, so that she might ride in comfort.  For Nausikáa was now a young woman, and soon the young noblemen would be coming to seek her hand in marriage, especially as she had blossomed into a beautiful and charming young lady, and it was only fitting that her raiment be sparkling clean.

Nausikáa and her handmaidens laundered the clothes in the river near its mouth, and then played ball and sang songs while the shining garments were laid to dry in the sun.  One of the servants accidentally sent the ball into a strong eddy and screamed, rousing a strange man who had been washed ashore, hidden among the reeds.  He was bearded and heavily caked with sea salt.  The girls were frightened and ran a distance away.  Nausikáa, however, held her ground and spoke to the stranger, asking him who he was and how he came to be there.  The man, who was none other than the long-suffering Odysseus, requested a rag with which to cover his nakedness and to be informed as to where he was and how he could find his way to the city.  He spoke with flowery words and in her heart she knew that this was no ordinary mortal.  As he bathed in the river and washed himself clean of the rime which clung to his broad shoulders and chest, then anointed himself richly with the olive oil she had provided and clothed himself in the garments that were laid out for him, she began to see him with different eyes.  For as he dressed, Athena made Odysseus appear younger and more hand­some, emphasizing his fine head of curly hair, his noble features and bearing, and his well-muscled physique.  He seemed to shine with beauty and grace.  And the young princess confided to her maid-servant that despite his first appear­ance as a wretched castaway, Odysseus now seemed god-like and regal, and that she would be happy indeed if such a one as he were to remain in that land and make her his wife.

Nausikáa is a one-movement work in which the violinist acts as bard, describing in music the awakening of passion as Alkinöos’ daughter watches the transformation of a poor wretch into a great hero.  She alternates between breathless fear and curiosity before her regal training finally enables her to take command as she becomes the gracious hostess to a noble stranger whose charm and beauty have proven to her his worth and eligibility.  The work divides into several contrasting sections, opening with the gentle rocking of the sea as Odysseus awakens, followed by fantasy-like scenes inspired by Athena’s influence, the maidens playing ball, the appearance of a frightening stranger, and the rising swell of infatua­tion as Nausikáa notices Odysseus’ increasingly god-like beauty.  The work ends with the gentle mood of the sea as she leads him off to the city.

 This work is dedicated to the brilliant violinist Jasper Wood who commissioned it with the generous financial assistance of the New Brunswick Arts Council.

My third quartet was commissioned by the Amati Quartet with the generous assistance of the Canada Council, and is dedicated to these wonderful musicians.  The two-movement design reflects my ongoing interest in experimenting with multi-movement structure, where in this case I could reflect fractally the large-scale bipartite design in the smaller sections.  Thus the first movement is binary in concept, with a first half consisting of short passages alternating in slow and fast tempi.  This is connected, by means of a sustained note, to the expansive, faster half of the movement where I develop motives from the previous fast passages.  After a short pause the second movement begins slowly and builds in breadth, serving as the classic “slow movement” of the work.  This moves without a pause, however, again by means of a sustained note, directly into the fastest and final section of the work.  Here the dotted rhythm from the end of the slow section is developed, as well as the sostenuto theme from the second half of the first movement. 

The subtitle, “The Delphinian”, refers to the inspirational influence of the constellation Delphinus, the dolphin.  The opening slow sections, rendered completely in natural harmonics like points of light, set the scene for the work by lending an image of the starry firmament reflected on the shining sea.   As Delphinus lies east of Aquila, on the edge of the Milky Way, the ancient Greeks believed that it occupied that part of the night sky which they called “The Water”.  They called Delphinus “Hieros Ichthus” or Sacred Fish, as it played an important religious role as a symbol of beneficence in many of their myths.  Later, Cicero named the constellation Curvus, appropriately pointing out the accepted form of the animal.  In my quartet the curved contour of the cello’s opening motive in the first fast passage of the opening movement exposes the first of many instances of this shape to be found throughout the work.  As well, I’ve made several references to the number nine in the piece as the third-century B.C. astronomer Eratosthenes, and later Ovid, wrote that Delphinus consisted of nine stars.  I provide a structural example of this through the nine short sections of the first half of the first movement.  More immediately recognizable is the recitativo-like, nine-note motive first presented in the viola at the più mosso of the second movement and then subsequently developed.

As both Eratosthenes and Ovid believed that the nine stars represented the nine muses, the philanthropic Delphinus also became known as the lover of music.  Although I don’t make use of any “dolphin-song” in this piece, I hope that the ethos of the work will bring the noble character of Delphinus to life.

The Double Concerto, Op. 51, for violin, piano and orchestra, was commissioned by Nancy Dahn and Timothy Steeves of the Duo Concertante, with the generous financial assistance of the Canada Council, for a series of premieres to take place during the year 2000 concert season.  I designed the work to display the virtuosic talents of this wonderful duo within a symphonic context of shifting textures, where the main musical ideas gradually evolve, taking on new characteristics.  The featured duo is joined by a variety of other instruments to create a multitude of chamber music combinations, set in relief against the orchestral tutti.  The many solo and duo cadenza passages, however, make it clear who the true soloists are!  Set in one large movement with three main sections separated by cadenzas, the work takes on a fantasy-like character, though the traditional concerto form is just beneath the surface.

Prophecy from 47 Ursae Majoris, commissioned by Arthur Campbell with the  financial support of the Yamaha Corporation, was completed in February, 2000.  Inspired by the recent discovery of new planets outside of our own solar system, the work is an attempt to capture the contents of a possible message received by our radio telescopes—a message sent in the universal language of music.

47 Ursae Majoris is a star like our sun, 46 light-years distant at declination 40.4˚, 10h59m right ascension in the constellation Ursae Majoris (“Great Bear”, also known as “The Big Dipper”).  Although the planet orbitting this star is a gas giant two and a half times as large as Jupiter, and thus not able to support life itself, it is possible that any of its as yet undetected moons could.  Its orbit of 1.7 astronomical units puts it within the “habitable zone” of its sun, and if Jupiter’s large moons are typical of gas giants throughout our galaxy, then the planet of 47 UMa may have several worlds orbitting it which could support intelligent life.

 This piece is a musical fantasy on the principle of non-verbal communication where concepts are revealed through the interrelationships among frequencies, rhythms and the elements of formal design—ideas which could perhaps be understood by like-minded beings, 46 years after the message was sent!  The prophecy? The message itself would be a prophecy of our own destiny.

The Dream of Amphíon was commissioned for the 2000 Esther Honens Calgary International Piano Competition, and was written to celebrate the theme of “The Complete Artist”.  Its title is derived from the Greek myth of Amphíon, a musician who was the twin brother of the stout warrior Zethus and son of the ill-fated Antiope and Zeus.  After rescuing their kidnapped mother and punishing her captors, the brothers became joint rulers of Thebes and together built the massive outer walls.  Zethus often teased Amphíon about his passion for music, which he played upon a lyre which Hermes had bestowed upon him.  “It diverts your mind,” he would say, “from useful purposes!”  But when it came time to move the huge Cyclopean stones, Zethus strained under the fatiguing work, while Amphíon simply imagined the finished structure in a dream.  As he charmed the stones with the ethereal tones of his lyre, they suddenly began to stir and then lifted off the ground and gently slid into place on the wall.

 Like the original city of Thebes built by the mythical Cadmus, my composition is thoroughly worked out in all its lyrical and bravura sections, its recurring chromatic theme, and the rotation of hexachords in a magical spiral.  However, towards the end of the work, I’ve left some “unturned stones”, or fragmented bits of the piece for the Amphíon-like performer to magically conjure into place, first improvising with the left hand, then with the right, then with both hands improvising simultaneously with different materials.  Like the great musical competitions at ancient Delphi in which competitors were called upon to improvise on a given theme, the spontaneous imaginings of the soloist provides a unique climax to my musical architecture.

Through the Asklepion was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the Gryphon Trio to premiere at the 2000 Ottawa Chamber Music Festival.  Inspired by visits to the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidavros in Greece where I lived for three and-a-half months in 1999, the work’s four movements are musical impressions of the remains of several of the ancient structures there.

The son of Apollo and the mortal Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas, Asklepios was trained in the art of medicine by the centaur Chiron.  After many years of healing the sick, his fame grew widespread.  One day, however, in response to a request by Artemis, he restored to life her favourite Hippolytus, and Zeus, angered by this violation of the laws of nature, struck him down with a thunder bolt.  Buried deep in the earth by the blow, the immortal Asklepios continued to assist mankind.  A prehistoric religion branching from the worship of Apollo, the cult of Asklepios became very popular and, by mid-sixth-century BC, had spread throughout the ancient world with important sanctuaries in Athens, Kos and Rome in addition to the original one at Epidavros.  Both natural and magical healing techniques were practised at these sites—even the famous Hippocrates of Kos claimed authority from Asklepios, who was generally represented as a bearded figure leaning on an augur’s wand accompanied by a magic serpent.  These elements later came to be included in the caduceus, the doctor’s emblem.

At Epidavros there are many wonderful ancient remains—most notably the fourth-century BC theatre which can accommodate 14,000 spectators, and is still in use today.  For my piece I chose to write movements inspired by four of the magical structures there.  The first, called “Propylaea”, is a portrait of the Gateway to the Temples, a structure once massive and ornate, and now lies as a pile of rubble.  It was approached via the Sacred Way from the town of Epidavros, and opened onto the holy grounds where the ancient pilgrims would seek the cures given by the god of healing.

The second movement is a musical depiction of the Ábaton, a sacred dormitory where patients, after making a sacrifice to the gods and performing a ritual purification, would spend the night.  Sleeping on the skins of the animals offered in propitiation, the patients might be cured immediately or Asklepios might appear to them in dreams which the priests would later translate into a treatment.

The third movement, “Tholos”, is inspired by the rotunda built by Polykleitos (c. 360-320 BC).  This was perhaps the most elaborate structure in all of ancient Greece with richly ornamented Corinthian columns and a complex underground chamber made up of concentric passages.  It is believed that this maze could have been Asklepios’ tomb, a pen for sacred serpents, or a ritual labyrinth in which patients would wander seeking a cure.  Its underground passages must surely be associated with the underworld life of the god of Epidavros—indeed the Tholos is the centre of the mystical chthonic cult of Asklepios.

 This movement flows directly into the fourth and last, “The Temple of Asklepios”, which was a Doric temple designed by the architect Theodotos (4th-century BC). It contained a gold and ivory statue of the god seated on a throne, a baton in his right hand, and his left resting on the head of a serpent.  The main subject matter in the Allegro is an actual piece of ancient Greek music, a fragment of a hymn to Asklepios inscribed in the third century AD (but probably much older), found near the temple.  In addition to this, snake-like quarter-tone intervals and ancient Greek modes and rhythms lend an exotic quality throughout the work as I conflate the ancient with the new, evoking the mystical spirit of that old place.

Completed in 2001, On the Wine-Dark Sea, my third sonata for violin and piano, was commissioned by Jasper Wood with the generous financial assistance of the Canada Council.  As with my first two sonatas, Emerald Mirrors and The Phoenix, On the Wine-Dark Sea exhibits considerable virtuosity in the manner of a duo concertante.

 Inspired by my sojourn by the Aegean Sea in 1999, the work plays out a pelagic drama in an expansive four-movement design.  The first of these, “Thalassios”, meaning “On and of the Sea”, sets the tone in a fluid exposition of both the primary and secondary thematic materials.  These are treated like Homeric epithets, or adjectival phrases, which recur in various forms throughout the work, recalling memories of the opening thalassic associations.  This is followed by “Reflections on the Waves”, a spacious slow movement set in a five-part arch form which begins with a cadenza for each instrument.  An interesting feature is the melodic inversion of phrases in the opening section, a procedure also encountered in the first movement.  “Dolphin Games” functions as a spirited contrast to the preceding.  Based on the secondary theme of the first movement, this playful scherzo and trio is treated in the manner of a children’s game, with excited chattering dialogue and sudden outbursts.  The final movement, “Ketos”, awakens from the depths the world of the sea monster.  Commencing with cadenzas of grandiose gesture, this colossal movement outweighs each of the previous ones.  Developing earlier materials in a cyclic fashion, the movement features fugato with subject inversion and stretto in the manner of mensuration canons.  Melodies with quarter-tone inflections and tetrachordal scale partitions recall the music of ancient Greece and its sea-faring people.

Much of the poetry of Ralph Gustafson evokes the sights and sounds of his beloved Eastern Townships.  Taken from his cycle Twelve Landscapes (1987), the poems in MacDonald’s Gustafson Landscapes describe places as far away as Egypt, Italy and Thailand, yet always return to North Hatley where we find the poet mowing his lawn, gazing out his kitchen window, or taking a walk at sunset alongside Lake Massawippi. 

These songs were first performed in Bandeen Hall at Bishop’s University by the composer and soprano Eleanor Gang, to whom they are dedicated.

Few know it, but Euripides was an avant-garde composer, whose use of quarter-tones and rapid modulations in his music was strongly criticized in his day—by the likes of Aristophanes, no less!  Writing both the poetry and music for his tragedies, as did his contemporaries, Euripides had great control over the final product which was first performed in festival competitions.  The singers were accompanied by a single musician playing the aulos, a double-reed wind instrument related to the modern-day oboe.  Although we only have some tantalizing fragments of Euripides’ music, we do have a number of ancient treatises on compositional techniques and some complete pieces by Athenaeus, Limenius and other ancient Greek composers.

 I’ve written music for Euripides’ Andromache inspired by the ancient Greek repertoire and their compositional techniques, especially the use of the “chromatic” genus of the tetrachord with semitones crushed at the bottom of its pyknon.  This, the many “modulations of the tetrachord” and the abundant use of the fourth give the music much of its “ancient Greek” quality, while my own compositional language and electronic manipulations put the music firmly in the twenty-first century—lending some of that avant-garde aesthetic which Euripides sought.

Howard Brown (1920-2001) was a dear friend of mine whom I had the honour to know since my arrival in Lennoxville in 1987.  A wonderful musician, scholar and founder of the Music Department at Bishop’s, Howard was a great supporter of my work, and that of my colleagues and our students. 

Born in the village of Arkona, Ontario, Howard’s talent as a pianist quickly emerged as swept up gold medals at music festivals.  In 1943 he completed a B.A. (Hon. Mus.) at the University of Toronto and then served as Pte. Brown, contributing to the war effort mainly through concert-giving.  While featured occasionally as soloist, he often shared the spotlight with Margaret Bach:  “Piano Duo Delights in Concert for Troops”.  After the war he returned to Toronto to complete a Mus. Bach., and then proceeded to the Senior School of the Royal Conservatory to study with the Lubka Kolessa.  After his graduation in 1949, Howard was appointed to the Halifax Conservatory of Music, and the next year moved to Mount Allison, first as head of the Piano Department, and from 1953 to 1967 as Chairman of the Music Department.  His concert career reached a zenith early in this period when in specialized in the works of Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, Ravel, Mendelssohn and Debussy.  He worked extensively with soprano Audrey Farnell, playing with her before Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1951.  He performed concertos with the Halifax Symphonette, the Halifax Symphony, and the New Brunswick Symphony.  He also joined with Stanley Saunders and Rodney McLeod to form the Mount Allison University Trio.  In 1967 he arrived at Bishop’s to create the Department of Music, providing a focus for musical life in the area.

I wrote this piece to commemorate Howard by using his initials, H. B., as a pitch motive (B, Bb) throughout.  As well, there are many instances of sigh motives and some other-worldly passages featuring microtones.  I scored it for piano trio to honour his work in that medium.

After three years of studying how to read ancient Greek texts and music notation, I felt it was time to go to the source.  Early in 1999 I spent three and-a-half months in Kalithea, Greece, not far from the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidavros.  During my time there I studied inscriptions of ancient Greek music both at Epidavros and at Delphi and discussed this repertoire with Greek scholars and ethnomusicologists.  The lovely curves of that music, combined with the beautiful landscape, the food, the people and the loneliness of the ancient sites at that time of year made a profound impression on me.   Soon I composed a number of major works saturated with my form of “ancient Greekness”, including The Dream of Amphíon, op. 53 (2000), for solo piano, Through the Asklepion, op. 54 (2000), for violin, cello and piano, and  On the Wine-Dark Sea, op. 55 (2001), for violin and piano.

My fourth quartet, the Andrómache Suite, also stems from this inspiration.  Composed in 2002, it was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and is dedicated to the wonderful musicians of the Alcan Quartet—Stepan Arman, Nathalie Camus, Luc Beauchemin and David Ellis—who premiered the piece on September 20, 2002 in Bandeen Hall, in Lennoxville, Québec.

In the fall of 2001 I wrote incidental music and songs for the Bishop’s University production of Euripides’ Andrómache, directed by the multi-talented Jonathan Rittenhouse.  I was so inspired by this experience that I was impelled to write this quartet—a work with ancient Greek-like melodies, Greek rhythms and the micro-intervals of the Greek tetrachord’s pyknon.  The work is imbued with melodies on many different levels—local, large-scale and contrapuntally—a multitude of inter-related melodic fragments which all follow a master melodic line throughout the work.

Here are some of the meanings behind the quartet’s five movement titles:

1. Andrómache, the Queen-in-waiting of Troy, is now a war trophy, a concubine of Neoptolemus, and much despised by his wife Hermione, who is intent on killing her.
2. The Temple is a safe haven for Andrómache for the first part of the play, a sanctuary which Hermione tries to aggressively take her from, and finally does so by threatening Andrómache’s son, Molossus, with the aid of her evil father, Menalaus.
3. Passions refers to the root cause of this problematic situation—that is, Paris’ choosing Aphrodite to win the contest of the three beauties because she promised him the love of the beautiful Helen.
4. Ancient Blues brings the ancient together with the more recent—the pain of the unfortunate. The opening of Euripides’ fourth chorus says it all, “If I could not be raised in a cultured home with the means to live right and well, I’d rather not be born at all.”
5. In Thetis, the finale, the sea goddess makes her “deus ex machina” entrance, solving many of the human problems while bringing a magical, epic and larger-than-life quality to the work.  Sea imagery abounds in wave gestures and liquid melodies…

The Red Guru: Symphony No. 1 is perhaps my most challenging work of late. Three years in the making, this commission by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra brings to fruition many of the ideas explored in my recent compositions including the techniques and melodic patterns of ancient composers, microtuning inspired by the systems employed by various cultures of the world today, my “micro-melody” textures involving patterns found in folk and popular music around the globe, “spectral” sonorities achieved through parallel harmonies stacked at different interval series, and aleatoric passages. 

Inspired by the “The Red Guru,” a painting by one of Canada’s premiere artists, David Sorenson, the work deals with the bringing together of different cultures in the aftermath of 9/11. In David’s painting I see violent slashes of colour—our confused and contradictory world—and near the centre of this emerges the image of a peacefully seated guru. This is the simple model for my piece.

Part I, “Devastation and Grief,” is a multitude of textures made up of musical motives from cultures around the world which explodes in tumultuous confusion followed by despair, while in Part II, “Fear and Reconciliation,” anxious, unpredictable materials give way to a glorious passacaglia built on a simple prayer for peace. The texture becomes increasingly multitudinous as sections divide into individuals playing motives from this hymn and lullabies from many parts of the world. The work ends peacefully, as I hope will be the case for the many conflicts in the world today.

The Illuminations of Gutenberg, a duet for marimbas, was written for Catherine Meunier and premiered in October of 2003 in Lennoxville, Québec. Inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s book, The Gutenberg Galaxy, this composition is a musical response to the invention of the printing press and how it has accelerated both learning and technological advancement.  Starting with McLuhan’s credo regarding the great interconnectedness of everything, I decided to base the work on a composite of related ideas.  The following aphorisms in his Laws of Media: “The trick is to reorganize the pattern before it is complete”; and “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”, give rise in my piece to musical patterns which move both forward and backwards in a riot of both exploration and renewal.

 And then there is the image of the mechanical pounding of a printing press—both physically and as a source for the dissemination of public information—which is always present in the action of these percussion instruments.  And illuminations?  These were the beautiful images decorating letters in early books.  But words themselves illuminate the mind; and music the realm beyond words.

The Mechanics of Stardust was written for Ensemble Musica Nova and premiered by Pauline Farrugia, Etienne de Médicis and Vincent Parizeau on March 22, 2003.  Inspired by Nobel Prize laureate Christian de Duve’s book Vital Dust, this simple composition is a meditation on the idea that all life began with stardust.  Taking the number three as a starting point, mixing in ideas such as the three fundamental atomic particles with Pythagorean numerology and the Christian Trinity, I’ve broken down the sonic matter for this reed trio into three essential components (pure pitch: i.e. traditional notes; mixed pitch/noise: multiphonics; and noise: percussive key clicks) and reconstructed them into an organized living (and breathing!) composition.

 Mechanically speaking, the pitch materials can be reduced to a six-note motive which divides itself into two three-note subgroups and forms the foundation for all melodic and harmonic statements in the piece.  The overall structural design places these “building blocks” into phrases and sections of elegant cogency while they continually evolve through inversion, fragmentation and other developmental procedures.  The non-traditional pitch materials are also highly organized, though they are presented in a fashion suggesting fluid spontaneity.  The piece ends in the stars, little pinpricks of light dissolving into the ether…

Completed in 2003, Kassandra’s Tears was written for Jasper Wood and Audrey Andrist for their first recording together.  As with all the works presented on that CD, “The Great Square of Pegasus”, the world of ancient Greece figures strongly in both inspiration and technical approach.  The disc won both the East Coast Music Award for Classical Recording of the Year and the 2005 Canadian Independent Music Award for Favourite Classical Artist/Group

Kassandra was a beautiful Trojan prophetess who refused the advances of Apollo.  He thereupon cursed her so that she always foretold truly but would never be believed.  At the end of the Trojan War she was taken home as a trophy by Agamemnon, and then murdered by his jealous wife, Klytemnestra.  Kassandra was a tragically sad figure—caught in the desires of arrogant men; knowing full well the terrible fate in store for her people and ultimately herself; trying to warn them, but to no avail.

 In this single movement work, I try to capture that sadness in the opening through the use of microintervals in the violin and an ostinato played by muting the strings inside the piano.  It was said that when Kassandra prophesied, the frenzied utterance was “a nomos which is no nomos”—a song without order or limits.  I evoke this in the fast middle section of the work with wild gypsy-style violin gestures with rough open-string double-stops, and much off-the-string playing.  Throughout, the melodic and harmonic content is composed according to the techniques used by the ancient Greeks, emphasizing the perfect fourth of the tetrachord and the three genera of interval content for its pyknon:  semitone-tone; semitone-semitone; and quartertone-quartertone.

Notes will be forthcoming.

In Book X of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus and his men arrive at the mysterious island of Circe.  Scouting in the forest, Odysseus is surprised by a great stag, which he kills and brings back to his hungry crew.  His men then set out to explore further and come upon the house of Circe surrounded by lions and wolves standing on their hind legs and wagging their tails!  The goddess entices the men inside with her seductive melody and then turns them into pigs!  Odysseus goes looking for them and is met in the woods by Hermes, who gives him powerful drugs to protect himself against Circe’s magic. 

Thus armed, Odysseus confronts Circe and the magicians do battle.  Victorious, Odysseus accepts Circe’s invitation to her bed, making her promise not to “unman” him, and the goddess returns his men to their human form, now more attractive and youthful than before.  Living in a false paradise, the travelers remain on the island until Circe sees fit to let them depart.

In the symphonic poem Circe, written especially for the Orchestre symphonique de Sherbrooke, the musical mood of this episode is captured in various ways:  the snake-like chromaticism of the opening ostinato suggests the chthonic and erotic magic of the goddess; the massive gesture of the brass reflects the surprise of coming upon the great stag; Circe’s theme, derived from the ostinato, is introduced by the oboe and English horn, modern-day descendants of the ancient Greek aulos; and at the frenzied climax of the piece, the Circe and Odysseus themes are verticalized as chords and tossed back and forth between the different sections of the orchestra.

Tapestries, MacDonald’s op. 66, was written in 2004 and is a concerto for viola and string orchestra commissioned by Rivka Golani with the generous financial assistance of the Canada Council.  The title and formal design were inspired by the Greek myth of Arachne, the talented but overly proud weaver who dared to challenge the goddess Athena in a contest creating tapestries.  As told by Ovid, both works depicted stunning scenes of metamorphoses:  divine punishments for humans in Athena’s and deceptive disguises of treacherous gods in Arachne’s.  Wild with indignation at her rival’s flawless but hubristic work which displayed the shameful crimes of the gods, Athena tore it to pieces and transformed Arachne into a spider!

The composition Tapestries reflects this myth in many ways.  For example, the formal structure consists of interwoven sections in what MacDonald calls “concatenated form”.  Here alternating sections get slower and faster respectively:  A (slow), B (moderately fast), C (slower), D (very fast) and E (slowest), and are set in an interlocking fashion as four, three-part movements with cadenzas connecting the second and third, and third and fourth:  A B A1; B C B2; C1 D C2; and D1 E D2.  All the sections are played segue to create a single, large-scale structure.

 The work also exhibits microtones and the tetrachord of ancient Greek music, as well as clusters, extended techniques, improvisation, serial procedures, and the metamorphoses of themes.

Commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra with the generous financial assistance of the Canada Council, War Machine Blues, like my recent Symphony No.1: The Red Guru, is both a protest against the violence of war and a lament for the victims.  Inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s snare drum motive from his Vietnam War protest anthem Machine Gun, the piece evolves through militaristic multi-layered ostinati cumulating in a crazy, out-of-control machine music.  A variation on one of my twelve-bar blues pieces bursts into a disturbing amorphous dirge—think Hendrix feed-back solo—full of explosions, wails and sobs, followed by a quotation from The Soul of a Man by Delta blues artist Blind Willie Johnson, “I want someone to tell me, Answer if you can; I want someone to tell me, Justa what is the soul of a man?”

Notes will be forthcoming.

Notes will be forthcoming.

The Riff was written in 2005 for marimbist Catherine Meunier with generous financial assistance provided by the Ville de Sherbrooke.  Inspired by the riffs, or catchy instrumental phrases used by blues, jazz and rock musicians, this solo work is an exploration into the essence of the riff as a musical entity.  Based on the octave, as is the case with so many classic examples, fragments of the riff gradually emerge from the musical fabric, gradually asserting themselves into entire statements. These continue to develop as the piece gains in rhythmic intensity until it literally rips itself apart. 

Now where the heck has that darn riff gone?

Although there are several Elektra characters throughout Greek mythology, the title of this piece for solo harp refers to the daughter of Klytemnestra and Agamemnon of the House of Atreus. Passed down to us through the tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, Elektra’s story tells of how she and her brother Orestes avenge the murder of their father in accordance with a command from the Delphic oracle. Living a wretched life of physical privation and mental suffering, Elektra is bullied by her guilty mother and her lover Aegisthus on account of her constant mourning. Her brother secretly returns home and the two then carry out their ugly revenge. A sensitive issue of domestic violence, this story is treated differently by the ancients. Euripides, for example, places the issue of matricide within the context of everyday life with characters who experience deep emotional responses, whereas Sophocles keeps his characters aloof on the heroic mythological plane.

This musical work is an expression of the sadness, fear and anger found in this story, conveyed through the medium of the harp, the modern instrument closest in sound to the ancient kithara. Besides traditional approaches to sound production, the piece is also replete with extended techniques developed by Carlos Salzedo. Of notable mention would be the use of the tuning key as a slide to produce quarter tones in a quotation from Euripides’ Orestes, “I grieve, I grieve—Your mother’s blood that drives you wild!”

This composition is written for my dear friend Erica Goodman and is dedicated to her.

Primavera (after Botticelli) for oboe and accordion (2006), was especially written for Joseph Petric and Normand Forget to take on a concert tour in Nova Scotia in the summer of 2006.  Inspired by Botticelli’s c.1482 painting of the “First Spring”, this composition is a musical depiction of the allegorical figures as they appear from right to left in the painting as one enters the room where it hangs in the Uffizi gallery in Florence. Botticelli’s depiction of the myth—which has its origins in both Ovid’s Fasti and Lucretius’ De Rerum Nature—presents a union of love both sacred and profane.

 The work opens as Zephyr, the warm west wind, forces himself into the scene pursuing the nymph Chloris, fear in her eyes and flowers streaming from her mouth as she is transformed into the stately Flora, goddess of blossoming spring.  In the centre are Venus and Cupid, love and desire; serene, glowing and sensuous.  A state of stasis is created through the application of Henry Cowell’s theory of the rhythmic triad: four against five (major third) and two against three (perfect fifth).  This is followed by the three graces, Beauty, Chastity and Pleasure, as they dance a spirited roundel, or circle-dance.  Finally, calm Mercury brushes away the storm clouds with his caduceus and the work ends in contemplation.

Composed in 2006 for flutists Albert Brouwer and Stéphanie Moreau and pianist Allison Gagnon, Cathedral Ghosts is a single-movement work which deals with reflections, and was inspired by a visit to Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres a few years ago.  The work is replete with musical reflections such as canonic imitations, melodic mirror images, vertical mirror images in chord spacings and sympathetic vibrations caused by playing into non-dampened piano strings. 

Thematic material was developed from musical representations of composers’ names—Bach’s initials, letters from Debussy’s name—a tradition that started with Josquin’s soggetto cavato technique and continued by Bach himself in his Art of Fugue, as well as by Schumann, Liszt, Busoni, Berg and others. There are also instances of sub-tones created by playing two notes together at close intervals. These are organized into audible contrapuntal lines that seem to be played by an invisible performer!

The “sacred place” idea also figures in an allusion to Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie, as well as in plainchant from the Alleluia for St. Andrew’s Day—a ghostly image of ancient monks chanting in the ruins of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Fife, Scotland.

My second symphony was written for Stéphane Laforest and La Sinfonia de Lanaudière who performed the world premiere on July 15, 2007 at the Festival de Lanaudière in Joliette, Québec.

A symphony is a unique world composed of sounds. This work was created in response to recent catastrophic events and is filled with both sea imagery and pathos for the human condition. The first movement is a huge crescendo—the inevitable force of the surge. The second movement, a secret underwater domain, is set as a murky adagio filled with melancholic twists. The third is of innocence set in a scherzo-like play of the waves, while the fourth is a majestic passacaglia, powerful and impossible to prevent as it follows its unavoidable course.

My toccata and fugue for piano was commissioned by the CBC for the 75th anniversary of Glenn Gould’s birth. Knowing Gould’s appreciation of virtuosity within the context of a cohesive musical argument, and his admiration of 18th-century contrapuntal style, I endeavoured to create a work which the master himself might have enjoyed playing. The piece features the pitches extracted from Gould’s name (G-E-G-D) as a motto, first in the toccata as a motive which generates all the melodic and rhythmic material, and secondly as the head motive for the subject of the fugue. Composing a fugue today may seem rather unfashionable, but I attempted to breathe new life into the form, capturing the 18th-century spirit within my own musical language and putting in a few treats for those in the know!

Notes will be forthcoming.

Notes will be forthcoming.

Notes will be forthcoming.

I started composing Mary’s Wedding almost three years ago. I received a call from Timothy Vernon inviting me to write an opera for Pacific Opera Victoria and to think about a subject. Busy working away at another piece, I had barely enough time to consider his proposal before he called back asking me what I thought of Stephen Massicotte’s Mary’s Wedding. I told him that although I wasn’t familiar with it I was intrigued by his enthusiasm and that I’d like to see the script right away. I read the play over and over and just fell in love with Mary, Charlie and Flowers. Then a funny thing happened. Lines from the play suddenly popped into my head as tunes and the music just started flowing onto my page. Couldn’t stop it. I think maybe it was the simple, poetic nature of Stephen’s lines—the rhythms, the unforced quality of the sounds—that lent themselves so perfectly to my melodies. It was the ideas themselves, too. Sentiments which were worth setting to music.

It wasn’t the kind of story that I was at first considering for an opera, but I soon discovered that it was a perfect story for my musical imagination. I wanted something surreal where it would seem normal that people sing to each other. What better setting for that than Mary’s dream world? Often I’ve experienced dreams where all the inhabitants converse in song. Perfectly normal! A dream can be a chaotic place, too, but one in which profound things may come to the surface. Transforming this non-linear dream story into an opera was a challenging undertaking that couldn’t have been achieved without the remarkable vision of Michael Shamata who acted as dramaturge throughout the workshop process.

I decided on three distinct musical voices for the character triangle that Stephen had originally created with two actors. He had cleverly combined Mary and Flowers into the female lead and infused each with a similar affection for Charlie. I decided to explore this further by separating this dual role into a soprano and bass for reasons of musical variety and to connect them through shared musical material. What resulted were two distinct personalities who each care deeply for Charlie and make him more real in the process. All three sing real arias—I think some of the tunes may stick with you. Remember the words, too. They’re important. I also wanted to expand the vocal forces so as to include a chorus that would function as characters that are mentioned in the play, but could now have a voice. So the townspeople, workmen, mothers and children, tea party guests and, of course, the soldiers all come to life through the chorus, which also functions omnisciently as in Greek tragedy.

The arias, duets and choral numbers are embedded in a large-scale musical landscape divided into two acts. Both acts are formed of continuous music where one scene leads directly into the next, similar to the dream-like way the play itself unfolds. Although many musical themes wind their way through the opera, it is the love theme, a never-ending pentatonic melody rising through all the keys, that predominates. Occurring at a number of key moments, it also forms the foundation for a set of variations that accompany the dream wedding processional that concludes the work.

Although Mary’s Wedding is a tale of love and war, it is also about dealing with sadness. Coping with grief through acceptance, a theme of my first symphony, The Red Guru, is also what makes Stephen’s story so important. Mary cannot rest from her recurrent dream until she accepts that Charlie is dead. She must do this if she is to move on and marry someone else. Only then will the words “Wake up, Mary, wake up” have their true meaning.

Many workshops later and after many long hours at my desk you have the opera before you. Thanks to all who have contributed to make this a reality—Stephen, Timothy, Michael, Ian, Jackie, David, Patrick, Robert, Teresa, Kim, Giuseppe, Sandy and all the singers who participated in the workshops: the POV chorus, in particular Tamara and Sam, and especially our soloists Betty, Tom and Alain. Special thanks to my wife Eleanor who copied out my scores and parts from the manuscript, then copied my corrections after what seemed like endless proofreading—a gargantuan task! And to my mom and dad who gave me the inspiration to be a composer; always encouraging, no matter how strange my music sounded. And finally to all those whose families and relationships have been shattered by war, then and now. I hope this work helps to bring some peace.

 APM November 2011

For this scaled-down touring version of my opera Mary’s Wedding, I re-arranged the work for the three principal soloists, a SATB chorus with one singer per part, and piano. Removed are the tea party, the trench warfare battle at Festubert, and the development of relationships in Act II. However, it does present the basic story and some good music—each of the three principals gets a solo and there are some good choral numbers. The storyline introduces the characters, sets the love affair of Mary and Charlie in motion, reaches a climax at the Battle of Moreuil Wood and then winds down in the dream wedding.

This version was performed throughout at November, 2015, at various cities throughout British Columbia.

The opera Mary’s Wedding was commissioned by Pacific Opera Victoria and was premiered at the McPherson Playhouse in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada on November 10, 2011. It is a story of love and loss set both in rural Canada and overseas at the time of the Great War. This orchestral suite brings together a number of significant sections of the opera, set as a fantasy of themes.

Commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, MacDonald’s setting of Shelley’s Ode To The West Wind for narrator and orchestra was completed in September of 2009. The poem is replete with musical imagery such as “thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow her clarion o’er the dreaming earth”, “dirge of the dying year” and “trumpet of a prophecy”. Some images are indeed symphonic in nature: “Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies will take from both a deep, autumnal tone”.

Shelley completed his Ode in the autumn of 1819 in Florence. Zephirus, the autumn wind he invokes, came upon him as he stood in the Arno forest near Florence. The poem evokes an ascent from death to life for the poet’s own fiery thoughts and, like Prometheus’ gift of fire, Shelley hopes that his free-thinking philosophy will enlighten and liberate humanity.

The five stanzas of the poem are set as individual movements which are played segue without pausing. The formal plan for each stanza is the sonnet sequence imposed on terza rima (rhyme: aba bcb cdc ded ee), in reference to Dante’s transcendental vision. The opening three stanzas invoke the West Wind as a driving force over land, in the sky, and under the ocean, and beg it to listen. The last two stanzas shift from nature’s forests to Shelley’s own, where in longing to be the West Wind’s lyre he becomes one with the forest and brings to a climax his commands: “Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!”, “Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!”, “Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!” and “Be through my lips to unawakened earth the trumpet of a prophecy!”

 The closing line, one of the most famous in English literature, poses the simple question of cyclic rejuvenation: “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Of Golden Apples was commissioned by harpist Karen Rokos and flutist Patricia Creighton for the Musique Royale concert at St. John’s Anglican Church in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, on September 22, 2012.

The duo call themselves Nova Brilliante and so MacDonald turned his attention once again to the constellations for inspiration, this time in particular to Draco and the myth surrounding the Garden of the Hesperides.

 Resplendent with haunting melodies, novel colours and music for the dancing Graces, this work also evokes the fierce battle between Heracles and the hundred-headed dragon guarding the golden apples of immortality which the hero sought to complete his eleventh Labour.

Andrew MacDonald’s Restless City, op. 81 was completed in 2017. Scored for electric archtop guitar and string quartet, the work follows the great tradition of piano quintet writing as practiced by Schumann, Brahms and Dvorák and features both concerto-like exchanges and intimate dialogic passages. Set in three substantial movements, this composition pays homage to bebop jazz artists Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron and Thelonious Monk.

I composed Snow Games in 2013 for my good friend, the violist Bojana Milinov. This duet is chamber music through and through, with all the motivic interplay one would hope for in such a medium. The musical scene opens with children calling to each other across the hills, then races and tumbles forward in good honest fun! Although I scored Snow Games so that I could play it with Bojana, I found the light amplification and colours of the electric archtop guitar worked beautifully with the viola. This may well be the first composition written for this combination of instruments!

One After One In Time, my fourth sonata for violin and piano, was composed for my good friends Ron François and Silvana Santinelli of the Duo François. Commissioned with the assistance of the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Mexican Fund for the Arts and Culture), the work was premiered by the Duo François on October 21, 2013 at the Aries Composers Festival in Fort Collins, Colorado. Inspired by the bebop jazz and beat poetry of the 1950s, the piece is set in three movements. The first, “Bounce”, is a tribute to Charlie Parker, featuring fragments from his tune Billie’s Bounce, while the second, “Beatitudes”, is a contemplative song in arch form. The final movement, “Variation Choruses”, is a theme and variations set inspired by Jack Kerourac’s Mexico City Blues, a collection of poems written as variations or “jazz chorus” improvisations. Chorus 240, on the death of Parker, ends with “[we] die one after one in time.”

“Corranach” is Gaelic for a lament sung over the dead at a wake. Four keeners would stand at the head, foot and sides of the body and sing a dirge consisting of four phrases, all of which exhibited descending contours beginning on a high note. I composed this piece for my brother Al who passed away in October of 2013. An activist for the East Timor Hope Foundation, Al composed a beautiful song called Self-Determination Day which I’ve set in this work as an homage to a great man.

 — Andrew Paul MacDonald

Regarding the genesis of The Orchid Garden, it came about as a result of hearing the fluid melodic improvisations of the brilliant tenor saxophonist, Ralph Bowen, and visiting a stunning orchid garden in the Dominican Republic. The two experiences came together in a day dream—the intertwining orchid vines and flowers, roots suspended in the air, became florid saxophone lines. That exotic place, abundant with life, became the opening orchestral landscape as well; a jungle world which upon entering increasingly envelops the listener. The character of this music, like the attitudes of the orchids themselves, ranges from coy timidity to reckless defiance.

The effortless efflorescence of Ralph’s playing also reminded me of Charlie Parker. So, in a bow to the great god of jazz, I developed the opening five notes of Parker’s Yardbird Suite as motivic material throughout the composition (C-G-A-Bb-Ab). Another jazz element comes in the last movement where there are a number of passages improvised by the soloist; a feature also found in the concerto of the early classical era.

Regarding the genesis of The Orchid Garden, it came about as a result of hearing the fluid melodic improvisations of the brilliant tenor saxophonist, Ralph Bowen, and visiting a stunning orchid garden in the Dominican Republic. The two experiences came together in a day dream—the intertwining orchid vines and flowers, roots suspended in the air, became florid saxophone lines. That exotic place, abundant with life, became the opening orchestral landscape as well; a jungle world which upon entering increasingly envelops the listener. The character of this music, like the attitudes of the orchids themselves, ranges from coy timidity to reckless defiance.

The effortless efflorescence of Ralph’s playing also reminded me of Charlie Parker. So, in a bow to the great god of jazz, I developed the opening five notes of Parker’s Yardbird Suite as motivic material throughout the composition (C-G-A-Bb-Ab). Another jazz element comes in the last movement where there are a number of passages improvised by the soloist; a feature also found in the concerto of the early classical era. 

This version with piano can be used for rehearsal before meeting with the orchestra or as an independent concert piece.

Regarding the genesis of The Orchid Garden, it came about as a result of hearing the fluid melodic improvisations of the brilliant tenor saxophonist, Ralph Bowen, and visiting a stunning orchid garden in the Dominican Republic. The two experiences came together in a day dream—the intertwining orchid vines and flowers, roots suspended in the air, became florid saxophone lines. That exotic place, abundant with life, became the opening orchestral landscape as well; a jungle world which upon entering increasingly envelops the listener. The character of this music, like the attitudes of the orchids themselves, ranges from coy timidity to reckless defiance.

The effortless efflorescence of Ralph’s playing also reminded me of Charlie Parker. So, in a bow to the great god of jazz, I developed the opening five notes of Parker’s Yardbird Suite as motivic material throughout the composition (C-G-A-Bb-Ab). Another jazz element comes in the last movement where there are a number of passages improvised by the soloist; a feature also found in the concerto of the early classical era. 

This version for alto saxophone varies little from the original for tenor.

Regarding the genesis of The Orchid Garden, it came about as a result of hearing the fluid melodic improvisations of the brilliant tenor saxophonist, Ralph Bowen, and visiting a stunning orchid garden in the Dominican Republic. The two experiences came together in a day dream—the intertwining orchid vines and flowers, roots suspended in the air, became florid saxophone lines. That exotic place, abundant with life, became the opening orchestral landscape as well; a jungle world which upon entering increasingly envelops the listener. The character of this music, like the attitudes of the orchids themselves, ranges from coy timidity to reckless defiance.

The effortless efflorescence of Ralph’s playing also reminded me of Charlie Parker. So, in a bow to the great god of jazz, I developed the opening five notes of Parker’s Yardbird Suite as motivic material throughout the composition (C-G-A-Bb-Ab). Another jazz element comes in the last movement where there are a number of passages improvised by the soloist; a feature also found in the concerto of the early classical era. 

This version for alto saxophone and piano varies little from the original for tenor and can be used for rehearsal before meeting with the orchestra or as an independent concert piece.

Composed for the Alcan Quartet’s 25^th Anniversary celebrations, Perfect Day is a single movement work of contrasting moods, timbres, textures and tempi where all of the thematic materials are derived from the opening few measures.

 The title will have a unique meaning for each listener, as the piece is at times reflective and at others full of adventure. One follows the thematic transformations as one would the episodes of a character throughout his illustrious day, returning to the opening gestures in the conclusion. I hope this will be the perfect piece for my friends, the Alcan Quartet; may they enjoy many more years together!

The Seven Ages is a choral setting for SATB of that famous passage from Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Act II, scene 7, lines 139-166).

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with a good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

After hearing Pentaèdre’s recent ATMA recording of Le Sacre du printemps where the timbral palette of the traditional wind quintet was expanded by changing instruments during the course of the work, I was very excited to compose a piece which would take advantage of this.

In Atmosphaera I used the technique of timbral evolution as a guiding structural principle, so that the piece ends with an ensemble which is completely different from that heard at the beginning. This principle allowed me a feast of colours to explore throughout the course of the piece which is further enhanced by a variety of textures and ensemble densities, as well as extended techniques. The title Atmosphaera can mean the five parts of the Earth’s atmosphere, or more generally air, heavens, sky, vapour, clouds, breath, mood, flavour, spirit, ambience, aura, character, surroundings or tone. The piece captures something of all these, but ultimately is about what makes wind instruments special.

Dans Atmosphaera, la technique de l’évolution du timbre est utilisée comme principe structurel directeur, de sorte que l’œuvre s’achève avec un ensemble qui diffère complètement de celui présenté au début. Cette approche permet l’exploration, tout au long de l’oeuvre, d’une abondance de couleurs auxquelles se greffe une variété de textures, de densités sonores et de modes de jeu contemporains. Atmosphaera peut décrire les cinq composantes de l’atmosphère terrestre, ou plus communément le ciel, les nuages, le vent, l’ambiance, l’esprit ou le caractère. Cette pièce traite un peu de tout cela, mais ultimement, elle met en relief le son des instruments à vents.

After hearing Pentaèdre’s recent ATMA recording of Le Sacre du printemps where the timbral palette of the traditional wind quintet was expanded by changing instruments during the course of the work, I was very excited to compose a piece which would take advantage of this. This version calls for a more standard instrumentation than that of the original.

In Atmosphaera I used the technique of timbral evolution as a guiding structural principle, so that the piece ends with an ensemble which is completely different from that heard at the beginning. This principle allowed me a feast of colours to explore throughout the course of the piece which is further enhanced by a variety of textures and ensemble densities, as well as extended techniques. The title Atmosphaera can mean the five parts of the Earth’s atmosphere, or more generally air, heavens, sky, vapour, clouds, breath, mood, flavour, spirit, ambience, aura, character, surroundings or tone. The piece captures something of all these, but ultimately is about what makes wind instruments special.

 Dans Atmosphaera, la technique de l’évolution du timbre est utilisée comme principe structurel directeur, de sorte que l’œuvre s’achève avec un ensemble qui diffère complètement de celui présenté au début. Cette approche permet l’exploration, tout au long de l’oeuvre, d’une abondance de couleurs auxquelles se greffe une variété de textures, de densités sonores et de modes de jeu contemporains. Atmosphaera peut décrire les cinq composantes de l’atmosphère terrestre, ou plus communément le ciel, les nuages, le vent, l’ambiance, l’esprit ou le caractère. Cette pièce traite un peu de tout cela, mais ultimement, elle met en relief le son des instruments à vents.

In 2014, Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams was performing at The Fifth London Festival of American Music in London, UK. On one of his free nights during the festival he attended a concert and heard my solo work, The Great Square of Pegasus, played by Canadian violinist Jonathan Chan. Intrigued by my music, Jeremy contacted me and soon thereafter performed my 1992 Blake cycle, Innocence, on a tour of Canada and the USA and later another early work, The Jam At Jerry’s Rocks, which I had reworked for baritone, piano and tape.

Then Jeremy asked me to write something new for him and pianist Paula Fan. We had a shared fascination with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, and so the wheels were set in motion. When the three of us met at my house in the fall of 2015, the neighbour’s cat, Suzie, was with us all day, making sure we understood who ruled the land. Paula then revealed that she had many cats and so Jeremy suggested that I consider Baudelaire’s cat poems from the Spleen et Ideal section of Les Fleurs du Mal for this new cycle.

 Pouring over these, I readily agreed. I chose the two “Le Chat” poems and “Les Chats”, hearing wonderful music in the poet’s use of rhythm, contour inflection and cadence. I renamed the poems using the first line of each. “Viens, mon beau chat” is the first Le Chat poem and “Les amoureux fervents” is Les Chats. The last two songs, “Dans ma cervelle se promène” and “De sa fourrure blonde et brune”, are part one and two of the other Le Chat poem. In this cycle I try to capture the essence of our household friend—what Suzie meant to me—from his whimsical nature to the universal vision always apparent in Baudelaire’s work.

Composed in 2017 for this particular OSS programme, Electric Pleasures is my twelfth concerto to date. Others include those I’ve written for violin, cello, viola, piano, harpsichord, harp, etc. My first was for classical guitar and chamber orchestra and it’s only fitting that this one be for electric guitar—there should be no problem hearing the soloist in this case! The work was conceived as a single movement set in four contrasting sections played without a break. Although very new sounding, it hearkens to an earlier era in its call for improvisation from the soloist. At times it surely has a jazz feel while at others a glorious symphonic fusion of the orchestra and the most popular instrument of our day.

 The premiere performance was played on a beautiful 7-string guitar made for me by Sherbrooke luthier, Marc Chicoine.

Composed in 2017, Electric Pleasures is my twelfth concerto to date. Others include those I’ve written for violin, cello, viola, piano, harpsichord, harp, etc. My first was for classical guitar and chamber orchestra and it’s only fitting that this one be for electric guitar—there should be no problem hearing the soloist in this case! The work was conceived as a single movement set in four contrasting sections played without a break. Although very new sounding, it hearkens to an earlier era in its call for improvisation from the soloist. At times it surely has a jazz feel while at others a glorious symphonic fusion of the orchestra and the most popular instrument of our day.

 This version with piano can be used for rehearsal before meeting with the orchestra or as an independent concert piece.

Notes will be forthcoming.

Notes will be forthcoming.

Fannie Gaudette, Artistic Director of the University Singers, asked me to compose something special to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of both the Singers and the Music Department at Bishop’s University by Dr. Howard Brown. I was inspired to write a Christmas piece for chorus and brass and the result is Hodie Christus Natus Est, “Today Christ is born”. As a lad I sang in the Elora Festival Singers and imagined someday writing my own composition to celebrate Christmas, having performed many such pieces by Bach, Handel, Britten and others. Many years later, it’s my turn to tell the Christmas story through texts from the Magnificat for Christmas Day Vespers, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s This Christmas Night, and the Gospel according to St. Luke, 2:1-14. In this short composition we experience again the essence of the story, that being the holy family travelling to Bethlehem for the Roman census and the astonishment of the shepherds, Eastern Kings and angels at the birth of Christ, all told from different points of view. The concluding Alleluia aptly summarizes the joy of this occasion. I hope Howard would approve.

Notes will be forthcoming.

The idea for the piece came from the three movement titles which are all action words. Yes, and they all start with “V” because I like alliteration! And, who knows, it might become known as the “3-V sonata”. I felt that both “Vault” and “Veer” are aggressive actions suitable for outer movements while “Veil” suggests something more secretive and inward-looking, perhaps more personal and a suitable contrast to the others. Well, then I sat down and tried to figure out how I could realize such ideas in music. Pretty general, I know, but it does make for a satisfying overall concept. We’ll leave it up to the audience members to decide exactly what that means to each of them. I think you’ll find the piece to be overall rather uplifting.