Initial ideas for the piece were born through a literal self-immersion
in the phenomena, swimming in the waves of Tea Gardens in New
South Wales where Martin’s grandmother lives, and improvising
at the piano, experimenting with sonorities for hours. Never having
written for the piano before, Martin encountered pianist Michael
Kieran Harvey’s request for a piece, stemming from 1994
and responded to finally in 1997, as a real challenge. The fact
of equal-temperament was a particular restriction, not so much
of ‘choice’ but
in the sense of an intonational frigity antithetical to the fluid
character of the tonal interactions Martin was seeking. Undaunted,
Martin overcame the fixity of piano tones, as well as what he
perceived as the burden of traditional piano writing, with the
invention of a new, subtly virtuosic texture. The oceanic quality
of duration without stasis is discovered in dynamically and rhythmically
irrational, vibrating repeated-notes, which form pristinely whole
long-tones, arching, caving and melting through each other like
waves. Harmonically, the more dynamic relations of white-note,
seven-fold modality are juxtaposed in clusters with the simplicity
of black-note pentatonicism, suspending the feeling of gravity.
The
second part of the piece is an hommage to the Second Viennese
Dreigestirn, delving more deeply into a chromatic tonality reminiscent
of the expressionist style of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. Reflected
is Martin’s obsession at the time of composing with Schoenberg’s
Fuenf Klavierstuecke, Op.23, a historically groundbreaking work
for its variety in texture and articulation, and for the complexity and
compactness of its far-reaching tonal and rhythmic relationships.
Here The Waves turns, as it were, away from emulation of nature
into an exploration of inner human fantasy, although the tension of their
connection is sustained as the music grows toward wavelike culmination.
Yet this wave deviates from the natural self-affirmation of pounding
itself into gravity – as this music proceeds it is ‘almost
as though the weight of history and and tonality, chromaticism,
were too heavy. The piano explores new gestures and textures
until it literally explodes, breaks free in an ectasy of what
Michael Harvey dubbed the ‘’metamusic’’.’ (M.M.)
This is music which scarcely becomes sound, but is pure, wild
and frenetic waving without water – the inspired movement
of the pianist’s
hands in the pneuma. The keys are struck but do not sound, as
though the essence of the instrument were lifted from its material
frame.
Then – darkness. Not evil darkness, not fearful darkness,
nor the darkness of oblivion, but the darkness in the beginning.
Before light separated itself from the primordial nest to fly
through the wide heavens! – A dark burning, whose firegleams
slumber in the deep roar of the flame, invisible – then
appear, delicate and triumphant in the crystalline horizon, risen
like a gong through deep-troughing piano harmonies.
As always
in Martin Mackerras’s music, the evocation of timelessness
holds sway. The ocean’s forgotten depths and her shimmering,
hopeful horizon are the dimensions of the human soul in its inner
eternity, rising and sinking incessantly, the perpetual undulations
resolving to the stillness of pure tone, as though the soul were
a vibrating string... as though the soul were a lyre... The piano
strives to become its entelechy, the lyre of waves. In the beginning
was the ocean.
Danaë Killian, January 5th, 2005
Danaë Killian is a pianist and writer living in Melbourne
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