1. The March of Time (9:20) | ||||||||
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Behold! I tell you a history from 1910 |
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The sequence begins with a deep C and then rising arpeggios: quite a grand introduction like Handel but with modern sounds.
But the words are different, and the story is one of earthly history, not christian legend. It also soon appears that the invitation to 'Behold' does not refer to christian vision, but to the invitation of Walt Whitman, as set by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his 1910 choral work, A Sea Symphony. Whitman's words are: Behold, the sea itself — and it is the sea of human life in which the Soul mkes its ultimately lonely journey. After a few bars in wandering keys, the horns recall the opening of Vaughan Williams's work — a fanfare in B flat minor resolving to D major. (This chord progression recurs many times, in different keys, throughout the piece). So we seem to be set for a Transcendentalist work, and indeed that's true... but first comes a surprise: | ||||
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This is the music my grandma wrote...
La Marche Marguerite |
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And so she did: this is real pop music of 1910, copied note for note from the piano score I have from my father's mother Margaret Miskin. Her little piece, La Marche Marguerite is in E flat, but my quotation cuts in to a middle 'trio' section in the softer key of A flat, and then runs on to her keyboard-bashing finale in E flat.
So this introduction nails democratic colours to the mast of Walt Whitman's ship: the queer spirituals will blend pop music into the 'classical' world, and make something special out of bringing to life this very simple piano March. | ||||
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And then she met my grandad It was 1914... ...Mesopotamia... After the war... there was no more music... she went deaf... Fifty years passed away. |
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The narrator continues the march of time, which is set as expressive music-drama and turns into and then out of a military march: | ||||
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I remember a motto in her house: speech is silver silence is golden. |
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Now a new key appears: C major. In these Queer Spirituals, C major is the key of 'seeing', of consciousness, and this is where my own early memories come into the song.
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And this was me in 1963. I couldn't play Mozart but playing grandma's march my fingers found their way around the keys and discovered... chords... Yesterday!... |
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C major is also the key of Mozart's little Sonatina which in piano lessons defeated me, as did all attempts to get me to play other people's music. We hear it (played very badly) as the song continues. | ||||
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I played my music to myself but I lacked a key to the music in my heart I was in prison... my sun had not risen...
I had to wait |
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Here the music goes back to E flat, the horn playing Margaret's tune in its home key, and goes on to recall some songs of the 1960s. This is a recreation of my early piano improvisation. In fact it's all true, apart from some over-simplification of dates! | ||||
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NOW... Another thirty years My youth has passed. I still can't play the piano but the computer can! |
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This climax arrives at a loud C. However it is overtaken by a second climax... | ||||
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Computers do everything now.
Go for it, grandma, |
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The computer starts singing... ... and we're in rave territory. I have kept Margaret Miskin's notes exactly as she wrote them but added rhythm and effects... | ||||
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and so am I! No more war please. War don't stop the music. |
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These words are set to an arpeggio in E flat echoing the grand finale of La Marche Marguerite and they are of course just my real feeling: with the computer I have been able to do what I could never do as a teenager. But the arpeggio brings us back to the opening and the trumpet call with its double meaning: both the false promise of everlasting life, and the still real possibility of global war.
Actually I loathe Handel's Messiah but this is a song about my true lower-middle-class roots, and I have to admit that Messiah introduced me to counterpoint. There follow some other musical allusions, all to works which in one way or another have lodged very sharply in my mind: the trumpet call, as in the '1914' section earlier, recalls Holst's Mars. Then there are snatches of songs from some twenty years ago... | ||||
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Speech is silver music is magic |
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...but in the end the song settles for the simplest and most direct thought. Music, whether classical or pop, is magic in its ability to transcend time and express what cannot be said in words. After a last B flat minor fanfare recalling A Sea Symphony, there is a mysterious coda. The trumpet rises to heavenly delight, over a suggestion of modern dance music, and this introduces the keys of B flat and D which dominate the second song, Heavenly Bodies. | ||||
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© 2000 Andrew Hodges | |
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© 2000 Andrew Hodges | ||||
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