Program Notes

“Paintings VI was commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Boston Musica Viva. It is scored for flute, Bb clarinet, piano, percussion (one player), violin, viola, and cello. The work was composed with a dual purpose in mind and is thus a ballet and a chamber concerto. In the printed score verbal indications and suggestions or cues are given which serve as interpretive guides for the light director and choreographer. The choreographer is given a separate scenario which is more linear and more detailed. This scenario dramatizes the process witnessed in human affairs from pre-life to post-life and the major forces, ideas, and attitudes therein. The symbolic development of this process is represented in the concrete forms of an individual existence seen as a metaphor for all existence. Perhaps, in a certain sense, Paintings VI is autobiographical. As the various metaphors, depicted in the scenario, unfold, they are given correspondent relationships in the musical structure. For example, at the stage of life symbolized by midnight, wherein the darkest nocturnal forces play upon the psyche, a musical texture and motivic interplay quote elements of the immortal jazz classic ‘Round about Midnight,’ and at a climactic point culminate in a literal quotation of the melody, ‘Round about Midnight,’ evoking the very powerful and suggestive metaphor of the nocturnal fantasy and its relationship to the dark phantasmagoric overtones of jazz, dark-night-towns, sensory fantasy, illusions of transformation and escaping into realms of non-reality. Another example which is adumbrated in the early going and which climaxes in the final moments, is the overpowering and insistently repeated gong crash (and choke). Metaphorically, these fervored repetitions represent the element of ‘white light’ which ultimately converts physical-material substance into ethereal substance–all with blinding dominance and brilliant projection. The dominant symbolic presence of ‘white light’ in the final moments of Paintings VI is an exact metaphor dramatizing the cosmic transporting of the human spirit into realms unknown and unexplored. Another example which may be more easily perceived is embodied in the solo violin cadenza. This cadenza functions in several ways: it acts as a dramatic relief–the complex textures and polyphony which lead up to the cadenza create a very strong musical necessity for contrast and relief. The ballet scenario also demands physical and visual relief and the metaphorical character of the violin cadenza which represents the individual soul's traversal and transition through the latter stages of life culminates when the full ensemble returns and begins its development toward a final apotheosis. In purely abstract musical terms, there are many structural elements which exist independently in much the same manner as the musical structural elements contained in Alban Berg's Wozzeck. There are powerful rhythmic motives which are ubiquitous and unify the total musical structure, creating long-range contrapuntal goals and resolutions. These elements are supported by a harmonic language which, although atonal or pantonal throughout, derives from a very cohesive unfolding of the total chromatic, creating the aural impression of harmonic balance and homogeneity throughout the entirety of the work's discourse. The use of registral invariance and the polyphonic network of clearly audible linear patterns which develop temporally over long periods, create a sense of ongoing (teleological) continuity and convincing physical motion highlighted by several major climactic points. These climactic points guide the listener through various stages of structural evolution (related, of course, to the earlier descriptions of the dramatic-metaphorical scenario) and transformation of the musical motives and harmonic materials–acting ultimately as architechtonic pillars or formal guide posts within a very large single movement framework.”

—William Thomas McKinley (© 1982), from Northeastern Records NR 203 liner notes and his notes.