A while back, before Charlie was born, back when I first started this website, I was working on some variations on Poland’s national anthem. This started as a challenge from Polish pianist Joanna Różewska to do something with Polish folk music.
I worked diligently on it for a while, but got too in my own head about it. I couldn’t figure out what direction to take the music. Should it be variations? Also do I have any kind of connection to this music, to Poland? What am I trying to say with this?
I wrote the main body of the first variation, and never got further than that. After chasing my own tail for a while, I put this project down and walked away, thinking wrongly that what I had written so far wasn’t all that good. What also happened around that time was I quit teaching, went to Rome with Erica and Jack for a month, then came back and started a totally new career. I wasn’t writing much music during that crazy time…. When I finally came back to composing a few months later, I was rediscovering the magic of writing Quiquern, which became my musical obsession going forward. The Poland music was suspended indefinitely.
Over the next year or so I began to spin out the plan for my second sonata. I wanted the sonata to end with a redemptive quality, with a strong overtone of love and hope. As I’ve said before, so much of my music reaches for this same sentiment. Maybe I’ve just got love and hope on the brain.
What better way to express that sentiment than with the idea that something that once seemed lost may yet still be recoverable. The title “Not Yet Lost” stood out in my mind as the right way to express these feelings. Suddenly the Polish music had a meaning I could relate to, something I would enjoy exploring and playing around with. Though I am no Polish patriot, and the the nationalistic thrust behind the Polish anthem has no historical significance to me personally, the sentiment behind the music suddenly struck a chord inside me. It clicked! I dove back into the music and started sketching out ideas.
This is hard to describe in words: I wanted to take the hope contained in Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, and create variations on that. In other words, the variations are not so much variations on the musical theme (melody) itself, but instead on the theme of the music: the idea that something that seems lost is actually not yet lost, a hope for the future, a hope that we can build something worth building. That’s what Mazurek Dąbrowskiego expresses, and that’s why I chose it, not because of the melody. I took the melody in the theme and dismantled it, and sprinkled the component parts throughout my variations, but the variations don’t sound like the theme. But they do express love, hope, excitement, eagerness, etc. That’s the reason why, in the end, I call them “reinventions” instead of variations.
Here is the main theme:
From the get-go this music establishes a gentle, gliding, loving vibe. Though the original lyrics to Mazurek Dąbrowskiego are all about marching off to victory, I’ve dropped all of that militarism and allowed the simple clarity of the melody to linger in the air for a minute. I’ve also dropped the original 3/4 time. This meter switch has deprived it of any recognizable Mazurka sound, and instead given the tune a more spacious 4/4 runway.
The first reinvention goes like this:
This reinvention was largely already completed from my work on this piece over a year ago. I went back in and tightened up the form, took all the puzzle pieces I had struggled to connect and re-sculpted them so they fit together just fine. Turns out the puzzle pieces were all made of clay anyhow.
I originally thought that first reinvention sounded like Nordstrom’s piano noodling, but now I don’t think so anymore. Now I just hear a love theme. If the original theme is a reserved and sweet little love, this first variation is more of a gushy, open-armed love. This music is plush and at times unabashed in its amorous sentimentality. That suits me well for my current frame of mind.
The second reinvention goes like this:
This one was largely influenced by Bach, specifically this Gavotte from English Suite #3:
I heard that little nugget on the radio a few weeks ago and couldn’t get it out of my head. I wanted to create something of my own with that same snappy Gavotte feeling. I also wanted to make sure that this music had something to say about love. This love music is at times brooding and stormy, other times playful and jolly, and sometimes it’s reaching for something inspirational. It fits in with the other music, even if it sounds unique. I’d also like to note that the jolly bits have a certain dance-like quality, which stems from the Gavotte that originally inspired it.
Took me about two weeks to write that 2nd reinvention, though I should note that the only time I really get to work on any of this stuff is like 10pm to 11pm. So two weeks is pretty decent turn-around time for me.
As you listen, you’ll hear fragments of the Polish melody shining through, though it gets warped by the motion of the music around it. I do not take a vert strict view of Theme and Variations. I don’t want to write a set of ten perfect little variations, the way Mozart did for example:
That’s too clean for my taste. And dare I say it, maybe even a bit boring by the time the 5th or 6th variation rolls in. My variations are much more difficult to put into clean little boxes. Instead they wander and play and do pretty much whatever I want them to do. They do not conform to the original structure of the initial theme. Of course this means I have to be careful to make sure the source material still comes through to the listener and not just the musicologist. This is a tricky tightrope to walk.
That initial Polish theme, in my opinion, is too simple for straight variations. It has wonderful expressive potential, especially for writing inspirational, loving, or even glorious music, music that reaches for a higher ideal. But if I stick to that initial structure for 10 variations, I’d get bored….
I don’t think I’ll write 10 reinventions or variations or whatever any ways. Maybe I’ll just do 3 or 4, not sure yet. It’s not about coming up with as many variations as I can. It’s about crafting a larger piece of music, with a grander story arc that takes the listener where I want them to go. In other words, this form is a vehicle to express my overall point: that hope and love are not lost, that something which at one point might have seemed unreachable can in fact be reached. I think for that reason, each variation will reach for something. This music will be riddled with hope and grand gestures, bold statements.
That’s not to say the theme isn’t in there. This entire variation is built out of the theme. Just look at the first melody line:
Those notes are the same notes as the main melody of the Polish tune, though now woven into a quicker kind of Baroque-y thing that is also minor. But even if it is hard to pick out that original melody by ear, the structure is right there on paper. I like variations like this. I want to write a Bach-inspired romp with a few metal-esque riffs in there, music that makes you want to hear it again, makes you think. It can sound new but still have deep roots to the past. It’s a fun challenge. Above all else, I want this music to say what I need it to say, even if that means I have to cast aside any sort of intense loyalty to the original melody. This is my art, so I control the form.
When all is said and done, I’m writing far too much music to squeeze into one sonata. I’ll probably have to “cull the herd” a bit, and only keep the music that truly speaks the way I need it to speak. A lot of this other material will end up in the rubbish heap (“bonus tracks”).
Now onto the next reinvention!