Program Note
I began working on Five Movements for a Tenth Muse shortly after seeing an incredible concert by guitarist Vuma Levin and the Amsterdam Modern Orkest. Levin’s music was energetic and joyful, but also reflective and deeply moving. Tijn Wybenga’s arrangements used techniques that would be typical in contemporary classical music, yet felt so at home in the modern jazz context.
Each of the piece’s first four movements is based on a metrical structure from Latin poetry. The first movement derives its flowing lines from a single foot: the dactyl, a long syllable followed by two short ones. The second movement takes a larger scheme, the Alcaic stanza, and maps it onto the time signature, with each long syllable becoming four eighth notes, each short syllable three eighth notes. The third movement derives from Sapphic stanza, but it is quickly fragmented by a kind of “record skip” effect that takes pieces of the meter and loops them. Finally, the fourth movement presents a melody in elegiac couplet, while the ending of the Sapphic line echoes louder and louder until it can no longer be ignored.
It’s strange that a conceit like this stays with me for the entire writing process. As Brian Eno might say, I prefer gardening to architecture. But while the first four movements play clear rhythmic games, the fifth movement dances to the beat of its own drum. Perhaps I can only stomach architecture for so long.
The five movements are as follows:
- Invocation
- Dance I
- Dance II
- Elegy
- Dance III