Quo Vadis

When I wrote the concerto for and with only 4 instruments the way that the three different melodic ideas had come together at 2 places in it had made quite an impression on me.

Not surprisingly I wanted to find out if I had latched onto something important or not. The only way to do so was to try it out some more, of course.   Since prior to that my focus had been to find ways to express one melodic idea in many different ways and use the different instruments to either bring an idea to life or to support it with another complimentary idea, I wondered if the brain would be happy to hear 3 melodic ideas and not have one as the master of the others.

To rephrase this I wondered if adding complexity in such a fashion created a listening experience that would put us into a deeper level of appreciation.

Of course, jumping with 3 ideas at the same time at a listener makes no sense but starting with one or two and maybe even introducing the third after a repeat of the first were thoughts that popped into my head.  Could we cope doing it with 4?  In a way we do this with 4 in a fugue, but here the melody repeats so it is quite different.  To me the ideal fugue is the one where the music is so lovely that you don’t even notice there is a fugue being played.  Mozart can do this, but frequently a fugue reminds me of an engineering activity, i.e. it does not speak deep inside to me.

So I decided to call my next effort Quo Vadis, since I did not know where this would lead me. Since the days I called a piece Seek and learned that it meant Seek and you will find something you were not expecting but should be grateful for, I was open to the possibility that at the end I might still not know where I was really going.

At the end I landed up with 3 different pieces, all for flute, English horn, viola and cello. They might also work for the usual string quartet but it is too early to say and not important to me at the moment.

As usual I started with a melodic idea and started coming up with ideas.  When I started with the first I had no idea that all 3 would look quite similar but turn out to be very different:

Quo Vadis - Piano

For the first one I also developed a piano version.  I believe that a pianist can play it, i.e. can cope with playing at times 3 different themes with 2 hands, but I will check this out with a pianist who is a great deal better than I am or ever was.

Quo Vadis - Quartet 1

After I had finished the first piece I started pondering what created a more memorable experience, a solo, a duo, a trip or 4 instruments playing together, using the same material more or less.  Picking Bach going from the solo sonatas to the Kyrie in the Mass in B-Minor would be an example, I thought. So for Quo Vadis 2 I could not resist starting with a solo, going then to a duo and then to a trio and then to all 4 instruments playing and then back to one again.  I like what it turned into but can’t claim it game me any deep new answers. Melodies that stick in your mind endlessly tend to be solo in your mind, but truly mind boggling experiences are of a more complex nature and more difficult if not impossible to call up at will and create the same state within you.

Quo Vadis Quartet 2

Next I got waylaid from starting work on QV-3 because of 2 songs that had asked for priority. One actually used the third melodic line you see above and other was because I felt so annoyed about how demagogues like Trump mislead people.

 The first one turned into a song I called Even When You Are Past 64!  The other I called The World Is Not Flat Mr. Trump!   I hope the soprano and pianist that have recorded 4 songs the end of last year will perform those as well and I can list them soon via YouTube and this website.

Naturally the first song also gave me material for the quartet, but only for a small part.

Quo Vadis Quartet 3

So what can I say now and what will I try to do next?

Currently I feel that “strong” melodies want to be in charge and are not team players. The “supporting cast” can be lively and interesting but will not be more than that.  I am not sure if 2 strong melodies can live together well say in a duo without each of them requiring each own “airtime” to a large degree. The complexities of 3 melodic lines coming together after suitable preparation seem to be very acceptable to the mind as well.  That type of music in classical music seems to have made a special impact on me.

I want to play a lot more with all of that in the future.  I don’t feel a strong need to compose music for more than 4 instruments yet, even though I am aware that you can do a lot more with an orchestra or what you can do rhythmically as well if you add a piano to a quartet.  Maybe one day.  At the moment I need to visit all the ideas I have hummed into my cell phone and rescue them from oblivion.  That might result in more songs, which I love to compose and I hope to continue with trios and quartets in the next year my desire to create mind boggling music!