A better week, though somewhat up-and-down. I spent long stretches of time standing still, and blundered around quite a lot. Eventually, perhaps slightly forcedly, I made my way through the fragment of the lyrics quoted last week. In line with what I decided earlier, I am building on the sequence of melody and harmony that I mentioned last week, repeating it a few times with certain variations and “additions”. The additions include a chord that has been on my mind for some time, evoking a sense of a sort of might. Below are its two versions, inversed around G-sharp:



LISTEN

 

The Woman and the Siren sing a duet here. It can be interpreted in at least two manners. First, as an image of a certain truth unknown to the Woman, of her being stuck in an illusion – or second, as her internal conflict between two versions of herself and her place in the world. Either way, the Woman is full of grief, and her fate is tragic. It’s an overreach to say so, though. Her fate is tragic from the point of view of an individual, and in individual timeline. In its entirety, the fate is as it is. It cannot be judged. Which makes it a sort of a meta-tragedy. This is the essence of the Siren’s song. And it is also, I dare to say, one of Szczepan’s most important threads. Or at least to me it truly speaks volumes.

 

These recurring harmonious „circles” are like subsequent embodiments. Micro-dramas experienced multiple times. Ever recurring, small culminations that resemble one another.

 

I slightly modified the order of the lines. Towards an exchange of intensifying frequency, until the parties to the duet sings simultaneously for a while  in an inaccurate mirror reflection across the G-sharp axis. Now, the ending is as follows (the Woman’s last line is partly simultaneous to the Siren’s last line):

 

WOMAN

I waited for him so many times, why did he not return?

 

SEA / SIREN

You sail in a black gown across the Atlantic from Europe,

 

WOMAN

I climbed the rocks above the harbour, awaiting sails.

 

SEA / SIREN

In chains, you sail from Guinea to America,

 

WOMAN

Why has he abandoned me? Will he return?

 

SEA / SIREN

From London’s sleazy backstreets

you were torn to sail

under the decks of small galleons,

in the crowded holds of slave ships,

in search of paradise, far from kings and princes.

You keep sailing for a month, two; your children die and you die, too.

Only from you could new settlers be born, new sailors, new slaves.

 

So far, I’ve got roughly 8 minutes of music, which makes around a third of this part. Not bad, though by the end of May I planned to have completed more of the work. By the way, it’s an interesting problem from the composer’s perspective: the eternal negotiation with oneself about discipline, time-keeping and punctuality, as confronted with the need for freedom and lack of limits, either of time or of any other kind. “One has to keep the balance” is such a useless cliché. Rather, a sort of dynamic imbalance is necessary, where discipline definitely dominates. Freedom is the natural state, the default mode, and one doesn’t need to make any special effort to attain it. The mind flees towards freedom whenever it can, and it must be kept under a tight watch. As a matter of fact, anything new can only spring to mind while free, but it would be wrong to believe that writing is always about coming up with something new. These are rather exceptional moments. Naturally, I can only speak for myself.

 

Now, there is a difficult moment ahead of me: I must find a way to shift from grief and longing to joy when the Woman sees the sail. I know already what the joy will sound like; it will be a theme important to the whole piece. It will appear here for the first time and then recur in part three in a totally different shape. But I don’t know yet how to introduce it. It should perhaps loom on the horizon and grow clearer and clearer, like a sail would, but I don’t quite feel it yet. It should sound like something unexpected yet long awaited. The joy must be unbridled, childlike, bewildering. Sudden and very brief, because the Woman will soon be extremely disappointed. By the way, another curious problem related to the issue of discipline vs freedom is deciding that something is good enough to move on. It’s no use hoping to ever feel certain that something could not be improved, but one cannot stop trying either. 

 

Jerzy Pilch has died. A unique master of phrase. I’ve always believed his artistry was musical in a sense (not using the term in any precise way). The tempo, the emphasis and the placement of the punchline. Micro-punchlines. Especially at the level of individual sentences which are like perfect, very characteristic melodies. Something between Webern and Stravinsky. 

 

I could not help thinking he could write a great libretto. I even managed to contact him and propose this. He refused, in a way that was very polite but very final.

 

R.I.P.

(transl. Zuzanna Wnuk)