by J. Mark Scearce
Composer’s Notes
Like most people, I was deeply affected by the events of September 11. And like many artists, I felt helpless to do anything but take solace in my own work, which, one always hopes, might give comfort to others. Music, I’ve found over the years, can assuage grief like no other art. And now, one year after the tragedies of that date, I find that every piece I’ve written in the last year has been in response to 9/11. This was not a conscious effort, but one born of need —my own. When I write, I am closest to my God.
It was little more than a month after 9/11 that I read Toni Morrison’s even-keeled, level-headed, compassionate testament to those that had died. I immediately wrote away for rights and, having shared my two previous commissions from and for the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, was given Ms. Morrison’s blessing to set her words to music. And powerful words they are, requiring a music capable of unutterable grief—a music that, on one hand, could be “songs of comfort for the bereaved” and, on the other, could “speak directly to the dead—the September dead.”
A tall order, this, but one I’d asked for, as the genuineness of Toni Morrison’s words cried out to me for music: “this thread thrown between your humanity and mine.” But a music, too, of humility (“I have nothing to say,” “I have nothing to give”) and simplicity (“I would not say a word,” “abandon sentences,” “purge my language of hyperbole”). And a music willing to subjugate itself to communicating “a gift of unhinged release.” I wanted to do this; I wanted my music to serve. But the genesis of this grief is far older than 9/11, as is all grief, born into the world with us. While I heard a mezzo right away upon first reading Ms. Morrison, the very idea of a solo violin came both relatively late in the process and far earlier.
Five years ago I’d planned a violin concerto based on a passage in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” Early in that book (page 13 to be exact), Ms. Rand describes “a symphony of triumph.” This was to be the last movement of my concerto, I reasoned, as triumph can only be heard rising out of pain and suffering. Ms. Rand wrote on: “She recognized the violence…the intensity…[the] clear, complex melody—at a time when no one wrote melody any longer…” And later, this tantalizing tidbit: “She did not know whether she was hearing a full symphony orchestra or only the theme.” While “the triumph” was to be the last movement, these descriptions, I knew, were my beginning..
I had met the Australian violinist Mark Menzies after we both had attended Indiana University, but that link (and the composer-conductor Harvey Sollberger) brought us together for a weekend during my Meet The Composer residency in North Carolina. During twelve hours of taped discussions, Mark and I talked our way through Ayn Rand, the history of the concerto, and a six measure, sixteen-beat fragment I’d fashioned before his arrival. This fragment I’d titled “Poeme-prayer in g(rief),” the small-g implying g-minor as well as the “g” of “grief.” It was a poem (a “poeme” in Romantic parlance). But moreover it was a prayer. A simple prayer.
That concerto never happened. But at the MacDowell Colony in January 2001, nine months before September 11, I wrote a six-minute work for solo violin and piano, now titled “Lachrymae-Chaconne.” Chaconne for the repetitious sequencing of the theme. Lachrymae for its crying: the grief it displayed so openly. Nine months after 9/11 I sat with Toni Morrison’s words, holding myself open to inspiration, and all I could hear in my mind’s ear before the mezzo began singing her words was my earlier poeme-prayer. I resisted and began the work three different ways, but at last came back to this image of grief. Once I gave in, the work took shape quickly and, five years after the fact, a fragment found its rightful place of service.
When the last steel girder, draped in black, was removed from ground zero, 261 days after the last tower collapsed, the bells tolled. They rang in four sets of five, the traditional signal for a fallen firefighter. The 5-5-5-5 code has been in use in New York City since 1870 and tells firefighters to lower the flag to half-staff. While the bells have been disconnected, the 5-5-5-5 code is still used. It is because this code still has meaning that I chose to end This Thread with the tolling of the bells in four sets of five chimes on the same pitch as the fire bells of old.
I wish to thank Paul Gambill whose faith and belief in my music brings to life now this third of our collaborative efforts. I thank Toni Morrison for her powerful words of salvation and, written only days after 9/11, triage. I thank Marietta Simpson for her performance and encouragement during the work’s composition. Thanks to my wife whose great ears (and heart) listened many times, often in imagination as her husband wailed away at the keyboard.
Thanks to Mark Menzies whose violin was very much in my mind’s ear, and to my friend, poet Rand Brandes who saw in Ms. Morrison’s poem the words “this thread” stand out as the title of the music. Thanks to Captain John Cannon of the City of Portland Fire Department Engine Co. 6, who gave my wife and I a tour of the old bell system and rang one so we could hear how it once was. And thanks to the MacDowell Colony whose own solace and solitude gave me the mental (and physical) space in which to realize the potential of my poeme-prayer.
back to This Thread
|
