SURRENDER, Between the Octaves

Names of all the movements in Between the Octaves, a suite in 7 movements are Initiate, Surrender, Thread, Curve, Encircle, Ritualise, Ignite. The whole suite follows a long line from movement 1 to movement 7. However, individual pieces are well suited to be played alone too. Piano Duo is ideally two Steinway grands, otherwise, whatever is available. An enjoyment of the tensions and relationships generated between the two instruments: grand-upright, upright-electronic keyboard is to be explored as a positive. Each piece creates its own world in the suite and can be part of smaller subgroups taken from the suite, in any combination, but the order of the pieces needs to be maintained if more than one is played. Surrender, Between the Octaves was the piece that was composed first. It expresses a simple call to return to the beginning, to return to a pure act of listening. This note..ah, now that note.. oh. This is how the piece was written - slowly, one note at a time. Listening within a space (its original title) of resonance, of edges and meetings, of disappearances and repetitions that reflect on this gentle body of notes. There is a slow-hearing that may, or may not create a tone-journey. Below is a taste of the background to the whole musical world of this 52 minute suite. During a reflective time I read the following: "The whole philosophy of dharma art (Buddhist art) is that you don't try to be artistic, but you just approach objects as they are, and the message comes through automatically." (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, from 'True Perception The Path of Dharma Art.' Shambhala 2008, p.133.) The 'objects as they are' became the 'octaves as they are'. As the pieces were composed the octaves had a centring and clarifying role that allowed other material to circulate around or play against them. They acted as pivots, repetitions, drones, ostinati, pointillist nodes, pedals, melodic features, struts, harmonic turnpikes, breathing spaces, bass lines: musical imperatives. The octaves called the musical shots most of the time. When the music pulled a semitone up or down and away from the octaves (as it did quite often) it was especially telling in the context of the ringing spaces the octaves were creating. I became interested in the subtle dislocation that two pianos could provide. By dislocation I mean a degree of tension between the natural acoustics of the two instruments in the room and the players idiosyncrasies as musicians. The whole point of this work was to examine the nature of my syntax, grammar, and compositional thinking. The title demanded one thing above all: what notes am I going to use between these octaves?? My choice of notes was derived in most instances from the tempo, pitch, and rhythm of the initial octaves at the beginning of each piece alongside the individual word titles that I set out to explore as musical images. The audio was developed from Sibelius software, via MIDI to Logic samples of a Steinway grand piano.