- Symphony, Memory's Arc (1992) wind ensemble 25'
- 3(2.afl,3.picc),2,Eh,eb,3,bcl,2,cbn,as,ts 4,4(4.flgl)3,1 cb, hp 2 pft(1cel) 5 perc
- Commissioned by the University of South Florida, Tampa
- Premiere-1992, by the University of South Florida Wind Ensemble conducted by Mallory Thompson, Tampa, FL.
Program Note
In 1869, Major Powell, the first white explorer of the Glen Canyon of the Colorado, wrote of his encampment in "a vast chamber carved out of the rock.. At the upper end there is a clear, deep pool of water, bordered with verdure.. Through the ceiling, and on through the rocks for a thousand feet above, there is a narrow, winding skylight.. When Old Shady sings us a song at night, we are pleased to find that this hollow in the rock is filled with sweet sounds. It was doubtless made for an academy of music, so we name it Music Temple." I have tried twice to capture an impression of this inaccessible place, submerged since 1963 under the silt and water backed up behind Glen Canyon Dam. Oddly, both attempts have produced abstract works, a string quartet and now this Symphony. Rather than writing music containing specific poetic images, my process involves specific musical ideas, developed in the light and shadow of orchestral color and texture, and in the case of the present work, tracing an arc in a prelude, three moments and peroration, all played without pause.
Hans Keller's loose definition of symphony as "the large-scale integration of contrasts" is useful in understanding the ways in which Memory's Arc describes a path above and below the horizon of the personality, with all of its conflicts. The motto-theme, which begins with two ascending whole-steps and is stated by horns and English horn in the prelude, is pulled apart in a driving, unpredictable allegro. Offstage flügelhorn and piano develop the motto-theme as a forgotten song in the central slow movement, a song more like a cornet tune wafted down the avenue on a summer evening than like the song Powell describes. The memory prompts music-box sounds, attempts at graceful dancing, outbursts of pain, and finally, dialogue between offstage memory and onstage present. Three discrete musics are juxtaposed in the scherzo-finale: a bubbling fugue for flutes, clarinets and percussion; a jaunty, awkward double-reed siciliano; a chorale for brass. The integration of the musics evokes a climactic return of the inverted motto-theme, primarily in the brass, now beginning with two descending whole-steps. A brief coda forcefully grounds the work in the present, though two faint, ringing chords recall the fragile, inner world of recollection.
Symphony, Memory's Arc was commissioned by the University of South Florida for its Wind Ensemble and is dedicated to that ensemble and its Director at that time, Mallory Thompson.