Making music from life

My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delights were born of my deepest griefs.

Franz Schubert

There is so much talk about music, and yet so little is said. For my part, I believe that words do not suffice for such a purpose, and if I found they did suffice I would finally have nothing more to do with music.

Felix Mendelssohn Letter, 1842

With our April concert we return to the familiar grandeur of Sanders Theatre after many months displaced due to Covid restrictions. It is also the month in which we have unwrapped and introduced most of the gifts from our BCMS Commissioning Club. This April’s concert comes with two gifts―a return to Sanders, and a reward―Michi Wiancko’s Tryanny of Coordinates for Piano Quintet.

Michi’s Quintet is placed between works by two Romantics from the mid 1800’s―Franz Schubert’s stirring Quartet Movement (in the same key as Beethoven’s fateful Symphony No. 5) and Mendelssohn’s first Piano Trio (in the key Mozart chose to open Don Giovanni). Throughout each of these works we find ourselves transported beyond ordinary life to a place of great beauty, virtuosity, and passion–a sublime place beyond words―where only Music may speak.

Michi Wiancko describes the origin of her new work―in the ordinary, and in the wisdom and simplicity of the lives of saints among us:

This piece is dedicated to those doing advanced work to bring hope, healing, joy, and liberation to all people. It explores the ideas of futurism, longing, and the building of new structures, represented at times by the use of large intervals (most notably the 9th). It also pays a bittersweet and critical homage to the western classical realm in which I was trained from an early age, represented at times by large runs (most notably the C major scale).

Many years ago I visited the gorgeous, touristy, and unfinished church of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and while climbing high up into one of the famous spires, I came face-to-face with an old crushed soda can, cemented to the granite as an integral part of its design. I froze in place, experiencing a deeply emotional reaction to this simple object, a literal piece of trash, being integrated into something so ornate and considered so sacred. This moment, forever etched in my memory, inspires part of the third movement, in which the score calls for a player to hammer the side of a half-full aluminum can with an office clip. It gives me joy to explore atypical methods of creating sound and approaching instruments; in this spirit, I incorporate additional percussive elements by asking players to strike their strings with a large wooden kitchen spoon.

This piece is deeply inspired by an array of people who have changed (or are currently changing) the world. Movement 1 is dedicated to Yuri Kochiyama, a prominent Japanese-American civil rights leader who worked alongside Malcolm X. Movement 2 quotes a line from one of my favorite poems by the teacher and Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh, widely known as “the father of mindfulness.” Movements 3 and 4 are inspired by adrienne maree brown, whose work has had a significant impact on my life. Finally, the title of the piece comes from one of my all-time favorite living writers, Báyò Akómoláfé. “Falling might very well be flying—without the tyranny of coordinates.”

Enjoy!

Marcus