DIVISIONS
It’s’s not often that a new piece lingers in the mind so much that it colors one’s perception of the more familiar works that follow it. That is what happened Thursday night at Symphony Hall, as Andris Nelsons began the Boston Symphony Orchestra program with Sebastian Currier’s Divisions, whose vivid evocation of conflict and ambivalence proved capable of casting its shadow over a Beethoven concerto and a Brahms symphony……..Currier seems to have one of the best ears in the business, and in Divisions he treated the orchestra as a rich instrument instead of as a machine for making special effects. The audience’s response, by contrast, was loud and enthusiastic, and there were cheers for the composer when Nelsons escorted him onstage.
- Boston Classical Review Currier’s orchestration is resourceful, and he proves adept at maintaining narrative tension across the sharply contrasting terrain. Even at the very end, the composer resists a sense of closure, as the music dissolves into a landscape of rustles, sighs, and silence. - Boston Globe - |
Program Note
DIVISIONS, written for the Seattle Symphony, Boston Symphony, and the National Orchestra of Belgium, is part of a group of pieces commissioned in commemoration of World War I. I am honored to be the American representative of this primarily European project to find some form of musical commemoration to the gruesome destruction that gripped Europe a century ago. When I was first approached, I remember mentioning the project to friend and he said, well, that was easy, one should just have total silence. And of course, in a way, he was right. That dark time in our collective history is really the antithesis of creative human impulse and it is hard to imagine what place music could have except possibly to once again mourn the dead. But it is one hundred years later and it seemed to me that the piece should have a connection to the present or even the future as much as look back to this time of unbridled destruction. My starting point was the rather obvious observation that we humans are a jumble of contradictory impulses; at our best so creative, insightful and altruistic, at our worst so inexplicably short-sighted, destructive and selfish. DIVISIONS embodies this basic contradiction. As it unfolds, the musical material moves from fragmentation and fracture, to wholeness and connectedness. The word “divisions” points to this process. It first simply refers to the destructive force whereby we humans work against each other instead of together. World War I is certainly an all too familiar instance. “Divisions” also has its military associations, as in a “division” of troops. But it also has a much more benign reference in the world of music: a “divisions” is an early form of instrumental variations from the 16th century. The term comes from the fact that in each successive variation, as the level of ornamentation increases, there are smaller and smaller note values, so that the beat is further “divided.” In my piece the trajectory is from the one meaning of the word to the other. After an opening of disjunction and fracture, the piece finally settles down into a set of simple variations. However, this movement towards wholeness proves ephemeral. The drum beat of war is never far off. |
Scoring
3(III=picc).3.3(III=bcl).3-4.3.3.1-harp-perc(3):vib/2cyms/flexatone/2tgl/2SD/3brake dr/BD/hi-cym/2 tamb/2anvil/guiro/whistle/glsp/xyl/hi-hat/marimba-strings.
Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes for the world.
World Premiere
4/23/2015
Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA
Seattle Symphony / Ludovic Morlot
3(III=picc).3.3(III=bcl).3-4.3.3.1-harp-perc(3):vib/2cyms/flexatone/2tgl/2SD/3brake dr/BD/hi-cym/2 tamb/2anvil/guiro/whistle/glsp/xyl/hi-hat/marimba-strings.
Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes for the world.
World Premiere
4/23/2015
Benaroya Hall, Seattle, WA
Seattle Symphony / Ludovic Morlot