Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Justin Connolly
Fourfold, Op. 11 b (1983)
( from The Garden of Forking Paths)- Novello & Co Ltd (World)
Programme Note
The Garden of Forking Paths is an allegory of temporal relationships and their effect upon time-bound humanity. As a student, I read Borges' story when it first appeared in English, in 1962; subsequently I began to apply its theory of overlapping universes of experience to the various dimensions of music, particularly in the pieces for piano duet and for two pianos which form my Opus 11.
Fourfold is the most recent of these. It explores aspects of the universe formed by the 29 distinct 4-note collections, but it also uses Borges' idea of overlapping "times", in which an event may appear, disappear or re-appear with altered functions in its changed surroundings.
There are four sections, each three minutes long, and each is dominated by one of the four gestures of "humours" heard at the outset; forcible, reflective, abrupt, lyrical. Events initially appearing in one mode are transformed by their reappearance elsewhere; larger or smaller fragments are constantly surfacing or being suppressed to create new combinations whose material nevertheless remains largely fixed as to pitch and register.
Music being a symbolic language of the emotions, such procedures represent a possible analogy with shifts and contradictions of mood in human consciousness, while also relating to such perceptions as the mandala-image, and to Blake's idea of the fourfold nature of being.
Fourfold is mostly slow music; the pulse, a function of internal proportional relationships, increases its speed in the 3:4:5:6 ratio which characterises the duration of the individual gestures on their first appearance.
© Justin Connolly
Fourfold is the most recent of these. It explores aspects of the universe formed by the 29 distinct 4-note collections, but it also uses Borges' idea of overlapping "times", in which an event may appear, disappear or re-appear with altered functions in its changed surroundings.
There are four sections, each three minutes long, and each is dominated by one of the four gestures of "humours" heard at the outset; forcible, reflective, abrupt, lyrical. Events initially appearing in one mode are transformed by their reappearance elsewhere; larger or smaller fragments are constantly surfacing or being suppressed to create new combinations whose material nevertheless remains largely fixed as to pitch and register.
Music being a symbolic language of the emotions, such procedures represent a possible analogy with shifts and contradictions of mood in human consciousness, while also relating to such perceptions as the mandala-image, and to Blake's idea of the fourfold nature of being.
Fourfold is mostly slow music; the pulse, a function of internal proportional relationships, increases its speed in the 3:4:5:6 ratio which characterises the duration of the individual gestures on their first appearance.
© Justin Connolly