Symphony No. 5 (2005)
(for orchestra, big band and e-guitar)

Musical trends that developed independently of each other for decades have over time formed completely separate discourses in the Western cultural sphere. To this point, it is rare for one circle to show a slightly more in-depth interest in a neighbouring field. A constructive and productive discussion is even more rare. All the various forms of contact tend to culminate in relatively superficial crossovers that generally pay lip service to a concealed or direct chase for popularity.
I became clearly aware of this situation when I agreed to write a major musical work commissioned by Stuttgart Broadcast for their big band and symphony orchestra. I wanted to add two free improvisations from an electric guitarist with a rock background.
Fortunately the wish was understood and thus the foundation for “trilateral negotiations in a constructive atmosphere” was laid – representatives from the fields of jazz, rock and modern symphonic music should meet.

Symphony No. 5 is divided into four parts. The “genetic” code of the music is common to all of the movements, only the ways in which it mutates are different. Thus the stylistic references to rock and jazz are only of the tonal and rhythmic kind.

The first movement consists of a number of undulating wave-like currents. Of these, whirlpools come to the fore, broadening and lengthening and mostly changing direction through “chord bubbles” which are created by the big band and symphony orchestra brass sections and which melt into one another. Focusing on one sound, and forking from it, moving up and down, the big band’s increasingly more frequent interjections and the general rise in intensity helps to set up the first guitar solo, which occurs above a low C pedal point formed by the bass instruments in the segue between the first and second movements.

The second movement is slow, oriented to string instruments, and initially in a very high register. What is happening here could be called the birth of melody. The intervallic sequence familiar from the first movement mutates thanks to directional changes within the sequence. The music incrementally grows into a large wave-like culmination which seems to congeal and then fall back to the lower register; then the aerate layer of harmonics and the delicate ripple played by the winds comes in, which serves as a bridge to the third movement.

The third movement, to borrow a phrase from Monty Python, is “something completely different”, but truly so – no joke. It is nothing if not a modern scherzo. The big band has the leading role. Some of the improvisational solos, rhythmic shifts and the accumulation of energy could be the keywords. The melodic motifs that were born in the second movement now find completely different rhythmic trappings.

In the fourth movement, the winds continue their rippling familiar from the end of the second movement and develop the ripples further, gradually involving other instrument groups. An angular bass line punctuated by temple blocks and another mutation of the original genetic sequence, interjected into by the strings, come in. This combination of sounds grows into a very noisy union of big band with orchestra, into which the second guitar solo melts. It all culminates in the Biggest Bang, the decaying repercussions consisting of vibrating surreal chords alted with microintervals. The point we have now arrived at could be the beginning of music that sounds like a strange echo in the ears of the listener after the last sound has actually been played. Whatever could this music sound like?

Erkki-Sven Tüür