The Book of Elements Volume III (2001)
(for piano solo)

The Book of Elements is a cycle of piano works in five volumes, each between 15–17 minutes in duration, with a varying number of pieces to each volume. Volume I consists of 11 brief works, a reference to the ‘11 new Bagatelles’ Op. 119 of Beethoven. An arbitrary number perhaps, chosen because of both its connection to a genre of musical miniatures and as the beginning of a sequence of diminishing primary numbers.

The elements of the title refers to a double reading of the term: first (as in chemistry) an ‘irresoluble substance’ and secondly (as in the ancient belief) in the elements as the ‘foundation’ of everything. The prime numbers have been described as the elements of arithmetic. In many traditional cultures ‘zero dimensionality’ is implicit in the cardinal directions. From ancient Celtic mythology to modern day Chinese language, there are five dimensions – north, south, east, west plus the centre, the place where one is. Oriental cosmology accounts for 5 elements – air, water, earth, fire and the ‘void’ – a pregnant emptiness, the negation of a fixed essence. I should point out that it was never part of my intention to either ‘represent’ or ‘illustrate’ these elements; rather they function as a kind of metaphor for different forms of energy.

The initial plan was to create a set of musical elements (idée fixe) – motivic material from which I could construct a number of works of varying scale and character. Assigning a volume to each of the five elements I by definition attach a set of extra-musical images to the construction, but this will always remain secondary and derivative. In fact it would be more accurate to say that all five elemental characteristics run across and through all five volumes. In the first volume the ‘aphoristic’ informs the scale, and these elements are exposed to a kind of intertextual and naked playfulness – a confrontation with style (see below) perhaps - which traces the lineage of a particular  conceptualization of (keyboard) transparency. Within the eleven brief, elliptical miniatures that make up Volume I there are a number of symmetries, pairings and ratio crossings which are arranged to maintain unity within an epigrammatic and heterogeneous constellation of works. Movement through the five volumes from a set of ‘miniatures’ in Volume I to the single movement of Volume V not only outlines an expansion of scale but also suggests a narrative (Mallarme proposed that the aim of the universe is the creation of ‘Le Livre’). All of the elements are outlined in the first volume and since all five volumes are approximately of the same duration (containing fewer works as the cycle progresses), the movement here has something to do with continuity.

The musical ‘miniature’ holds a particular fascination since it occludes manners, expresses without preparation. The question of form and how it might exist across a multi-movement work is interesting; it is a space where 19th-Century notions of ‘organicity’ begin to collapse. The musical miniature is first and foremost melancholic; a beginning, an everlasting beginning, a miraculous spontaneity. The Bagatelles of Beethoven, the piano suites of Schumann, late Brahms and Schoenberg follow a lineage which in some ways may be traceable to the ‘character’ or ‘mood’ suites of the English virginalists (Gibbons, Byrd, Bull etc.). Questions of connection arise: does the mere grouping together of apparently individual pieces for example establish a connection beyond their proximity? The musical miniature, with little time to develop, compresses the space for action and traces a gesture that contains its own ‘cut’. The ambiguity and fragility that form a constituent of this lineage will perhaps always carry some of that pleasing sadness associated with abandoned spaces; ruptures exist where the ear might expect coherence. Style (from the Latin stylus, that pointed tool for writing on wax) as ‘character’ refers to a manner or mode of expression (reminding us of the relationship between modality and manner). The word ‘character’ itself comes from the Greek ‘to engrave’ or ‘cut’, an act that involves an element of violence. Character in part emerges from the interaction of events within a musical space; the type of movement, repetition, inflection and duration mark one event in relation to another.

The five volumes began with a commission from Roger Woodward and the Sydney Spring Festival in 1997 and collectively they are dedicated with respect and admiration to his restless creativity. 

Volume III consists of 5 works, of proportionally (in clock time) 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 minutes in duration, (although not in this order) and is associated with earth, here imagined as crystal (or ‘solidified light’). The regular arrangement of equal (semitone) divisions of the octave of the piano is here conceptualized as a ‘potential’ analogue to the regular atomic arrangement of crystals. An imposed order, the chromatic scale, becomes the inherent structurally dominant pattern; all material tends towards the grid, crystallized by the very design of the piano keyboard. The sad news of the passing of Iannis Xenakis reached me just as I was finishing Volume III and this volume is dedicated to his memory.

Volume III was commissioned by the 2001 Berlin Biennale for Ian Pace, who gave the premiere  during the festival.