Jan Swafford - THEY THAT MOURN - in memoriam 9-11 -- PART 1.wmv

The performance is by the Omega Trio: Eva Gruesser, violin, Emmanuel Feldman, cello, and George Sebastian Lopez, piano.

A program note from the composer:




They That Mourn was commissioned by Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg. When the wisps of ideas for this piece began to acquire weight and point was in September of 2001. That date, of course, engraved in all our lives. In collecting material, I tried to resist the temptation to write a piece rising out of those horrors. But it happened anyway, of its own accord.

In composing as in living, after September 11 I could not help thinking of tragedy, mourning, elegies. So the music acquired its atmosphere. I thought of the quotidian, of everyday life which is never really carefree until it seems so in the light of catastrophe. I remembered that mourning is not one feeling at all. Mourning is made of grief, shock, loss, memorials both ceremonial and interior, all tinged with rage and confusion and fear. I wanted an elegy to reflect the tumult of feeling with which mourning runs its course--a course in the direction, sometimes, of reclaiming hope and joy.

In They That Mourn the constants of joy and tragedy emerge in the simplest form in music: the old major and minor chords and what Germans call moll-Dur, a mingling of major and minor like a mingling of joy and sorrow. In the last part there are two dances, one solemn, the other an exhilarated dance heard earlier, but now after the catastrophe and so not the same. Finally a song of mourning at once ceremonial and heartbroken: cantorial. At the end, two bells for the dead.

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[PaulRFake]

Awesome!

[realpianistcomposer]

Wow - now that I think about it, when I was reading your Brahms biography, I do recall coming across that you were also a composer. And I can say with all honesty that I enjoy your music (or what I've heard of it so far, namely this piece, lol) every bit as much as I enjoyed the book, difference in scale notwithstanding. (Also, thank you for your article in today's "Slate" about contemporary music, which is how I came across this to begin with.) Keep up the great work!

[harryslide]

Most eloquently touching music. Very well played, too. Not easy music. Thanks for the illuminating notes, Maestro.

Please write more!

Thanks!