Presenter: Alexander Bean
Mentor: Robert Kyr
Oral Presentation
Major: Music Composition/Organ Performance
The New Complexity, like other avant-garde antecedents, has been rightly criticized for its inaccessibility. In my flute duet, “Ein Paar Variationen,” I aim to construct a new musical language borrowing from New Complexity and Neoclassicism that is more accessible than either movement. The work is a set of variations on the Lutheran chorale “Ein Feste Burg” (which dates from the Protestant Reformation), crafted into a large dramatic arc in order to give
the audience a means of access to the work. Within this variation form are subsumed several musical styles: the theme borrows on the harmonic language of Hindemith; the first variation, as well as the last, recalls the tonal and contrapuntal works of Bartok; finally, the second and third variations draw upon the New Complexity tradition, using complicated rhythms and extended techniques. The entire piece, therefore, unites multiple disparate traditions into a single work covering a broad historical span, and creates a music that is both avant-garde and accessible. I chose these particular musical styles reflects both the major influences on my own compositional language (as a church organist I have a close acquaintance with sacred music, and as a composer I have tried to emulate the composers and movements named above), as well as a conscious aesthetic decision to include stylistic elements of composers whose work is often considered inaccessible, it not specifically avant-garde. “Ein Feste Burg” was chosen to ground the work in music that is highly accessible. While the inaccessibility of the avant-garde has its role as artistic critique, the difficulty in approaching the work encountered by the audience limits the power of this critique. Thus, works such as mine are necessary to unite the critical power of the avant-garde and present it in a manner that can be approached and understood.