I’m making real headway on this, but I’m at a point where it’s now just grinding out what I know has to be on the page for the bridge bits, so I’m going to go ahead and post what I’ve got so far.

You will hear the basic building blocks for the rest of the aria: the plaintive “I am alone” motif; the accompanying cello line for that; the sincere “Flying in the sky” motif; the wistful “Aloft on pinions” motif.  Expect them to return as signposts.  (At the end of this version, you can hear the cello line making its entrance for a sustained run, over which Icarus will sing what I’m calling the “bridge” text.)

Something I didn’t talk about yesterday was the issue of sixteenth notes.  We’ve been slammed with them from the opening, nearly six minutes of them, and so it was really critical to back off for a while.  But an aria about flying without whirling sixteenths or sextuplets?  What to do, what to do…  I think you will be pleased with the solution.

Dream One, “I am alone” | score (pdf) | mp3

Yesterday and today I worked on one of the main phrases of Icarus’s first dream aria.

A little background: Scott’s text for this aria is nowhere metrical, but it does have three repeating elements:

1. “I am alone” bits
2. “I am flying in the sky” bits
3. “Aloft on pinions/ Of hope and magic” bits

Part of the puzzle for me as a composer, therefore, is to make sure that whatever I come up with for one of these bits will bear repeating in a meaningful (and hopefully increasingly meaningful) way.  For the past two days I’ve been churning out crap—that’s the technical term—seeing if I could come up with something for the “I am flying in the sky” theme.  I started using the moving bass line from “I am alone” as a basis, but none of those attempts really grabbed me.

So when an approach isn’t working, go for the opposite approach.  Just drop your baggage and head in the other direction.  One of two things will happen: you will find an answer, or something you’ve written already will make more sense.

This time, I think it worked.  I won’t post the results today; I want to crack the “Aloft on pinions” puzzle before I post the next version of this aria.  But I will say that the transition from the “I am alone” recitative into “I am flying in the sky” really works.

P.S. to Scott: We are not giving a tenor the line “In my singular solar solipsism.”  That’s just daring the audience not to giggle at his lisp.

update: Just to double-check some harmonies, I switched the voicing on the piano score to French horn and strings.  Oh my.  Y’all are in for a treat.

Here’s our first look at our hero, Icarus.

After the Baroque splendors of the adoring crowds and the glories of his father’s pride, Icarus finds himself alone in his trajectory.

As a side note, I keep thinking of that Red Bull stunt of a couple years back, where Felix Baumgartner dove from the edge of the stratosphere.  (Cool video here.)  Of course, Icarus is kind of like a reverse Baumgartner: lots of telemetry/assistance going up—only with no suit, of course—but not so much coming down.

Anyway, musically speakingwise, after five minutes of nearly solid sixteenth notes in the opening, it’s time for a break.  We get a still, quiet statement of the first five notes of the labyrinth tone row, and then Icarus begins the first of his seven arias in this opera.  The entire thing will be about five minutes long by my roughest estimation, and no, it’s not going to stay this quiet and slow.  In fact, in the very next section we’ll get more movement as Icarus meditates on his relationship to flying and his father.

Dream One, “I am alone” (05/15/14) | score (pdf) | mp3

Note: there are some staccato markings in Icarus’s part that are there just to separate the notes in the recording.  They will be omitted in the actual score.

I am a little concerned that work on Seven Dreams of Falling continues to be in the 2-3 range of the LSCA, but take it and run, I always say.

Today’s work is from the middle of the fourth section, “Hark, the sound of screaming fans,” in which we’re in the control center for the Event.  It’s a bit of exposition, filling us in on the background of the overall myth.

For those who don’t know the whole slutty story, Pasiphaë is the wife of Minos, king of Crete, and Ariadne’s mother.  (She is also the daughter of Helios, the sun, which is cool but not relevant to our story.)  She managed to offend Poseidon, who sent a fabulous bull to Minos and then cursed Pasiphaë so that she was consumed by lust for the animal.  She forced Daedalus to build her a sex sling that looked like a cow so that she could lure the beast to her.

The result was that she gave birth to Asterion (“starlike”), otherwise known as The Minotaur.  Daedalus was then coerced into designing and building the labyrinth to hide the Minotaur from the outside world.

So that is the exposition Ariadne sings for us in today’s work:

Dream One, “My mother” (05/14/14) | score (pdf) | mp3

Ariadne herself has issues, needless to say.  (So, mezzo it is.)

Another appearance of the labyrinth tone row at m. 13.

I would like to point out how not comfortably diatonic this passage is, thank you very much.  As a self-taught composer, I am sensitive to the charge that purely tonal music is a) too easy; and b) unsophisticated, so the fact that the first five minutes of the opera just wallows in “pretty” music had me worried that it was dismissible.  (Not to worry: I quite like my opening.)

I’ll be honest: this is the fifth version of this opening number that I have written, and I’m still not sure this is it.  However, as Frank Gehry always says, let’s let it sit there and annoy us for a while.

After whatever I work out for the plunging motif, we are presented with the chorus.  As it says in the libretto: The Event is on.  Observers attend the moment in amazement and delight.

A brassy Baroque anthem launches right out of the gate, and the chorus sings.  It’s all extremely standard harmony, except for their paean to Apollo, the bass line of which is the labyrinth 12-tone row.¹

At the very end, you can hear the Zadok-arpeggios beginning, and in performance we would head straight into Daedalus’s “Fly and fall.”

“Let us joyfully gaze” | score (pdf) | mp3

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¹ I promise it gets more “modern” with Icarus’s first dream aria, right after “Fly and fall.”

Well, there’s one small part of Seven Dreams of Falling completed: Daedalus’s first number, “Fly and Fall.”

As you will recall—and if you don’t, go back and read the previous couple of posts—Daedalus is setting forth the idea that the annual Event, i.e., Icarus’s flight and fall, is a ritual both good and necessary.  It is “the story of us all,” as all good myth should be.

Some slight changes in the main body, but unless you were bugged by something and want to go back to hear if I fixed it, you can pick up the mp3 at 2:30 to hear the changed cadence from yesterday (as promised) and the thrilling conclusion of the section.

I will say that I have now done to Daedalus what I have issues with in many modern operas: there’s not a place for the audience to applaud.  The piece ends softly and will segue into Icarus himself, “Dream One,” so no applause for poor Daedalus.  I’ll make it up to him later in the opera.  After all, Icarus gets seven arias.

Dream One, “Fly and Fall” | score (pdf) | mp3

I have to say that I think this is pretty good stuff.  Here’s a slammed together idea of what I think is going on onstage:

I’ve also started a page for Seven Dreams so we can keep up with finished music.

update: I have a proposed solution to the applause problem: just bring the chorus back in for one more big “Fly and fall!” and wrap it up with a stinger.  We can come back in after the applause as the spotlight focuses on Icarus for his aria.  Compare the last 10 seconds of the above mp3 to this:

“Fly and fall” applause ending: score (pdf) | mp3

Express your preference in comments.

Whattaya know…  Another day of 2-3 on the LSCA!

I had thought I might just fart around with unplanned/unattached melodies and harmonies, but I went back to the idea of working on the rest of Daedalus’s entrance in Dream One.  And that’s what I did.

Those who are keeping track of my compositional style might be surprised at the simplicity of the harmonies of this section.  It seems a throwback, I know, but I’ve decided that the opening will be relatively uncomplicated as they introduce the idea of myth and its supreme value.  Trust me, when we segue into Icarus’s actual dream in another few measures, there will be enough interesting harmonies to do you.

The first bit of this section is quasi-recitative, blossoming forth with the previously heard aria, then (new part) retreating again before the chorus joins in.

The usual abrupt ending, which I’m pretty sure is going to get a new tonality before heading into the final bit of this section.  Simplicity is one thing; cheesiness is altogether something else.

Dream One: Daedalus | score (pdf) | mp3

Here’s today’s abortive attempt.

I took the notes of our 12-tone row and splattered them in a descending cascade from the top of the orchestra to the bottom. I thought it might be a good stab at an opening to the show.

It’s not a sure thing: mp3

At the very least, it sounds sparse; that could be fixed with judicious tinkering.  This was after all just a splatter, not meant to be a finished product.

However, and this will probably seem odd, the last three notes—the ones that outline a V⁷ chord—simply sound too pat. I’m all about the tonality, but that cadence just made me wrinkle my lip.

Oh well, that’s the purpose of abortive attempts, ne-c’est pas?

Back to Tibbetts’ song.

A third thing I’m playing with for the opening of Seven Dreams of Falling is motifs, and the first motif is one that I used in Six Preludes (no fugues) for “Prelude (no fugue) No. 6.”

I got this from Sid Lonegren’s Labyrinths: ancient myths and modern uses (p. 139). He takes an eleven-circuit labyrinth:

…and labels the circuits with the notes of the chromatic scale, starting with A on the outside circuit and ending with G# at the center.  When you walk the path, you encounter the notes in the order C# – A# – B – C – A – D – G – E – F – F# – D# – G#, which I have transposed down a half-step for the above motif.

It is of course a 12-tone row of serial music infamy, but when you play it there’s a definite tonal, if chromatic, pattern to it.  I mean, look at the penultimate measure: it outlines a V⁷ chord, of all things, leading straight back to our tonic note.  You may hear it in the “Prelude (no fugue) No. 6” here.

So I’m thinking it would be a valid thing to use this motif as a major element in an opera that centers in part on a labyrinth (technically a maze¹).  The question will be how to do so.  (I’m already thinking about stealing incorporating some of the prelude.)

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¹ A labyrinth is unicursal: it has only one path to the center.  You cannot get lost in a labyrinth.  A maze is a puzzle; you would need Ariadne’s thread to get back out.