Fantaisie #2 "Schwanengesang" (“Swan Song”)
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Fantaisie #2 "Schwanengesang" (“Swan Song”)
by Danaë Xanthe Vlasse
Piano Solo for advanced pianist. Approximately 5 minutes 50 seconds long.
AWARDS:
Winner: Global Music Awards 2013 Gold Medal in Composition, and Honorable Mention Award for “Listener Impact” Category.
Winner: MTAC Composers Today 2016 First Place in "Advanced Work" Category.
Official Selection: Hollywood Music In Media Awards, 2017.
Winner: Best Music Video INDIE MUSIC CHANNEL AWARDS 2018
Winner: OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD at the August 2018 Cult Critic Movie Awards™
Program Notes:
The mythology of the Swan Song dates back to Greek antiquity; it tells of a dying swan that has never uttered a beautiful sound in life, but miraculously sings one glorious song with its parting breaths. This myth has been a subject of creative fascination for centuries and has been explored equally in theatre, painting, and music. The artistic challenge of representing this tale provides a powerful prism for creative focus because it forces the composer to delve into empathetic embodiment of the swan, and ultimately poses the question “what would I feel and express if I were facing only minutes left to live?”
This Fantaisie's theme is chromatic and harmonically unstable, and punctuated with painful accents; it represents the mournful song of the ailing swan caught between its desire to grasp onto a few moments more of life and its resignation to a passage into afterlife.
Because this piece is based on a story line, its musical development is driven by a depiction of the narrative. First, the swan’s song is introduced in a simple, wistful manner, evoking a dawning realization of distress. Then this theme begins to grow more passionate, and splits into duets as the swan's consciousness divides between physical and spiritual states. The thematic material appears in high and low registers, and it is frequently shared between both hands with overlapping voices. The majority of the piece is written with three simultaneous parts: 1) the right hand’s uppermost fingers carry melodic lines throughout, and 2) harmonic arpeggios remain virtually constant in the left hand, while 3) the innermost fingers of each hand work together to sustain an internal melody. This inner melody shares the contours of the uppermost melodic line, but is frequently offset in its entrance, in order to highlight the disagreement and turmoil of the swan’s simultaneously conflicting states of being. Essentially, the construction of the inner melody seeks to emphasize that the two hands’ shared but divided effort is representative of the swan’s inner plurality.
There are specific places where the melody is not driving the narrative and is interrupted by inner cadenzas; these parts of the work represent the most “unconscious” moments in the story whereby the swansong is displaced by delirious and panicked episodes; then, as consciousness returns, the swan’s theme resumes with greater anguish and with each iteration of the theme reaching a new climax.
Several technical elements in the work are designed to portray drifting consciousness, thrashing wings, and a fluttering heartbeat; these elements are both audible as well as strongly visual in live performance because the pianist’s arms, hands and fingers are required to float above the keys (portraying “drifting”), to cross rapidly (“thrashing”) and to use leggiero touch (“fluttering”) as part of executing the technical passages in the piece.
Finally, the duality and conflict ceases as the swan is too weak to continue struggling, so the theme simplifies into a painful solo, expressing the theme in several new keys before abruptly rising into a dissonant crash – a depiction of the swan’s voice breaking. The coda portrays final fleeting moments; life transported out of consciousness though ascending glissandos and a fragmented motivic echo of the swansong. As the swan’s spirit departs, a limping heartbeat fades, wing-tips settle into stillness and life glistens out into nothingness.
Poetry to accompany the music;
The Swan
Ivory quills; a quiver in a tail destined to pen.
Dust aflutter...
Down afloat...
An ailing grace lies mourning, despairing.
Delirious from the fragrance of a waterlily's fresh palette of nascent pastels.
Fearful of this night's timeless mistress;
A muse sinister yet seductive with repose; calling cadence to life's thrashing.
Sails heave, whimpering under the weight of their effort,
Resigned toward inevitably succumbing to dusk's siren.
Drops of loneliness glisten along the arc of a sinuous spine, until...
Echoes of breath convey feathered spirits into the beams of a sharply setting sphere."
~ Danaë Xanthe Vlasse, 2013
by Danaë Xanthe Vlasse
Piano Solo for advanced pianist. Approximately 5 minutes 50 seconds long.
AWARDS:
Winner: Global Music Awards 2013 Gold Medal in Composition, and Honorable Mention Award for “Listener Impact” Category.
Winner: MTAC Composers Today 2016 First Place in "Advanced Work" Category.
Official Selection: Hollywood Music In Media Awards, 2017.
Winner: Best Music Video INDIE MUSIC CHANNEL AWARDS 2018
Winner: OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD at the August 2018 Cult Critic Movie Awards™
Program Notes:
The mythology of the Swan Song dates back to Greek antiquity; it tells of a dying swan that has never uttered a beautiful sound in life, but miraculously sings one glorious song with its parting breaths. This myth has been a subject of creative fascination for centuries and has been explored equally in theatre, painting, and music. The artistic challenge of representing this tale provides a powerful prism for creative focus because it forces the composer to delve into empathetic embodiment of the swan, and ultimately poses the question “what would I feel and express if I were facing only minutes left to live?”
This Fantaisie's theme is chromatic and harmonically unstable, and punctuated with painful accents; it represents the mournful song of the ailing swan caught between its desire to grasp onto a few moments more of life and its resignation to a passage into afterlife.
Because this piece is based on a story line, its musical development is driven by a depiction of the narrative. First, the swan’s song is introduced in a simple, wistful manner, evoking a dawning realization of distress. Then this theme begins to grow more passionate, and splits into duets as the swan's consciousness divides between physical and spiritual states. The thematic material appears in high and low registers, and it is frequently shared between both hands with overlapping voices. The majority of the piece is written with three simultaneous parts: 1) the right hand’s uppermost fingers carry melodic lines throughout, and 2) harmonic arpeggios remain virtually constant in the left hand, while 3) the innermost fingers of each hand work together to sustain an internal melody. This inner melody shares the contours of the uppermost melodic line, but is frequently offset in its entrance, in order to highlight the disagreement and turmoil of the swan’s simultaneously conflicting states of being. Essentially, the construction of the inner melody seeks to emphasize that the two hands’ shared but divided effort is representative of the swan’s inner plurality.
There are specific places where the melody is not driving the narrative and is interrupted by inner cadenzas; these parts of the work represent the most “unconscious” moments in the story whereby the swansong is displaced by delirious and panicked episodes; then, as consciousness returns, the swan’s theme resumes with greater anguish and with each iteration of the theme reaching a new climax.
Several technical elements in the work are designed to portray drifting consciousness, thrashing wings, and a fluttering heartbeat; these elements are both audible as well as strongly visual in live performance because the pianist’s arms, hands and fingers are required to float above the keys (portraying “drifting”), to cross rapidly (“thrashing”) and to use leggiero touch (“fluttering”) as part of executing the technical passages in the piece.
Finally, the duality and conflict ceases as the swan is too weak to continue struggling, so the theme simplifies into a painful solo, expressing the theme in several new keys before abruptly rising into a dissonant crash – a depiction of the swan’s voice breaking. The coda portrays final fleeting moments; life transported out of consciousness though ascending glissandos and a fragmented motivic echo of the swansong. As the swan’s spirit departs, a limping heartbeat fades, wing-tips settle into stillness and life glistens out into nothingness.
Poetry to accompany the music;
The Swan
Ivory quills; a quiver in a tail destined to pen.
Dust aflutter...
Down afloat...
An ailing grace lies mourning, despairing.
Delirious from the fragrance of a waterlily's fresh palette of nascent pastels.
Fearful of this night's timeless mistress;
A muse sinister yet seductive with repose; calling cadence to life's thrashing.
Sails heave, whimpering under the weight of their effort,
Resigned toward inevitably succumbing to dusk's siren.
Drops of loneliness glisten along the arc of a sinuous spine, until...
Echoes of breath convey feathered spirits into the beams of a sharply setting sphere."
~ Danaë Xanthe Vlasse, 2013