The Broken Mirror of Memory, Part 1

The Kickstarter project for The Broken Mirror of Memory has passed its first major milestone! I’m now able to pay for printing the CD, and distributing in online music stores. Huzzah!! In celebration, and as a huge thank you to all the awesome backers who have pitched in so far, I’m posting part 1 (out of 4) of the piece. Here it is! Paul Cantrell ▶️ The Broken Mirror of Memory – 1. Entanglement Paul Cantrell, piano Pat O’Keefe, bass clarinet View score for The Broken Mirror of Memory – 1. Entanglement ⬇️ Download audio file for The Broken Mirror of Memory – 1. Entanglement (2:00 / 6.8 M) Buy CD or lossless audio This music comes right out of the gate at full speed, the piano and the bass clarinet in a state of swirling mutual entanglement. On the first note, Pat actually growls into the instrument while playing, producing a rough sound that punches right through the mix — but then the bass clarinet is immediately submerged under the piano, resurfacing, submerging again…. <!-- The structure of part 1 is essentially a compressed sonata form. (I didn’t plan it that way from the beginning; I just let the music evolved, then realized this is a reasonable way to talk about it. Description, not prescription.) For those who don’t know the term, “sonata form” is a loose structure which essentially works as follows: Exposition: The music makes a journey from point A to point B. Sometimes this happens once, sometimes twice. (We talk about the “A theme” and “B theme,” but there may be many other themes in between. The important thing is that it’s a journey of contrasts.) Development: That journey then gets varied, expounded upon, and mixed around. The themes from the exposition appear in new orders, new contexts, new flavors. They may struggle against one another; they may overlap or unite. Recapitulation (a.k.a. “recap”): We make that original journey from A to B once again, but now see it in a new light because of whatever insights the development revealed. The journey may be almost identical, but usually it changes in some way — a new key, a new emotion, a new ending. In this piece, the piano opens carrying the A theme, which pushes toward agitation and complexity. Then, at 0:15, the bass clarinet bursts through with the B theme, a soaring melody. At that moment, you know that this is not a just thrill ride. There is something in the music that wants to burst through and find a kind of freedom — and it’s going to take the journey of the entire piece, all four parts, for it to find it. The exposition repeats at 0:24, the agitation even more extreme, the melody even more soaring. At 0:48, the development begins. The instruments trade back and forth, bits of A and B emerging and sinking back in, doing a dance of shifting identity. At 1:13, we get a full-throated singing of the B theme — and as it lingers, everything dissolves, the turbulence in suspension. For a moment, the music seems to be reaching beyond its entanglement&nbsp;… …and then at 1:39, the recap, the A theme comes crashing back in, folded in on itself, now forceful and unstoppable. At this point, if it were a strict sonata form, we would hear the whole B theme once more — but at 1:48, the clarinet manages only a truncated, punctuated echo of it. There is no space left for that soaring melody; it is completely subsumed into the piano’s swirling waters. --> The movement leaves us hanging with a big thorny knot, energy spent but unresolved. It was only two minutes, but the music covered a lot of ground — and never once gave us a chance to truly rest. We’re desperate to catch our breath, and that is just what Part 2 does, answering density with spareness, crowded turbulence with isolated wandering in an abstract vastness. When we get a bit farther down the road of Kickstarter goals, I’ll post it. We’re now stretching for the next goal on Kickstarter: raising enough to get the word out about the recording. If you haven’t backed the project yet, please consider it! You can get a CD and/or the full-quality digital version, which have a clarity and fullness of sound that these low-bitrate MP3 lack. (Plus, of course, the CD will have the complete piece!) Update: The Kickstarter campaign was a smashing success! The recording is now released!