Ganymede/Prometheus (1982)

Abstract

"Graham Hair divides his music into two types related to the association of words and music. The first type, vocal pieces, forms the mainstream of his musical activity while the second type, instrumental works, many of which, like Ganymede/Prometheus, relate to a literary program, is subsidiary to his main compositional activity. Ganymede/Prometheus was written over a period of ten days towards the end of 1982 and was first performed in Las Vegas at the University of Nevada in January 1983 by the Flederman ensemble on their first American tour. The dichotomy of the title is realised on a number of levels, the most obvious being the two sections of the piece and the musical personality of the chief protagonists the flute and the trombone, and incidentally the respective players in Flederman, Geoffrey Collins and Simone de Haan. 'Ganymede' embodies a certain attitude towards belief - a follower of received opinion, while 'Prometheus' is somewhat the opposite - a discoverer both led on and finally defeated by what he discovers. The music of 'Ganymede', in words of the composer, is that of 'mercurial aesthete' while Prometheus is more 'shaggy and rough spoken'. These musical personalities are predominantly realised in the styles of instrumental writing rather than in any specific harmonic or melodic characteristics. At the same time there are binary oppositions within the harmonic structures which run parallel to, if not being expressive of, the dichotomy of the title. The aesthetic. of the .piece twns on this .dichotomy. First, it is reflected in the relationship of the piece to a historical model, in this case two early poems by Goethe and settings of these by Schubert and Wolf. The notion of a Goethe setting already embodies a certain received nineteenth century attitude to music which is subject to a 'Promethean' transformation. Similarly the notion of adopting a model, in this case Schubert's setting, exemplifies a received notion of twentieth century neoclassical structure. This is transformed to the extent that the surface and ostensible structure of Ganymede/Prometheus are very different from those of its models with which it shares none of the stylistic referents which are the characteristic rhetoric of neoclassicism The manner in which the structure is derived from Schubert's turns more on a similar approach to resolution and interplay of' opposite' musical parameters ( or at least ideas which are made to appear opposite by being placed in binary opposition to one another). The derivation of form is thus structuralist rather than morphological. Schubert's song ( as the composer of Ganymede/ Prometheus has pointed out) progresses from the key of A flat to the key of F, the two keys being linked by the note C flat/B natural which is foreign to both, though being capable of resolution to either B flat ( as in the key of A flat) or C (as the dominant of F).In many ways the B is thus neutral and can be 'poured' into either mould. In Ganymede/Prometheus this structural determinant is realised through whole tone tetrachords which can be altered either to become or to resemble tetrachords which are found in the cycle of fourths on the one hand or to resemble tetrachords which are part of the dominant seventh on the other. The first section, 'Ganymede', is reflected in a black for white image in 'Prometheus' which realises the same structural components but aniculates them in a binary opposite fashion. Thus 'Ganymede' is scored for alto flute, flute with keyboaros and percussion and is Joined at the climax by the alto trombone, while 'Prometheus' is for tenor trombone with keyboards and percussion joined at the climax by the piccolo. Each piece is divided into three tripartite sections which can be seen as textural and hannonic variants of one another. From the rhythmic point of view each section is marked by a change of figuration and a change of polyrhythm. The polyrhythms in 'Ganymede' move from 3 against 4 to 8 against 9 and in 'Prometheus' from 9 against 8 to 4 against 3. Harmonically the sections in 'Ganymede' are marked by the way in which the whole tone tetrachords are filtered into other harmonic types. In 'Prometheus' the same principle is applied to tetrachords from the cycle of fourths. What the listeners will be aware of is a harmonic world out of which emerge, in varying degrees of relief, elements of the whole tone and pentatonic ( cycle of fourths) world, for example the emerging whole tone sonorities of 'Ganymede' and the eruption of pentatonic clusters at the climax of 'Prometheus'. Since its first performance, the score has been through several versions in which the basic musical material and structure have been realised in different ways for each performance ('like Handel's Messiah' as the composer says). Each new version is not so much a revision of the original as a reconstruction of the original musical and literary ideas starting afresh and without reference to the previous score. In thus refusing to take on a fixed and stable form, Ganymede/ Prometheus has probably displayed its most Promethean characteristics. If, as the composer intends, a definitive version emerges in 1989, the balance may well be restored in favour of 'Ganymede'." -- Peter Mc Callum Show more