by Christopher Fulkerson
It has been observed that each generation of composers synthesizes the styles of the opposites of its predecessors. Certainly, this happens sometimes: Schoenberg synthesized the musics of Brahms and Wagner; Berg synthesized the twelve-tone technique with Romantic harmony; the postwar generation of American composers synthesized the musics of Schoenberg and Stravinsky; Carter synthesized just about everybody into a single all-inclusive style.
This Violin Fantasy was an attempt to combine the "pitch multiplication" system of Pierre Boulez with formal and metrical procedures that I was learning about Carter and Babbitt. Yes, it was something akin to Babbitt's "time point system" of linking pitch with rhythm that I used in the Epilogue of this piece, not his pitch system per se. The idea of simultaneous forms controlled by both pitch and metrical or rhythmic designs was further developed in the small oratorio I call SCRITTI DI LEONARDO.
Like all of the pieces I have ever called "fantasy," this is a fantasy in expressive effusiveness only - not in the sense that there is anything genuinely improvisational about it. In fact it is quite rigorously composed, though like most of my pieces it is meant to have an improvisational character. There are two simultaneous sequences of events, each resembling a multimovement work - for a time the working title of the piece was "Suites," in other words, it is two pieces at the same time. A formal design is shown on the right.
The piece was written in 1979, and first played by Maryvonne LeDizes in France, and then in San Francisco at the 1986 Ariel Valentine's Day Concert while Maryvonne was on tour with Pierre Boulez during his historic REPONS tour with the Ensemble InterContemporain. THE SCREAM THAT PEAKS PAST FEAR was also given its world premiere at that concert - Ariel believes in intense Valentine's Days.
The score is 22 pages long in the composer's hand. Hard copy of the Study Score is $10.
A recording is available on the CD Set MODERNISM FOREVER
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