The Tree of Life - 6 journal entries for piano (2020)
Instrumentation: solo piano.
Duration: c. 23 minutes.
Commissioned by: Daniel Johnson.
This work will remain under exclusivity until 2025
1. Departure
2-3. Omen - Elegy
4-5. Diversion - Rain
6. Talisman
RECORDING: Listen to Departure, Rain and Diversion here.
PROGRAM NOTE:
I’ve kept a journal since late 2017. When first discussing writing a piano cycle with Daniel Johnson, our mutual love of notebooks and stationery came up. Consequently, I decided it would be fitting to make the work a collection of ‘musical journal entries’. I would consciously make each movement about my thoughts and feelings towards certain events unfolding around me. One of these events was the outbreak of COVID-19 - the work was composed from February to Mid-June 2020. However, the mood of the work is not ‘doom and gloom’. When Social Isolation began, I felt compelled to write music that represented the strength of community and human spirit. Also, several birthdays (including my own) occurred when writing the cycle.
When writing the journal entries, an overall form and organising principle took shape. In addition to the movements forming an alternating slow-fast pattern, musical materials reappear in different movements. These musical materials are like musical ‘characters’ - a character first met briefly would later become a central figure. I came to think of the work as a collection of intertwined short stories.
The titles of the work are deliberately ‘symbolic’, or even ‘archetypal’. I’ve avoided explicitly stating the ‘stories’ behind the movements, in the hopes that the listener will graft their own feelings and experiences onto the music. A discarded subtitle for the work was The Book of Symbols.
PERFORMANCE NOTE:
If performed as a whole, the movement order should be adhered to.
Movements 1, 3 and 6 can be performed separately. Movements 2-3 and 4-5 should be played ‘attacca’ as indicated in the present edition. Otherwise, movements may be spread throughout a recital program.
