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SIX WOODEN BLOCKS: A Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Cello (2005)

PLAY MUSIC

1. Revenge: Gigue
2. Remorse: Tango
3. Repentance: Passacaglia
4. Regret: Corrente
5. Remembrance: Ragtime
6. Release: Sarabande

Six Wooden Blocks

named revenge, remorse
repentance, regret
remembrance, release

You might spend
a whole morning
stacking them
in one order
then another

You might work
chronologically
theologically
or attempt magic

Each is stained
a different color,
shades of indigo and violet
none pale

They are fashioned
of heartwood,
oiled, heavy,
never softening
to the touch

-  Sally Allen McNall

            The six “blocks” of Sally McNall’s poem are, of course, states of mind that one might indulge in, or fall a victim to, in relation to any of an array of past life experiences.
Most plausibly, for me at least, these past experiences involve human relationships from which one has come away with a sense of failure. (“Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love,” Iris Murdoch reminds us.)

            Each of the six dances in this suite (or “set”) is an emotive, or affective, response to one of Sally’s hard “looks back” at what we have been. A potent part of the poem is the non-linear nature of these self-evaluations; the way none leads inevitably to another, and none resolves the dilemma, or ends the reflection. These dances could, of course, be played in “one order, then another,” but, to create a satisfying structure for a thirty-minute piece of music, I was happiest adopting the order that Sally herself uses.  Turned into music in this way, a progression is quite strongly implied, Release being achieved “at last” – or at least, “for now.”

I: Revenge: Gigue

            The uselessness and inherent fallacy of revenge are communicated in the opening gigue.  This dance, typically jovial in nature and found at the end of conventional dance suites, is here transformed into a brutal and humorless exercise, though somewhat retaining the rhythmic “feel” of its type.  Harshly screaming in its highest register, the clarinet leads the attack, while strings hammer angrily at the bottom of theirs.  The main melodic gesture of the dance, heard in the clarinet right at the outset, will recur in all of the remaining movements except the last.

II. Remorse: Tango

            Remorse, the first in a trio of confessional central movements, is a tango, and is the most anguished and exaggerated of the three. The rather melodramatic gesture of throwing back one’s head, the back of one fist pressed against one’s forehead, was sometimes in my mind. The theme of Revenge is still very much in evidence in this essay in self-mortification.

III. Repentance: Passacaglia

            A passacaglia is not technically a dance, but a musical form in which a single, usually brief, melodic unit is continuously repeated, rather like, and especially so in this case, a litany, or repetitive prayer. Eight notes, heard alone at the opening in the cello, constantly recur with more and more elaborate, complex, and technically daunting embellishment, until, following a climax at which the tango rhythm of Remorse returns, the energy drains from the music.  We are left, finally, in very much the same place as we began.

IV. Regret: Corrente

            The expression, “a fleeting regret” was the starting point of this, perhaps the mildest form of reflective self-criticism. Spinning sixteenths suggest a shadowy past, imperfectly understood.  Twice the music circles down into the beginnings of what feels like real anger, but these pass quickly, and regret fades like smoke.

V. Remembrance: Ragtime

            Remembrance may, of course, be completely benign, even sweet.  But in the context of Sally’s poem, I can only hear these memories as touched with the taste of bitterness and missed opportunities. More the recollection of a ragtime than an actual dance, this ghostly piece shifts unexpectedly to remote and lonely places, and ends in dissolution, like the fracturing of memory itself.

VI. Release: Sarabande

            This solemn, restrained dance offers some respite from the mood of the earlier pieces, but it is a bittersweet farewell, in which there is still a full and aching awareness of what has come before. At the very last, the musical texture is completely reversed from that at the opening of Revenge: now the two strings duet poignantly in their upper registers while the clarinet’s voice, nearly motionless, hums in its lowest.

Painting by Dan Massad (Personal Page)

Karen Bentley-Pollick, violin (www.kbentley.com)
Dennis Parker, cello (www.dennisparkerland.com)
Justin O’Dell, clarinet