New Roads, Old Destinations
for solo piano
(1996)
duration: 6’
GRT • 031
CD available
Giants in the Land
Ian Holtham, piano
Move Digital
audio sample
score available from
Australian Music
Centre
program note
This piece is
inspired by M. C. Escher’s famous 1960 lithograph,
Ascending and
Descending,
showing stairs which descend impossibly back to an upper
starting point. This illusion can also be found in music.
One of the most famous examples is Monteverdi’s
Non Morir
Seneca chorus
from The Coronation
of Poppea where
chromatically rising lines are dovetailed to give the
impression that the music is constantly getting higher and
higher, when in fact it is merely treading a metaphoric
waterwheel. More recently, Wim Mertens’ solo piano
piece Alef from the recording Jeremiades combines a descending sequence with
gradual phrase augmentation to induce a sense of
uncertainty on the part of the listener as to whether the
music has returned to the ‘top’ or whether it has
progressed elsewhere.
Ambiguity is also at
the heart of this piece. In New Roads, Old
Destinations, each
time the phrases descend further (new roads) and yet still
arrive back at the same cadential motive (old
destinations). In between the ‘new roads’ are refrains
based on the same sequential motive but these never expand
beyond 4 bars and also wind up at ‘old destinations’. This
ambiguity is reinforced by chromatic descent into a
harmonic labyrinth of symmetrical relationships that appear
to have tonal centres, but prove elusive.
review
"All the tracks
are great, but I’m particularly enamoured of Stuart
Greenbaum’s New
Roads, Old Destinations."
Greg Borrowman, Australian Hi-Fi,
February 2005