Passionate Isolation
David Hahn
About this work:
Program Notes
The title Passionate Isolation comes from the prose-poem No More Secondhand God by R. Buckminster Fuller. The following lines begin the book:
Late tonight
(April 9, 1940)
I am just sitting here
for one of the many reasons that
people find themselves passionately isolated.
(The cause is rarely noble.)
Written in solitude during a period of international turmoil at the beginning of World War II, Fuller's text attracted me as a mirror of our own troubled world in 2004. To the many isolated individuals in our world, it can appear that, as human beings, we are locked into a fate of a continuous cycle of abuses of power leading to armed conflict. Consequently, I saw the movements of this piece as: 1) the Ritual of impotent international deliberations, 2) the Misgivings of the World's population in the face of impending war, and 3) the inevitable March of the military machine.
Year composed: 2004
Duration: 00:08:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Other Combinations, 2-5 players
Instrumentation: 1 Guitar (Classical/Acoustic), 1 Mandolin
Instrumentation notes: To the Performers:
Mandolin: The pizzicato sections (mm.81-89 & mm.95-102) in the I. Ritual movement should be played with the picking hand muting the strings slightly. You are accompanying the guitar here.
Guitar: For the entire I. Ritual movement, the guitar should weave a piece of paper (wax paper works very well) into the strings of the instrument (see diagram below of strings woven with paper). The result is that the guitar part will produce a pitched percussive effect. The other 2 movements are played normally.