Chaconne for Orchestra
Daniel Bradshaw
About this work:
“What’s a Chaconne?” This is usually the first question I get when I show anyone my new work for orchestra. I wish in answer I could immediately infuse their minds with some of the great Chaconnes of the past: movements from Bach’s Partita in D Minor for solo violin, Brahm’s Fourth Symphony, the Shostakovitch Piano Trio in E Minor among many, many others. This might help convey the fact that a Chaconne is not just a set of variations over a harmonic progression (as I usually tell them), but that a Chaconne is an expression of the pain and beauty of life and death, time and space; it is the means through which the great composers of past centuries have made some of their most profound and spiritual statements. My own Chaconne was written not in an attempt to add my voice to these great models, but out of sheer admiration for some of the great chaconnes of the past.
In my piece, I wanted my work to be clearly allied with the past, while still living in the 21st Century. Hence, there are elements of traditional chaconnes (the slow, solemn character, the triple meter), as well as more adventurous elements which take the theme, if not to extremes, then certainly beyond the conventions of the 18th and 19th Centuries. I chose to begin the piece in a very traditional way, with a simple statement of the theme (a two-voice harmonic progression). The first two variations add contrapuntal lines to the framework of the theme, which is still clearly intelligible. The third complicates the harmonies of the theme, turning it into a coloristic wash of clusters, which propels the work to a new sense of freedom, turning from the rigid control of the theme. The next two variations increase in intensity and complexity, the theme virtually unintelligible, submerged by its own aggressive variants. At this point, when the piece is about to burst, the theme reasserts its dominance over a minor pedal point, the whole orchestra finally engaging the original material as a unified body. This leads to a relaxed reverie, which gradually builds to the triumphal close of the work, the presentation of the theme in the trombones while the orchestra rings in celebration. But the chaconne is not finished. Almost as an afterthought, the pattern remembers where it began, bringing the work to an introspective close.
Why did I write a Chaconne? As a young child, I would watch my older sister play Bach, Chopin, and Rachmanninoff. Then as she left the piano, I would get on the bench and play everything she had just played. None of the notes were there, but there were highs and lows, louds and softs, and I poured my own emotion into my imitation of her playing. I suppose writing a Chaconne has been a similar exercise for me: the awe and fascination I have felt through experiencing the music of Bach and Brahms made me want to try it myself. I wanted to express my own ideas and passions. I chose to express them through a Chaconne to show their connection (and my connection) to the music of the past.
Chaconne was premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska conducting on October 27, 2007 and was subsequently broadcast on American Public Media's "Performance Today." Funded in part by a Composer Assistance Grant from the American Music Center.
Year composed: 2007
Duration: 00:12:30
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Standard Orchestra
Instrumentation:
Instrumentation notes: 3333 4331 Timp, 2 Perc, Strings