Brilliant Mirrors
Gregg Wramage
About this work:
Recipient of the New Music for Young Ensembles Josef Alexander Award and premiered by Pentasonic Winds, 12/00. Published by the composer. For further information about this work, please contact Gregg Wramage at: gwramage@hotmail.com, 718-238-9485, 28 Marine Ave., Apt. 5H, Brooklyn, NY 11209.
Brilliant Mirrors is cast in five short movements which are performed in a quasi-segued manner. The movements are arranged in a mirrored arch form, so that relationships in tempo, texture, and general musical character exist between movements I & V, and II & IV, while the third movement acts as the emotional and dramatic focal point of the work. Movements I & V feature a fast tempo, and dense, contrapuntal textures, while movements I I & IV are in moderate tempi and employ homophonic textures. The third movement is set apart from the other movements by its slow tempo and the use of chorale style writing for the quintet. Most of the melodic and harmonic material in the piece is derived from a six-note chord which contains the pitches E, A, F, G sharp, B, and F sharp.
The title is taken from a passage in Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Human, All Too Human”, which offers an optimistic interpretation of the various imperfections man discovers in his own nature and actions. The passage reminded me of the general emotional character of my quintet, in that
Brilliant Mirrors is a piece that sounds rather contented with itself to me, despite all of its melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and structural “imperfections”. The title also seemed appropriate due to the preponderance of mirror writing (inversion) found in the melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and structural elements of the piece. Brilliant Mirrors was composed in March of 1998, during a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. The aforementioned passage from Nietzsche’s “Human, All Too Human” is quoted below:
Man is conscious of certain actions which stand low in the customary order of rank of actions; indeed, he discovers in himself a tendency to actions of this sort which seem to him almost as immutable as his whole nature does. How much he would like to attempt that other species of actions which in the general estimation are accounted the highest, how much he would like to feel full of that good consciousness which is supposed to attend a
selfless mode of thought! Unhappily he gets no further than desiring this: his discontent at his insufficiency is added to all the other kinds of
discontent which his lot in life in general have engendered in him; so that there arises a profound depression of spirits, together with a watching-out
for a physician who might be able to alleviate this condition and all its causes. - This condition would not be felt so bitterly if man compared himself only with other men: for then he would have no reason to be especially discontented with himself, since he would see he was only bearing the general burden of human dissatisfaction and imperfection. But he
compares himself with a being which alone is capable of those actions called unegoistic and lives continually in the consciousness of a selfless mode of thought, with God; it is because he looks into this brilliant mirror that his own nature seems to him so dismal, so uncommonly distorted.
Year composed: 1998
Duration: 00:10:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Woodwind Quintet
Instrumentation: 1 Flute, 1 Oboe, 1 Clarinet, 1 Bassoon, 1 Horn in F