Mount Everest — Summit Bid

Human frailty and perseverance pitted against towering, monolithic 'Mother Nature'…

The writing of this really odd, visually stylized symphonic poem started with the little 2-part canon that forms the final section of my Symphony 2. I first produced the canon in an experimental 4-part arrangement and immediately sensed in it something of the spirit of Dave's ascent of Everest in my novel Three Blind Executioners — the buoyant, ever-ascending 'spirit' of the mountain explorer and truth seeker, mingled with the human tenderness, frailties and longings that a truly open mind reveals. Then, with that image in mind, I was moved to incorporate some impression of the mountain itself, throwing into sharp relief the humanity and dwarfed and apprehensive feelings of those tiny human specks upon it.

A gradual crescendo of very slow rising waves of overlapping minor triads forms the introductory section. Any potential resemblance to the opening of Sibelius' Swan of Tuonela is dispelled by the timpani and the occasional harmonic clashes suggestive of disaster. And at the top of each wave, sternly, resplendently, stands a major triad — perhaps the blinding, dangerously UV-rich light of the sun, a dazzlingly sunlit snowy ridge crest or the summit itself, both forbidding and beckoning.

Out of the stern climax of this introduction emerges a harmonized ostinato, against which a soaring nostalgic theme emerges in the deep bass and for much of the rest of the time it simply repeats itself in various canonic combinations, each entry in the bass being taken up by progressively higher instruments until it's reached the top. The effect becomes that of a wall of sound, of shifting harmonic combinations, of ever shifting tensions and relaxations as the rising waves of the individual lines weave around the ostinato. Twice the music is cut by great chasms or maybe avalanches.

Towards the end the key changes, with the ostinato now in octaves and not harmonized, giving a sense of finality about the proceedings. Soon each melodic line, one by one, starting from the bass, becomes a held minor triad, but the topmost line clashes by becoming a major triad instead. The other parts all stop playing, leaving the major chord hanging over the abyss.

This ending of the work on a major chord is quite different from use of a 'major' ending in romantic music. Here, far from a sense of triumph, the final chord is at best an impassioned question mark over the outcome of the mountain's ascent bid; indeed, it bears at least an echo of catastrophe. Such is the nature of mountaineering, especially on the 'big ones'.