Symphony No. 5 (Magritte Gallery)

An abundant playful celebration of colour and imagery…

I make no apology for producing in this symphony a work of highly unconventional form, which for many people will require several listenings before they can fully acclimatize to its particular shape, multiplicity, and mode of organic development. I've previously composed a number of works of immediate impact, and it's right that I also produce works that challenge the listener more, forging new pathways in the receptive listener's mind, revealing their secrets more slowly and always holding something in reserve.

Despite its humour and highly charged emotive element, the underlying character of this work is contemplative and 'observational', rather than trying to get the listener involved with the composer's own 'story' or emotional issues.

Imagine yourself moving slowly through a gallery of paintings of a particular artist. The paintings all have a strong atmosphere and quality that are characteristic of that artist, and a variety of motifs keep recurring in the different paintings. When you've got to the end of the exhibition you gradually work your way back to the start, but as you look at each picture anew your experience of it is much augmented and modified by the other works you've seen in the meantime, and indeed by the sheer passage of time; also your own imagination, stimulated by the pictures, interpolates additional images.

Similarly, imagine yourself setting out on a journey, on a route which you will supposedly retrace to your starting point — presumably returning home. This symphony highlights the illusory quality of that return and the inevitability of change and forward motion.

The underlying structural basis of this work is chaconne-like, with a theme that is constantly repeated while other ideas build up around it — though that's only the starting point. The basic theme exists both in the full form and in a pizzicato or staccato form with many missing notes which result in a very different rhythmic character. The work has an arched shape and can be summarized as follows (you don't have to know all this to enjoy the work!!)…

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• Introduction
  • Statement 1 (in canon, with the pizzicato form)
  • Statement 2 (clarinets, harmonized, with string chords)
  • Statement 3 (canon of pizzicato form)
  • Statement 4 (in bass: sinister muttering with string harmonics & tubular bells)
  • Statement 5 (staccato brass with eruptions)
  • Statement 6 (quarter-speed):
    • 1st half with half-speed variant: fast train;
    • 2nd half with half-speed dissonant pizzicato version: dark and eerie, with touching melodic motif and hint of London Underground train on castanets
  • Inverted, boisterous variation of basic theme
• Development of fugal idea in introduction, 1
  • Keystone: variation of basic theme, violently hammered out
• Development of fugal idea in introduction, 2 (partly repeat)
  • Inverted, boisterous variation of basic theme (repeat)
  • Statement 7 (half-speed):
    • 1st half with mostly folk-like ideas, polytonal in triple time;
    • 2nd half a no-man's land, seeking a direction.
  • Variation of Statement 5
  • Repeat of Statement 4 (somewhat augmented instrumentation)
• Development (includes a variation of basic theme in a gentle 6/8)
  • Variation of Statement 3
• Development
  • Statement 8 (harmonized strings with trumpet playing the pizzicato form)
• Development
  • Repeat of Statement 2 (slightly augmented instrumentation)
  • Variation of Statement 8 (ethereal, wind plus pp timpani)
  • Variation 1 of Statement 2 (turbulent)
• Development of fugal idea in introduction, 3
  • Variation 1 of Statement 2 (turbulent), repeat
  • Variation 2 of Statement 2 (half-speed, ethereal, with nervous interjections developing)
  • Repeat of Statement 1 (somewhat augmented instrumentation)
• Coda.

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The symmetry of the arch, thus, is subverted by my normal compositional process of thematic metamorphosis, so that in the latter half of the arch the statements of the underlying theme are separated by additional variations and metamorphoses both of that theme and the variety of others that I've entwined with it.

The keystone of the arch is therefore not in the middle of the work but only about ¼ way through. Sections described as 'development' and 'coda' part from the basic theme in order to work upon some of the additional motifs, including those of the introduction, which are shown in a new light. The later repeat (variant) statements of the basic theme give the effect of contrasting intermezzi in the main symphonic development, giving us the illusion of simultaneously moving forward and backward in time.

The peaceful coda comes as a surprise, when the work seems to have already drawn to a conclusive ending. It's like final whiffs of incense rising into the heights — but I feel that the incense isn't of Earth but of another world entirely, as indeed could be said of many parts of this symphony.

As the composition of the work proceeded I was struck by its feel for the surrealistic, with its other-worldly dreamlike quality and its streak of dark humour and often an underlying slight feeling of menace, which suggested to me very much the paintings of René Magritte.