Symphony No. 6 (K2 — A Song of Striving and Adventure)

A no-holds-barred sequence of dramatic tableaux…

This work is dedicated to the memory of Alison Hargreaves, one of the world's top mountaineers and the first British woman to reach the summit of K2, the world's second highest mountain. An ascent of K2 is generally recognised as still more challenging and dangerous than one of Everest, at least by the latter's normal route, and indeed, on 15th August 1986, K2 — 'The Killer Mountain' — lost little time in claiming Alison's life once she'd got to the top and was starting her descent.

Is it really a symphony or a closely linked set of symphonic poems? Let the critics and pundits run the course of their arguments about semantics and musical categories and stick labels here, there and everywhere to gloss over the fact that they understand little of real consequence. A more worthwhile occupation would be to open oneself to the vision of the music regardless of how anyone would wish to classify it.

In the best sense, the symphony has a certain uncompromising and relentless character, reflecting the nature of its inspiration and primary focus. In the spirit of mountaineers and all who understand what living is really about, the K2 Symphony is a celebration and not a mourning or tale of woe and tragedy. It certainly contains elements of urgency, torment, anguish and naked calamity, which reflect the experience of those who live life to the full and take themselves to their limits, but these are all set in a context that is positive and celebratory — sometimes joyful, sometimes more serenely meditative. And indeed, why should we mourn deaths that occur in the course of such positive and wonderful striving? Things are as they are, and death is a fact of every life. Indeed, life itself is meaningless without death. What sort of death would you prefer? One at the end of a 'safe' life in which you rejoiced in dullness, mediocrity and repetitiveness, or one at the end of a life that was abundant and lived to the full, even if, perhaps, it was a bit on the short side?

In any case, those of us who are enlightened don't see death as being anything more than a cessation of one particular set of experiences — something that actually every single person experiences every time (s)he goes to sleep. So, where is the tragedy about death, except in an illusion born of one's unhelpful emotional attachments?

Those who expect my use of a full organ in the work to reflect an over-grandiose approach to the subject should get a little surprise, for the organ functions here as it does in a couple of major works of Vaughan Williams, and is in fact not used to augment the orchestral sound at all. Instead, it appears like a bolt from the blue in complete opposition to the orchestra, its monolithic blocks of sound seemingly representing the insurmountable obstacle or final catastrophe.

The four Movements

1. Introduction: Intimation of restlessness

At the beginning the motif that provides the underlying structural basis of the symphony reveals itself in a crazy camouflage. This four-note motif descends by a tritone, ascends by a semitone and then ascends by a tritone, and would be beloved of composers of the atonal/discordant type of music, but I myself have used the motif in a characteristic modal context. The motif's first appearance is as the four long-held brilliant major chords that commence the movement after the initial cheeky nod towards the opening motif of Beethoven's First Symphony. Each of the following movements of this symphony starts with the respective major chord from that original blaze of light.

Out of that original luminosity emerge two main ideas, which are alternated:

• a warm-toned mysterious and anticipatory idea which remains undeveloped through the repeats, like figurative glimpses of our expansive, sky-like deepest levels of consciousness, and
• an urgent, even incandescent idea, whose restlessness increases with each appearance.

At the climax of its third appearance, the restless idea sets off into a skipping 6/8 metre, sounding as though influenced by the music of Eduard Tubin. In fact the similarity is fortuitous, for I didn't hear the Tubin-like effect in my mind prior to putting the parts together. For a moment within that turmoil and again at the end we get our first tastes of an exalted, ecstatic state that is to re-emerge more powerfully in various forms in the 3rd and especially 4th movement.

2. To the Fallen — Song of the Underworld

The movement's opening major chord is the second and lowest-pitched one from the symphony's opening blaze of light. Almost at once the bright image flips over to reveal an underworld loaded with an eerie and haunted atmosphere as though it were a chorus of suffering lost souls. A dance of death leads into a very brief more noble chorale-like fragment, like an intensely felt sigh of longing. The haunted elements are further developed, till eventually a frantic outburst takes us headlong to the insurmountable obstacle and a climax of unbearable anguish. The outburst eventually comes to rest in a serene chorale-like idea, as though one has woken up from a disturbing dream and is beginning to reassure oneself.

The movement finishes with a repeat of the dance of death, again leading to the noble idea, but this time it switches to the major mode, at last shining a ray of light into the underworld.

And who are 'the fallen' of the movement's title? — In the most meaningful sense it's not so much those who've fallen off mountains as those who've 'fallen by the wayside' — that is, who've died unfulfilled, and who at and after their death face the agony of the full recognition of their frustrated longings and missed opportunities — well, at least from some sort of Buddhist perspective. According to my understanding nowadays such an 'agony of the full recognition…' wouldn't at all be in the tangible form portrayed in this music, but would be something experienced only in a subtle and barely conceptual way within a deep level of consciousness.

Nowadays I see this music as portraying in a harrowing caricature form an open and deeply aware person's empathetic view of other people's failures to make something genuinely worthwhile of their lives as they remain captive to their desires and attachments and the 'devils they know' rather than explore new and ever more meaningful vistas.

3. Song of Striving and Endeavour

In dramatic contrast with the intense despair portrayed in the second movement, this one is a sort of celebratory battle scene — a battle against the elements and adversity rather than of humans against each other. A particular distinguishing feature is a high tone (a D), which is sounded throughout except in the initial and final wild celebrations. This high tone is alternated by flute and piccolo, a glockenspiel figure marking the beginning of each entry, giving the tone a bell-like effect that seems always to be hinting at some deeper aspect of reality.

The movement commences with the high D tone starting to establish itself, but this is interrupted by the opening major chord, which is the third of the four in the symphony's opening blaze of light. This chord is in fact of C# major and thus in harmonic terms is quite a wrench from that higher tone. In contrast with the previous movement, the major chord is dwelt upon in a tremendous over-the-top celebration, with timpani and snare drum hammering out irrationally changing rhythmic patterns that add greatly to the excitement and tension.

The celebration eventually descends and terminates like the end of an exciting glissade down a long soft snow slope. The high tone re-establishes itself and is to continue till near the end of the movement. After a few moments of hushed anticipation comes the first wave of the 'battle'. This is quite short, and the piano has the lion's share of the work. Rhythmically, it's elaborated from the celebration that opened the movement.

The pause before the second wave is short and contains mostly what I think of as the symphony's 'mountain theme' — an imposing and noble near-atonal melody first introduced on low brass. The second wave of the battle is an elaboration of the first, with a greater proportion of its activity in the orchestra. Listeners with high mountain experience should have little difficulty in recognising the avalanches, both in this stage of the 'battle' and subsequently. The following interlude has all the feel of a high-level overnight camp, with its tremendous icy cold, sense of dwarfed humanity and immensity of silence broken only by the occasional avalanche and rockfall and the odd ice movements in the glaciers.

The mountain theme comes in again, leading us through a frenzied crescendo to a terrifying climax, which drops us into the start of the battle's third wave. This is a further-elaborated repeat of the second wave, but is somewhat truncated, with a growing positive energy emerging. The choir joins in briefly, first cryptically crying out 'No way forward — Back to the river!', and then wordlessly adding to the complex texture as that wave of the battle subsides. The mountain theme reappears, again leading into a frenzied crescendo.

This time, instead of a terrifying climax, with an unexpected serenity the orchestra at last discovers the chord of D major, having reached the level of the high tone that had hovered over the music up to this point. The summit has been reached. We finish with a repeat of the opening celebration, now pitched a semitone higher and so dancing around that D-major chord. There's a problem, however: K2 has a way with those who dare to reach its summit…

4. Song of Freedom and Release

Although this movement has a radiant and celebratory quality overall, it's not of the traditional 'finale-allegro' type of symphony finale and is more meditative in character, its luminosity shining into the depths. Unsurprisingly its opening presents us with the fourth chord (G major) from the blaze of light that opened the symphony, though in this context it seems more like dawn light rather than sunrise. Sunrise lies just beyond, in an elaboration of the whole of that original blaze of light.

The final chord of that drops us into a celebratory fugue-like idea, which doesn't really develop and paves the way for the choir to come in with the movement's main new theme, which was hinted at briefly in the previous movement — a seemingly carol-like tune in 3/4 metre and imbued with a remarkable radiance and at times elemental quality from its particular mode and harmonization. The previous, fugue-like idea returns, its sense of joy much augmented by the choir, though it develops no further than the first time.

Following the words Away, bright star, away!, we enter a rarefied ascending, soaring environment, in which the symphony's underlying 4-note motif emerges as a slowing quasi-ostinato, each repetition of the motif a whole-tone higher than the last — though because of the shape of the motif it sounds as though the rising is by semitone steps. We'd already encountered the exalted, ecstatic quality of this in little glimpses in the 3rd movement, but here we have no battle; just a steady 'ascending of the spirit', the participation of the choir adding to the uplifting and other-worldly effect.

The mountain theme from the 3rd movement re-emerges, now translated into the radiant mode of the carol-like tune, making it yet another paean of joy. A new variant of the ascending idea incorporates a little rhythmic 'knocking' figure that was heard in previous movements and has already made its mark all over the place in this movement, now insistently asserting a D# like a wonderful beacon leading us on in the ascent.

After a further ascending passage with the insistent D#, the high D from the 3rd movement is back with us to accompany a last rendering of the mountain theme in its original form, now with the choir expanding the sound of the orchestra. From this remains the ascending idea, with the insistent 'knocking' of that D#, which at the symphony's end can only hint at the apparent infinity that lies not only beyond but also within all that we experience…

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(the carol-like theme):

The dawning of the Clear Light
At last has brought an end to sufferings of this life.
The Clear Light of compassionate love that knows no bounds…
The Clear Light has granted a new kind of sight beyond earthly lives.
 
I saw three ships, three lives, come sailing by
On transient waves on the boundless ocean of mind.
Three ships, three lives appeared to arise, then came sailing by,
One by one, and soon were no more.
They came one by one, and soon were no more,
As the waves of thought fell back into the ocean calm.
 
Before the beginning of time was, I am.

(fugue-like theme):

Sail, noble ship! My life in this world is passed and time becomes to say goodbye.
O death, indeed I ask, O where is thy sting?
Behold, I passed through death,
Yet for evermore I live!
Sail, noble ship! My life in this world is passed and time becomes to say goodbye, away, away!
Away, bright star, away!

(other-worldly ascending passages):

The Buddhist mantras:

Om mani padme hum;
Om ah hum vajra guru padma siddhi hum.

(Mountain theme):

Older and finer than mountains or firmament,
Live I for ever.
Mountains of wonder, grandest of worldly loves
In the hour of passing away,
When you took my life away —
Yet still I live…

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Related works

• Symphony 1 (Sagarmatha)

• Symphony 4 (Highland Wilderness)

• Music From the Mountain Waters

• Mount Everest — Summit Bid

• Fantasy Variations — From the Scottish Mountains (note that this is in a significantly different idiom / mindset as compared with any of my other works)

• Sunrise on Ama Dablam

• Clarity of a Mountain Sunrise