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Program Notes
In the words of the composer:
Dreams of Fin was conceived as an extension of Finnegan’s Wake by David Gompper. Gompper states that in writing Finnegan’s Wake, his intention was “to effect a transformation of the foot-stomping dance tune by leading it through a labyrinth of rhythmic manipulations, and into a series of playful excursions.” I further picture Gompper’s work as an interpolation of the wake of the so-named character in Joyce’s Ulysses. The joyous dance-like melody of Finnegan’s Wake sets a mood contrary to what most in western society view as a somber occasion. My Dreams of Fin begins precisely where Gompper’s Finnegan’s Wake ends off, as though one has passed through the ether to the realm of the dead—into what Edgar Allan Poe once referred to as the “Dream World.” I thus reordered the intervals of the primary motive from Gompper’s work and applied my own musical syntax to create a new motive. The use of sul tasto in the violin and una corda in the piano provides a veiled view of the “other world,” moving out of the shadows only at the moment of greatest beauty, marking the final acceptance of Finnegan’s passage into Poe’s “Dream World.”
Dangerfield’s depiction vibrantly captures the essence of his triply directed response piece—moving in a near visceral sense through the media of Gompper, Joyce and the larger collective of the Irish soul bound as it is to numerous ancient rites, and none more exacting than the injunction to prepare the dead for a sanctified crossing into the spirit world. The account that follows will provide a gloss on Dangerfield’s gloss while engaging in aspects of his work the distinct temporal domains of which uncannily address the paradox of the Celtic otherworld, a place that is at once near and distant, present and not.
Dreams of Fin commences with unaccompanied violin stating the principal motivic material and at a tentative though expressive pace. In an instant we are aurally commanded to an earlier era, one dominated by the static vertical interval of the open fifth G – D (and its stretching out through several octaves) wherein the melody, governed by modal concerns, is made to unfold. There is a lamenting quality to this introduction, a quality that continues as the piano joins in at the head of the A section of the composition’s tripartite structural design. Fertile contrapuntal exchanges between the two instruments follow, with thematic material often passing between the violin and the piano. And yet for all of the elaborate passagework a certain disjuncture among the lines reigns in this the initial section of Dreams of Fin: it is as though a schism exists, thwarting the several attempts at initiating contact among participants, and as a result their total communion is hampered. And yet each of the many voices has a commanding presence and the expansive registral space is employed as a key element in projecting the fullness of the section’s texture.
With the collapse of the registral space, however, we are cast into the more lively middle section of Dangerfield’s Dreams of Fin—itself a three-part design fashioned after Gompper’s fashioning of a traditional Irish reel. The initial sweep features a continual elevation in the energy level by means of shifting metric patterns that distort the central short-long-short rhythmic motto underpinning the dance. The intricate play in the partnering of the two instruments finds the overall rising tessitura of the violin bringing the right-hand material of the piano along with it. The inner portion of the middle section of Dreams of Fin features a near composite effect of sixteenth-note activity. This “romp” is also predicated upon three driving lines of descending motion in the violin, each longer than the previous one, with the third extended in range through some two-and-a-half octaves and culminating in a transitional passage not unlike the opening of the reel section, but supported by richer sonorities in the piano’s lower register.
Dreams of Fin comes to a conclusion by cycling back on itself with the institution of a version of its opening. But whereas the metaphor of being encircled by a distant past had held sway in the initial moments of the work, the ancient veil is lifted in this recapitulatory act. This is Dangerfield’s ultimate remembrance of Gompper’s work positioning it in the wake of Finnegan. The yearning sul tasto pitches in the violin and the una corde of the piano serve as reminders of our debt to the unending chain of creation and rebirth.
Program Notes by Gregory Marion
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
The University of Saskatchewan
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Joseph Dangerfield
