Published
Tombeau De Messiaen
This work is a modest offering in response to the death of a great musical and spiritual presence. Messiaen was a protospectralist, that is to say, he was fascinated by the colours of the harmonic series and its distortions, and found therein a prismatic play of light. The tape part of my work is composed of piano sounds entirely tuned to harmonic series – twelve of them, one for each class of pitch. The ‘tempered’ live piano joins and distorts these series, never entirely belonging, never entirely separate. Tombeau de Messiaen was written for Philip Mead (who commissioned it with funds provided in part by Eastern Arts) and dedicated to him and to Jake Harvey Tavener who was born ten hours before Tombeau was finished. Sound projection by the composer.
In an exclusive world premiere recording, virtuoso pianist Philip Mead interprets ‘Tombeau de Messiaen’ for piano and tape, Harvey’s recent homage to the French composer, where the piano is continuously transformed by the swirling harmonic interactions and distortions of its ghostly tape counterpart. Also for the first time on CD is one of Harvey’s earliest works ‘4 Images After Yeats’ the epic piano solo composition inspired by Yeats’ mystical poems. The Purgatory theme is explored using fragments of music from the past (Bach, Liszt, Schoenberg,…) which weave in and out this dense and breathtaking score; a definite tour de force by Philip Mead. These piano compositions are intercut by two ‘classic’ Harvey tape pieces ‘Ritual Melodies’ and the sublime ‘Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco’ both of which have been remixed by Harvey specially for this release. Built around the themes of Death and Rebirth and spanning a range from 1969 to 1999, this CD is an essential tribute to one of the most significant composers of our times.
La siguiente obra será Tombeau de Messiaen (1994), para piano y cinta, la primera obra suya que escuché. En esta obra aparecen algunos guiños a Messiaen (algunas series de acordes que se escuchan, pero el más descarado es, para mí, lo que es el punto culminante de la pieza y la escala descendente del final, un pasaje que podría haberlo escrito perfectamente Messiaen). Es básicamente un homenaje a este compositor como precursor del espectralismo. En esta obra Harvey mezcla por una parte el temperamento igual del piano “en vivo” y por otra, la afinación “natural” (según la serie armónica) de la grabación:
“Esta mezcla puede ser desconcertante al principio- parece que la cinta está “fuera de tono”- pero gradualmente lo que emerge es un sutil juego entre dos voces buscando el unísono y “afinadas” entre sí, preservando sin embargo las tensiones de la distancia que hay entre ellas. Solo al final, en un gran gesto afirmativo a la manera de Messiaen, hay una sensación de llegada- aunque incluso esta se disipa en los compases finales, en los que el piano (extendiendo la idea de caída que implica la palabra “tombeau”) se escucha arrojándose hacia el abismo en un torbellino descendente” – J.H.
Tombeau es tumba en francés, tomber es caer, de ahí la relación.