Contemporary Classics January 5, 2021 Bite Me: Contemporary Classical Music about Insects

The late Norwegian composer John Persen's "Bugs" perfectly captures that point in time when bugs are all too much – buzzing in your ear, whizzing around your head, making that NOISE!  And believe me if Norway is anything like Finland in the Summer – beware of the flying bugs because they are very active and biting.

Béla Bartók -  Mikrokosmos Book 6 #142  "From the Diary of a Fly"

This composition is one of the more difficult ones in this set of progressively challenging works. Only 11 more follow, some of which are even more virtuosic in nature.

In this work, Bartók attempts here to depict the actions of a fly caught in a cobweb, from the fly's perspective -- i.e., as related from his diary. The composer revealed there are buzzing sounds depicted that signify the fly's desperation to escape.

The work opens busily, a sort of buzzing theme emerging from the hazy rhythmic manner of the music. As it ascends the keyboard, it gradually grows louder, more distinctive and intense, taking on a sense of fear, of impending doom. The music begins to relax suddenly as it turns downward, its mood slowly growing tranquil. The music's busy manner slows and fades peacefully. In the end, the fly escapes.

Roger Cichy is a composer and conductor raised and educated in Ohio.  He has written music about the monumental such as the discovery of the Titanic and the everyday such as Bugs written in 2000 which is a delightful suite based on a few of the most interesting insects.

Prelude, which begins the suite, was not conceived as a part of the original set of movements but was include when Cichy began work on the piece.  "The suite seemed to need an introduction and this just came out and fell into place", commented Cichy.  The prelude is meant to suggest many of the creatures we associate as bugs.

The second movement, Dragonfly portrays this insect in a couple of contexts.  First, the insect is really considered an aquatic bug spending most of its life under water while emerging only in it adult stage to take to the air.   The second context is reflected in folklore where the dragonfly is responsible for flying around at night and sewing shut the mouths of fibbing boys and girls.  

Praying Mantis, as its name infers, provides a perfect topic for the slow, religioso third movement.  The mantis is often pictured resting with its front legs folded as though in meditation or prayer. 

Black Widow Spider was a movement Cichy couldn't resist.  Ths fourth movement is set to a cool blues. The opening statement was written with an eight note pattern (for the eight legs of the spider) which changes several times in order of notes but contains the same pitches.  Within a few repetitions of the pattern, five more notes are added to complete a dodecaphonic (twelve-note) scale.  In its entirely, the dodceaphonic scale is played from C to a C an octave higher working inward to the center pitch (F#) which represent the spider's web.  The textures begin changing from cool blues to hot as the black widow spider approached its prey with its deadly venom.

The suite would be incomplete without the most gorgeous of all insects, the butterfly.   Cichy chose Tiger Swallowtail for the fifth movement for no particular reason other than it is commonly called the "flying flower".  Set in a lyrical style, this movement tries to musically depict the grace and beauty of such a remarkable insect.

The final, sixth, movement, Army Ants, provides the perfect subject for a march-style piece.  Cichy created a dissonant march portraying the army ants as salvage predators which are constantly on the move.

Gene Pritsker- Maggots a Concertino for Baritone Saxophone

Next is a the third work which triggered this episode of Contemporary Classics, Gene Pritsker’s Maggots, which is a concertino for baritone saxophone with chamber ensemble. The work is in three movements: 1. Maggots, 2. Larva & 3. Butterflies

The first movement “maggots” was inspired by the ‘Men and Maggots’ scene from the classic silent film ‘Battleship Potemkin’. The music is groove oriented but starts off with slow growing music, which depicts the hatching of the insect eggs and development into the maggots – or larvae.   In the second movement ‘Larva’ the the music starts with upward scales, wishing and growing, expanding and transforming until the music becomes an asymmetrical groove in 7/8 time.  Now for the third movement, we would expect a buzzing fly, but Pritsker impishly changes species.  So with the third movement we have the colorful introduction depicting the birth of the Butterfly, coming out of its cocoon, and discovering its wings. But then the groove really kicks in as the butterfly discovering its surroundings, slowly starting to fly and live. But in the end we hear the music of the introduction depicting the short life of the Butterfly  as it lays its eggs and it goes back into the earth.

Kaija Saariaho - Sept Papillons ("Seven Butterflies") for solo cello

Sept Papillons was the first piece Saariaho wrote after the completion of her opera "L'Amour de loin"  and it was partially written during the rehearsals for the performance of her opera.  Saariaho has written that in writing it, she wanted to find a new world which had nothing to do with opera either in style or language.  She wanted to move from “the metaphors of the opera which all have the eternal quality of love, yearning and death” and to move "to a metaphor of the ephemeral: butterfly." Also, from the long time spans of the opera, she moved to seven miniatures, which each seem to be studies on a different aspect of fragile and ephemeral movement that has no beginning or end.

The piece was commissioned by the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, and was premiered in Helsinki a little over a decade ago on September 10, 2000 by Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen, to whom the piece is dedicated.  An interesting side note, Saariaho became friends with Karttunen after they both moved from Finland to Paris in the early 1980s.