MELOPOEIA
Year of composition: 2015
Instrumentation: soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, violin, viola, cello
Duration: 5’30″
Presented in collaboration with Lasse Thoreson’s Concrescence project, Montreal, QC
Premiere: McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble, Guillaume Bourgogne, cond.
Pollack Hall, Montreal
April 2015
PROGRAMME NOTE
In Melopoeia complementary trios of voices and strings are cast in a textural fabric that weaves together triadic consonance, dense polyphony and strange microtonal inflections. This short work draws inspiration from a debate that is detailed in Aristoxenus’ Elementa Harmonica wherein the author argues that musical intervals should be judged according to their inherent melodic function – a departure from the prevailing Pythagorian tradition that validated intervals based on the relative perfection of their arithmetic proportions. Its title derives from the seventh and final ‘aspect’ of music-making as defined by Aristoxenus in the Elementa: the “art of shaping melody”.