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CALPENTYN ALTERNATIVES, Op. 416
Tufts UniversityMusic Dept, USA
http://www.tufts.edu/as/music/
October 16, 2004
By John McDonald,
(Writer is a composer/pianist and an Associate Professor of Music
at Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA)
Calpentyn Alternatives, Op. 416 (2004)
1. Three Treatments Of A Nädagam Song
2. Quodlibet With "Drums"
3. The Nädagam Song In Three Elements: Wind, Water, Sun
Commissioned by Tufts University
Music Department (Janet Schmaldfeldt, Chair) for Triple
Helix (Bayla Keyes, violin; Rhonda Rider, cello; Lois Shapiro,
piano) for their series "From Other Shores"
(from the Concert Program - This concert
highlights the diversity of cultures that has created America by exploring
the rich and growing repertoire of chamber music inspired by and often
incorporating authentic folk traditions - music forged in different cultural
crucibles that conveys a sense of place, an ethos.
Each piece in the program manifests
a unique internal relationship between an indigenous music and the legacy
of Western art music. Indeed, this internal musical dialog between two
cultures is a kind of metaphor for the experience of immigrnats in a new
land as they struggle to find a balance between traditional ways and new
customs or values.)
Celebrating SARID
(South Asia Research Institute for Policy & Development; Javed Sultan,
Founder & Executive Director) and the Calpentyn
Wind
Alternative Energy project; Janaki Blum, Director and Vinod Moonesinghe,
Project Coordinator.
In keeping with Triple Helix's exciting recital project entitled "From
Other Shores: Celebrating the Diversity
of American Music," I offer this trio in celebration of their effort
to encompass the many influences that have reached and continue to reach
our own shores of the USA - whether we realize these influences or not!
Sri Lankan Influences
My wife is Sri Lankan, and from
her I have learned much about the vast cultural influences that have shaped
modern Sri Lanka, an island nation with a culturally and religiously diverse
population of nearly 20 million. Recent decades have witnessed destructive
civil war in the region, a conflict kept alive since 1983 by small, intransigent
power elites on both the Tamil monority and Sinhalese majority sides.
Despite this lasting conflict, the
cultural mix of that includes ancient Sankrit/Pali spiritual traditions
(Buddhism and Hinduism) and Islam as well as prominent Roman Catholicism,
has forged a folk culture that has remained alive even in remote peninsular
regions such as Kalpitiya (Calpentyn, as the Dutch dubbed it), an important
fishing town located in the Northwestern province of the island. Add to
the mix the lasting influences of colonization, including the influx of
Portugese, Dutch and English popoulations from the sixteenth to the nineteenth
centuries, and the cultural picture becomes as multifarious as any one
might find on the globe.
Energy Alternatives
And now, with the efforts of the
Cambridge-based non-profit development organization, SARID, the uSA has
become involved in an appropriately scaled development project involving
wind energy in the Kalpitiya area. According to the SARID website
(www.sarid.net), "The aim of the
project is to design housing & energy resources appropriate to the
local climate and needs as highlighted by the inhabitants. Regional
household electrical appliances currently use automotive batteries. Introducing
wind turbines for battery recharging will dispense with the arduous ferry-ride
to a distant mainland location where batteries are currently re-powered".
In short, as of this writing, SARID is innovating viable "Calpentyn
Alternatives" - energy solutions that will make daily life more tolerable
for one of the most economically challenged areas of Sri Lanka. My Trio
for Triple Helix is a salutation to this effort.
Musical Symbol of Hope
The double meaning of "Alternatives" operates in my music.
While celebrating alternative energy (hre, wind power), it also uses the
term "alternatives" to mean " variations". Thus, the
first movement states three versions of the main melodic source material
of the work, a melody from the musical repertory of the "Nädagama",
a lyrical folk play boasting several traditional verses and songs dating
at least as far back as the seventeenth century. The melody's lyrics are
sung by a princess who waits hopefully in her flower garden for her prince
to pass by. The not-so-veiled longing of the melody was attractive to
me, and serves as a symbol of hope and anticipation that the Calpentyn
Wind project holds for the Kalpitiya region. The movement's"three
treatments" are invocative, dance-like, and grand, respectively.
The second movement, "Quodlibet with 'Drums'", is a "fanciful
combination of several airs" (Oxford English Dictionary definition
of "quodlibet") that combines first two, then three Nädagam
melodies to form a melodic tapestry that is divided by two "drum
solos." The new melodies are one that introduces the previously mentioned
prince to the audience in the folk drama, and another that is lullaby-like
and borrows from Roman Catholic Church music. These two new tunes are
combined with the princess's lament from the first movement (heard in
the piano after the first "drum solo", played also by the piano).
The "drums" imitate percussion incipits to Buddhist chanting;
I composed the solos after listening attentively to a recording of regional
Sri Lankan priests performing a lengthy chant.
Like the first movement, the last presents three variants ("alternatives")
again using the princess's plaintive melody. The first variant is subtitled
"Wind: Sarasara (Rustle Study)," and alludes to the coastal
wind by taking a Sinhalese word for "breeze" or "rustle"
("sarasara") and creating instrumental fugures (listen to piano
and violin) that are breezy. The second variant tries to capture a sense
of glistening water, here evocative of the blue coastal waters of the
fishing community of Kalpitiya. The work closes with a third variant,
"Sun," strongly reminiscent of the end of the first movement,
yet hopeful and intentionally triumphant.
By steeping this trio in imagery from Sri Lankan folk traditions, I have
attempted to fashion a paean to the cultural history of the region in
which SARID is now attempting to accomplish truly positive change through
alternative energy developments. By the same token, the trio celebrates
the efforts of Bayla Keyes, Rhonda Rider, and Lois Shapiro as they take
on a new and exciting phase of concert programming that has become one
of their hall marks. I offer this work toTriple Helix and to SARID with
great appreciation.
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