Isaac Levitan: Valley of the river: Autumn
The original impetus for these pieces was the result of a minor(??) crisis – the music software that I’d used for several years suddenly announced it would no longer be updated and, as a consequence, would eventually fall out of use.
Panic! I needed – at my advanced age – to learn a completely new setup!
Being (for once) brave, I decided to tackle the problem head on by writing, on my new software, a chamber orchestral version (without voice) of my 2009 setting of Arthur Waley’s translation of Po Chü-i’s beautifully melancholic The Chrysanthemums in the Eastern Garden – it became Scena, the first of the Five Pieces.
I was quite pleased with the result and, once I’d got going and started to get a sense of how the new music editor worked, there was no stopping me – Tourbillion [Whirlwind], Antiphon and Toccata followed in short order (advanced age?? who says!!!).
The final Valediction was written slightly later, and as a response to the death of a friend (to whose memory the whole work is dedicated); it returns to the musical material and the Autumnal/Winter world of the opening Scena.
Here are the computer generated results of my effort:
The Art of Listening 