Stained Glass, Caustic Fly

Philippe Macnab-Séguin

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Duo

2021

14 min.

Electronic Keyboard

Electronics

Live Electronics

Piano

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Program Notes: I would first like to say that I am not of the opinion that the author of an artistic work has any final authority over their work’s interpretation or ‘meaning’. I share the following program note with the hope that it will enrich, rather than restrict, one’s experience and perspectives of the piece, by turning the subjective experience into an intersubjective one. This piece was written in fulfilment of the Luba Zuk Piano Duo Prize, a commissioning prize which gives preference for pieces referencing Hungarian or Canadian culture; this prompted me to a fruitful reflection on my Canadian roots. In 1959, the Catholic church played a massive role in Quebec society, with welfare, health education entirely in its hands. In just a few years in the early 1960s, the Quiet Revolution saw the secularization of all these institutions. The population ceased attending Sunday worship, broke with traditional morality, developed a newfound Quebecois nationalism, all while the clergy saw a major exodus of its members. In my personal experience, being born and raised in a suburb near Montreal, very few members of preceding generations speak of religion, and when they do, it is generally in a spirit of mistrust or even outright hatred for the injustices and abuses of power they witnessed in their youth. One thing that seems clear from all these conversations is that organised religion, in Quebec, is a thing of the past (and good riddance!). Ironically, however, it seems that many young Quebecers of my generation are searching for something to fill the cultural, or spiritual, vacuum left in the wake of the Quiet Revolution. Many turn to Eastern religions and philosophies, new age spirituality, or seek to rediscover their Judeo-Christian roots. This particular set of circumstances served as the prima materia and conceptual background for my compositional process. All of the melodic material in the piece is derived from a Gregorian Chant for New Year’s day: Multifarie olim Deus loquens in prophétis, Novissime diébus istis locutus est nobis in Filio suo On many occasions in the past, God spoke through the prophets; at long last, in these present days, he has spoken to us through his Son. Stained Glass, Caustic Fly is a set of personal associations to this musical kernel, one which I have never sung nor heard anywhere near a church, which I found through an online search, and which seems like an ancient relic, something forgotten, dead. It is a reflection on the past, the future, and the transience of living cultures. I cannot help but reflect on the immeasurable gap that technology has created between the time in which these chants were first set down and the vantage point from which I now view them. Technology has allowed me to access these chants, compose this music, produce the electronics, and coordinate the poly-tempi and real-time tuning changes in the performance. It is the agent which pushed us past the Quiet Revolution and propels us inexorably into the future, leaving in its wake an endless stream of forgotten cultures, silently absorbed into our nascent globalism.
Ensemble Name: Mai Miyagaki & Alexey Shafirov