Marc Sabat : To walk in this what came to pass (2022)

support our open access content: https://ko-fi.com/plainsound Composer: Marc Sabat Publisher: PLAINSOUND MUSIC EDITION http://www.plainsound.org Performed by: Note Performer / Dorico notation software (tuned computer simulation) “To walk in this what came to pass” was written in the first months of 2022, during the unprovoked and brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, an act which demonstrated to the entire world Muscovy’s continuing urge, exercised over centuries, to dominate and to negate Ukrainians’ sovereignty and independent cultural identity. My parents, and their parents, with the exception of my father’s father, successfully fled the Russian occupation of Western Ukraine during the second world war, giving me the great fortune of being born and growing up in Canada. My grandfather and namesake Julian Sabat, whom I never knew, was murdered by the invaders: by a collusion of Stalin’s Communist and Hitler’s Nazi armies. He was lost along with many Jewish and Ukrainian intellectuals tortured and killed in Zolochiw castle in 1942. From the old photographs I imagine he was a free-thinking man, opposed to the imposition of totalitarian ideologies on a diverse and multi-ethnic populace seeking self-determination. It is with horror that such atrocities continue through recent decades: in the Middle East, in Turkey, in the former Yugoslavia, in China, etc. and now most recently, Putin channeling Hitler in his invasion of free Ukraine. As the world’s climate faces radical deterioration, our elected officials enable this latest evil aggressor with purchases of his cheap, dirty fossil fuels. As a result, children lose their families, their lives. In my “useless” activity of seeking out and shaping sounds I must hope that somehow our wisdom will prevail over uncertainty, and that in moments of shared experiences, of the fragile and beautiful joy of living, creation and community might prevail over destruction and dominance. This work seeks to bring the colours of two instrumental worlds and their respective tonal systems together in a shared space. The 415 instruments (winds, strings, theorbo) are tuned and play in an historical extended 1/6-Pythagorean-comma meantone known to Telemann and Mozart as the “musicians’ tuning”. Each perfect fifth is narrowed to ca. 698 cents. Thus, major and minor thirds are truer to their harmonic ratios than in 12-tone Equal Temperament, sharps are differentiated from flats by a comma, and enharmonic intervals (augmented and diminished diatonic intervals) may approximate septimal harmonies. The keyboard instruments (organ and synthesized Fender Rhodes), each having only 12 keys, adopt a compromise known as Vallotti Well-Temperament, in which a circle of fifths is realised by combining 6 meantone fifths (between the 7 diatonic notes) with 6 pure fifths (between the remaining notes). Pure Pythagorean tuning of the series of fifths is narrowed by 6 times 1/6 comma (in total, by one Pythagorean comma), closing the circle and allowing wolf-free modulation through all 12 keys. The 440 string instruments, by virtue of the almost-semitone interval between 440 Hz and 415 Hz, adopt the 7 pitches separated by pure fifths in Vallotti’s tuning as their open strings (Cello scordatura Bb-F-C-G through Violin G-D-A-E). Bass flute and scordatura harp play in extended just intonation based on these pure fifths. This tonal “correlation” allows the harmonic potential of the 12-tone chromatic scale to be perceived from two perspectives. At 440, pitches derive from untempered just intonation: pure fifths combined with higher harmonics or subharmonics of the series (17° and 19°). At 415, extended meantone allows warm, tempered approximations of septimal harmonies, with occasional flashes suggesting the quartertone tunings of 11° and 13°. Vallotti, bridging the two views, permits us to walk, or to dance, – in the street (in the old sense of passacaglia) – through all 12 keys, each with subtly different beatings of the consonant chords. There are two ways to do this, as we know from all that has come to pass in western music – by perfect fifths and fourths (7 or 5 semitone steps) or by semitones. Both are followed, and superimposed, with a minimalist echo of the chaconne rhythm, to make this piece: an old journey, with remembrances, and strange new shadings, hopeful that another outcome is always possible, within the materiality that is already (always) there. Berlin, 26 May 2022