Pandemic Sonatine for piano, face masks, and COVID vaccination card [w/ spoken intro]
Composed and performed by Brian Ciach. Copyright © 2022 by Brian Ciach. ASCAP. All rights reserved. https://sigh-ackmusic.org
Pandemic Sonatine (2022)
[Introduction 00:00]
I. Wipedown 04:15
II. Crumb's Lament 07:10
III. Silent Rage 14:07
Performed at:
New Music South Bay
April 28, 2022
San José State University Concert Hall
San José, California
PROGRAM NOTES
This piece integrates features of the Pandemic into a sonatina for piano solo.
Most, if not all piano teachers are familiar with the Pandemic need to sanitize the piano keys between students with alcohol wipes. Cleaning piano keys usually amounts to swiping the white and black keys with some force, amounting to a series of sliding sounds (glissandos) and short, spiky note-clusters (when cleaning in between the black keys).
The first movement of this work, Wipedown, repurposes these cleaning gestures into something musical. I call for bandanas instead of alcohol wipes because of their weight, durability, thickness, and practicality. I’ve added a special “bandana whip” of the keys, as well.
The second movement, Crumb’s Lament, is inspired by the music of composer, George Crumb, who passed away on February 6, 2022. He is known for writing pieces that explore new realms of sound with traditional instruments, scores notated in circles or spirals, and calling on musicians to chant, sing, shout, and wear masks, among other things. Crumb taught composition at the University of Pennsylvania from 1983-1995, eventually becoming Annenberg Professor of the Humanities. Although I never met him, I performed his Makrokosmos for piano and have always been captivated by his work. I missed studying with him by about a decade, enrolling as a PhD student in composition at UPenn in 2006. (I happen to be from Broomall, PA, which is a neighboring town with Media, where he lived.) This second movement is the heart of the Sonatine. It is a lament bass, but instead of descending chromatically (as, famously, in Dido’s Lament by Purcell), this progression ascends. The first rapid bass gesture states the pitches which the harmonic progression of most of the movement follows (F#-G#-A-A#-B-C). The piece is basically two sets of variations on this ground bass, with an extended coda. A fair amount of the piece is played with the right hand alone, while the left hand lightly rests the edge of a plastic card on the strings, producing a “sitar sizzle” sound—reflective of many of Crumb’s pieces in their search for new timbres. The card being used is my heavily-laminated COVID vaccination card.
The third movement, Silent Rage, contains no “music” at all. It is simply a series of pantomimed false starts in a short rondo form. Pandemic Sonatine was composed in March of 2022 and runs approximately 10 minutes in duration.