Duration: 20 minutes
I. Midnight Air
II. Troublemaker
III. Astrolabe
Each of the three movements of the concerto has a starting point in poems of Rumi whose work has been a long time passion of mine. I have written many pieces based on his writings. All three of these poems come from Coleman Barks’ marvelous translations.
The first movement is inspired by a poem called, The Night Air, in which at one point, Rumi notes:
…there’s a window open between us, mixing the night air of our beings ... a way between voice and presence where information flows.
When I think of those moments in which I have been closest to the open state that Rumi describes here, they mostly occur in the middle of the night, and outside in nature, where time and my mind seem to be still, and I am open. The first movement in the concerto starts with this sentiment of openness musically. The three-note figure which represents it is also the DNA of the greater work- all three movements have this starting melodic shape, though they take on very different characters. In this first movement, that melodic kernel is always lyrical and expansive, and sometimes even sounds as if it is played by a giant mandolin (in a repeated note, strummed manner) into the night air by the solo piano. There is a feeling of open space.
One of the great things about Rumi is that as philosophical as his work is, it is also filled with surprises, strange turns of phrase, and even at times slapstick comedy to make his greater points, pairing the seemingly positive and negative. One of the many figures in his work who represents this appears in his poem, Red Shirt:
Has anybody seen the boy who used to come here?
Round-faced troublemaker, quick to find a joke, slow
to be serious.
For Rumi, this is a positive thing. So important is humor in perception (and humor is in the end, a kind of letting-go), that he then adds:
I’d gladly spend years getting word
of him, even third or fourth-hand.
This movement musically alternates between a good-natured chorale (based on the three note motive set out in the first movement) with fits of laughter represented in the solo piano part (represented by spurts of cluster chords), and sharp musical punch-lines. This is the most virtuosic of the movements, and requires a great deal of agility and dexterousness from the soloist. And a wry wit and good sense of timing.
The third movement was inspired by the poem, The Fragile Vial. In it, Rumi writes:
The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe and become oceanic.
I tried to have the music in this movement alternate between a single, more fragile musical line (still based on that opening melodic shape from the first movement, but inverted- one lone melody being whistled in a canyon so to speak) with that same material presented in more grand and surging ways, with enormous harmonic underpinnings and broader expanses at its disposal. Both of these representations are to my mind in line with the scope of the poem.
I am so grateful to Jeffrey Biegel for leading the charge in making this piece a reality, and am honored to be back in Harrisburg, where I have been so many times over the years to visit my mother’s side of the family, based in Camp Hill and Lemoyne.
—Christopher Theofanidis
Biography