My “never-ending symphony” project began in the early 1980s with music I had written in my head. It was originally going to be a four-movement piano sonata in the key of F# minor, but by the end of the decade, it had become a five-movement symphony in C minor. And yet it was still written in my head.
I finally got around to starting to actual writing the thing in 2006 (with one movement adapted from a piano tune I wrote in 1996), and now it has over twenty “movements”, so it's much more a symphonic suite than a symphony, and not exactly centered around the key of C minor, especially the atonal and polytonal parts. But there are a number of leitmotifs for different characters and situations.
The official name of the work is, facetiously, Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, aka Symphony apocalyptique, the soundtrack for an imaginary movie and/or video game called DIES IRÆ, styled in all capital letters with the æ ligature. I am working on the ideas for a sci-fi/horror role-playing game.
The choice to give French titles to many of the pieces is a nod to Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique. One of the leitmotifs (or as Berlioz would’ve called them, idées fixes) is the medieval funeral chant Dies irae, which can be heard in the final “Witches’ Sabbath” movement. Other old themes, obviously in the public domain, are quoted. In “An American in İstanbul”, one can hear a snippet of Mozart’s Rondo alla turca and a very old song of the Levant titled “Ya ein mulayyatein” in Arabic and “Şaşkın” in Turkish. In “Une russe à Nouvelle-Orléans”, “Song of the Volga Boatmen” is used.
Besides “Fantastique”, other major influences include the symphonies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich’s symphonies, Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, the epic film scores of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman and the like, and Nobuo Uematsu, composer to most of the Final Fantasy series of games. Also, in many of the pieces, microtonal notes can be found within a 72 equal temperament tuning, both expressing Pendereckian atonality and exotic tonality as an approximation of just intonation (listen to some Harry Partch to get an idea of what I’m talking about).
I finally got around to starting to actual writing the thing in 2006 (with one movement adapted from a piano tune I wrote in 1996), and now it has over twenty “movements”, so it's much more a symphonic suite than a symphony, and not exactly centered around the key of C minor, especially the atonal and polytonal parts. But there are a number of leitmotifs for different characters and situations.
The official name of the work is, facetiously, Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, aka Symphony apocalyptique, the soundtrack for an imaginary movie and/or video game called DIES IRÆ, styled in all capital letters with the æ ligature. I am working on the ideas for a sci-fi/horror role-playing game.
The choice to give French titles to many of the pieces is a nod to Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique. One of the leitmotifs (or as Berlioz would’ve called them, idées fixes) is the medieval funeral chant Dies irae, which can be heard in the final “Witches’ Sabbath” movement. Other old themes, obviously in the public domain, are quoted. In “An American in İstanbul”, one can hear a snippet of Mozart’s Rondo alla turca and a very old song of the Levant titled “Ya ein mulayyatein” in Arabic and “Şaşkın” in Turkish. In “Une russe à Nouvelle-Orléans”, “Song of the Volga Boatmen” is used.
Besides “Fantastique”, other major influences include the symphonies of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich’s symphonies, Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, the epic film scores of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman and the like, and Nobuo Uematsu, composer to most of the Final Fantasy series of games. Also, in many of the pieces, microtonal notes can be found within a 72 equal temperament tuning, both expressing Pendereckian atonality and exotic tonality as an approximation of just intonation (listen to some Harry Partch to get an idea of what I’m talking about).
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