Symphony No. 2, or, A 19th Century Russian Composer in 21st Century America

That composer would be Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881), my personal favorite of the Five. And it is his piano suite, Pictures at an Exhibition, famously orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, which inspired one of my works-in-progress, the second of my “epic symphonies” (in E flat major).

Mussorgsky himself was inspired to write “Pictures” when his friend, artist Victor Hartmann, died suddenly. He imagined his sketches as part of an exhibit: a ten-movement work, each preceded by a leitmotif he called “Promenade”. I’m doing something similar for my Symphony, only with fifty-two movements, for the fifty American States plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, each individual piece inspired by photographs from each state.

While Mussorgsky imagined a trip to a museum, I chose to subtitle my opus “Great American Road Trip”. (The movements for Puerto Rico, Alaska and Hawai’i would require a different means of transportation, of course.) I’m expecting the finished work to be over two hours long, most movements taking up two to three minutes each, but a few as much as five.

Some features of the work:

• Since each movement could be considered a “prelude” of sorts, I’m using all twenty-four major and minor keys, with the remainder of the movements repeating a key, or being atonal. At least one of the movements will use a tonality based on a quarter tone, or an Arabic maqam (including a taqsim on Maqam Bastanigar for clarinet in the Michigan movement). Since the key is constantly changing, this would almost be an example of the progressive tonality of Mahler’s symphonies, except the first and final movements will both be in E flat major, the overall key of the work.
• Soloists will be featured at various times. For the middle movements, this will be piano, so the work will sound a bit like a piano concerto. Other instruments to be used: harpsichord, guitar, banjo, accordion, Latin percussion and church organ.
• Various popular styles will be used, such as bluegrass for Kentucky and Tennessee, jazz for Louisiana and Missouri, polka and Irish reel for Illinois, tejano for Texas.
• The fifty-two movements are organized into five parts:
  Part One (1-12): Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia.
  Part Two (13-22): Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Puerto Rico.
  Part Three (23-33): Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota.
  Part Four (34-42): North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas.
  Part Five (43-52): New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, California.
• For the Nevada movement, I want to use Harry Partch’s 43-microtone scale, but probably approximated in 72 equal temperament for convenience.

One more thing: I’ll be ripping off another Mussorgsky opus, A Night on the Bare Mountain, for the Texas and Hawaii movements. Some more inspiration will come from other multi-epic symphonic works: Holst’s The Planets, Stravinsky’s early ballets, Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, and from a fellow American composer, Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England. Also, of course, all those great symphonies (though what I’m writing is as much a symphonic suite as symphony).

To get you started, here’s the first movement, Maine.