La distanza della luna (The distance of the moon) (2015)
Movement 1 of Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics)
Duration: 7:00 minutes
Instrumentation: solo piano
Premiere: Texas State International Piano Festival (June 1-4, 2015) by finalists Inyoung Kim, Nathan Ryland, Soyeon An, Sung-Soo Cho, Hyeinn Jun, and Jeremy Hassell
Notes:
Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics) is set of musical responses Italo Calvino’s collection of stories by the same name. Each story takes as its starting point a scientific fact (some of them disproven by now) and proceeds to spin out a whimsical tale with bizarre characters, all narrated by a timeless, multiform character with the improbable name of Qfwfq. Though each story begins from a strange place, and though they are often very funny, these stories speak clearly to universal themes of loss, loneliness, and yearning. To me, the very absurdity of each story’s premise makes these underlying truths more vivid.
While there are many specific connections to each story, the approach in these pieces ranges widely, from character pieces, to impressionistic and atmospheric works, to much more abstract interpretations of the ideas in the stories. These pieces may be performed individually, or as a complete set, or in subsets of the performer’s choosing.
La distanza della luna (The Distance of the Moon) takes as its starting point the fact that the moon used to be closer to the Earth. What follows is a strange story about a group of people who would row a boat out to the point where the moon was closest, prop up a ladder, and then climb up onto the moon to collect the moon’s milk. My piece does not attempt to tell the story in any linear fashion, but rather takes a few striking images, excerpted below, as inspiration for the music.
…On those nights the water was very calm, so silvery it looked like mercury, and the fish in it, violet-colored, unable to resist the Moon's attraction, rose to the surface, all of them, and so did the octopuses and the saffron medusas. There was always a flight of tiny creatures -- little crabs, squid, and even some weeds, light and filmy, and coral plants -- that broke from the sea and ended up on the Moon, hanging down from that lime-white ceiling, or else they stayed in midair, a phosphorescent swarm we had to drive off, waving banana leaves at them…
…I would feel ladder and boat drifting away from below me, and the motion of the Moon would tear me from the Earth's attraction. Yes, the Moon was so strong that she pulled you up; you realized this the moment you passed from one to the other: you had to swing up abruptly, with a kind of somersault, grabbing the scales, throwing your legs over your head, until your feet were on the Moon's surface. Seen from the Earth, you looked as if you were hanging there with your head down, but for you, it was the normal position, and the only odd thing was that when you raised your eyes you saw the sea above you, glistening, with the boat and the others upside down, hanging like a bunch of grapes from the vine…
…Vhd Vhd picked up the harp from the bottom of the boat and handed it to his wife. She was obliged to take it and play a few notes…I took to singing in a low voice that sad song that goes: "Every shiny fish is floating, floating; and every dark fish is at the bottom, at the bottom of the sea. . ." and all the others, except my cousin, echoed my words…