Uisge Beatha
Program Notes
With Uisge Beatha, I try to further the dialogic conception of composition that I have been working with the last few years. Here I invite dialogue by drawing on a largely tonal compositional language that I hope to be readily resonant—albeit at times consonant and dissonant—with my meaning.
And that meaning? A celebration of the fellowship of existence. Life is good; do it with others. Those others include humans and others to whom we accord an interactive recognition. The title of the piece is Celtic for “water of life,” and that water surely flows with more than a human fluid. But it also flows with the spirit of a very human fluid. It flows with spirits in the plural sense of companionship and the spirited fluids that help us make those connections, with both human and other others. It flows, then, with the joy of the bottle, and the heritage of the tongue proclaims it, for it is from the Celtic uisge that we get whiskey—the beatha bit being understood.
Understood, but perhaps forgotten: Which is part of why I try to recall it for us here. And so I offer a draught of fellowship, based on three of the many Celtic-inspired dance tunes I have written over the years, while playing for contradance bands (a branch of the Celtic musical tree). In the first movement, “Water,” I dance two of my old jigs together, playing them each alone, and each as a canon, and then the two canons together—forming a double canon—in part to connect with Baroque traditions. With this dialogue of jigs, I boast of a night’s drinking and dancing with good friends, Celtic and Baroque, human and otherwise. The second movement, “Life,” brings us the unavoidable retort: the reality of the next morning. It begins with something of a musical hang-over, and a bleary awaking and finding of the feet. In the midst of this post-grog grogginess, the musical identity wanders into Eastern Europe (as I often do myself). The sky of the mind clears eventually, and the feet traipse into a Celtic polka. The pounding comes back, though, and the head returns to the hands. But the feet come alive again, and dance us to the end of these dialogues—the end of these dialogues which, in fact, have no end.
My point, then, is to offer a musical existentialism: Dialogue as the water of life. Live it. Enjoy it. Relish it.
Performance Notes
In Uisge Beatha, I draw on a broadly Celtic folk language, based on two jigs and a reel-ish kind of a tune that I score more or less as a polka. Celtic players have a considerable array of ornaments that they traditionally use to spice up a performance, often added at the spur of the moment—ornaments such as a “cut,” “strike,” “roll,” and what some call, onomatopoetically, a “fih-dih-dih.” I include a healthy sprinkling of fih-dih-dihs in the first movement, and a few “zows” (accents at the end of a sustained note), but otherwise I have not written out traditional ornaments. Players should feel free to add these anywhere, to the satisfaction of their own taste and judgment, if they are familiar with the relevant techniques for their instruments. But they should feel under no compulsion to do so. I have not tried to recreate the sound of a Celtic band in this piece, and players should feel under no such imitative command. And even with the addition of traditional ornaments, the piece still wouldn’t sound like a Celtic folk band. That’s not the point. Rather, players should draw on their own experiences and talents to create a good performance.
In short, play it as you like it.
The duration of the piece is about 15 minutes.
Movement I : Water
Performance by L'Ensemble Portique, February 10, 2006, in Madison, Wisconsin
Score: PDF (first half)
Movement II : Life
Performance by L'Ensemble Portique, February 10, 2006, in Madison, Wisconsin
Score: PDF (first half)
For the complete score and parts, contact the composer.
All content copyright © 2003 to 2006 Michael Mayerfeld Bell. All rights reserved.
Page last updated March 1, 2013