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multi-choice harmony

beat series

In writing the music to accompany Howl, the first work in the "Beat Series", I discovered my DEBOP method. I was happily able to use the DEBOP method again for "On The Road", to connect the music to the phrasing and structure of the text in real-time narrative performance. Writing the music for "On The Road", I also found inspiration in the theories of M-Base saxophonist Steve Coleman. I wanted melodic themes for the work that could be harmonised in a variety of ways, but I didn't want to impose a "master" score, I wanted the work to breathe and evolve through performance. Coleman talks about "Absolute Conception" and "Telleric" harmonic analysis. This gave me the idea for a series of chords derived from a simple melodic line being harmonised in triads in all possible major and minor ways. The pianist harmonises "on the spot" from a choice of six chords for each note of the melody (see left).

The work is to be written in two versions: one for narrator and piano alone, the other for at least narrator, vocalist, piano and saxophone. In the version for comparatively larger forces, the two characters of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriaty will be represented musically by, respectively, the piano and the saxophone, with a great deal of the saxophone's part being freely improvised, which the piano will attempt to incorporate within its own musical framework (the multi-choice score), in much the same way that the character of Dean inspires Sal in various unexpected ways, forcing him to rethink his own world view. In many ways, Dean is the alter-ego of Sal, and the dynamic between them is a crucial tension/release throughout the entire work. In the version for narrator and piano, the characters of Sal and Dean will be represented by the pianist's left and right hands, respectively.

With regard to the substantial amount of text in the book, I propose the following: much has been made of Kerouac’s love of Jazz and his attempts to lead a strict Buddhist life. In the quartet-plus version, I see the text being performed by a narrator and a singer. The novel will not be read in its entirety, but selections from its text will be narrated and key phrases intoned by the vocalist in much the same way as mantra are chanted. In the version for narrator and piano duo, the narrator will intone the "mantras" alongside the text itself.

The work will be divided into five parts to mirror the five parts of the novel, with each part itself being subdivided into a number of smaller movements: 14 for Part One, 11 for Part Two, 11 for Part Three, 6 for Part Four with Part Five presented in an unbroken whole, reflecting the chapter subdivisions of the original novel.

The work will hopefully be premiered at some point during 2009.

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."
- Jack Kerouac, from On The Road (1957)