The “Fantasia” is the fourth movement of the Suite #1 for Piano. It is the first piece of music I ever began writing. I had just had my requitelessed heart broken and in a fit of musical inspiration started banging out some horribly dissonant chords with my right hand while the left played a sad’n’depressing melody in the bass. I kept working on the piece for a few more days and realized that the melody was going nowhere but man, I dug that repetitive cluster-like chord going on in the right hand. Just like Cage had no feel for harmony (as the story goes, his teacher, Schoenberg, told him that), I had no feel for melody. So screw it, melody, like plot, emotional arcs, character development, and good grammar in books; like rhythm and harmony in music; and like natural turnout in dance; is way overrated. I would just stick with the repetitive dissonant chord construction and play with variations on that.
When I was first exposed to the minimalist (in the world of Western European Academic Classical Music, minimalism refers to music characterized by the constant and rhythmic repetition of a musical idea that slowly evolves in subtle ways over time) works of Glass, Reich, Riley, et al, I was struck first by how cool and innovative it was but then by virtue of its reliance on conventional harmony (I mean conventional in the sense that they employed Western European Harmony at all—their use of it, on the contrary, tended to be very advanced and inventive) seemed anachronistic. This did not inform the composition of the “Fantasia” (originally titled “Fantasy”. I’ll get into the name-change a bit later) directly but was certainly a part of my daily musical thought process—if I were going to compose minimalistic music by god I would make that shit dissonant as all hell.
So the “Fantasia” is not minimalistic (dissonant or otherwise) but it is perhaps suggestive of that style. It does repeat a simple rhythmic idea throughout the piece but it does not ever really change. Just those driving eighth-note clusters in 4/4 that occasionally move around a bit. Against that are four thematic ideas (one major and three minor) which, in good ABA´ form, get exposed, developed, then recapitulated with variation, and tied up with a brief coda.
Coming up with a title for a piece can be tricky. I hate, hate, hate, and despise evocative titles. Like Andrew York's really terrific solo guitar piece Sunburst. Or Debussy's popular (and deservedly so) Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Ick. I prefer to use generic names and so tend to borrow heavily from Baroque stylized dance titles like Minuet and Bouree and Gigue or non-dance yet generic names like Prelude. A Fantasy is a Baroque style of music that unlike the stylized dance forms above is a free-form bit of music that does not even hint at a dance-like origin. Of all the Baroque names “Fantasy” seemed to best fit this piece. Therefore the original title was “Fantasy” and that’s how it was presented at its first three performances. Unfortunately something annoying happened, I had assumed that everyone would somehow automatically pick up on the Baroque usage (we were all Western European Classical Music lovers, after all). They didn’t. I received way too many comments/jokes like “wow, what a dark fantasy!” and “I’d hate to hear how dark your nightmares are if that’s your idea of a fantasy!” and so on. I took it all graciously but it has bothered the fuck out of me ever since. So with this publication I’ve decided to go with the Italian form and call it “Fantasia”. Probably still too evocative but maybe the foreign-ness of the term will help minimize the effect.
I wrote the “Prelude” several months later but for guitar. It works really well on that instrument taking advantage of the timbral qualities of the guitar and sits nicely under the fingers. After writing it I noticed that stylistically it was similar to the “Fantasia” but was thinner, less frenetic, and would thus pair nicely with the “Fantasia” and provide a bit of contrast.
With that I had a “Prelude” and “Fantasia”. The next obvious thought is to make the entire thing into a suite. I figured two more movements would fill it out nicely and had every intention of writing those. But then I moved on musically. No more was I interested in this kind of music but had become enamored with Cagean experimentalism and being way more up-to-the-minute avant-garde instead of late 19th Century avant-garde. So I didn't get around to writing the other two movements—I had other far more exciting musical projects to work on.
Which brings us to the present, some 20 years later. Now that I’ve decided to get back into music, I found myself finally ready to finish up that suite. The “Sarabande” is based very loosely on Bach's “Sarabande” from his Lute Suite in G minor (BWV 995) but with the same kind of repetitive dissonance of the “Fantasia” and “Prelude”. The “Gigue” continues with the same ideas but is perhaps the most Baroquey-dancey-like piece of the suite. It has an actual rhythmic pattern which really stands out. Perhaps that provides a nice contrast for the “Fantasia” that follows.
Copyright 2017 David Bellows