Shipping Up to Boston

11/6/2021

I don’t think I can overstate how much of a whirlwind Boston was for me. Flying from Florida, meeting up with old friends, having a terrific premiere performance, going out on the town to celebrate, and flying back to Florida (all in less than 24 hours!) made for a trip that I will never forget. I cannot thank the musicians of New Music Mosaic enough—they are wonderful people, talented artists, and a joy to work with. So it was with a full heart and bleary early-morning eyes that I snapped this photo while on a moving walkway at the airport, and was later shocked to find that it was actually quite good.

The performance took place at a venue called the LilyPad located within Inman Square, Cambridge. It’s a trendy little place, and when the show began it was a packed house positively brimming with excitement. The musicians played superbly, and any of my pre-show jitters quickly melted away as they performed my piece. Following the concert, we went out to celebrate a successful show, and I had the opportunity to meet many kind musicians. I hope to return to the city in the future, and continue to work with those lovely (and lively!) music communities. Here’s a photo I took of the ensemble working their magic:

So what about the piece itself? It is called “A Diagram of Madness Deferred” and I wrote it for this intrepid ensemble. Specifically:

  • Walter Yee - Clarinet

  • Elsie Han - Viola

  • Wilson Poffenberger - Baritone Saxophone

  • Matt Carey - Percussion

  • Wes Fowler - Percussion

While conceptualizing the piece, I decided to draw the score cover first so that I could use it as my anchor point. I took inspiration from Kandinsky and Italian Futurism to create something that is at once abstract, vivid, and compartmentalized. It sort of felt like a map created by an alien species, or a series of esoteric diagrams, and thus I found the work’s title. As for the music itself, it quickly alternates sections of defined pulse with sections of ambiguous pulse, so as to create an unsettled effect. With this constant vacillation between calm and chaos, a labile mood is produced, encouraging the listener to revel in madness. It is irrational and playful, and I imagine that the Dada art movement would have approved.

The last thing to discuss before watching the performance video (found below) is that I created a text to accompany the piece. Since the painting and music had such a discrete, clear form, I eventually realized that writing poetry which corresponded to the music would be fairly straightforward. Furthermore, I had been experiencing nightmares during the weeks in which I wrote this piece (probably owing to the fact that I had at last discovered the works of HP Lovecraft, and insisted upon reading them before bed) and the subject of these nightmares easily transformed into the poem itself. The narrator of the poem is slipping into madness and experiencing delusions of grandeur, among other things. I’ve included the short poem below, and you will also find it in super-titles within the video itself. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

From what horrors I glimpsed in idle misery
There yet remains a chorus
Among the detritus of my rambling thoughts
Which thrums with laughter;
Besieged by tides of unending rot
A lighthouse for my soul hereafter.

I AM THE THUNDERING GOD OF CLAY INCARNATE
But what terrors I have wrought
In the gardens of my masters
For chanting—iridescent—ensnares my mind in vile knots.

Feebly I grasp my last pure reverie…
THE SKY SO RUDE I SCREAMED
The most delightful song ever have I heard!

O the labyrinthian dread of memory:
A Diagram of Madness Deferred.

Stephen Caldwell