Description

Suizen forms the third and final panel of a series of pieces for
different solo instruments, beginning in 2007 with being the pine tree
for accordion, later followed by Ume for guitar in 2013. Each piece is
based on one of a trio of seasonal images common to a number of Chinese
and Japanese art forms: pine tree, plum blossom and bamboo, the
so-called “Three Friends of Winter”. While all three represent different
shades of strength and endurance, they are each endowed with their own
particular virtues as well. The pine stands for longevity and patience,
the plum blossom for purity and evanescent beauty. The bamboo, in its
turn, embodies flexibility, bending with the wind, as well as the
quality of emptiness – referred to as mu in Zen texts – a boundless
spaciousness that is the true state of all things.

As with the other panels in the series, I wrote the music through the
instrument itself, creating material as I improvised on them as best I
could, making a special effort to note the (many) imperfections in my
naïve playing and create a place for them in the piece. By this means
the error – the accidental – becomes beautiful and exalted rather than
unwelcome. Each piece also has a strong connection to a traditional
Japanese instrument whose structure and technique it resembles. In the
case of the bass flute, the inspiration was the hocchiku, a larger, more
rough-sounding version of the end-blown bamboo shakuhachi flute. In
contrast with the other pieces, though, Suizen was influenced by a
specific tradition of playing, even a person. In late 2008 I heard a
performance by Atsuya Okuda, whose specific meditative practice was
improvising on the hocchiku, known as suizen, literally “blowing
meditation”.

It was never my intent to fall into exoticism by copying
Asian-sounding pitch patterns or melodies. Rather, I was drawn to the
intense quality of Okuda’s playing, his range of tonal colors, in which
gestures separated by long, intensely shaped silences seemed to evolve
constantly, as if a single, uninterrupted thought were being
relentlessly pursued in a fragmentary way. Of particular interest was
his way of ending a piece very suddenly, with an almost perfunctory
gesture, the timing of which nonetheless felt absolutely right. Phrase
lengths are calculated according to the duration of a single breath.
Durations are long, notes are few, and the music employs the full range
of colors produced by the performer’s breath, from its strongest and
most violent to its most ragged or fragile.

Suizen is dedicated to Hanna Kinnunen, whose playing shares many
qualities with Okuda’s, and which has been a neverending inspiration
since our first meeting many years, and many pieces ago.

bfl

Works for Solo Instrument

Dedicated to Hanna Kinnunen

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