5 African Scenes
Michael Bomier - Gateway Editions
Using the language of modern Western music, here are five portraits in sound of the African continent. Saharan Sirocco uses mirrored 4ths in whole-steps, first L, then R, with a single R.H. octave to suggest the shifting sand and wind without end. Drums and a Song uses the black-key pentatonic scale with alternating R-L notes in symmetrical mirrored structures to make percussion and then a melody. Beneath the Congo Canopy uses three chords of a 4th and a 3rd, in two different inversions, as the accompaniment to a melody in octaves, as the traveller through the forest floor might see the thick undergrowth, and the dim filtered light from above. Cape of Good Hope, in a Winter Storm, uses a diminished chord with two added notes, top and bottom, as the ostinato that creeps in, then EXPLODES, as the storm puts any ship in its path through its rages, calming once more at the finale. The Great Rift Valley is a majestic tribute in chords and octaves to the primal beauty and still-daunting terrain of the Continent that bore us all out of her to the rest of the World. Medium level, octave passages are not fast, chords are not wide, ostinato is static and pianistic. Can be performed as single pieces, and in any order.