Edlin Paul Max: The Illusionist's Magic Box
for piano, toy piano and electronics (ENS)
Edlin Paul Max: The Illusionist's Magic Box
for piano, toy piano and electronics (ENS)
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The charming toy piano is actually not an easy instrument to write for, with an often-clumsy action which means it cannot play fast passages. However, its sound is so instantly recognisable, and it immediately evokes childhood, magic, illusion, and sheer fantasy. It arouses thoughts of an unreal or lost world. The piano, on the other hand, is arguably the grand wizard of instruments, capable of conjuring up so many sonorities, and being able to mimic an entire orchestra and much more.
The birth of this piece took a slightly unusual path. Having received the commission from Dawn, together with some specific instructions and time limit, I set about drafting sketches. I immediately started thinking about a larger-than-life character who could manipulate, transfix, tantalise, beguile and command. And this was combined with the surrealist art I love and grew up with (my mother painted so much surrealist work). And then there was the daily news, focusing so much on the politics of charlatans who cast their magic spells on their often-gullible people. I imagined a grandiose character that was both enigmatic and ambiguous: possibly genial, possibly malevolent, but certainly a combination of many characteristics.
The sketches became the foundation to a huge (second) concerto for piano and large orchestra that I wrote on a whim. I temporarily abandoned the immediate commission, knowing I had many months to complete that work. Then I turned to the task in hand, and the sketches (the exact same musical material I had naughtily yet intentionally used in that concerto) took on a new life, independent yet complimentary, and with a totally different structure. And the sound world was so different too, because I chose to create an other-worldly electronic soundscape that would act as a cohesive and magical force that allowed the two pianos (real and toy) to expand their ideas (their spells and their stories). Ultimately, both this work and the concerto are companions – the very same illusionist casting the same spells from their ‘box of tricks’, yet yielding more unforeseen results.
The electronics uses sampled sounds of bowed metal percussion instruments as well as more conventional ‘struck’ sonorities in ranges that simply don’t exist, and using quarter-tones (the notes in-between conventional semitones) that these instruments cannot play. So, through electronic manipulation, the unreal is created out of the real, and the two keyboard instruments act as the seeming masters of all that goes on, with that ‘grand-wizard’ announcing both start and symbolically shutting up that ‘magic box’. There is no story to this work. This is music to evoke individual responses, but the piece is born from visual imagery. It will be interesting to see how a visual artist responds to that.
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- Edlin Paul Max: The Illusionist's Magic Box
