The Search for Nelly Gray, VIII Scherzo

[Mark W]

Hello MG,

It has been at least a year since I've tuned into your Symphony. It's a delight to see your progress with it.

In getting my arms around your Symphony, there are many intelligible common themes I hear. I quite agree with Adrian that the music captures the era of the Civil War. That is so, not just because the banjo is heard from time to time, although that is indeed a dead give-away.

One overall theme I "feel" in your Symphony is that it generally seems to portray a sort of "massive" perspective on the Civil War. I hear a whole lot going on. If this were a play or theater, it would be like the stage often had the full cast of characters, or many of them, out there at once, rather than just a couple at a time. Even if the dialog is only between two main characters in the foreground, I see (hear) lots of other background characters, "extras", filling in the scene, providing depth. Perhaps I'm biased thinking about the Civil War, because it has always felt "massive" to me. But more so, I think I'm hearing it this way because of the use of poly-harmony: often more than 4 tones out of the 12-tone scale are heard at a time. This conveys the feelings of many voices, lots of characters, lots of things going on.

However, maybe I'm not hearing it right. What role does the poly-harmony have in the music, from your composer's point of view? What does the poly-harmony "say" that clearly differentiates what this music from what it would sound like if it were written in single tonality harmony? It seems to me that changing it from poly-harmony to single tonality would be like sanitizing and hiding the horrors of the Civil War, which would be contradictory to your intentions, if I understand them.

Cheers
-- Mark