An Deilf

Partita No. 2

As with my other Paritas, No 2 carries with it a subtitle: Il Cortegiano (No. 1) evokes the political theories and strategies of Castiglione while La Comète (No. 3) considers the appearance of comets visible in France in 1664-65 and 1680-81, un-predicted by contemporary astronomy, and un-accountable for withing the heliocentric cultural metaphor of Louis XIV's role at court and in the culture at large. These subtitles are more suggestive than determinative with their abstract and sometimes esoteric references pointing towards significance rather than demarking meaning.  An Deilf is Irish for 'The Dolphin'; threaded through this partita is the poetry of Derek Mahon, in particular his poem 'Achill' and its consideration of the artist as a parent, and situational distance between a maker and their family. 

Formally, An Deilf exploits in a novel manner the Baroque device of the 'doubling', the repetition of movements and material with increased intensity and technical challenge. In the Baroque, these doubles occur immediately after the initial appearance of the material. In An Deilf, the doubles are entwined more deeply into the work; III doubles I while IV doubles II, leading to an origamic architecture of the movements' structure.

Movements I ('Fripperies') and III (its double) share thematics, harmony, metrical structures, and textures evocative of Robert Fripp and King Crimson, important figures for me and my entrance into music.  Movement II (Currachs...) and its 'double', take gestures and harmonies from my work 'Sails Knife-bright in a Seasonal Wind' and develop them in an increasingly virtuosic manner; the currachs of the title are small fishing boats of a distinctly Irish design. In the poem as the locus of the first means of transport for explorations of the young, seeking Phaeacia or Eutopia or Tol Eressëa, or whatever realm was being sought out in any particular week.

Movement V ups the ante of genre reference, bearing the title and devices of fugal technique; there are statements, episodes, and a stretto, and the iterative intensification of proper to a work bearing the indication of 'fugue,' a challenge for the payer, and the composer foolish enough to tag the work thusly and so emplot themselves and their craft in a thread of technicity with such culturally loaded technicity and positional relationship with one's ascended masters.

The work is dedicated to Adam Kossler with whom the work has been substantially revised since its first formation during the Pandemic. In a notable resonance, Adams has become the teacher of my son Tiernan. The work in its temporal architecture develops through a process of instantiation, departure, and return, with increasing complexity, intensity, and challenge. This is the subtle maieutics of challenge, delight, and struggle, as play shifts from the errancies of childhood, to the cultural pay of Gadamer and Hoitenza, and the serious play of James.

Here is a passage from Mahon's Achill

And I think of my son a dolphin in the Aegean,

   A sprite among sails knife-bright in a seasonal wind,

And wish he were here where currachs walk on the ocean

   To ease with his talk the solitude locked in my mind