Program Notes
“The Butterfly” is an experiment in sonic/literary meaning. It is our inclination as humans to assign meaning to an abstract idea that we find somehow emotionally engaging, but, especially in music, there is often no greater meaning. It is merely something to which we may have an emotional response, but nothing more. The arts exist on a scale of most to least abstract: Architecture and textiles are almost completely abstract, while poetry and prose are not so at all. This is because, in the language arts, the express goal is to convey meaning. Every word in itself carries a connotation that is contextualized by accompanying text. Even the writers of nonsense, such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, invent words and phrases in order to enhance a nonsensical meaning, but a meaning, not to mention a narrative, nonetheless. There are also those who write poetry from a string of completely made up sounds that convey absolutely no meaning beyond that contained in the tone of its delivery—the use of verbal, conversational sound to achieve the abstract.
“The Butterfly” achieves abstract poetry by doing neither of these things; instead, it employs aurally pleasing sentence clauses tied together using poetic devices such as juxtaposition, alliteration, personification, etc, and a healthy dose of negative capability, in order to create complex imagery that completely lacks any conceivable narrative or greater meaning. Each line exists within its own universe, which is given some context by the lines before and after it. That means there are no metaphors, symbolism, allegory, allusion, or moral—just images aided by sound flashing before an audience. Inevitably, each individual listener will independently contextualize the words, creating a story that is completely different not only from that of the other listeners, but also the composer.
I went about doing this in three ways: constructing a nonsensical, meaningless poem and then writing music to enhance it (text painting); composing music and then constructing a poem to enhance it (what I call “music painting”); and taking the clauses of already existing lines and stacking them on top of one another to create new ideas. Just as words can have different connotations, the musical motives employed throughout the piece can denote different ideas or images depending on the text that accompanies it. For example, music that accompanies a flapping butterfly can later accompany a descending meteorite.
So the audience finds itself with a paradox: The greater meaning of this work is that this work has no greater meaning.
Notes
The premiere of this piece was on Sunday, October 8, 2023 in Auer Hall at Indiana University for Zavac’s senior composition recital. The ensemble was conducted by Jae Hwan Lee and the narration was done by Sy Anderson.
Music
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