Four Harmonies: Reflections of Monet - for soprano, flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, and percussion. Premiered by the TAK Ensemble in April 2024 in Chicago, Il.
Four Harmonies: Reflections of Monet responds to a series of paintings of Monet which I recently saw at Musée D’Orsay in Paris. The paintings were of the Rouen Cathedral and, as is typical of Monet, he painted multiple variations on the Cathedral’s façade with different hues and shadings, and he titled them various “Harmonies” depending on the colors that are primary in the painting. What struck me was not so much Monet’s characteristic cycles of paintings, but the simplistic, yet evocative titling of these as “Harmonies,” particularly since the “harmony” is what changes while the subject stays constant. In Four Harmonies, there are four continuous movements which are all based on closely related harmonic material. In this way, the constant subject is harmony in the musical sense, while the evolving contexts of each movement are treated like unfolding colors as harmonies in a visual art medium, in an effort to create different shadings and explorations of a single subject. In this way, the piece becomes an approximation of a single subject based on multiple viewpoints, angles, or perspectives, as is the case for the Monet series.