For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Tomorrow Sharpened (2011)
for marimba, crotales and piano
Duration; 10:00
Caroline Mallonée’s educational pedigree is the stuff of dreams. It includes degrees from Harvard, Yale, Duke, AND a Fulbright Fellowship. I will try to work through my jealousy, but I’m only human. The takeaway for me after getting to know some of Mallonee’s music is that it represents an ideal best represented by the often-quoted line I used for this entry’s epigraph that is attributed to either Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr. or Jr. (The internet can’t seem to make up its mind which).
After listening to several pieces of both instrumental and choral work, I narrowed it down, with difficulty, to one each. The piece I chose for the main listening example ended up being the one that didn’t have a Soundcloud track because it currently lives on a commercially available release by a record label. The choral piece included on the Soundcloud playlist as the last of five examples (Shine On, O Moon of Summer) is probably my actual sentimental favorite. In a previous life, I can remember stocking retail shelves with her successful choral octavos. Her work is highly regarded in the choral community and with good reason.
Tomorrow Sharpened begins with an audible reminder as to why the piano is considered part of the percussion family. A rhythmic ostinato pattern is set up in the marimba with the piano accenting different beats and pitches. The range that both instruments are playing in play off of one another, highlighting their similarities of timbre. Crotale entrances are added to the piano accents expanding the upper end of the harmonic spectrum, sharpening the texture and exciting overtones. Quickly, lower frequencies are added in the marimba followed by the extreme low register of the piano, and the entire width of the available canvas of frequencies is defined. What follows is a playful interaction and development of the rhythmic ostinato through the use of hocket, a favorite technique of Mallonee's, and multiple variations of playful melodic interweavings of instrumentation. Next, there is a slowing of tempo and a lengthening of attack matched in the piano by rolling marimba chords. Even though the tempo has slowed, the pulse has remained to maintain forward momentum. Attacks in the extreme low register of the piano are allowed to resonate, maintaining the sense of a canvas of sound. This is paired in the upper register by bowed crotales and judicious use of the piano's sustain pedal, allowing for harmonic complexities to exist within all of the decaying sound. The marimba gradually stops rolling and begins joining in with the opening rhythmic pulse again. The sustain pedal is slowly phased out, and all of the parts head down into the low register and eventually bottom out. Suddenly we're back to the rapid beginning tempo, and we're headed for the home stretch. The hocket and melodic interweavings return and eventually transition to cascading scalar patterns that fizz around the ensemble from top to bottom, concluding with a diminuendo and a last ting in the upper register.