FRANK J. OTERI
Tipping Points: An October Surprise
For Piano 4 Hands
FRANK J. OTERI
Tipping Points: An October Surprise
For Piano 4 Hands
About Tipping Points: An October Surprise
Tipping Points: An October Surprise, completed on October 10, 2024 (which were more optimistic times), was an attempt to convey in music for piano four-hands the very strange 2024 U.S. Presidential campaign as well as an attempt to predict its outcome. (I turned out to be wrong.) The two pianists engage in a constant sonic argument akin to one upmanship and the choreography required to perform this music is designed to evoke a contentious debate, but there was no attempt to actually have the two pianists mirror the two candidates.
The music is in one continuous movement that is in five distinct parts that are hopefully discernibly different. "Scales Tipped (a.k.a. Same Old Tired Ideas)" is a cascade of ascending interlocking triads (either major, minor, or quartal) that add up to a 12-tone row in which one of the pitches Ab (e.g. A = 415 hz) repeats, and so it's actually a 13-tone row which is not quite right. It spans the entire keyboard again and again and seems like it's going somewhere but never really does; it merely gets louder and louder. In the next section, "Concepts of a Plan (a Chord Salad)," one of the pianists plays a sequence of all possible triads that can be formed from that tone-row that then keeps repeating in other keys for no apparent reason while the other pianist simply bangs a single chord over and over again in the lowest and highest ranges. In both of these sections, one of the pianist must constantly change positions which appears to it is an intentional stalking of the other pianist, admittedly a not terribly subtle evocation of a presidential debate from an earlier election cycle involving one of the 2024 candidates. "Toss Up States (a.k.a. Razor Thin Margins)" is a relentlessly accelerating arpeggiation of different pentatonic scales (all derived from the tone row at the onset) in which the two pianists go in and out of synch with each other, mirroring the too -close-to - call polls in states that will ultimately determine which candidate wins the electoral vote. At the onset, its four-part counterpoint periodically dissolves into all four hands playing the same pitch (always an A or an Ab) three times, but eventually the music slows down and an annoying series of unison Ds ring out followed by an ominous silence. (That silence turned out to be an ominous prediction of the way many people felt on November 6, 2024, the day after the election.) But then, in "Not Going Back!", both pianists bang three pentatonic clusters following a silent downbeat. Those three clusters keep repeating, but each time in a different pentatonic scale (the ones from "Toss Up States" but now in reverse), though the highest note in each sequence is always either an A or an Ab. Finally, in "Shattering the Glass Ceiling," the arpeggiated pentatonic scales in shifting metrical patterns return (played by one of the pianists), while the sequences of three pentatonic clusters continue (played by the other pianist), culminating in one final massive pentatonic cluster requiring the two pianists to completely reverse the positions they were seated at in the beginning of the piece. (One final clue to all of this: "ka" is a rhythmic solfege syllable for a pulse that is off the beat, "ma" is the perfect fourth in Indian solfege which in the key of Eb would be Ab, and "la," of course, is A in European solfege; there are three As in the name Kamala and, of course, though the music is relentlessly in quintuple time, the emphasized three beats suggest a waltz or perhaps in this case, a Walz! In hindsight, some people might find the euphoria of these last two sections unbearable now that we know how everything turned out, but they should serve as a reminder of what might have happened, indeed what should have happened, and perhaps the relentless clusters now can convey the irrepressible anger over what didn’t happen.)
Tipping Points is dedicated to the two pianists who premiered the work on October 26, 2024 (a mere 10 days before that fateful election) Trudy Chan (who is also my wife) and Marc Peloquin as well as his husband Seth Slade, all of whom shared my hope for a different outcome than what actually happened, and to the memory of James R. Rosenfield (1945-2024), a dear friend and patron of contemporary music who sadly is no longer with us and who strongly believed, as still do I, that the arts have the power to incentivize positive societal transformation.
Frank J. Oteri (October 26, 2024, revised November 7, 2024)
Primo:Pedalthroughthewholesectionand cleardiscretelyifitgetstoomuddled.
movetotheleftside (ofthepiano)
Secondo:Discretepedallingforthiswholesection Clearasneeded.
Oteri-TippingPoints:AnOctoberSurprise
Secondo:staystandingfrom thispointontilltheendofthe piece;moveleft/rightquicklyas needed