walpurgthesis
considering Act I: (exposition and beggining)
a little sorrowful -theme- introduction to start.
followed by a celebration. a dance piece. this would be a good place to show the characters of the folk involved, and throw in a handful of comedy.
followed by calamity -a fire pit, with young men (and women) celebrating the arival of spring and fertility by stomping around a fire, trying also to frighten evil spirits away. witches could hear them and infiltrate their circles, making the whole celebration degenerate into the next movement (not that a bunch of young people celebrating fertility wouldn't go crazy after a while on their own anyway.) some soldiers could appear, foreshadowing a second calamity (get it?). it'd be nice to thrown in the death of early modernism in there, as well as the consequential disilusionment with modernity and science (though this can be shown in the next movement)

Act II: (the technical climax and vientre of the monster)
the 20s. wild jazz. an asymetrical reinterpretation of the initial celebration, with the same measure of comedy, but with inverted characters. a surreal reinterpretation of the initial celebration, maybe.. musically, i was thinking of using kurt weil and john zorn as examples for the general feel and structure of this episode. frank zappa also. so yeah. a funny (but equally disgusting) reportrayal of the (almost comercial) initial celebration. (with thorns sticking out of its skin). this should end in near chaotic free jazz atonality.
followed by Miliitary marches, starting with a fixed-up version of Avanzada, and a half twelve-tone half fully chromatic Ives-Berg synthesis. This could be illustrative of both the Russian and American millitary efforts and i don't know. i don't know how to link this with any plot-line. i guess this could be an avand-garde episode in which random characters make theatrical critiques of typical usuals of theatre and cinema, such as romance, or religion. see? help!
this would be followed by the slow movement of the work. I don't know how i'd musically do this, but i think it'd be the opportune location for summarizing the themes and develop them together. it should then grow forewards and speed up as it reaches the end, fade out. and then surprise the audience with a full diatonic, tonal choir -of-sorts. something really "pretty" and fast paced.

Act III: (the dramatic climax and conclusion)
Reprisal of the stomping, and a second calamity. Nothing but soldiers this time around, though. flowing from all sides, crossing each other. dancing, maybe. this calamity should slowly develop to a twleve tone level. The Russians reach Berlin, the spicks are on the streets. the children stomp their feet. completely atonal and fast paced. this would then easelly transform into a minimalist repetition cycle. The Ives themes could go crazy to accomplish this, and be abandoned by the rest of the ensemble. This would have been the end of the war, (the atonal part of the episode either symbolyzing the death of hitler or nuclear attack on hiroshima).
The minimalist cycle could tie in with the initial sorrowful theme, which would then be fully developed and resolved (into a major key - a la russian nationalist, showing optimism and a nice extent of cheesy-ness. i do it here so no one thinks us nazi sympathisers). It ends in a major key showing the optimism of spring, immigration debates and the defeat of fascism, in other words.

and that is it. a total of 6-7 movements (depending on how you cut them).

was my initial conception of "WALPURGISNACHT" (written down in 2006 as ideas for a theatre production collaboration with David Alday)

and "Well, just like the string quartet could have been divided into "argument" "love affair" and "memory." (which helped me conceive with how to develop the themes, textures and gestures)
this can also work like this. Although, obviously, i haven't thought this through, I'm planning on using styles of music that were "politicized" during the era of nationalism in music (19th and 20th centuries, mainly) and blending them together through processes that parallel the processes of identity-and-memory formation heretofore described. metaphor is the vehicle of meaning in music. but i'm not sure what i'm going to do of it yet.
my initial idea, before i got into this meta-history crap (which deals a lot with the internalization of norms, a vehicle i can potentially exploit very well in the music) was to have four movements: 1. a russian, eastern european one, 2. an american one, 3. a germanic/french, western european one and, 4. a concluding one. Theoretically, every movements should be a transformation of diverse elements into single styles, the germano-french one, for example, blending romantic chromaticism with french impressionism to create a melange of both. The last movement, in turn would do this to all of them. The processes by which this happens in each movement should be reflective of the processes that happen in the particular styles of music that i am alluding. I know this sounds like a happy happy hippy hippy unitarian universalist over-positive douchbaggerie, but i'm entirely confident in my ability to write pessimistic music (at the moment).
I was also thinking, if miles and the group is up for it, of having smiles sing (with the band behind him) St. James infirmary as an intermission between the 2 and 3 movements."
was how i conceived of the thesis last year,

and considering that it's not coming out anything like either conceptions, (The first movement is my impression of Hugo Wolf (german), Erik Satie (french) and Hugo Wolf eating Erik Satie. The second movement is my impression of Stravinsky (russian) as a cubist, Wojciech Kilar (polish) and then Messiaen (french) if he'd ever been in King Crimson (american). The third is st James (american) being eaten by Steve Reich (american) and then Perotin (french). The last will be a recapitulation of Messiaen(french) and a salsa (colombo-cubo-puerto-newyorkinian) and Messiaen being eaten by the salsa. is how it's going to be)

I was wondering whether i should change the title of my senior project. The St. James theme's become much more important to the composition than i'd anticipated (these things take on a life of their own) and it doesn't really have anything to do with Walpurgis night. As a matter of fact, the only constants in the work are a leitmotif of a tritone, and the occasional blue note in a pentatonic scale (both taken from the st. james theme).

What about: "Nocturne in black and blue?" subtitled "the entirety of evening" with the movements of "twilight, dusk, st. james and dawn"
the working title has been "walpurgisnacht" sub-titled "dance into may" and "the curtain falls, the summon, the answer, the curtain rises"

whatcha think?

If i changed it to "Nocturne in black and blue" or ('nocturne en noire et bleu" if i'm feeling like an asshole), I'd have Noire l'étoffe et noir l'esprit,
Noir le visage et noir le soucis,
Noire la veine et noir le sang et,
Noire la moelle et noir l'os.
D'une autre couleur est le vernis fugace de la lumière solaire,
Le soleil est le peintre des couleurs ;
Noire est la vase interne de la terre
Ce n'est pas la lumière qui peint le noir de son fin pinceau rayonnant.
Non :
Noire est l'âme cachée de la matière.
Oh !
Noire, noire, noire. in the program notes...

EDIT: Or i could just call it "Black-land."