Symphony No. 2: A Plague Journal
A symphony for orchestra in four movements.
Duration: 39'
Difficulty: 4/5 (Difficulty Rating Overview)
I. Alarum Within
II. March of the Grotesques
III. Acquainted with Grief
IV. Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
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LARGE ORCHESTRA
Piccolo
2 Flutes
2 Oboes
Cor Anglais
2 Clarinets
Bass Clarinet
2 Bassoons
Contrabassoon
6 French Horns
4 Trumpets
2 Tenor Trombones
Bass Trombone
Tuba
Timpani
Percussion (3 players)
Marimba
Glockenspiel
Vibraphone
Chimes
Snare Drum
Gran Cassa
Piatti
Suspended Cymbals (Small, Medium & Large)
Triangle
Tam Tam
Wood Block
Harp
Piano (doubling Celesta)
Strings
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PROGRAM NOTES
by J.A.C. Redford
The initial idea for A Plague Journal came to me in March 2020, shortly after my wife and I began sheltering in place at home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sometimes musical ideas occur as snippets of melody or rhythm, sometimes as harmonic sequences. This one dropped into my head in the form of a coherent scene, like a video that played uninterrupted from start to finish. And what I saw and heard in that scene was an orchestra performing the opening moments of a new work.
I had no plans to write a symphony when the idea struck me. In fact, composing a large work seemed a rash choice to make when concerts were being canceled or postponed all over the world! However, I couldn’t shake the effect of this waking “vision,” and after a few days, I gave in. I realized that what I had heard was the introduction to a symphony and began the attempt to capture and develop it in sketch form.
Not long after beginning to write, I decided to call my symphony A Plague Journal, with full credit to Daniel Defoe who wrote his historical novel A Journal of the Plague Year about the devastating 1665 epidemic of bubonic plague in England. Our experience of COVID-19 shared much in common with Londoners of the 17th century: like them, our coping strategies were masks and distancing. I was aware while composing that there was a good deal of metaphoric resonance between the music and the circumstances, and that is what prompted the title, but the symphony is not a description of the pandemic. The musical ideas came first and the title followed.
Giving the symphony a general title led naturally to giving sub-titles to each of its four discrete sections, or movements. I called the first movement Alarum Within, after a Shakespearean stage direction calling for offstage instruments, especially trumpets, which often signal an imminent yet unseen threat. The double meaning with regard to COVID-19 appealed to me.
The second movement, a scherzo, is sub-titled March of the Grotesques. I think of it as the clown car in a dark circus. One apparently universal experience of the COVID-19 pandemic was the unsettling sense that nobody seemed to know what they were doing, from our leaders to our neighbors to (dare we admit it?) ourselves. Each of us can supply manifold candidates for the “grotesques” in that parade. It would be comic if it weren’t so tragic. The second movement is my musical response to an absurd and surrealistic state of affairs.
The third movement, Acquainted with Grief, is an elegy for those who died during the pandemic and for those who grieved their loss. The music does not address the horror of the loss itself, but its aftermath. And the losses were not limited to the deaths of loved ones, but range widely to the loss of livelihoods and communities, hopes and dreams. Each of the classic stages of grief are mirrored somewhere in this movement, though not in any particular order. The title is drawn from the fifty-third chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah, which speaks of “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Many of us now have a much deeper understanding of what an acquaintance with grief might mean.
I looked to the great English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, for the title of my final movement. His brilliant poem, God’s Grandeur, includes these hauntingly hopeful lines: “And though the last lights off the black West went/Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs,” the second portion of which became the fourth movement’s title. As I wrote this music in the final months of 2020, the pandemic was still raging and no one knew how it would end. Nevertheless, I fervently hoped humankind would survive this plague and find fresh joy and purpose in its wake. The fourth movement is invested with hope of various kinds, incorporating among them a wistful wish for the recovery of the carefree, the redemptive restoration of an ordinary day without an undertow.
A complex work of concert music can be forbidding for those listeners new to the experience. If this category includes you, think of my symphony as a musical novel, with the themes as the characters. A character in a novel usually has a particular name, history and temperament. These identifiable features help us as readers to care about and stick with a character through the unfolding of the story, however many twists and turns it takes. Like a character, a theme is a unique and identifiable musical entity, such as a melody, a particular set of chords or rhythmic pattern, which we can follow even through a complicated wordless narrative. Moreover, a theme may be complex in itself, containing more than one motif or gesture, in the same way a single character may display different traits.
A novel has a beginning, a middle and an end. It introduces its major characters, takes them on a journey, then brings them to some kind of resolution. Just as a character in a novel is introduced through a series of scenes in which that character acts or reacts, so it is with a musical theme in a symphony. One may hear it a few times in different ways before the focus shifts to a new character.
The development of a story puts its characters through their paces, transforming them in various ways, sometimes concealing them with elaborate disguises. They confront conflict, experience joy, face challenges and suffering, win or lose and sometimes seem to strain against the frames that initially served to define them. This development is practically the point of a novel with respect to its characters! The musical development of a theme is similarly rich and satisfying.
A novel’s resolution need not be a happy one, nor one that ties up all the loose ends, but whether it ends in death, change or a restoration of equilibrium, it does bring the story of the characters to some sort of conclusion. This is true in my symphony as well. It has a discernible resolution where its thematic characters are concerned, in each of its discrete chapters and as a whole contiguous work. All of this said, the story is not the only thing I want people to listen for in my symphony. I want to speak to the heart as well as the mind and hope audiences will find both challenge and consolation in it.
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There is no text for this instrumental work. The following are offered as texts and images which inspired the composer during the creation of the work.
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The World Premiere of Symphony #2: A Plague Journal took place on June 23, 2023 at the Koger Center in Columbia, South Carolina. The Varna International Music Academy Orchestra was conducted by Gregory Buchalter. A second performance was given at the Miller Theater in Augusta, Georgia on June 25, 2023.
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Purchase Symphony No. 2: A Plague Journal
Instrumental Scores:
Scores and parts are delivered as PDF files. A set of parts includes permission to make the requisite copies for the ensemble.
Pricing:
Orchestral Score - $50
Orchestral Parts - $175