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The yellow fades from red to green (Compositions for Solo Piano)

by Sean Harold & Tomoko Ono

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about

I kissed the virescent eyes of seraphim...:
"I kissed the virescent eyes of seraphim..." is an art song for solo prepared piano. The pianist acts as both voice and accompaniment, wordlessly setting a poem of the same name:

I kissed the virescent eyes of seraphim
to remember you
but soft, the trinity wept.

And with scarlet breath
fervid exhales bled opiates timelessly
into the churches and sins and virtues we had long since forgotten,

But flaxen and pale
ignominious lechery beckoned so.
When sunset fell the three magi lay still and frozen

Underneath the vi'let canopy,
Engulfed and blinded in twilit firmament,
The gaping hand of crucifixion
Stretched forth its ashen fingers,
Dripping with the anemic passion of feeble and pallid dementia,
To seize the fate of martyrs
And wring cochineal mausoleums
Like raw, upturned earth
Prodigiously borne from the derelict kingdom of an insouciant corpse

Draped in woven gold.
A peaked body come into blushing flesh
To decay three times...

Azure paramour;
a berceuse flowered in melancholic song,
His wounds hid amongst the crystal webs of sunken kin.

And moss crept gently into the reddest mouth
its home left nameless,
While nine choirs whispered violence into ears of lust.


The yellow fades from red to green:
"The yellow fades from red to green" is based on the slow movement of Mozart's Sonata No. 2, K. 280. It was written as a study & precursor for another piece of mine: "Du rouge au vert tout le jaune se meurt..." for violin, gamba, and harpsichord. "Du rouge au vert tout le jaune se meurt..." used Pärt's "Mozart -- Adagio" (which is based on the same Mozart piece) as its seed material.

The idea was to write "The yellow fades from red to green", then use it as the foundation for "Du rouge au vert tout le jaune se meurt..." in the same way that Pärt had used Mozart's slow movement as the foundation for his piano trio.

Each movement of "The yellow fades from red to green" deconstructs a section of Mozart's Sonata, rebuilding the source material and re-imagining it from a different vantage point.


...with crystal finger:
"...with crystal finger" is based on Bach's "Ricercar a 6. " With this piece, the intent was to tackle Bach's work in five distinct ways. As such, each movement takes a different approach to building both form and content, passing Bach's deconstructed materials through the lens of Georg Trakl's prose poem "Verwandlung Des Bösen" (from which the title of the piece is taken). The result is a work in which historical forms and Bach's fugue are first broken down, and then rebuilt as disquieting aphorisms.

This piece was premiered at, and commissioned by, the 21st Century Piano Competition.

credits

released January 1, 2021

Music written by Sean Harold:
"I kissed the virescent eyes of seraphim…" (2012)
"The yellow fades from red to green" (2014)
"…with crystal finger" (2015)

Piano performed by Tomoko Ono

Produced, recorded, and engineered by Sean Harold

Artwork ("Courtship") and album design by Jaz Harold

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No Thank You Recordings Winthrop, Maine

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