Musical Freefall: Projecting the Time-Space of Wolpe's Battle Piece

Abstract

An elucidation of the author's personal path towards mastery of the challenges found in twentieth-century keyboard masterpieces, this article describes how the author approaches music (specifically pieces by Donald Martino and Peter Maxwell Davies) that has few of the usual stylistic features on which musicians and listeners depend, and that explores a new time and space. The main focus is the Battle Piece of Stefan Wolpe, which the author has been performing for 25 years. Hearing ever-larger temporal areas and discarding the security of beats and measures, one loses the sense of musical ‘gravity’ in what Wolpe referred to as ‘constellatory’ time-space. Steady effort and love of the music gradually expand one's musical perspectives, even as the steps forward are often imperceptible. As in the finale of Battle Piece, one can ultimately hear multiple speeds and emotions simultaneously, as in a trance, thus allowing this multidimensional universe to be apprehended directly by the listener as well.