Joseph Schwantner, "From A Dark Millennium"
From a Dark Millennium
Joseph Schwantner
Born: March 22, 1943, Chicago, Illinois
Composed: 1981
Duration: 11 minutes
SANCTUARY...
Deep forests a play of Shadows most ancient murmurings from a dark millennium the trembling fragrance of the music of amber
- Joseph Schwantner
From a Dark Millennium is the final movement of a trilogy of works for wind ensemble written by Schwantner between 1977 and 1996, which also includes the monumental works …and the mountains rising nowhere (the “first” movement), and In evening’s stillness… (the “second”).
Schwantner does not consider From a Dark Millennium to be programmatic; he does, however, admit that, “the mysterious and shadowy atmosphere... springs from images drawn from a brief original poem that forms the poetic backdrop for the work. The poem helped to stimulate, provoke, and enhance the flow of my musical ideas.”
From a Dark Millennium features a number of Schwantner’s favorite compositional techniques, including “shared monody," “static pillars” of harmony (“blocks of sound”, remaining unchanged for a period of time), changing meters, ostinato (repeating bass figure) and contrasting dynamics/tempi/textural density. As described by the composer, throughout his works, “the piano is responsible for presenting the primary melodic, gestural, harmonic, and sonoric elements that unfold in the music.”
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