Scott Ordway

PREMIERE

Commissioned by the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival

Premiere: August 2016 at the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival (Newburyport, MA)

MEDIA

NOTE

Mistral is the third installment of Mare Vitalis, a three-part cycle of independent solo and chamber works, each inspired in a different way by the profound physical, cultural, and spiritual lives of the sea.

Scored for the unusual quartet of violin, viola, cello, and organ, Mistral takes its inspiration from the wind, a force that has defined and empowered maritime communities for millennia and which, in captivity, so to speak, powers “the king of instruments.”

Chamber music featuring the organ is exceedingly rare. Instead, the instrument has historically been called upon to accompany choirs in liturgical and concert settings, as a medium for virtuosic improvised or composed solo pieces, and as an occasional guest in monumental symphonic works.

When cast in an intimate chamber setting, the organ’s magnitude cannot be ignored. The instrument is capable of producing a phenomenal quantity of sound. But unlike that of a wind or string instrument, this sound does not emanate from a fixed point on the stage but, instead, seems to emerge from the building’s architecture itself. Furthermore, in many cases, the performer is not visible to the audience, leaving the sound both disembodied and magnificent. In these circumstances, the sound of the organ does not discernibly come from a performer, but from the structural environment itself, giving it both an authority and a permanence unattainable by other instruments.

The organ in Mistral is not a virtuoso or an accompanist, but rather a static, immovable force, a monumental natural background in front of which an intimate, deeply human performance takes place. In this sense, the musical structure mirrors the physical circumstances of the performance: three small humans perform in front of the massive edifice of the organ. This structure also reflects the relationship between humans and the wind: we are often able to harness this great power, and to live comfortably in its presence, but we can never alter its course.