The Tears of Pirene

My uncle died a few months ago. As I grieved his passing my thoughts also turned to my grandmother who had lived long enough to see her first born die.

Being a father I couldn’t imagine anything worse.

It reminded me of the myth of Pirene, the nymph of Grecian mythology who, when her child was killed, wept so much that she became nothing but tears. The gods had pity on her and turned her into a fountain.

I am not usually one to express myself in music, but this was bigger than me and it called for music.

But I did not want to write music that was sweet or melancholic. No saccharine Adagios or wretched Requiems.

No, I wanted something that felt like grief; ugly, angry, numb sadness like a dull cry coming from the pit of the stomach.

This is what I wrote.

The Tears of Pirene begins with the event of death; a grinding, violent gesture ending with a few ragged breaths.

After this abrupt beginning there is a single note held in the soprano sax, and from it rises the ghostly, melancholic theme.

This melody represents the denial stage, the first of the five stages of grief. It is denial seen from an outside perspective, emanating a disquieting sense of calm.

But this denial is filled with tension, and the tension mounts. The texture becomes more active, contrapuntal and dissonant. The register gradually rises until denial gives way to anger.

Anger is the second stage of grief. But not a violent anger, it is an anger born of sadness.

The soprano continues developing the main melody, repeating it angrily over a weeping chromatic line in the alto and throbbing pedal tones in the lower horns.

The melody rises and builds, almost reaches a climax but instead stops abruptly, as if the anger had suddenly exhausted itself, unresolved.

Following anger is depression, the next step in the grieving process.

To write the music for the depression stage, I imagined losing my own children and vocalized the feeling. It came out as a deep, dull moan emanating from the pit of my stomach.

I immediately wrote down my wailing, a few notes of it anyway, bending the saxophone notes to capture that anguish with music.

That idea was combined with elements of the main melody and developed into a lyrical solo line in the alto, played over a pulsating, dull pedal tone, creating a feeling of emptiness.

From this darkness of depression comes acceptance, the final stage of grief.

The music rises very slowly, reluctantly, almost imperceptibly becoming brighter. This effect was achieved with great pains, so that the transition from dark to light appears so gradually and subtly that you feel it rather than hear it.

And when finally that warm, glowing final chord is heard, pulsing gently, it is like a symbol of peace and hope which, after all that pain, you didn’t even expect could happen.

Here is The Tears of Pirene recorded at the premiere by the Erie Saxophone Quartet. (This is only a sample, with parts taken from the beginning, middle and ending of the piece.) 

>> Visit the Erie Saxophone Quartet on MySpace.

Download a score sample.
This is an excerpt from the actual PDF file you would receive upon purchase. This allows you to see the high quality of the engraving.