Suite for trio (clarinet [A], viola and piano) was created by composer Elena Sokolovski in 2012. Bright and contrasting images of a bygone era, captured by a modern author, appear in relief before the listener. As if you see now the figures of the Spanish nobles proudly moving in the dance, then the French courtiers riding in carriages outside the city. Or suddenly we see towers with loopholes and fortress walls of the building: once it was a majestic castle on the Rhine, from which only ruins remained in the Baroque era... But let's not be sad – near Naples we are waiting for a village holiday with its fiery dances and the virtuoso playing of rural musicians!
The suite consists of four parts. The first part – “The Solemn Procession of the Spanish Grandees” – relies on a slow, calm movement and draws images of majestic figures floating in a royal dance-procession. The theme of the procession passes three times in the play, varying in tonal terms (E major, C sharp minor, A flat major), and the piece ends in the key of E flat major, that is, half a tone below its beginning, gradually slowing down and loudness, and thereby gives the impression that the procession is moving away. The author introduces ornaments typical of baroque music into the melody – mordents, grace notes, which gives the theme a flavor of those times. After the first and second introductions of the theme, small repetitions of the instruments are heard, indicating, as it were, a respite in the dance.
We can say that the first part bears the features of the dance of the Spanish allemande. This dance genre originated in Europe long before the Baroque era, but it was in the 17th-18th centuries that this genre passed into instrumental music and ceased to play a significant role in choreographic art. There is a version that the slow, smooth movements of couples dancing the allemande became one of the prototypes of the waltz (especially in its slow version).
The work, created in the 21st century, immerses us in the atmosphere of the past, reviving its features.
So we were in Spain. Now we are heading to France. The second part is called “Journey to Versailles”, a scene full of hilarious humor.
A light clatter of hooves, several luxurious carriages with rich and famous members of the royal court, elegant ladies, many servants .. Everyone goes to a picnic and will dance there until the morning – that's why the gentlemen have so much fun! But suddenly one of the old courtiers notices with fright that he forgot at home ... a wig! And another lost his false teeth! However, such incidents do not in the least prevent the old men from making laugh or lightly pinching the young ladies of the court! And light female squeals only incite elderly naughty ones. And the hooves all clatter and clatter, and Versailles is already visible ahead!
What sadness seizes those who observe the picture of once beautiful, but now ruined buildings!
It is with such a picture that we meet in the third play, “Ruins of the Rhine Castles”. The author managed to paint with musical means such an image that gives rise to a dual feeling – on the one hand, static, immobility of the ruins, and on the other hand, sad memories drawn from books and pictures of those times when these castles majestically towered over the Rhine begin to swarm in the soul. In music, painting, literature there are works dedicated to the images of ruined castles, palaces, sunken temples, in which life has stopped and only memories of the past remain (Mussorgsky, Debussy, Heine, Druon, Russian artist Glukhov, etc.). Involuntarily, the motifs of old mournful tunes come to mind, for example, mourning folia and other images close to the genres of sarabande, chaconne, passacaglia.
These genres were often used by classical and romantic composers in their works. Music in the nature of folia and passacaglia evokes mournful thoughts about losses, tragic situations, about destruction. In the play “The Ruins of the Rhine Castles”, the author does not quote any old melody, but recreates the atmosphere of the image thanks to a number of techniques, for example, timbre. Only the piano is the soloist here: it's timbre, somewhat restrained and chilly, perfectly conveys the hidden and mysterious nature of the picture of the silent ruins. A significant role is played by a rather slow tempo and the syncopated rhythm associated with it, but, as it were, having lost its energy. Vertically built polyphonic piano chords resemble rows of dilapidated colonnades stretching into the distance, and a quiet echo and echoes of sounded motives evoke a feeling of empty space, on which a medieval castle once towered, and now only its ruins remain...
The musical form of this piece is interesting and very peculiar. The form is built as a non-reprise simple two-part form with a small conclusion. In music, the concept of reprise in simple forms in the overwhelming majority of cases means the affirmation of the original theme. The theme is presented in the first section of the form, followed by its development (the second section) and, finally, comes the third section – repetition of the theme, its setting, that is, a reprise. There are countless such examples in the art of music. Thus, thanks to the reprise, the musical form acquires symmetry and balance. The absence of a reprise section in the play by Elena Sokolovski leads to an effect specially conceived by the author: the second section – the development of the theme – does not lead anywhere, and this supports the main idea of the work about destruction, deformation and loss of values.
Another interesting feature of the musical form of the work, which serves the same idea, is the method of successive reduction of sections. Thus, the first section contains 17 measures, the second – only 13, and the final – only 6 measures. Such a “diminuendo” of the form also indicates deformation and destruction.
And while listening to this piece, one can imagine how on a moonlit night some ghostly shadows are gliding between the ruins, and a barely audible whisper of long-gone people seems to be...
Well, finally, we are in a sunny Italian village, where some holiday is celebrated cheerfully and wholeheartedly. Rapidly rising and falling, the “spinning” melodic pattern resembles many dance genres that existed during the Baroque: tarantella, canario, gigue. Canario, for example, is dedicated to the “incendiary courtship” of a gentleman for a lady, and English sailors dance a gigue. Jumps, stomp, abrupt movements are characteristic of all these dances, which demonstrate the dexterity and speed of the dancers.
In the middle of the piece, the author introduced a small virtuoso cadenza of clarinet and viola: this cadenza makes the listeners pay attention to the performing art of the instrumentalists who “accompany” the dancers. The piano falls silent, and broken passages, glissando, quarter-tone sounds, and tremolo are introduced in the parts of the clarinet and viola. The returned dance embraces everyone again with its fiery joy and reckless mood.
Glancing over the whole suite, one can see that it is built in the form of an old instrumental suite, widespread in the music of the Baroque era (Bach, Handel, etc.). The old suite of those times very often consisted of four parts: a rather slow allemande, lively courante, a very slow sarabande and a very fast gigue. These four dances lined up in a suite in a certain zigzag tempo order. The instrumental version reflects those dances that have existed in European countries since ancient times, but by the Baroque era they were no longer so popular in terms of choreography, but by no means lost their significance for instrumental music. In the suite of the modern composer Elena Sokolovski, there is a specific zigzag tempo order of the works. Indeed, the first piece sounds at a restrained slow tempo and corresponds to the allemande, the second – at a live tempo – to the courante, the third, in its very slow tempo and gloomy imagery, resembles a sarabande, and the fourth is close in fast tempo and the nature of the gigue.
Thus, the musical form of the entire suite can be considered a modern version of an old baroque suite. This composition was performed in the USA, Greece and other countries and met with the best reception. Undoubtedly, this suite by the composer Elena Sokolovski is an excellent contribution of the author to contemporary chamber music.