Kyle Gann: The Insomnia of Lilacs
(2018)

for virtual flutes, vibraphone, and piano

Mp3 Recording
Score in Johnston pitch notation
Raw MIDI Score

The Insomnia of Lilacs is a kind of half-hour tone poem using 58 pitches per octave. After just finishing Hyperchromatica for three pianos tuned differently, it occurred to me that a lot of pitches might be conveniently handleable if I had multiples of the same instrument(s) tuned to the same scale, but at different transpositions. So I came up with an ideal chamber ensemble of flutes, vibraphones, and pianos using a set of parallel scales. This piece is conceived as a recording only, and cannot be performed: who has a vibraphone with 58 pitches? Having just spent two years on the harmonic series (Hyperchromatica), I was rather desperate to have minor tonalities again, and especially to move smoothly between major and minor seventh chords, from a septimal minor seventh (1/1, 7/6, 3/2, 7/4) to regular minor and major sevenths, with a neutral seventh chord to smooth the transitions. The resulting 11-limit scale has a 12-pitch scale built up on five separate tonics: 32/25, 49/48, 1/1, 96/49, and 25/16. On each of those tonics is built a scale of 1/1, 9/8, 7/6, 6/5, 5/4, 27/20, 11/8, 3/2, 5/3, 7/4, 9/5, and 15/8.

Thus I made a score with five flutes, five vibraphones, and five pianos, each trio with the basic 12-pitch scale transposed to a different level. (Two pitches overlap among the five scales, which is why there are 58 pitches rather than 60.) At 31 and a half minutes, this is the longest single movement I've ever written. The often floating texture harks back to my 1981 piece for three live pianos Long Night. A Copland quote appeared inadvertently; I embraced it and played with it. Two Europeans, Eberhard Weber and Arvo Part, make momentary appearances, and the spirit of Harold Budd hovers. As for the title, I wanted to evoke fragrance and nighttime, with a tinge of surreality that relates to the strange voice-leading among the tonalities. Plants suspend some natural operations when it's dark out, but what if some lilacs couldn't? What if they kept perfuming the atmosphere while obsessing about ideas that kept returning?

In case it might aid the listener, I will attempt a narrative program:

0:00 m. 1	The piece begins in murky dissonance, a foreshadowing.
0:21 m.9	Beginning at zero, phrases roll up from the piano into the flutes, charting the characteristics of the tuning.
4:02 m. 98	That done, a tentative transition moves toward a new phase.
6:19 m. 140	An initial attempt at a grand unison statement is made, growing from a two-note motive in the flutes (a falling minor third).
7:01 m. 151	Following this, the music starts out on its journey, pulsing in different tempos at once, beginning to move restlessly from key to key and gradually dying away.
10:36 m. 193	As if uncertain where to turn, the music echoes a developing motive in various keys and tempos.
11:30 m. 214	At last, a long, treble ostinato starts up in the piano, then another in the vibraphone. The flute, solo at first before joined by two more, makes a stately progression through the bleak landscape.
14:52 m. 292	Finally, chains of perfect fifths bubble up from the bass, something like the first section but wandering with gentle dissonance from each initiating key.
16:37 m. 315	The vibraphone picks up a repeated note from the texture and moves in tiny intervals and unpredictable rhythms; the flute and piano start to follow along.
17:50 m. 343	Finally, the grand statement is attempted again, more emphatically and resolving into bliss.
18:52 m. 359	A seeming destination has arrived. Lush seventh chords sparkle in rhythmic layers, sometimes spilling into microtonal cascades, as the flutes more confidently echo their two-note motive. Eventually even this dies away.
20:45 m. 403	With that apotheosis exhausted, the lilacs pause to remember, one by one, all the phases they've been through, and even imagine one that hasn't happened yet.
21:36 m. 412	The last of the memories is the opening murky chords, now extending mysteriously as though wiping out memory.
23:12 m. 434	A slowly moving bass line begins moving upward and downward through differently colored chords. The instruments separate and dissociate; the flutes float through barely shifting perfect fifths, the vibraphone attempts some stream-of-consciousness motives, while a boogie-woogie voice in the piano struggles to maintain a subjective consciousness in this long, cloudy trek.
26:44 m. 475	At last all the instruments come back together in a calm and graceful tango (the one foreshadowed among the memories), musing thoughtfully on the journey that has now come to an end.

Below, arranged horizontally, are the scales of the five tonalities, in terms of pitch name, ratio to C 1/1, and cents. The center scale, on C, is the simplest in terms of ratios, and the ones above and below are transpositions of that scale.

Pitch: Ratio: Cents:	Fb 32/25 427	Gb 36/25 631	A7bb 112/75 694	Abb 192/125 743	Ab 8/5 814	Bbb 216/125 947	B^bb- 44/25 979	Cb 48/25 1129	Db- 16/15 112	E7bb 28/25 196	Ebb 144/125 245	Eb 6/5 316
Pitch: Ratio: Cents:	D77b 49/48 36	E77b+ 441/384 240	F777b+ 343/288 303	F77b+ 49/40 351	F77+ 245/192 422	G77b+ 441/320 555	G^77b 539/384 587	A77b+ 49/32 738	B77b 245/144 920	C777b+ 343/192 1005	C77b+ 147/80 1053	C77+ 245/128 1124
Pitch: Ratio: Cents:	C 1 0	D 9/8 204	E7b 7/6 267	Eb 6/5 316	E 5/4 386	F+ 27/20 520	F^ 11/8 551	G 3/2 702	A 5/3 884	B7b 7/4 969	Bb 9/5 1018	B 15/8 1088
Pitch: Ratio: Cents:	BLL- 96/49 1164	C#LL 54/49 168	DL- 8/7 231	DLL- 288/245 280	D#LL- 60/49 351	ELL 324/245 484	E^LL- 66/49 516	F#LL 72/49 666	G#LL- 80/49 849	AL 12/7 933	ALL 432/245 982	A#LL 90/49 1053
Pitch: Ratio: Cents:	G# 25/16 773	A#+ 225/128 977	B7 175/96 1039	B 15/8 1088	B# 125/64 1159	C#+ 135/128 92	C^# 275/256 124	D# 75/64 275	E# 125/96 457	F7#+ 175/128 541	F#+ 45/32 590	FX+ 375/256 661

One might note that Eb 6/5 occurs in both the 32/25 and 1/1 scales, and B 15/8 occurs in both the 1/1 and 25/16 scales. In addition, F77b+ 49/40 and D#LL- 60/49 are less than a cent apart, as are C77b+ 147/80 and A#LL 90/49, so there are functionally only 56 pitches; I constructed the scales intentionally to play with this ambiguity. Generally speaking, each new section explores a different aspect of the tuning. There's a section that plays entirely with five-limit dissonances, another that overlaps seventh chords from contrasting tonalities in the most dissonant (but always quiet) music I've ever written, and so on.

Some wonky, technical notes: The idea for this piece came from the fact (learned in the course of writing Hyperchromatica) that ratios 49/40 (351.3¢) and 60/49 (350.6¢) exactly bisect the difference between a minor third (315.6¢) and major third (386.3¢). I love moving between major and minor seventh chords with a neutral seventh in-between, and while I had often done it with an 11/9 ratio (347.4¢), this was a marginally even smoother transition. To get perfect fifths on 49/40 and 60/49, I needed to replicate the scale on 49/48 (D77b) and 96/49 (BLL-). Adding the two other tonalities on rather distant five-limit intervals of Fb and G# provided scales in perfect fifths with steps in the neighborhood of 35 cents. Such a progression can be most clearly be seen at the end of the piece, mm. 524ff, in the slow downward progression of fifths in the flutes (cents given for the upper line):

Of course, all the double sevens and double sub-sevens introduced some peculiarities of notation; for instance, A7bb is 694¢, while A#LL is 1053¢, so that two A-notes are 359¢ apart. Intervals that seem to move upward often move downward, and vice versa. Also, while this was my first eleven-limit piece in many years, it's really more conceptually seven-limit, with five ornamental eleven-limit notes.

(If you don't have enough experience with just intonation to make sense of this chart, try reading the step-by-step page on Ben Johnston's Notation section. In this notation, + raises a pitch by 81/80, - lowers it by 80/81, # raises it by 25/24, b lowers it by 24/25, 7 lowers it by 35/36, L raises it by 36/35, ^ raises it by 33/32, and F-A-C, C-E-G, and G-B-D are all perfectly tuned 4:5:6 major triads.)

Much thanks to Juhani Nuorvala for technical help and to Matt Sargent for sound production.

- Kyle Gann