Happy Tachyons (piano, mallet percussion)

Program Note: 

‍Happy Tachyons, commissioned by Dame Evelyn Glennie, pushes the boundaries of technical prowess for the percussionist. Written with exuberance and high spirits, this vibrant work showcases the interplay between the twinkling, bright vibraphone and the resonant depths of the marimba. It demands the percussionist to navigate passages that require simultaneous performance on both instruments, creating a captivating and dynamic musical experience.

Throughout Happy Tachyons, melodic bursts from the vibraphone alternate with the rich, woody tones of the marimba, creating contrasting textures and captivating melodies. The percussive lines, executed with flair, skate incessantly over a heavily syncopated piano accompaniment, adding an energetic and rhythmic drive to the composition.

I composed Happy Tachyons as my wife Carla and I were eagerly anticipating the arrival of our first child, Emanuel. The joyous and spirited nature of this piece reflects the anticipation and excitement surrounding his impending birth, infusing the music with a sense of celebration and anticipation.

A recording of Happy Tachyons, performed by Jeremy Fitzsimons on percussion and Stephen Gosling on piano, is available on the Trust Records CD Fragments (MMT2047). It captures the technical virtuosity and vibrant energy that define this composition, showcasing the remarkable abilities of the performers.

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Why this piece is seldom played

I wrote this piece on the back of Evelyn Glennie's championing of Matre's Dance in the early 1990's. Evelyn performed Matre's Dance everywhere, thereby bringing my music to the attention of percussionists worldwide. I then wrote Drum Dances for Evelyn and Philip Smith.

A third piano-percussion duo was eventually instigated and along came Happy Tachyons. I made one decision in the writing of this piece, which essentially doomed it to being performed by only the truly committed. I wrote several extended passages (e.g. at 01.23) where the player performs on both the vibes and the marimba at the same time in tightly synchronised and (here's the real blunder) wide-leaping melodies. I love those passages but they are the closest to impossible I've ever written.

Whenever anyone takes this piece on I have immediate (and massive) respect for them. I've yet to ever hear Happy Tachyons live in concert.

Musically the whole piece is like one extended C-dominant-7th chord. It finally hits the tonic (F) in the last bar, creating a perfect cadence consisting of a 7-and-a-half-minute Dominant, followed by a 5-second Tonic.

The piece also references gamelan music at one point, and three other composers;

1. The final theme in Stravinsky's Firebird
2. Keith Jarrett's Kyoto Part 1
3. Jack Body's Little Elegies (third part)

These are not too obvious (I hope) and were intended as homages to compositions I greatly admired while writing the piece.

I had an interesting experience, and a kind of awakening when I shared this piece for the first time. I invited Jack to my place to have a listen. I was watching him carefully as the music played and I listened very carefully to what he was saying afterwards. I realised then that our age difference, and the the difference in the music we had listened to and studied, had given us different processing speeds when it came to music that moved fast and had a lot of surface information in a short space of time (as Happy Tachyons does). As Jack responded to the work I understood then that the musical information in the fast-moving surface seemed to have eluded him.

This is by no means any kind of criticism, or a suggestion that I was ever more capable. But it was an interesting observation about generational differences in listening (and hearing), and taught me something extremely valuable; if I was to continue writing musical surfaces saturated with dense information (which I have done), I would need to organise the middle-level structures better so that the detail could be contained within clearly understood successive 'chapters'. I needed to find better ways of assisting listener perception and memory.

There's always a lesson....

Performance Notes

The success of this piece lies in the realisation of the accents and dynamic shapes in the melodic lines. All accents other than those at the end of a crescendo mark should be thought of as very strongly contrasted to non-accented notes. This is illustrated in the first few pages through extensive use of dynamics.

The mallet markings are guides only, as different acoustical spaces may suggest the use of stronger or weaker mallet types. The number of mallets indicated is also only a suggestion although the 4-mallet passages were written with this technique in mind.

The indication of finger-pedalling' in the piano part measure 196 is relevant until the end of the piece. This relates to the various C-octaves in the left hand. The principle is that the octave forms a continuum of sound by always sustaining either the upper or lower note with thumb or fifth finger until it appears again. This way the left hand will be sustained as if it is being pedalled but the right hand lines will not be blurred.

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