Steven Mackey: Beautiful Passing
Canary Classics

While the two works on Beautiful Passing wrestle with death and memory, the tone of the material, as serious as it is, isn't morose but life-affirming. The passing of Steven Mackey's mother was pivotal in the development of the title work, for example, but rather than wallow in grief the piece celebrates her memory. A natural companion to it is the five-part Mnemosyne's Pool (2014), deemed by Musical America “the first great American symphony of the 21st century” and here given a powerful reading by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Robertson. As memorable as it is, the violin concerto, written in 2008, is even more so, due in no small part to the rapturous performance by soloist Anthony Marwood.

Mackey (b. 1956) is recognized as a composer of works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, dance, and opera, but he's also known for guitar-based pieces that combine his formal academic training and love for high-energy rock music. Among the pieces he's created in that area are: Troubadour Songs (1991), for string quartet and electric guitar; and Physical Property (1992), for electric guitar and string quartet and also a highlight of Kronos Quartet's 1993 album Short Stories. While he's continued to produce material that includes electric guitar—the recent RIOT, for instance, is scored for mezzo-soprano, electric guitar, chorus, and orchestra—he's also created a substantial collection of work that eschews the instrument, the pair on Beautiful Passing prime examples. A scan of his output reveals him to be a composer of boundless imagination.

Monumental in scope, Beautiful Passing works through a shifting panorama of sections during its twenty-four-minute journey. As mentioned, it was the death of his mother from esophageal cancer that was the catalyst for its writing (in Mackey's own words, the piece “was inspired by the experience of watching my mother die”). One of life's most profound events, the death of one's mother can engender an inner conflagration ranging from sorrow and longing to mystification. Whereas the dying in those final moments might enter a state of peace, acceptance, and surrender, survivors may experience a dramatic array of moods as they attempt to come to terms with the passing. Mackey was little different in that regard and in the period following her death began to reflect on different facets of the experience—her serenity and strength, the tumult involved in resolving post-death practical matters, and the insomnia and inner turmoil he endured after her passing.

What's most fascinating about the composition is the way Mackey translates those elements into musical form: rather than simulate the event in a linear progression, he combined those states into a structure that sees elements interacting and sometimes violently colliding, similar to the way contrasting emotions rapidly follow one another. A single-movement work, it's actually in two halves, with a violin cadenza at its centre. In the first part, the violin and orchestra are often at cross-purposes, the soloist playing long, singing lines and the orchestra at times eruptive; after the cadenza, the violin, entering in a series of triple-stops, turns combative in a way that connects it more fluidly to the tone of the orchestra, the alignment perhaps intimating a move towards resolution. A blustery motif lends shape to a piece that pulls in multiple directions, though Marwood's tremendously sustained performance also acts as a through-line. Ending as it does on a note of lyrical serenity, Beautiful Passing registers as a concerto any violinist would be wise to consider adding to their repertoire.

The title for Mnemosyne's Pool derives, of course, from Greek mythology, Mnemosyne being the goddess that presided over a pool having to do with the preservation of memory and history. Whereas Beautiful Passing deals with a specific life event, Mnemosyne's Pool explores memory in more general terms, as a means by which the past is retained and, having become part of one's mental fabric, is recalled, even if the organizational process inclines more towards discontinuity and confabulation than linear ordering and photographic accuracy. The absence of a soloist makes the orchestra the focal point, but Mackey's writing is so imaginative and resourceful scant lessening of interest occurs from the first piece to the forty-three-minute second. There are aggressive passages but also gentler ones, and the music at times takes on a reverie-like quality, as if the musicians are collectively returning a memory to the present; one passage in the opening “Variations” is so evocative, in fact, it could be regarded as the composer's attempt to represent the mythical pool setting in musical terms. There's levity, as exemplified by passages of impish devilry (“Fleeting”), but also solemnity (“In Memoriam A.H.S.”) and lyricism (“Echoes”). Mackey makes full use of the timbral resources the orchestra provides, the symphony panoramic in colour and dynamic in mood.

January 2023