#56 - of the unconscious...
(Click image to watch the performance and scroll down to read text)
COMPOSED BY TIFFANY CUARESMA & PREMIERED BY MARK IRCHAI,
INSPIRED BY SIMON DINNERSTEIN’S DRAWING “NIGHT”
“of the unconscious…” was written for the Musaics of the Bay Stay-at-Home Symposium in response to Simon Dinnerstein’s artwork “Night” and the poem “Dreams'' by Samuel Menashe. “of the unconscious…” is my musical interpretation of Simon Dinnerstein’s painting “Night” which blends modernist traditions with strong surrealist overtones and explores the psychological realm of childhood anxiety juxtaposed upon the dream-like world of the unconscious. This piece explores Dinnerstein’s exploration of the juxtaposition between the conscious world and the unexplored depths of the unconscious of anxiety and fear within every child.
To sonically paint a landscape of this psychological realm, “of the unconscious…” explores vast spatial and timbral extremes and builds upon a singular melodic theme: “The Child’s” theme. This theme is inspired and loosely constructed upon the opening theme in Debussy’s Children’s Corner V. “ The Little Shepherd. Tres Moderes” to reflect the questioning yet beckoning energy of a child. The melody is weaved throughout the entirety of the piece both in the more upfront, foreground sections (representing the “conscious”) and the deeper dream-like soundscapes representing the “unconscious.” With the piece’s inside piano hits, trembling piano string tremolos, dream-like sonorities, and clusters, I hope listeners can delve into the world of Simon Dinnerstein’s painting “Night” and the sonic landscape of the unconscious…
—Tiffany Cuaresma, Composer
Night by Simon Dinnerstein
“I have always been intrigued by the world of childhood and by children’s art. This is probably due to a few factors: observing my daughter’s creation of a fantasy world made of tiny toy animals, dolls and a ‘secret’ language; listening to my wife’s stories about the children in her pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes; remembering my own deep feelings of the beauty, fears, secrets and pathos connected with childhood.
Night was inspired by a play that my wife’s students put on in their pre-kindergarten classroom. The room was charged with energy, excitement and anxiety. The elemental force of these four-year olds was palpable. The children made masks from large paper bags. Their eyes, noses and mouths mysteriously peered out of the large oval openings cut into the center of the bags. My wife noticed that the children were impatient to put the masks on. Once they were inside them, however, they grew nervous and were quick to take them off.
Sometimes the artist is fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. The image that I saw literally called out to me. What energy and secret passions did these children invoke? As a child growing up in Brooklyn, how did this secret ‘night-world’ manifest itself – deep within subways, behind masks, riding with skeletons and witches?
From these thoughts grew Night, my meditation on childhood. Memories of my childhood fears and excitements began to flood my mind. Many of these ghostly anxieties haunt the procession behind and over the young children in the picture: skeletons, demons, witches, bats, masks, beekeepers and, most importantly, the El, the subway which takes the viewer screeching off and out of the panoramic landscape. Growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, this El, which mysteriously disappeared into a tunnel under the street, both intrigued and frightened me throughout my childhood.
I decided to emulate a child's crayon-scratching to represent the dark side of this scene. Thus this composition is not only about childhood, but of childhood in that it literally uses a child's drawing technique with an adult sophistication. Using children's materials (a variety of colors are laid down in Crayola crayon, covered with black tempera or crayon and then scratched through with a pin to reveal the color underneath), the child's world and drawing style merges into the world of fine art.
With its strong surrealist overtones, juxtaposing dream and fantasy, Night unites figurative and modernist traditions. Pushing spatial elements to extremes, it makes use of a deep, unusually high landscape punctuated by a crescent moon echoing the drama taking place in the foreground. While working on this piece, I could feel the spirit of Chagall, Ryder, Breughel, Gillespie and Kiefer looking over my shoulder, as well as the writings of Isabel Allende and Mikhail Bulgakov.”
Night, 1985, mixed media, 36 1/2 x 76 3/8" Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York
—Simon Dinnerstein
Dreams
What wires lay bare
For this short circuit
Which makes filaments flare ---
Can any bulb resist
Sockets whose threads twist
As far as they are spun ---
Who conducts these visits
Swifter than an eclipse
When the moon is overcome?
Samuel Menashe, Collected Poems
