This piece, with the title meaning "study in
harmony" in German, was written in 1985 and is named after a book of
the same title published in 1911 by Arnold Schoenberg.The inspiration for the book came in
a dream when while driving across the bridge on San FranciscoBay
he saw an oil tanker turn around and take off like what he described as a "Saturn
V rocket".There are
three movements to the composition:
Movement 1: Un-named
Movement 2: Anfortas
Wood
Movement 3:Meister Eckhardt and Quackie
The second movement was inspired by the Fisher King that
appears in Arthurian legend as a keeper for the Holy Grail who is wounded
in the legs or groin and unable to move on his own.The third movement is a further dream
where he dreamed about his wife nicknaming his daughter Quackie.In the dream Quackie
would ride through outer space on the shoulders of Meister Eckhardt, the 15th Century mystic.It was premiered by the San
Francisco Symphony Orchestra and some of its movements have been used for
the computer strategy game Civilization
IV. In his own words the
composer has said that he sees it as a "parody of a different sort in
that it bears a 'subsidiary relation' to a model (in this case
a number of signal works from the turn of the century like Gurrelieder and the Sibelius Fourth Symphony) but it
does without the intent to ridicule".He also stated that "The
shades of Mahler, Sibelius, Debussy and the young Schoenberg are everywhere
in this strange piece".
