Childhood

Childhood

Cole’s Childhood is set in spring and depicts a child emerging from a darkened cave into a bright world. This served as the inspiration for the composition’s introduction which, though distinct from the main body, shares both harmonic language and arpeggiated figures with it. The introduction was added retrospectively following a tutorial in January, to better ground the piece harmonically by foreshadowing the main theme. This introductory passage also exemplifies one of the visual narratives I wanted to convey, with the falling configuration (see Figure 1) conveying the echoes of waters within a cave. Figure 1: Childhood bars 1—2 An echo of the previous two notes The piece’s primary theme is built upon the B♭ Mixolydian mode, which is a major scale with a flattened seventh (A♭ instead of A, in this case). Modes were used extensively by Debussy, notably in L’isle Joyeuse (Tymoczko, 2004), and French impressionism proved to be the largest influence on this composition. While researching Debussy’s use of modes I discovered Ralph Locke’s analysis of Le Martyre de Saint Sébastian, which describes its third act as possessing an ‘incomprehensible—an unredeemably Other’ character, achieved through modal writing and off- kilter rhythm (Locke, 2007). This resonated with my aim of recreating the warm, ethereal atmosphere of Cole’s Childhood, and so it felt appropriate to use mixolydian to suggest a dreamlike quality.