No. 33 Guest, Steve Kirk – Stravinsky Homage
I’m pleased to have composer/guitarist Steve Kirk talk about “Dance of the Earth”, his homage to Igor Stravinsky; and share his guitar tab chart. Additional program notes below.
Click the notation to download all four pages of the chart.
Original Program Notes by Steve Kirk
I don’t know if it’s exactly safe to say that Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring has influenced the harmonic and rhythmic choices, either directly or indirectly, of every modern composer, but I’m going to say it anyway; so profoundly has this concert work influenced the state of modern musical consciousness.
So, rather than directly borrow thematic material for this piece, I instead chose to use compositional techniques that Stravinsky employed in his creation of Rite Of Spring: poly-harmonics, where two tonal centers are used simultaneously to create a heightened sense of ambiguity in both melody and harmony, a dedication to the use of uneven time signatures and phrase-lengths and an abandonment of conventional form structures in favor of a more organic stream of consciousness style of writing.
In the service of these techniques I used reoccurring melodic and rhythmic motifs but resisted the temptation to use exact repetition, for the most part. The rhythmic dominance overRite Of Spring influenced my decision to compose for piano and guitar for this duet, both instruments presenting abundant percussive and tonal possibilities.