Christopher Coleman

The Winter Mountain (2015)

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I.    First Flurries

II.   Soft Snowfall

III.  Deep Crevasse With Foxfire

IV.  The Frozen Waterfall

V.   The Snow-Clad Summit

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available from Vanderbilt Music Company

duration ca. 15:00

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Instrumentation

pedal harp

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Program Note

Having completed The Autumnal Mountain near the end of 2014, I found myself with some unused musical ideas that I wanted to develop rather than discard.  I was reluctant to start a sort of mountainous Four Seasons—after all, who can surpass Vivaldi, even if from a mountaintop?—but the desire to work out those remaining ideas was too strong to not write one sequel.  There was further compositional cross-fertilization, in that much of the material from the first movement, First Flurries, was originally composed for the Toccata from Triptych I but never used—in fact the Toccata was originally planned for harp.

 

The Winter Mountain is first revealed in a light dusting of snow—like individual snowflakes dancing in the wind, each musical pattern is similar but unique.  The beauty of a mountain village covered in white appears in the distance.  Foxfire—luminescent fungi—shines in the darkness of a mountainous crevasse as the weather turns cold, and light glistens off the crystalline icicles of a frozen waterfall.  Finally our eyes turn to the stark and severe beauty of the stony mountaintop clad in snow.

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The Winter Mountain was premiered by Michelle Abbott on the concert Multiple Worlds: the Music of Christopher Coleman, April 19. 2015, at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academic Community Hall.