Feux d’artifice – Tombeau [Shuttle Explodes: Seven Feared Dead] (1986)

Piano solo – 6 mins.

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Audio

Score (Free Download)

Program Note

A ballad for piano solo, the title and subtitle (“Shuttle Explodes: Seven Feared Dead) may provide all the listener needs to know about this work. The tension between power and brilliance of the shuttle’s lift-off and explosion and the the tragic outcome demanded a musical expression, with solo piano being the ideal medium. The shuttle disaster deeply affects us, not simply because of sorrow for the loss of life, or because of bruised national pride, but because it presents an iridescent, existential metaphor for our existence. Our awareness of the ultimate dissolution of the universe only creates a context with makes our quests and adventures, despite their inevitable futility, radiant and heroic. The climax of this piece comes not in the virtuoso fireworks, but in a massive “white-key” chorale which appears suddenly, like death, suggesting the shuttle, gigantic, white, promising another world, poised with its enormous booster rockets on the launch pad on a frosty January morning, imposing and irresistible.

Feux d’artifice – Tombeau was commissioned by and written for Samuel Viviano, a pianist who infuses his of new (and old music) with magical brilliance and electrifying emotional intensity. Mr. Viviano premiered the work on July 20, 1986 in Merkin Hall, New York City.