Le Petit Prince - Concert Suite No. 2
| Year Composed: | 2018 |
| Instrumentation: | 2+picc.2+eh.2+bcl.2+cbsn/4.3.3.1/timp+3 perc/hp/pno/strings |
| Duration | 20 minutes |
| 1. | Overture and Migration |
| 2. | Pas De Deux |
| 3. | The Snake |
| 4. | The Stars Are Like Bells |
Program Notes
In 2017, I had an opportunity (funded through the Canada Council for the Arts) to develop a pair of symphonic concert suites, based on original music I had written for the National Ballet of Canada's full-length ballet Le Petit Prince, which premiered in 2016. Adapted from Antoine Saint-Exupery's profoundly influential novella, the ballet was conceived and choreographed by Guillaume Cote, who played a significant role in shaping the overall musical vision of the ballet. During the three years of production, I wrote and rewrote many of the numbers, in accordance with the shifting demands of the narrative and dramatic pacing. Throughout this process, I was guided first and foremost by the spirit of the original novella - its story and characters, as well as its author's overarching philosophy on love, acceptance, and the cultivation of the imagination.
These two suites provided me with a rare opportunity to revisit this music, and to make a few changes, based on my own intuition of how the music should breathe in the concert hall. Much has been excised from the original score, of course -- both suites are approximately 22 minutes in length, totaling to just under half the running time of the ballet -- but certain areas of music have been extended, developed, or restored from an earlier draft, according to what I might describe as the music's internal compass. I hope that listeners acquainted with the original ballet will find the concert experience an enriching one. For those listeners who have not seen the ballet, I hope that the music will provide a fresh musical entryway into Saint-Exupery's timeless fable.
Concert Suite No. 2 opens with "Overture and Migration", a dramatic curtain-riser of a movement: deep, churning chords, accented by the tolling of bells, erupt into a glorious surge of sound, over which the Migration Theme -- representing the Little Prince's journey to Earth -- is heard in the French horns. In the ballet, this music accompanies the spectacular introduction to the Lamplighter: circular panels in the ceiling and walls burst open, bathing the stage in golden light. The "Pas De Deux" that follows portrays the Little Prince's romantic but complicated relationship with the character of the Rose. A newly composed introduction, referencing the main theme of my Violin Concerto (which for me had come to symbolize a Rose-like figure in my own life) leads to the Rose Theme, a darkly ambiguous 'love theme' that reflects the Rose's mercurial temperament. The movement concludes with a pas de deux from a later scene, and which contains a theme which I had originally sketched for the Little Prince himself, but which eventually came to signify the dream-like resolution of the two characters' romance.
The character of the Snake -- a symbol of death that is not wholly negative in nature -- appears twice in the novella, and both appearances are musically described in the third movement, "The Snake". An introduction, comprised of eerie, rattling textures is followed by a wild, undulating dance that forms the climax of the ballet. Finally, "The Stars Are Like Bells" is my musical attempt at capturing the novella's heartrending conclusion: a processional that begins as a funereal passacaglia (starting with sixteen bars of solo piano chords) and ends in an affirmative reprise of the Little Prince theme, which then fades away into a shimmer of twinkling percussion.
Commissions and Awards
- The creation of this concert suite was made possible with generous funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Performances
- May 1, 2022 - Niagara Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bradley Thachuk. First Ontario Performing Arts Centre, St. Catharines, ON