Is Music Really The Food of Love?

There are several pieces in the 3 Alicia's Piano Books that deals with love. But how do we express love in music (apart from the composer's obvious intention -- sometimes failed -- to make it sound beautiful)? For me, love is about uniting the differences of 2 persons. Remember this, young pianists who will experience (or just entered into?) your first love: you don't ask your partner to be the same as you. You should love your partner because who (s)he is. And that means that (s)he is different from you, and let him/her be that way. You are a lover, not a boss who tells people how they should act and should be. That's the power of love : it’s the unity of 2 people IN SPITE OF their differences. .......................................................................................................................................... But enough of love talk, let's analyze my music in a formal way. Keeping that concept above in mind, it is not difficult to write "love music" for piano: just make the right and left hand do different things! And that's what I did, mostly in rhythm. But of course, this is for the pieces with educational purposes. I'm making it rather simplistic, and if you listen to my other "love oriented" music, they are much more complicated than that! Until now I have managed writing those (easy) love music bi-rhythmically. I would love to do one bi-tonally, it would be really wild! Falling in Love (Alicia's 1st piano book) started from my wish to explain to my daughter the difference between a 6/8 and a 3/4 bar. So I wrote a piece where the left hand is in a 6/8 bar, and the right is in 3/4. The result is a flowing melodious piece, not a rhythmical one, since the melody is supported by an accompaniment which is different from its rhythm. No love involved initially, besides my love to my daughter. But then it turned out to be pretty romantic, so I gave it its title, and since I was commissioned to write for the film "Romeo & Juliet" at that time, the piece found its way to be one of the background music of one scene. .......................................................................................................................................... Since Alicia doesn't play the piano anymore, Alicia's 3rd Piano Book became more varied. I put many pieces that don't have any relations to Alicia and/or dealing with piano techniques into this book. One of them is indeed called Differences Unite, written for my dear friends Nathania Karina & Christian Oscar. It was written just because I chatted through Yahoo Messenger to Nathania, and suddenly felt like writing it (noooo, no fixed date for the wedding yet, at least that’s what they say hehehe). In this piece, the polyrhythm of 3 and 2 is changed in every beat, therefore it becomes a not-so-easy piece. The melody also appears not only in 1 hand but in both, so in most part of the piece it is clear which hand is more important. In the beginning, the melody in right hand even comes in exactly inverted from the first time it appears in left hand, kinda saying that two statements could be diametrically opposed but they both can be true (if you remember John Keats saying that “Truth is beauty”, ... and if you consider my melody beautiful). Only in the end both hands play equally important melodies (it also symbolizes that in a relationship, both parties are equal, if both are in love). .......................................................................................................................................... Unexpected Turns is a wedding gift for my dear childhood friend Laksmi Pamuntjak who has now become a prominent writer (and a stunningly beautiful lady, as if she turned into a butterfly from the caterpillar who I used to know!) who was marrying her second husband. Her most recent novel "AMBA" is enjoying immense success, and I feel guilty that for the 1 month I've been here in Indonesia I haven't managed to get hold of it. But I will, and the book will perhaps will accompany me during the flight back to Spain later this month. The title of my music refers to her life experiences too, and its differences lie in the sections which go to unexpected turns, although all of them are built on the same motif. .......................................................................................................................................... Mother's Love is different. It uses the motifs that I employ in my music for the film "Air Mata Terakhir Bunda" (Mother's Last Drop of Tears), to be released at the end of this year. After I finished writing its soundtrack, one day I felt like tinkering on one of its motif to make a rather virtuosic short piece. Anyway, a mother's love surpasses all differences; it's just the greatest love of all. .......................................................................................................................................... Talking about my music, of course we can’t avoid talking about motifs, since that element is the most crucial thing in my creative process. My music without motifs is like the world without atoms. I mentioned several times in my lectures that I have a “love” motif, but I am not sure if I have written about it in this blog. Anyway, it consists of an interval of a perfect fifth, plus a minor second (with its derivatives such as a major seventh or minor ninth and so on). That symbolizes my idea that love can make you understand perfection through happiness, but it can create the most dissonant chord too. Have your heart been wounded deeper than by the knife of love? Anyway, if you want to hear how this motif is so exploited, you can listen to my song Dalam Doaku and Ketika Kau Entah Dimana where it appears naked in the very first 3 notes of the singer. It then appears in a more elaborated figure in “Echo’s Whisper” for oboe and piano, and in many many places in my recent orchestral work ERSTWHILE: A communion of time (which is about love being postponed for 7 centuries. That motif can’t help but being very much elaborated, naturally!)