The Forms of Things Unknown

It was really a happy coincidence when Helen Gumanti, pianist and representative of Fazioli & Bluthner pianos asked me to do a piece for multiple pianos based on a section of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". My first piece for 4 pianos was based on the first two lines of "Richard III" : Now is the winter of our discontent.... . To do that I used Vivaldi's theme from his famous "Winter" of the Four Seasons and mixed it with contemporary riffs inspired by Michael Jackson (to be honest, I forgot which song in particular, .... or perhaps there was no song in particular of MJ?). ............................................................................................................................................ Since I wrote Vivaldi's Winter of Discontent I always thought of writing another piece for multiple pianos to complement it. For this new piece, it is for 3 pianos as Helen Gumanti requested, and I used part of Theseus's speech and took the phrase The Forms of Things Unknown as the title. I started sketching it in Jakarta and these days while I am in Surabaya I worked and finished it during the flight from Jakarta (we had 1 hour extra being inside the plane without taking off, waiting for the queue of other planes to take off at Soekarno Hatta Airport! To be honest, I was busy composing so it didn't feel like 1 hour) and in my hotel room. ............................................................................................................................................ The creative process for "Forms" is different from "Winter" : I took these phrases and use it as a method for composing : And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name. ............................................................................................................................................ Therefore the piece is built of small motifs that just develop themselves, among others by repetitions. But there is one motif that goes through transformation throughout the whole piece: 4 notes ascending, and then descending. Those four notes changed from whole tone scale into a pentatonic scale and even octotonic scale. ............................................................................................................................................ As usual in my "percussive" pieces, I use very strong rhythms. Besides, Chendra Panatan will do a choreography of this piece too, so the piece is definitely "danceable". For my rhythms, my orientations are always those rock groups of the 80s and 90s such as Pet Shop Boys, Queen and my biggest influence of all time, Michael Jackson. But after I finished "Forms", I realized that A-Ha's "Take on Me" is everywhere in the piece; I guess it was because I put it in my songlist during my flight to Surabaya. ............................................................................................................................................ Anyway, I am here in Surabaya as the judge for the Nusantara Piano Competition. After Surabaya, it will be Semarang in July, and then the finals in August in Jakarta. But there will be another round of semifinal in Jakarta, so those of you young pianists who didn't join it before, or joined it but didn't get to the finals, you can have another opportunity by joining it in Jakarta. You can check their instagram account at @pianonusantara. Anyway, good luck for all pianists and piano lovers!