Composing with a cantus firmus is like surrendering your fate to the whims of a friend.  You're fairly sure you're in good hands, but uncomfortable with letting go.  Perhaps also a little giddy at finding yourself freed from the burden of choice.  In a sense, everything depends on the CF.  

The Netherlands polyphonists of the 15th c. chose their tunes from sources both obscure and unexpected, from melismatic fragments of Gregorian chant to bawdy ballads stripped of their texts and sanctified in stately rhythms.  Hidden in a lower voice, those structural pillars would virtually disappear beneath the flourish of contrapuntal embellishment.
The practice continued in the organ works of the 17th c. master Girolamo Frescobaldi, whose experimental chromaticism clashed with the old style-CFs, and  contributed to the demise of the modal system.  Frescobaldi's meditations are a testament to this transitional moment in the history of music.

In the present work, a new set of Musical Flowers (borrowing its name from Frescobaldi), I seek to revive and extend, in a small way, this cantus firmus tradition.  Instead of seeking melodic inspiration in the history of my culture, I look to the music of my personal past: the cantus for the Kyrie section comes from some recent 12 tone works, the Gloria gets its tune from a recent dance-piece, part of The Unshadowed Shore, the Sanctus movement uses the theme of The Blue Flower, the Agnus Dei takes it cantus from the Hybrid Genre (Wratlicu Wyrd), while the coda utilizes themes from the symphonies of Anton Bruckner (19th c. organist and heir to the tradition of Frescobaldi).  

For the most part, regardless of the style of the CFs, my melodic, harmonic and rhythmic language here is close to that of the Renaissance (except for the ubiquitous accidentals).  But the process of composing has been a revelation - a strange mix of bondage (since the cantus conditions every choice) and freedom (from the need to coordinate the voices through imitation, as well as from concerns about harmonic progression).  Melodic arabesques entwine a nuclear line, coalescing in serendipitous consonances.

The homage that results is admittedly oblique, but perhaps this is as it should be: superficial understanding is sometimes demonstrated in naive imitation, whereas we express our admiration for those things we truly know and deeply love through artistic transformation (as Schoenberg did in his homage to Mahler, the last of the Six Little Piano Pieces opus 19, an aphoristic atonal gem that manages, with a few reiterated gestures, to bid reluctant farewell to the Age of Romanticism while ushering in a brave, new world).

Meanwhile, it is my hope to compose two more books of Musical Flowers, thereby making the present work Fiori Musicali,  Book One.  Book Two will feature a less placid, more dramatic kind of counterpoint, with sforzandos and brief outbursts of frenetic rhythm intruding on soft, static passages, while the melodic style will highlight instability of pitch and timbral metamorphosis through the use of extended techniques.    In Book Three, recorded samples of the earlier books will be transformed electronically, largely beyond recognition, so that, in a sense, the idea of the piece will serve as cantus to its its realization.

Itˈs obvious then that, taken together, the three books will exhibit an appalling lack of stylistic unity.  This lack of consistency is already noticeable, though to a lesser degree, within the present (First) book itself: from rather stiff and formal beginnings the individual movements become increasingly daring in melody, harmony and rhythm, as their structures get longer and more involved.

Does this require justification?  In the 21st century, probably not.  But I would like to make clear that, in composing in many manners, it has never been my desire to appear clever.  My choices have always been sincere and natural attempts to explore, understand and express the enigmas of self and world through music, literature and art.  The results may be variegated, discontinuous, even contradictory on the surface, but I trust they possess an inner consistency as honest responses to my experience of being in the world.

And this world - mine and yours - is large and growing ever larger.  Certainly itˈs bigger than the world of Frescobaldi, or Bach, or even Messiaen.  But I think that each of these men responded, in his own manner and in his own time, to his world as I am responding to mine: with openness and curiosity.