III. Escher Keys: Day and Night to Waterfall

The third movement moves from Escher’s Day and Night into Waterfall to create a symmetrical conclusion to Escher Keys.  Beginning in the sky of the first image, the listener moves back and forth, side to side between viewing the white birds and black birds, neither of which visually can be seen at the same time.  Moving into the patterned, chess-like view of the fields, the viewer is confronted with two opposing rivers.  Wooden timbres comprise much of the timbre pallet.  Day and Night is the only woodcut I selected to be included in this piece.  All the other pieces are lithographs.  As the opposing rivers move into the cities, the listener shifts from Day and Night into Waterfall, which continues with fluid flowing movement from the opposing rivers.  Like the first movement, the soloist in this movement retains its more traditional relationship with the orchestra interjecting his statements often to have the orchestra respond with atmospheric tessellations.  After building back up solid pillars of the castle-like structure, defying logic, the middle section of this movement deconstructs from birds into missiles.  The mysterious Shepard tones return over the war zone to conclude with the over blowing airy texture of the opening and perpetual motion of the rising harmonic series. 

Duration: 5 minutes