The quotations cover the subjects of earth, wind, water,
and fire—the four elements. While Fine says the
choices were made subconsciously, she’s pleased by
the totality. Although a Greek-like melody appears only
once in the piece, other Greek elements are suggested:
the water surrounding the islands, the Melteme (the
wind), and the sound of a bouzouki, a Greek lute. Susan
Feder captures the essence of Poetic Fires in her program
notes: “a sparsely scored chamber work, exquisitely
colored, in which the piano has an integral part. The
rhythmic profile is as sharply defined as the timbral
one.”
–Leslie Jones, “The Solo Piano Music of
Vivian Fine,” Doctor of musical arts thesis,
University of Cincinnatti, 1994
Vivian Fine
won’t be in the audience for her premiere with the
American Composers Orchestra….she’ll be on
stage at the piano….“As I worked through the
piano part of Poetic Fires, I found I was using
less and less pedal….I’m in a period where
I’m writing works that have a dramatic
character…I recently visited Greece, so I had a
bunch of Greek writings running through my mind. I wrote
Poetic Fires without specific literary
allusions, and when it was finished I chose quotes to
describe the music rather than
vice-versa.”…The composer emphasizes the fact
that Poetic Fires is not a concerto. “…In
Poetic Fires there is much more of an interweaving of the
sounds of the piano and orchestra. I tried to make the
orchestration transparent and let the lyric and
articulated piano passages come through.”
–Susan Galardi, “Premieres: The
Composer Speaks,” Musical America,
February, 1985
[Fine]
returned to a favorite theme, Greek mythology, using
short passages by Aeschylus and Homer containing imagery
of sea waves, the appearance of a deceased mother, Sirens
amidst a hedge of dead men’s bones, Aeolus and
hollow winds, Night, and Jove’s harp. The
text’s imagery becomes the character for that
section, suggesting linear shapes and
orchestration…The piano is not a solo instrument as
in a concerto, but a member of the orchestra whose timbre
Fine mixes with other instruments and occasionally
features in a solo passage…Poetic Fires does
not stress the internal unity of ‘Drama
[for Orchestra],’ such as the cyclic use of
materials and many canons. Instead, Fine experimented
with unusual orchestral doublings and swathes of
orchestral colors. There are passages in which the
glockenspiel doubles a trumpet and an English horn
doubles a flute: the bassoon repeats a previous piano
passage; and the sections about the sirens beings with a
cello solo repeated by the contra bassoon. Bassoon,
xylophone, and piano are mixed during the section about
Aeolus. It is almost as if Fine considers the
instrumental timbres to be dancers whom she features in
solos and small ensembles.
–Heidi Von Gunden,
The Music of Vivian Fine, Scarecrow Press,
1999.