Product Description
Christophers Closet was composed in late July and the first three weeks of August 2007 for Latvian-born Canadian virtuoso Valentin Bogolubov, two-time recipient of the Delian Societys Orpheus Award. Bogolubov, who had premiered Fords Three Chromicons in Quebec earlier the same year, had made plans to perform a special program featuring Debussys Childrens Corner and La boîte à joujoux, and invited Ford to take part in this new project.
Fords suggestion that some music about more modern toys might be an interesting addition to the program was well received, and so he set out to create a series of colorful, contrasting movements in a contemporary but accessible tonal idiom that he hoped would appeal to children of all ages. As work advanced, a story began to take shape in his mind that resulted in a piano suite with optional narration and choreographic dramatization (see the complete text below).
For most of his adult life, Ford, like all Americans, had been witness to a series of scandals and controversies implicating the White House and several highly influential American presidents. By the turn of the century, the high office held by the Commander in Chief had been gravely tarnished by the likes of Watergate, the Iran-Contra Affair, the Monica Lewinsky Affair, and the Iraq War. Deeply disillusioned by the political and moral failings of men who posed as defenders of the right and champions of peace, Ford was no less troubled by the fact that
presidents and other world leaders were setting an extremely poor example that would have dangerous repercussions for generations to come. It is with this background in mind that he composed Christophers Closet, which is as much an entertainment for the young as it is an admonition for their elders to play a positive and responsible role in the psychological development of children in order to stem the rising tide of global violence.
The suite opens with a decidedly ironic and unsettling version of "Hail to the Chief," a tune that now serves as the official anthem of the President of the United States but which was originally penned around 1810 by British theatrical songwriter James Sanderson as a setting of several lines from Sir Walter Scotts poem, Lady of the Lake, beginning with the words, "Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!" Albert Gamse later supplied the melody with a new text-"Hail to the Chief we have chosen for the nation," but the music is almost always heard today in purely instrumental arrangements. Here Ford exploits jolting dissonances, abrupt register changes, and other paradoxical effects to underscore the not-so-noble and enlightened character of Christophers superhero action figure, "Chief."
"Trolls" is a multimetric waltz parody evoking the quirky stubby-limbed fuzzy-headed dolls created by Danish designer Thomas Dam that became wildly popular in the mid twentieth century. Still loved and collected the world over, "Trolls" (also known as "Dam Things") here seem to symbolize the eccentrically independent, free-spirited, pacifistic "flower children" of the 1960s-qualities equally evident in the charming dance Ford composed for them.
"Chocolate Bunny" is a delightful tribute to the popular musical styles of such serious early twentieth-century composers as George Gershwin and Scott Joplin. Conspicuously less dissonant and "sweeter" in sound than the previous two movements, the bunnys imaginary hopping motion is vividly suggested by leaping melodies and accompaniments and syncopated rhythms.
"Darwin the Dauntless Diplodocus," subtitled "A Mesozoic Mazurka," intentionally adopts an old-fashioned dance form and style reminiscent of the romantic early nineteenth century, when the disciplines of paleontology and musicology were both rapidly coming into their own. That much said, Chopin never conceived a mazurka quit
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