Valse Kinetic

“String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe – from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies – are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.” ―Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe When Alexandre Da Costa asked me to compose a new work for the Orchestre Symphonique de Longueuil for a program inspired by “Vienna”, two thoughts immediately came to mind: “waltz” and “Brahms”. The waltz is of course the dance/music genre most popularly associated with the historic city of Vienna, stately and elegant on the one hand and fluid and kinetic on the other. And of the veritable murderers’ row of legendary composers who at some point made Vienna their home, Johannes Brahms is the one I most closely relate to on a personal level. Brahms’s obsession with the music of J.S. Bach was of particular interest to me. I was struck by this linking of minds when I read that, later in Brahms’s life, his first daily act upon waking in his apartment in Vienna was to sit at his piano and play through Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. In Valse Kinetic, I sought to capture something of that atmosphere: an orchestral work that channels Brahms channeling Bach. With the flowing ternary feel of the waltz as its musical starting point, the piece taps into Brahms’s, Bach’s, and my shared love for highly propulsive, fluid, complexly interlocking music. —HS