The lost civilization of Atlantis had, I like to think, a deep feeling for music, with dance having a strong role in festivals and ceremonies. Each dance had a particular rhythm. Over time, these became so well-known that musicians could embellish them in ways similar to Indian raga players or Western jazz performers.
My attempt to recollect a lost civilization uses low instruments — bass, cello, viola, horn and bass clarinet. This suited the dark times (2017-2018) in which I was writing. And it has the advantage that low instruments are best heard in small numbers, in thin textures. Like jazz, my dances give prominence to one or two players at a time, with the sequence of solos and duos known in advance. Their material is planned to give a symmetry to each movement. The material and instrumentation create a pattern that spans the whole suite.
Composing was well under way when I realized that John Adams had titled a piece Alleged Dances, Paul Sarcich had written Imaginary Dances, Paul Harvey had his Dances of Atlantis, and Gregory Rose had composed his wonderful Danse Macabre based on a medieval fresco. No matter; all of us pseudo-dance composers are in debt to Stravinsky, whose Agon was imagined as a history-that-never-was, an alternative development starting from a 17th century French dancing manual.
This piece is the second of a series intended as potential companions to Stravinsky's Septet, Beethoven's Septet, and Schubert's Octet.