I have never written anything more than five minutes long before. In that light, I'm rather proud of my newest project, even if I'm ashamed of the music itself. I also wrote it in three days. This made me very, very unhappy at the time, but it was also kind of exciting. It was a new challenge, writing music to describe something rather specific. On that note, since I just uploaded the music itself (which is terribly synthesized), I feel I should supply the letter I wrote to William Golding explaining precisely WHAT THE HELL THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE. Here it is. (Oh, and the last paragraph is what I'm going to call an acceptable falsehood, in light of the circumstances.)


Dear Mr. Golding,

I am an American student, enrolled in the tenth grade at Madison East High School in the state of Wisconsin. Our English class recently read your work, Lord of the Flies, and as part of our analysis thereof we have been asked to produce a creative piece based on your book. This is a rather hefty proposal, though very expressive, so naturally we all began working on this the week before it was due (as we spent the days prior to this immersed in analysis). Personally, I found your book incredibly compelling. The verisimilitude especially impressed me; I had the feeling that you had experienced this firsthand, the detail was so engrossing. While I would like to take a more optimistic view of the nature of humanity, your writing forces me to consider the distinct possibility that we really are, as a race, innately violent. (To digress a moment with regards to our analysis, the writing of Howard Zinn [an American historian] is particularly inimical to the philosophy expressed in your book—while the two can be reconciled, I doubt you would have approved of the reasoning involved. This source was one we considered in our discussions, and one which I would dearly like to see your reaction to as a thinker.) Much as I would love to elaborate further on these points, they are hardly the focus of this letter.

I chose for my project to compose a piece of music with a programmatic intent derived from the plot and character of your novel, an overture of sorts to the drama contained therein. Though I consider myself an amateur composer, I have never completed a work this ambitious (nor any sort of work, even a smaller one) in this amount of time, nor have I ever composed any sort of programmatic work (one that expresses a story or other nonmusical idea).

This overture seeks to express salient points from the plot of the novel in a manner characteristic of the overall ambience of the book. To this end, I decided within a few minutes that the piece could not be tonal in nature. It opens with a brief marcato declaration in the strings, dissonant chords representing the implied aerial battle that prefaces the story. A response from the woodwinds depicts the uneasy calm of the island below, answered by the strings’ repeating of the initial motif as the plane crashes. Flutes and horns briefly paint the idyllic forest as the boys find it, with descending birdcalls from the other winds closing the phrase. Pizzicato strings introduce an oboe melody as Ralph, Jack, and Simon begin to explore the island. The chords betray the unease that has begun to settle, though the oboe remains unfazed. The brass, led by a solo trumpet, interrupt this wandering with a reminder of civilization (recalling the conch shell, a primitive forerunner of the brass family), and the strings tangentially declaim a hymn tune that nods to Simon’s allegorical portrayal of a Jesus figure. This and the brass feel slightly out of place (and entirely tonal)—signs that the civilization the boys have made, and the haven Simon finds in the forest, are doomed to fall.

A disturbing melody in the celli and basses in their lowest register heralds the coming chaos, as talk of a mysterious Beast becomes prevalent and Jack’s hunters begin to kill. A brief, hushed silence makes what follows even more startling. Beginning as rhythmic, polytonal chords in the low brass, a wild sacrificial dance modeled after Stavinsky’s Rite of Spring commences. Hectic changing meters and blaring dissonance characterize this savage episode, and different voices rise above the tumult before being subsumed into the chaos as individuals become a mob. Amidst this cacophony a single horn screams the chorale melody from Simon’s forest hideaway, but it is lost amidst shrieks from the clarinets and raucous crashes on the timpani. Stopped notes blasted from the horns punctuate the din, ending on a single dissonant chord as Simon is torn apart and the trumpet and percussion die away. Ralph and Piggy retreat to the relative tranquility of the other side of the island, meditating on what they have done. The winds recall the opening melody, joined by the strings in a contemplative moment, before the next hunt begins.

This episode of violence, no less shocking, is represented by frenzied scrambling in the clarinets and bassoon over a marchlike, absurd statement by the low brass. It sustains its intensity as the barbarism of Jack’s tribe increases, encompassing the confrontation between the two leaders. The crash of a timpani, representing the boulder, ends the march abruptly, and a final despairing trumpet call (in the minor this time) recalls the destruction of the conch, and the order the boys tried to build. It would be pointless at this moment to try to replicate the sheer terror of the chase, represented so completely by previous passages, so instead the music recalls Ralph’s final reflections. Melodies in the woodwinds serve as an elegy to their departed companions, and the order of society, over a nearly inaudible sustained note in the celli that reminds us of the constant element of human nature as portrayed in Lord of the Flies. This pedal tone, normally dissonant, transforms the tonic chords of the melody (major) into minor chords, depicting the sorrowful death of civilization. Finally, the strings (with a solo horn) close the work with a brief funeral march (recalling the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony), dying away into silence with Ralph’s tears.

I hope you find the elements of this work accurately portray your novel, Mr. Golding, and that you did not find the poorly synthesized recording entirely offensive to listen to. (I regret that the program that produced it is considered the pinnacle of modern composition software.) I enjoyed both reading your book and writing this piece immensely, and hope it is as engaging to hear as it was to compose. Lord of the Flies is an amazingly powerful work, and I would love to think that I could capture a fraction of the intensity of your writing in my music.


Sincerely,
Mikko Utevsky