Ratcatcher

“I love to listen to stories. If the storyteller is good, it doesn’t really matter what the story is; it could be an emotionally neutral personal anecdote. Yet, something about a good storyteller’s inflection, tone, rhythm, techniques for changing venue, techniques for quoting characters, accents, dialects etc. -- the music of the telling -- makes it an experience.”

The above paragraph was for a piece I wrote 30 years ago called See Ya Thursday but my fascination with stories and story-telling has not abated. Quite the contrary! Raising children over the past decade has given me the excuse to plug into the world of fables and fairy-tales again. Regular listening to Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest, a podcast by master storyteller Adam Gidwitz was the highlight of the pandemic in our family. I will confess that I listened even when the kids weren’t around.

Ratcatcher returns to this territory for inspiration. Specifically, the title refers to the main character in the familiar story – The Pied Piper of Hamelin – which dates back to the 13th century. I am not attempting to retell the story in a linear fashion but rather I’ve distilled some of the characters and affects into representative musicalizations which connect and contrast on the basis of rhythm, harmony, melodic shape, etc.. In other words they interact as musical motives do to tell their own abstract story rather than lining up to unfold the Pied Piper.

There are three main elements, in order of appearance:
A simple melody, kind of processional music, which serves as an introduction. This melody is generally accompanied by chiming piano chords, tolling like bells in the distance.

An intense, snarling, edgy motive that embodies a sense of drama, struggle and action.

A celebratory dance that alludes to an ancient musical style (more renaissance than medieval but still …) and reinforces the atmosphere of fairy tales and magical thinking.

These elements interact in a continuity that turns sharp corners to uncover surprising revelations and put disparate affects in vivid relief. There is ample use of one of my favorite story-telling conjunctions – “meanwhile.”

Ratcatcher is 17 minutes long and was commissioned by the Naumburg Foundation and written for saxophone virtuoso Valentin Kovalev and pianist Amy Yang.

– Steven Mackey