Jeu de Tarot 2

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Jeu de Tarot 2 is a chamber violin concerto commissioned by Ensemble Mise-En with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. The work was composed in 2018-19, and is in six movements. It’s scored for flute, doubling, oboe doubling, clarinet doubling, horn, bass trombone, percussion, harp, and keyboard (piano, keyboard controller for electronic samples), solo violin, violin, viola, cello, and contrabass. The work is the second in the series of works dedicated to and written for virtuoso violinist Irvine Arditti and ensemble based upon cards of the major arcana of the Tarot. These works may be performed sequentially, or separately. [The premiere of Jeu de Tarot 2 was delayed for several years due to the circumstances in the world in the years 2020 through 2022, remaining unperformed.}

This composition is in seven movements titled after seven selected cards from the twenty-two major arcana of the Tarot deck. They are:

 8. Death

 9./10. Judgment/Resurrection of the Dead

 11. Temperance

 12. The Wheel

 13. The Tower

 14. The Chariot

In each movement the soloist, and the ensemble, explore a scene suggested by the rich symbology of the images upon the cards –fantastic images made by many famous, and not-so-famous artists - and by the very poetic pen-pictures, created by Russian mathematician, mystic, and writer P.D. Ouspensky in his remarkable publication “A New Model of the Universe” from 1919, revised and published again in 1929. Ouspensky writes of some potential histories of the cards, and following that, in a separate chapter, he imagines confronting a particular array of the cards laid out ritually. These depictions are immensely powerful suggesting deeply profound spiritual dimensions and purposes in potential for the twenty two cards of the major arcana.

Here are a few lines excepted from Ouspensky’s pen-pictures; these descriptions create an atmosphere, an aura for each of the musical movements: (The Symbolism of the Tarot chapter V, part II, in A New Model of the Universe, Knopf, 1931) –

Death: …I saw a gigantic horseman on a white charger, clad in black armour, with a black helmet, and a black plume…And wherever the white steed passed night and death followed. Flowers withered, leaves fell, the earth was covered with a white shroud, grave-yards appeared, towers, palaces, cities all fell into ruins. Kings, beautiful women, high priests, innocent children all fell on their knees before it, and stretched out their hands in despair and anguish – and then fell to rise no more…Life broke in upon me, and looking at the disappearing horseman and the setting sun, I understood that the path of life consists of the hoof marks of the steed of death. The sun setting on one side rises on the other…

Judgement/Resurrection: I saw an icy plain. A cloud arose and grew until it covered a quarter of the sky. In the midst of the cloud there appeared two fiery wings, and I saw the messenger of the empress. He raised his trumpet and blew a loud and imperious blast. And one after the other the graves in the plain began to open and out of them people came forth…And in the opening graves I saw the unfolding flowers, and in the extended hands I smelt the fragrance of flowers. And I understood the mystery of birth in death.

Temperance: I saw an angel standing between earth and heaven, clothed in a white robe, with wings of flame and a golden halo round his head. He stood with one foot on the land and the other in the sea, and behind him the sun was rising…In his hands the angel held two cups – one of gold and one of silver, and between the cups there flowed an incessant stream which sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow. But I could not say from which cup it flowed and into which it was flowing. “The name of the angel is Time”, said the voice. “In the angel’s hands are two cups gold and silver. One cup is the past, the other the future. The rainbow stream between them is the present. You see that it is flowing in both directions. This is time in its most incomprehensible aspect for man. Men think that everything is incessantly flowing in one direction. They do not see that everything eternally meets, that one thing comes from the past and another from the future, and that time is a multitude of circles turning in different directions.”…

The Wheel: I walked on in meditation endeavoring to understand my vision of the Angel….at the four quarters of the sky I saw the four, winged beasts of the apocalypse - …and each of them was reading an open book. And I heard the voice of the animals of Zarathustra…”Every moment beginneth existence, around every ‘here’ rolleth the ball of ‘there’. The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.”

The Tower: I saw rising from earth to heaven a high tower, whose top reached beyond the clouds…Suddenly the sky opened, a thunderclap shook the whole earth, and lightning struck the top of the tower. Tongues of flame shot out of heaven; the whole tower filled with fire and smoke – and I saw the builders of the tower falling from its top. ”Look”, said the voice, “Nature is patient for a long time and then suddenly with one blow she annihilates all that goes against her. If only men could see that almost all they know consists of the ruins of destroyed towers, perhaps they would cease to build them.”

The Chariot: I saw a chariot drawn by two sphinxes…Beneath the canopy stood the conqueror in armour of steel… ”This is the conqueror who has not yet conquered himself. Here are both will and knowledge. But in all of this there is more of desire to attain rather than that of real attainment. This is the conqueror who has not yet conquered himself. And he does not know that in himself lies the conquered city, …that in himself great dangers await him. And realize that this is the same man whom you saw connecting heaven and earth, and the same man whom you saw dragging himself along a dusty road toward the precipice where the crocodile awaits him.”

The seven movements of this work are interconnected amongst themselves, and also with the seven movements of the previous set, Jeu de Tarot. Some of the musical images themselves, apart from connections internal to these works, are similarly linked to specific instances across and within the entirety of the body of work created by the composer. The clearest such example is the movement “The Hermit” from Jeu de Tarot, with “Judgement” of Jeu de Tarot 2; an increasingly obscure example as illustrative is this – the electronics from Movement 11, Temperance, are compressed realizations of the microtonal ensemble music in Movement 8, Death, whilst the ensemble music in Movement 11 is derived from that of Movement 8, only tempered, placing the more or less conventionally tuned ensemble in the ‘aura’ of an alternately tempered electronic environment, a ghostly incarnation of a previous iteration.

In this way, by analogy, a listener hears the discontinuous ‘play’ of the soloist throughout numerous atmospheres, within a myriad of musical demands, in relationship to the ensemble; this then analogous to the kaleidoscopic depth of Ouspensky’s vision fully saturating his written ‘pen-pictures’, a journey through archetypal symbols underlying the mystery of being.

Felder – Jeu de Tarot 2 – liner note

A musical composition is a halfway house, even if it is made of time and stands at some point in time. As it unfolds, we can hear it taking us back to where it came from: the traditions it is growing from, altering, countering; other works by its composer; statements of intent that this composer may have made. In the case of the present composition, David Felder’s Jeu de Tarot 2, we are directed by the composer to the “very rich symbology” of the Tarot cards, and in particular to the visions described by the Russian émigré esotericist P.D. Ouspensky as arising from the cards’ prescribed images—visions as vivid and cosmic as those of the Book of Revelation. “I saw a gigantic horseman on a white charger,” Ouspensky begins his response to the Death card, which comes first in Felder’s sequence of seven, “clad in black armour, with a black helmet, and a black plume.” All fall in this ominous apparition’s wake, from monarchs to children. Flowers wither. Cities crumble into ruins.

However, if we take the work as modeled on this scenario, we risk hearing it as program music, the score for an imaginary film. So perhaps we should turn the other way, not to the music’s past but to its commanding present and to its future, which lies with us, for it is in our understanding and interpretation that the music will find its destination.

Felder composed Jeu de Tarot 2 in 2018–19 as a sequel to a work similarly based on Ouspensky’s Tarot visions and similarly scored for solo violin with mixed ensemble, Irvine Arditti the destined soloist in both. The seven cards of Jeu de Tarot 2 are traversed in as many sections, of which the slow-pulsed, introductory first puts the solo instrument immediately into a tussle, with itself as much as with the ensemble. Right at the start, the prime note of the violin’s inner strength, the D it can sound on its bottom two strings, is compromised by slides through quarter-tone steps on one of those strings. The instrument escapes by way of a quasi-geographical routing that instantly proves illusory and untenable: a Middle Eastern or Indian turn of phrase greeted by a little cascade of bells on vibraphone, harp, and sampled celesta, as if from further east. Later brushes with the locatable, but Western, are no less exotic in the context of this piece and no less unsustainable. Meanwhile, the violin uses its immense range to engage with other instruments, from piccolo to trombone, but always the partnership is transitory. It is as if the violin is receiving echoes back from blank walls in every direction. Hence, too, its faltering progress. The solo instrument is seeking something beyond worn-out imagery and well-known registers, a new elsewhere.

So the piece continues. Its second section suddenly finds the violin imprisoned in a different cell, constituted of blasts from the far bass, with trombone, horn, contrabass clarinet, and low strings to the fore. Other instruments in this dark confinement—English horn, vibraphone, fellow strings—are not so much companions as similarly solitary wanderers. Again there are memory traces, again futile. A quick change to rapid iterations announces the short third section, which closes with a cadenza. With the piece almost half over, we have reached what feels like the end of the first movement—though, once more, any sense of familiarity is not to be trusted.

That remains the case in what we may hear as the slow movement, which proceeds through two phases, the shorter second having the solo violin most of the time trilling well above the staff, until there comes an emphatic close.

The finale, as we must call it, for whatever warnings and trepidations it may convey, is also composed of two sections, the second much shorter than the first. Images once more are slipping by, now very often at hectic speed, including in the first section major chords and arpeggios, these barely admitted foothold. Implacable iterations once again give the music their force but also their frustration. As they come to a climax, they burst into the whirling final section, where the violin comes to form skittering duos with the bass clarinet, then the piccolo. Not long after this, the music slows and scatters, to leave the violin supported only by flute and double bass as it reaches a homecoming on G that may also be an illusion.

If we want to turn around now to investigate where we have come from, we might want to start with the additional quotations from Ouspensky that Felder offers. The cards of the second and third sections are Judgement (“I saw an icy plain”) and Resurrection (“And one after the other the graves in the plain began to open and out of them people came forth.”) Those of the fourth and fifth sections, constituting the slow movement, are Temperance (Ouspensky sees the Angel of Time, holding the gold cup of the past and the silver cup of the future, with between theme a rainbow stream) and The Wheel (“I saw the four winged beasts of the Apocalypse”). The massive first part of the finale belongs to the card The Tower (“Tongues of flame shot out of heaven; the whole tower filled with fire and smoke”), leaving last place to The Chariot (“Beneath the canopy stood the conqueror in armour of steel”).

Turn again, to immerse ourselves in the sheer presence of the music, and we find landscapes, images, gestures, and figures no less wondrous and imposing than Ouspensky’s. We also find a solo violin, easily taken as a stand-in for ourselves, hacking a path through an environment that, when not unwelcoming, can offer only remnants of a past that once worked for our benefit but does so no longer. The paradox is that this lesson in desuetude is conveyed in and by a work of renovatory strength and energy.