Tänka na Véshu
Solo Piano | Duration c. 6’00”
Hewitt Hill Music
During my formative years as a composer and pianist, I had the great fortune of learning and playing Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances. These folk miniatures, based on seven tunes that Bartók collected during his travels in Transylvania in central Romania, had an enormous impact on my writing style, and I continued to play them often during my studies at Westminster Choir College and the University of Aberdeen.
For many years I desired to compose a companion piece to the Romanian Folk Dances, but I struggled to find source material that I connected personally with on a deep enough level to do so. In 2018, when I was approached by Nancy Railey to compose a new piano work, we discussed the concept of creating my long dreamed-of companion work to the Bartók, ultimately arriving on five imaginary dances of an imaginary people of my own creation.
My imaginary people, the Véshu, live in a fishing village called Milvarna. This village is located at the confluence of two rivers that empty westward into Lake Shoma, an invented inland sea. The Véshu are a peaceful people who make their living fishing and weaving, vulnerable at times to the fierce weather of the lake, but productive and happy nonetheless. Traditional folk tunes and dances are a natural part of their lives, performed at village feasts and events.
The first dance, Mota Shoma, is a dance that formed out of the awe and respect (and even fear) that the Véshu have for the source of their livelihood, Lake Shoma. The second dance, Milvarna, is so named for the village the Véshu inhabit, and is often heard when welcoming a travelling villager back to their homeland. The third dance is based on the legend of Keisho, the snake on the far Western shore of Lake Shoma that eats the sun as it sets each evening. Véla Tänk is a simple child’s dance, often used to calm a child’s fears at night (usually after the telling of the rather frightening tale of Keisho). The final dance, Vésha, exhibits the joy that all Véshu feel in being close to such an abundance of water. This dance is often paired with the village dance in a set, as it is presented here.
It should be noted that although the Véshu, their language and their lands are all technically an exercise in imagination, they bear a resemblence, at least geographically, to my home of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My hometown is situated on the southern shore of Lake Superior, between the mouths of the Dead River and the Carp River; two streams that empty into "Mother Superior" and that are commonly fished for salmon by locals and travellers alike.
