Piece Year: 2008

Cadential Variations is a collage comprised entirely of endings. The formal function of these endings is re-contextualized as they instead become a piece of a linear continuum. Consider what an ending can reveal about a musician’s relationship to death and mortality. 

Some entirely subjective examples: 

• In Le Sacre Du Printemps, Stravinsky tags one final stinger onto the end, as if telling death who will have the last word. 
• Steve Reich’s Different Trains jolts itself into consciousness, all train engines and interlocking motion, until everything suddenly stops, leaving you mesmerized by its sudden absence. 
• Post-song feedback/guitar-noodling is the rock star’s proclamation of his desire to defy death. 
• The utter lack of endings in most techno music speaks volumes about the youth-obsessed mindset of rave culture, negating death by merely cross-fading to the next beat-matched record. 
• The self-important high, long, ending note of a typical operatic aria elevates the singer’s final breath to a level of histrionic grandeur. 
• The violent, tight, and heavy ending of a Sepultura song states that we may die, but we will do so fighting and strong to the end. 

With this in mind, what could be said of a piece like Cadential Variations, which consists entirely of endings? Perhaps it might be considered morbid, dwelling obsessively on death and mortality. On the other hand, it might be uplifting; each death is not really an ending, but merely a transition to a new stage of existence.