Amor Fati

Cyrcles by Frank Wallace is a substantial piece for solo guitar. It is always an honor and a joy to work closely with composers. I have known this particular composer for years and am grateful to have played a role in bringing this piece of music into the world. Cyrcles conveys Wallace’s musical spirit well, strong and gestural but balanced with lyrical passages and episodes of rich melodic writing. His aesthetic is immediately modern but also comes from tradition, a music that gives precedence to the musical contour and to the breath, a sense of strong and weak, qualities of the lute and early music. Cyrcles is cyclical in form, motivic ideas and melodic fragments recur from movement to movement. These motifs carry the names of people the composer had in mind while writing, their names translated into musical notes, including close friends, a doctor and my own name. But, the dominant theme is that of Ko, one of the composer’s students, lost to suicide at the age of 22. Ko’s motif translates to 5 musical steps, chromatic or diatonic depending on the musical context. The Great Sleep – Ko’s Way is a striking movement, in memoriam, relentlessly quiet and still, offering a moment of meditation on death, loss, and grief. In spite of the pain inherent in the cycles of nature, the composer iterates the positive message of his piece saying, “Cyrcles is optimistic. It embraces the sacred cycle of life and death. And it mourns the loss of youth. My youth, as a 66 year old man, but more importantly OUR youth. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death in the world for those aged 15-24 years. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Drug overdose also claims many lives of our youth. The circle is broken. Let’s wake up and be gentle with each other and our mother the Earth. Only in that gentleness is there hope to reclaim optimism and dreams of a brighter future for all species.”

– David William Ross