John Harbison: Diamond Watch
Diamond Watch
Double Play for Two Pianos (2009)
John Harbison, composer
Premiere performance by Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chuang, Piano
Kresge Auditorium, April 30, 2010
Variations based on the unofficial anthem of American baseball, the 1908 tin pan alley song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"
Musical allusions commence with the opening chords, and as the composer writes, "The movement titles offer a heavy hint as to the origin of the ground." Diamond Watch was commissioned by Priscilla (Kate) Myrick Diamond as a retirement present for Peter Diamond, MIT Institute Professor of Economics, Nobel prize winner for Economic Sciences — and baseball fan.
Movements
1. Leading off
2. Taking a pitch
3. Low and inside
4. High and outside
5. On deck circle
6. Making contact
7. Stealing a base
8. Diamond daze
9. Ahead on the count
10. Swinging for the fences
11. Stroking a hit
12. Walkoff
played without substantial pauses
Composer's Note
"Diamond Watch" was fun to write, a piece for an occasion I envisioned as enjoyable, with cherished performers, attentive listeners, and a location I’ve grown to love, even for its acoustics, Kresge Auditorium at MIT.
The dedicatee, Peter Diamond, is one of the world’s sovereign economists, but his other interests include baseball. I got to thinking about the various intersections between games, statistics, musical shapes, rules, frames, and predictions, and began imagining a series of variations.
In my favorite kind of variation the “theme” itself is not overtly stated. This is the idea of the baroque passacaglias: the bass and its harmony are the real source. Bach’s Goldberg Variations and his solo violin Chaconne proceed this way, as does Corelli’s La Folia.
I have previously written shadow-theme variations on a large scale, for violin, clarinet and piano, and quite brief, in my second piano sonata (for Robert Levin). This one is somewhere between those in duration, about twelve minutes.