J.Healer

I was reading a novel about a married couple who live on an island with a lighthouse. The husband was the lighthouse keeper and they both had a terrible and difficult decision to make. The novel managed to convey a sense of loneliness in their decision and it was fitting that the author placed them within the setting of a lighthouse. One afternoon, I sat at the piano and decided to purposefully compose a piano piece about a lighthouse. The piece is in two halves to represent dusk into night and then night into dawn. I considered how the light from a lighthouse moves in a circular fashion.  Each half of the piece therefore consists in a number of key modulations to give the sense of always moving.  The key changes eventually arrive back in readiness to start all over again, creating the sense of moving in a circle. I also read that a lighthouse uses rhythmic flashes of a rotating light in order to transmit visual signals to surrounding boats. These patterns of flashes (the light’s character) are coded messages providing warnings of collision, directional guidance or even weather reports. I therefore keep a rhythmic pattern going but each pattern (after each modulation) is slightly different (to convey the sense of a different message). The rhythm eventually slows right at the end to signal the oil of the lamp being put out as it is now day.

The piece is written with a sense of loneliness, perhaps coupled with an important decision to make.