Invisible Cities - 50/55!!! — Tom Baker Music

Invisible Cities 50/55

***updated 7/13/23 - Finished #55. That’s a big double bar (and a double bourbon)***

So here is a progress report on the string-quartet-pieces:

Last night, I finished number 50! That is 50 of 55. Since last June I have written 38 pieces for string quartet, and have 5 more to go. They are averaging about 3.30 per piece. So… you do the math. An important sabbatical goal for me was to finish the composing of the whole work by the middle of August. So a bit of work left, but I am feeling pretty confident at this point. Details on the piece below. But for now, a little celebration of 50…

The plan is to keep writing during an upcoming month of in Scotland and North Wales. I will keep you posted, dear imaginary reader, and check-in in a few weeks with an update.

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A strange dream.

In the summer of 2010 I had a dream that I was attending my own memorial service. Though it was not a particularly sad dream, it did start out as a performance anxiety dream: I was in a large warehouse that had dozens of services of all kinds happing at the same time in different rooms. I had to check many rooms until I found the right one, and I feared I might miss the whole thing, which I somehow knew would be marked as truant on my permanent record. When I did finally found the right room, I sat down in the back row and perused the memorial program. On the back was a list of my complete works as a composer. I looked over the list and had wonderful, nostalgic memories of the conception of this or that piece, or fond feelings toward this or that performer. Then, in a rather sudden moment of dream-clarity, I realized that I had never written a String Quartet! And then I woke up.

So began this long cycle of string quartets. The first sketches quickly turned into a master plan to write a cycle of 55 pieces for string quartet. The inspiration at the core of the cycle is a book called Invisible Cites, by one of my favorite authors, Italo Calvino. Calvino’s book is a magical and fantastical tale about a conversation between Marco Polo, the erstwhile explorer, and Kublai Kahn, the great emperor. In each of the 55 chapters of Invisible Cities, Polo describes to Khan a city he has supposedly visited (both characters know that Polo is crafting and improvising these cities). The descriptions are beautiful, poetic and profound; they create a magical world of strange and mystical places. The musical pieces are my interpretation in sound of these imaginary cities. The finished musical piece will be like the novella in another way - it is intended as an open work. A group might decide to do any number of pieces, in any order. The book is structured this way and Calvino intended it to be an open work, something to return to again and again, in any order, in any number.

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