POSTCARDS FROM THE SKY

Marjan Mozetich
(b. Gorizia, Italy, January 7, 1948)

Composed 1996; 13 minutes

It’s called the ’driveway experience’ among radio people – the magic touch that some music has to keep a driver captive in their car long after they have arrived at their destination. Writing such music is a gift that Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich was celebrated for when people used to write letters (or postcards) to the station or light up the switchboard (when stations had human operators) calling in to ask ’What was that piece?’ Times change, but Mozetich, who has taught, guided, and mentored composition students at Queen’s University, Canada for almost three decades, continues to forge a singularly strong link between composer, performer and audience. With more than 70 works in many instrumental and vocal combinations, as well as for theater, film and dance, Mozetich has long been among the most played living classical composers in Canada. His initial instincts were towards the avant-garde and a more intellectually-driven approach to composition. Then, an about-turn in the early 1980s raised eyebrows, infuriated a few, but generally delighted audiences. His aim, he has said since then, is “to write music that expresses beauty, sensuousness and emotion.”

Mozetich’s three-movement Postcards from the Sky for string orchestra was commissioned by the Canada Council. It premièred in April 1996 by the Thirteen Strings of Ottawa and was conducted by Paul Andreas Mahr. This often achingly beautiful music offers short, postcard-length reflections on the sky as a metaphor for life. The first movement, Unfolding Sky, reveals a short, falling theme, and a rising arpeggio theme in the bass, both heard over continuously pulsing strings, while opening up to reveal more and more of themselves, eventually bursting into sunlight. In Weeping Clouds, a related, falling theme is slowed down and elongated into an elegy, accompanied by pizzicato falling rain. Only at the end does the melody take an upward trajectory, offering solace. A Messenger presents a yearning theme over a stepwise, descending bass line, supported by a shimmering texture of rocking strings. The beauty of this enigmatic musical message, Mozetich says, briefly reflects on the infinite beyond our worldly concerns.