Program Note

…and the madness of crowds… (2018) was commissioned by the Occasional Symphony to accompany the Japanese silent film A Page of Madness. The scene which it accompanies features a janitor at a mental rehabilitation hospital (whom we have been following during the course of the film, increasingly wondering if he is staff or patient) who is visited by the apparition of his wife. He attempts to release a patient (perhaps his wife, perhaps not), is confronted by other patients, and, eventually, doctors; pandemonium and violence eventually ensue. An ostinato figure opens the work—it will permeate the texture throughout most of the piece—followed by a plaintive melody, which returns occasionally throughout. The melody’s pathos is balanced by later outbursts of violence. Meanwhile, the texture continually thickens, creating a crush of notes through the layering of ostinato and close canons, and, finally, fading into memory.

— Douglas Buchanan

Audio

Video

The world premiere of "...and the madness of crowds..." written for Occasional Symphony to accompany the silent film "A Page of Madness", conducted by Ryan Tani, October 31, 2018, Baltimore, Maryland.