Revenge! Revenge!! Revenge!!!

Revenge! Revenge!! Revenge!!! begins with the thinnest of musical wafers and stretches it thinner and thinner, using slowly evolving, repetitive structures. Dissonance builds between the forward motion of predictably linear changes in pitch and rhythm, and the halting way in which these changes occur.

This piece is a kind of sequel to Devilled Swan, which was commissioned by my former composition teacher John Beckwith as part of his 1994 Toronto Arts Award, and premiered by Arraymusic. Both pieces feature materials he advised us undergrads to use with caution: chromatic scales, octaves, etc. Breaking these taboos was so exciting that I needed two pieces to do a proper job.  To be fair, John doesn’t recall issuing any such prohibitions. Perhaps I needed to imagine them in order to summon up the courage to break them. Certainly his teaching made a lasting impression; and despite their teasing façades, both pieces are dedicated to him with respect and affection.

The title quotes the whisky-maddened and thirsty Captain Haddock after his flask is shattered by a stray bullet during a desert skirmish in The Adventure of the Crab with the Golden Claws, one of Hergé’s Tintin comic books.  Revenge! Revenge!! Revenge!!! was premiered by the Composers Ensemble of Princeton in March 1996, and commissioned with the assistance of The Canada Council for the Arts.

Toronto composer James Rolfe (b. Ottawa, 1961) writes for chamber ensemble, orchestra, and choir. He has been commissioned and performed by ensembles in Canada, the USA, Europe, and New Zealand. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, the K. M. Hunter Music Award in 2003, the 2005 Louis Applebaum Composers Award, and the 2006 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for raW.

Mr. Rolfe is also known as of Canada’s leading opera composers. His opera Beatrice Chancy was produced between 1998 and 2001 in Toronto, Dartmouth, and Edmonton by The Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company. In February 2009 the same company premiered Inês, which was nominated for a Dora Award. The children’s opera Elijah’s Kite was premiered in New York in 2006 by Tapestry New Opera Works with the Manhattan School of Music, and later presented at Rideau Hall in Ottawa before the Governor-General. His masques Orpheus and Eurydice and Aeneas and Dido (with words by André Alexis) were premiered by The Toronto Masque Theatre in 2004 and 2007. Swoon was premiered in December 2006 by the Canadian Opera Company, which has since commissioned a new opera. Other upcoming premieres include Norway’s Trio Mediaeval and the band of North Toronto Collegiate Institute.

For more information about James Rolfe, click here.