The Hat, the Elephant, and the Snake

Kathryn Selfelder’s Dessin No. 1 takes its title from a drawing of an elephant inside a snake in the Little Prince, “which is the incarnation of the quote ‘One only sees well with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes’” [program note]. For the rest of this week, you can hear the Minnesota Orchestra’s performance at ClassicalMPR.

The work is dominated by the opening violin melody that is broken up and re-mixed in various forms and instrumentations, the entire work is derived from the opening melody. The first section has slowly oscillating tetrachords over which the melody is introduced by a solo violin and gradually transformed, first by the oboe and bassoon, then the violas and cellos. The transformation of the melody is continuous throughout the piece, using fragments of the melody in various permutations.

The second section is accompanied by lightly arpeggiated chords in the violins. The melodic metamorphosis is mostly augmentation of fragments, with a two note fragment (short-long) stepwise either ascending or descending, not unlike the grace note that the solo violin played at the beginning or the extension of the melody by the oboe in the first section, permeating the whole orchestra to a climax that ends with a octave string passage with brass accents.

The third section is quietly introduced by a descending fragment in the winds, then taken over by the strings with a violin solo singing the melody augmented. That descending wind fragment then reappears and is echoed by the brass. The descending fragment is inverted in the strings and winds until, in its descending form, it is blown clearly by the horns at the second climax. Over that horn call, the violins play the melody in a very augmented form, under which the violas and cellos bring back the arpeggios, reinforced by the winds.

The final section uses a seemingly new melody in the flute and clarinet that, to me, sounds like it is derived from the opening melody yet transformed like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or a hat becomes an elephant in a snake. The oscillating tetrachords reappear as the accompaniment to balance the piece.