Enigma

SKU: PR.14440516S

UPC: 680160667864. 9 x 12 inches.

In 1979, Martin produced a set of three quintets, in consideration of Gorky's piece Nighttime Enigma Nostalgia. Each is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. As the title suggests, the music is in a state of perpetual questioning using a variety of approaches. For example, Enigma opens using ostinati (plural of ostinato) that do not match in length, like a staircase with each step a different height. Additionally, the music has sudden starts and stops, again unexplained. There are dramatic and powerful explosive passages that are interrupted. The technique, used to create this feeling of a perplexed music world where things seem often not to make sense and to be left unresolved, is called in poetry and literature, anticlimax. In Enigma, the music suggests one direction; then refuses to continue, striking out in another direction. Artists use approaches such as this to force themselves into creative circumstances that they otherwise might not have discovered. (From the performance notes.).