2. Paris Commune

The Impetus:

In France, 1871, Louis Bonaparte, who had begun a war with Otto Von Bismarck the Minister of Prussia, had just abdicated and replaced by August Thiers.  The workers of Paris, who had been fighting the Prussian army for months, became frustrated when Thiers began talking about conditions of French surrender with Bismarck.  The workers, many members of the French national guard, seized Paris and set up a democratically run Central Committee, the first workers’ government in human history.  The Commune controlled production and distribution for over two months in Paris before both Thiers and Bismarck agreed to suspend war in order to deal with the Communards.  Thiers broke the Commune’s barricades on May 21st, and a week later had crushed the commune and killed between 20,000 and 30,000 Communards.

The composition:

The first unison line between the guitar and sax outlines the scale I used for the first theme (and the ending theme), it’s a Eb major scale with a b9 and a b13 (hungarian minor) and both melodic lines; the harmony and bass part all come from that scale.  The next section, with the main melody, I wrote at the piano, humming melodies and playing chords until I was content with the material. In the third section I expanded a bit on the first theme mostly by adding a few more notes to the basic scale I was working from (I added natural 9 and sharp nine).

This track also includes Jason Harnell on drums who solos over the ending material, Storm Nilson on Guitar and  David J. Carpenter on acoustic bass guitar.

Unfortunately the final arrangement of the piece never got recorded, which had developed during live performances and rehearsals over the year after the recording. The pdf of the score shows the changes that where made.

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02 Paris Commune

Paris Commune Score

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