I Ching
Hexagram No. 64:
Towards Completion: Fire over Water
The final
movement calls for a large array of instruments. It is twelve minutes long, the longest of
the four and, on first hearing at least, the most virtuoso of them all. The most striking aspects of this movement are the two major sections at the beginning and end, consisting of pyrotechnic displays of drumming on Chinese tom-toms and/or bongo drums at various pitches.
The two-note series
The piece begins with semiquavers at a very fast tempo:
One can hear, almost directly, that the basis of this music is a two-note infinity series. Melodies are created
by the omission of notes, and by linking and stressing, while the basic rhythmic patterns
remain constant.
Waves
The introduction moves on to a cadence, in which the soloist plays simple patterns on the drums that gradually change as individual notes are brought to the fore and others slowly disappear - the so-called Waves technique:
Drum talk
After a massive ritardando, the soloist continues on the drums, but now at a more moderate tempo. The four different pitches of the drums, combined with variations in the beat, create a kind of 'drum talk'.
This idea is then continued on the vibraphone, which plays tuneful melodies masked by variations in stress. The basic melodic motif appears several times, and at the end of this section the temple blocks join the fray and take over the lead.
Towards completion
The role of the temple blocks is in turn gradually taken over by the tom-toms, and the piece ands in a dazzling whirl of drumming. At this point, through rhythmic shifts, the two-note infinity series plays a round with itself in the same tempo. Moreover, it contains itself within itself - which indeed can very clearly be heard. The third rhythmic element, the endless accelerando (see the article about this), can also be traced in the music sample given here.
The drum rolls gradually slacken off in speed (using the Waves technique), and the work ends on a very deep and sonorous crash of the gong.