Draft:Afrikosmos

Afrikosmos link text is a collection of 75 piano pieces by the South African composer Michael Blake, composed between 2015 and 2020. Afrikosmos is modelled on Mikrokosmos by the Hungarian modernist composer Béla Bartók, sharing its basic concept of a progressive approach from easy pieces to virtuoso concert works, over the course of six volumes of music. While Bartók's pieces draw their material from the folk music of Hungary, Rumania and Slovakia, Michael Blake's pieces draw theirs from the traditional music of sub-Saharan Africa, often in rhythmic cycles. For examples, he draws on xylophone music from Uganda and Mozambique, mbira music from Zimbabwe, panpipe music from Venda, Xhosa music for the Uhadi musical bow, African choral music, popular styles such as mbaqanga, goema, and boeremusiek, flute music from the Ituri Rain Forest, lesiba music from Lesotho, and African birdsong. A selection of pieces has been arranged as Six Africosms for brass quintet, and another group as Afrikosmos Suite for organ.

Volumes

Each volume includes studies, character pieces, dances, pieces exploring rhythm or texture, pieces in different modes, folksong arrangements and transcriptions, and homages to earlier composers. The contents of the six volumes is as follows:

Volume 1 To Comfort a Child (Lullaby) Stickfighting Song Interlocking Hands Sefapanosaurus Distant Cowbells Herding Song (Pastoral) Geyser Off! Hat On! Fifths You are a real rascal Slow Dance In the Hexatonic Mode Wedding Song Ntsikana's Bell Reflection (Homage to Erik Satie) Stroll to the Spaza Shop (Homage to Stanley Glasser)

Volume 2 Canon at the Octave Five Finger Patterns Ostinato with Cross Rhythms Call and Response Four-note Patterns Threshing Song Lusikisiki Variations on 4ths and 5ths In Goema Style Latshon’ilanga (The sun has set) There Cried a Hippo Song for the Evening Haiku March (Homage to Stefan Wolpe)

Volume 3 Spotted Dikkop and Black Cuckoo Smoke and Mirrors Supermoon (Homage to Henry Cowell) Lebombo Bone iKos’tina Stay on Path Thirds Tickey-draai Two Modes Interlocking Variations John Knox Bokwe’s Plea for Africa Postcards from South Africa African Doves (Homage to Olivier Messiaen)

Volume 4 Keep left, pass right If I had wings I could fly High Fives Emerging Melody Scents of Childhood 1 (Homage to Schumann) Self Delectative Song Seventh Must Fall Chaconne in Mbaqanga Style Patterns in a Heptatonic Field Weave Da kom die Alibama Message from the Nduna (Homage to György Kurtág)

Volume 5 The Seven Steps Linong tsa lesiba Un Sonnerie pour G D Chorale (Homage to MMM) Scents of Childhood 2 (Homage to Schumann) Walking Song (Homage to Percy Grainger) Changing Times with Repeating Patterns Reedpipe Dance Major-Minor Unevensong Ituri Rain Forest (Homage to JSB)

Volume 6 The music flows jolly as it won’t stop forever (Perpetuum mobile) Heaven's Bow Night Music Giyani Scents of Childhood 3 (Homage to Schumann and Puccini) Diary of a Dung Beetle Freedom Day Variation Lyric Piece (Homage to Grieg) Broken Line Dance in Seakhi Rhythm (Homage to Bartók and JP Mohapeloa)

The Music

This music breathes a twentieth-century American experimental sensibility in its motionlessness, sounding introspection, the deliberate affordance of allowing sonority to be sounded again and again until its constituent colours start separating under the operation of repetition.

Some of the compositional techniques frequently found are the anhemitonic pentatonic scale: a five-note scale which has no semitones, for example D-E-G-A-B (e.g. To Comfort a Child, Volume 1); Xhosa bow harmony: two triads which are built on the two fundamental pitches of an Uhadi musical bow, for example C-E-G and D-F#-A (e.g. You are a real rascal, Volume 1); the bow scale: the hexatonic scale resulting from these two bow chords: C-D-E-F#-G-A (this is not the same whole-tone hexatonic scale as used by Debussy for example)(e.g. Two Modes Interlocking, Volume 2); interlocking: different rhythmic parts alternating to create a single line, which can give an impression of great speed (e.g. Interlocking Hands, Volume 1); and polyrhythm: simultaneously combining contrasting rhythms (e.g. Heaven's Bow, Volume 6).

Seakhi rhythm, found in the music of Lesotho, is characterised by additive rhythm and strongly resembles the Bulgarian rhythms Bartók used in Mikrokosmos. The final piece in Volume 6, "Dance in Seakhi Rhythm", is both a homage to Bartók and the Sotho composer Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa, and like the final dance in Mikrokosmos has the quavers grouped as 3+3+2 in a bar link text.

Antony Gray link text recorded the complete cycle for Divine Art Records link text in June 2021, in the concert hall of the Yehudi Menduhin School in Surrey.