Les Saisons Bien Tempérées, Prelude and Fugue No. 5 in D (Primevère, Jonquille, Tulipe, Pivoine) (2026)

“Les Saisons Bien Tempérées” is a project commissioned by Canadian Guitar Quartet from 12 composers, one for each note of the chromatic scale and month of the year.  The mission behind this cycle of preludes and fugues for guitar quartet is to highlight the effects of climate change on places where we grew up and the nature that is dear to our hearts.  I chose the month of May and tonal center of D to channel my memories of my great-grandmother’s flower garden in Belarus and its central role in my family’s lives. Stay tuned for some playback samples and more information on the upcoming publication of the score by Les Productions d’Oz and recording by the Canadian Guitar Quartet.

Program Notes:

In 1915, a young girl in a small town in the western borderlands of the Russian Empire peered through the wrought-iron fence of a nobleman’s estate.  The garden was full of flowers, not crops.  It was striking to see something grown for beauty and enjoyment rather than simple necessity of survival.  She dreamed of a flower garden of her own one day.

  That girl was my great-grandmother Elizaveta, who went on to survive two world wars and become the matriarch of our family.  The hardships and privations that she and my grandmother Tamara—her eldest child-- lived through are difficult for me to fully imagine today.  Through it all, they worked and persevered, and in 1959 Elizaveta purchased a two-room dwelling with an adjacent plot of land in my hometown of Gomel (then Soviet Union, now Belarus).  It is there that our family finally put down its roots. The house was rebuilt and expanded many times and bears little resemblance now to its original form.  My parents still live there today.

  Nina, my mother, was a first grader when the family moved in.  The plot of land around the house was dominated by three massive apple trees “as big as baobabs,” she tells me.  Those were lean, hungry years.  Elizaveta tried planting vegetables to help feed the family, but nothing wanted to grow in the shade of the apple trees after they sprouted leaves each spring.  So, my savvy great-grandmother had an idea of planting several types of spring flowers that would finish their blooming season by the time the apple trees were fully dressed in foliage.  Her plan was to grow uncommon and desirable varieties in order to harvest and sell at markets throughout the city and beyond.  She hoped this would generate enough income to give the family some financial stability.

  Bulb by bulb, seedling by seedling, Elizaveta invested in her flower collection, tended the soil, and cultivated the plants with the help of the rest of the family.  Her plan worked, and by the time I was a child I remember a sea of flowers every spring—an explosion of colors, shapes, and delicate scents.  The blooming order was always the same: first, the gentle, modest primroses; then, the elegant daffodils closely followed by the showy tulips; and finally, my favorites--the fragrant, plush peonies.  The title of my composition reflects this flowering order: Primevère, Jonquille, Tulipe, Pivoine.  It is also a slight nod to Guillaume de Machaut and his rondeau Rose, Liz, Printemps, Verdure, which was one of the pieces that ignited my interest in composing!

  For decades, our family worked throughout the year to prepare for the spring harvest that would start in late April and be finished by early June.  The month of May was peak season for our spring bloom extravaganza--the month when “all hands on deck” were required and time was short.  We worked to cut down the flowers quickly and collect them in bunches, placing them in water in a cool underground cellar.  My grandmother and great-grandmother brought baby strollers full of flowers to farmer’s markets around the city and even took overnight trains to far-away metropolises like Moscow to sell bouquets there.  Almost everyone was involved to various degrees in cultivating the land, and our small flower plantation sustained us with income throughout many difficult years.  Life was not easy in the Soviet Union, but thanks to the industriousness and entrepreneurial spirit of the women in my family, we were somewhat shielded from the worst of it.  The income our informal floral business generated allowed my family a degree of financial independence in uncertain times. 

I titled the prelude of my work A Garden of Our Own because I always felt growing up that my great-grandmother’s house and garden were the emotional center of our family.  They were also a fulfillment of her childhood dream of owning her own garden.  Many of my core memories take me back to that place.  In my prelude, I wanted to capture the feeling of luxuriant fields of blooms swaying in spring breezes, the turning of the flowers’ radiant faces to the sun, the fresh and fragrant air of a glorious spring day.

  The climate in Belarus has changed dramatically since my childhood.  Spring comes much sooner now than before, and brings with it hotter and more unpredictable weather.  Temperature extremes have become more common, and seasons change more suddenly.  Both people and plants have had to adapt to these changes: flowers have shifted their blooming seasons to start earlier and finish quicker than in the past; new species of flowers and crops are now cultivated because the climate is different.  Apples, pears, plums, and cherries are now joined or replaced by watermelons, apricots, peaches, sweet peppers, and other warmth-loving plants. 

I titled the second movement of my composition--the fugue--Chasing Spring because spring season in Belarus is now shorter, more compressed, and less predictable than before.  Fugue, or fuga, also originally means chase, and I enjoyed tying both of these meanings together in the title.  Some of the musical elements of my fugue are meant to reflect the new realities of climate and gardening in Belarus today.  For example, the countersubject becomes equally important to the subject at some point in the piece, like a new species coming into the ecosystem and thriving in the new environment.  The stretto passages illustrate a compressed blooming season, when plants are “rushing” to complete their flowering before hostile or unpredictable weather arrives.

Ultimately, the prevailing mood of my work is that of optimism.  We must adapt to the new realities, and I believe that human ingenuity and adaptability will have to mitigate the destructive effects of climate change.