Inner Banners

Program note

In this five-movement solo piano work, each movement evokes an element — respectively earth, fire, water, air, and metal — imagined as constitutive of an inner world of the self. The first four movements are directly based on (Plains, Chains, The Self-erasing Bird) or inspired by (Pools) poems of Henri Michaux. Plains and Chains were even initially conceived as melodies. Each piece acts as an emotional image — a response to a single element.

PLAINS (earth) moves from grounded stability to the exhilaration of flight, ending in the suffocation of burial beneath the surface.

CHAINS (fire) explores passion, movement, and weightlessness, along with the risk of self-annihilation. The shrinking meter structure (6–5–4–3–2…) reflects the shrinking verse structure of the poem.

POOLS (water) reflects on stillness, slowness, and change without motion, like a rain-dappled pond. Symmetry and reflection shape its form, while a submerged world casts a darker undertone.

In THE SELF-ERASING BIRD (air), the alternation of suspended echoes and sudden silences mimics the bird's appearance and disappearance, while the longing melody of the middle section is a direct setting of one line of the poem.

STEEL (metal) pushes the pianist to the edge of endurance: stamina is tested, force must be sustained, and relentlessness becomes both means and obstacle, coldness and sheen, culminating in a final, physically charged climax.

The cycle's title, INNER BANNERS, evokes the elemental forces as both collective phenomena and inner states — present in the world and within us.

Genevieve Feiwen Lee | Thomas Sauer (III), piano