cindy mctee

FINISH LINE
for orchestra

2005
7 minutes

Commissioned by the Amarillo Symphony Guild and premièred by the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra, James Setapen, Music Director, March 24, 2006.

instrumentation

full orchestra

score & audio examples

commercial recording of the wind version

purchase/rent

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program notes

Finish Line is a seven-minute work commissioned by the Amarillo Symphony Guild in honor of their fiftieth anniversary. The work was inspired by several paintings of Futurist artist, Giacomo Balla, suggesting the transformation of landscape by the passage of a speeding automobile.

Centered in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, the artistic movement known as Futurism embraced an aesthetic that glorified the speed and power of machines, especially automobiles. The Futurist Manifesto of 1909 by F.T. Marinetti proclaimed that "a racing automobile . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace." Is it any wonder, then, that Italy has led the pack in producing finely crafted racing machines noted for their style and grace.

I decided to use the work of futurist artist, Giacomo Balla, as a point of departure for the creation of Finish Line and chose several paintings suggesting the transformation of landscape by the passage of a speeding automobile. The title of one work in particular, Abstract Speed + Sound, suggests that Balla sought to render on canvas the whirling noise of the automobile itself.

In Finish Line, the use of repeated fragments (ostinatos), a steady pulse, and a spirited tempo attempt to portray the swirling gestures and mechanized agitation of Balla’s paintings. Multiple points of view (characteristic of futurist art) are represented by the simultaneous presentation of two tempos at the beginning and end of the work, and also by a seamless, temporal transformation process analogous to gear shifting, where the speed, or RPM, of the engine modulates smoothly to a new frequency.

There are also three short sections in Finish Line during which forward momentum and time are slowed down and ultimately suspended. This is achieved by inserting varying amounts of silence between the repetitions of melodic fragments which are therefore heard in ever changing relationships to create a non-linear texture of circles within circles and a dreamlike, hovering, effect.

Italian Futurists were, of course, not the only artists affected by the dawn of the machine age. Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, is actually the composer credited with having produced the first important piece of “machine music,” the Rite of Spring, its rhythmic pulsations depicting not just prehistoric, ritualistic dance, but also the nervous energy of a modern, mechanized city. There are references to this famous work at the beginning and end of Finish Line.

Pitch structures in this work are derived from both octatonic (8-note) and 12-note scales while the note “A” (for Amarillo) launches the piece in a flurry of percussion.

I completed Finish Line by mid-summer of 2005 and then set out on a 6000-mile road trip, often imagining myself racing through Balla’s paintings. Like Balla, I too delighted in the ability of a speeding automobile to transform time and space, with vast expanses of changing landscape playing like a movie on my windshield. Fasten your seatbelts!

press/reviews

. . . it's back to the races with Cindy McTee's 'Finish Line' (2006), inspired by the futurist paintings of Giacomo Ballo, propelled by minimalist techniques, and relentless in its drive.

Barry Kilpatrick
American Record Guide

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The guild-commissioned piece, sponsored in recognition of its 50th anniversary, opened the concert with a far more contemporary sound than anything that followed. Composer Cindy McTee's work, inspired by the [early 20th-century] art movement called futurism and by her love of fast cars, showed off the symphony as the finely tuned machine it is. The piece had a nicely bracing quality, thanks to some occasional dissonance, clever rhythms and hints of the Doppler effect in the horns. Quite fun.

Chip Chandler
Amarillo Globe-News