Minor Gods

(a suite for solo violin)

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Program Notes

With FINALE biting the dust, I needed to start learning another music notation software program. Figuring it would be easier to start with something for a single instrument, I began writing music for solo violin. It turned into this suite. The pantheon of Greek Gods has been on my mind lately following a visit from our granddaughter who is captivated by stories from Greek mythology. That shaped the direction of the music.

MIDI rendition of MINOR GODS

PAN
the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens, and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring.

MORPHEUS
a god associated with sleep and dreams. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses he is the son of Somnus and appears in dreams in human form. From the Middle Ages, the name began to stand more generally for the god of dreams, or of sleep.

AETHER
the personification of the bright upper sky. According to Hesiod, he was the son of Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night), and the brother of Hemera (Day). In Orphic cosmogony Aether was the offspring of Chronos (Time).

THE MOIRAI
often known in English as the Fates—were the personifications of destiny. They were three sisters: Clotho (the spinner), Lachesis (the allotter), and Atropos (the inevitable, a metaphor for death).

GAIA
the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (Sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Giants, as well as of Pontus (Sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods.

NYX
the goddess and personification of the night, the offspring of Chaos, and the mother of Aether and Hemera (Day) by Erebus (Darkness). By herself, she produces a brood of children which are personifications of primarily negative forces. A black-robed goddess who drives through the sky in a chariot pulled by horses. She is greater than all the gods together and even Zeus fears to displease her.

CALLIOPE
the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. The Chief of all Muses.

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