Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star) is a bright astronomical radio source at the centre of the Milky Way, and the hypothesized location of a supermassive black hole.
Mr Kearney's piece, in two movements immediately conveys the strangeness and remoteness of this subject with some very unusual guitar figurations and some utterly original ideas that I have never seen on the guitar before.
The first movement Meta is marked to be played freely and begins with some harmonics deliberately clashing with adjacent notes. Then a very fluid line goes through several time signatures firstly in the 15th position and then in the third, before acquiring a second voice (melody) above. This then gradually expands into two and then three notes above until the left hand is really working hard. This then suddenly dies away on a reiteration of the opening harmonic notes clashes.
Lix, the second and final movement begins largo in almost the same vein as the preceding coda but soon gathers momentum with a complex rhythmic line that is both angular and mysterious at the same time. As before rhythms and note values soon shorten and become more complex until you are dealing with a highly original bunch of sextuplets all in a row spread in a highly unusual way across the strings campanella fashion. Then comes a long passage where two deliberately oddly spaced notes are sounded around open strings, creating a very odd set of harmonies indeed, leading to a passage marked aggressively consisting of flying triplets and thence to a march-like section with chords based on open fifths clashing with an open G string. Then, after a short pause, a 12/8 section, which has the surprising instruction of «With Groove« brings one almost into the realms of the electric blues guitarists of the past decades, with lightning runs and rock-like riffs. Another march-like section intervenes until a più lento enters with an arpeggio section based on an extremely wide tessitura that winds down and eventually becomes a section from the opening movement. Harmonics enter and the whole thing winds down to a complete stop on the harmonics that opened the piece.
I have seen nothing remotely like this on guitar before, The chordal ideas and the arpeggio patterns had my normally good sight-reading muscles struggling greatly. But the music is extremely worthwhile and providing you have the technical maturity you may well love this alarmingly individual piece.
Chris Dumigan (Classical Guitar Magazine)
