Egotist - (2011) 
Ambrose Bierce
for
medium or high voice and piano
Megaceph, chosen to serve the State
In the halls of legislative debate,
One day with his credentials came
To the capitol's door and announced his name.
The doorkeeper looked, with a comical twist
Of the face, at the eminent egotist,
And said: "Go away, for we settle here
All manner of questions, knotty and queer,
And we cannot have, when the speaker demands
To know how every member stands,
A man who to all things under the sky
Assents by eternally voting 'I.'"
[ 3
pages, circa 2' 10" ]

Ambrose Bierce
The
text comes from Bierce's The Cynic's Word Book, (1906). If there is a
topic about which to be cynical, it most certainly is politics. The American
comic, Will Rogers, observed: "If you ever injected truth into politics you
have no politics." Bierce's fantasy -- the tale is surely a fantasy when
egotistical politician might actually reject another politician for being
egotistical -- is one among many perspectives which come to the same
conclusion. Politics in all lands is filled with enormous egos, and yet as
one thinks historically, our culture is created far more by poets, comics,
painters and playwrights, musicians and other artists, than it is by
politicians.
"Megaceph"
refers to megacephaly, in which an abnormally large head
circumference in an infant or child, that is indicative of problems with
brain development. Bierce means "swelled head," as his chosen name for the
"chosen" politician, while the broad humor of a Rogers would suggest that
"the doorkeeper" and surely "the speaker" might well be of the same
lineage, for such is the truth of that day and today. As Rogers would
further instruct, "The more you observe politics, the more you've got to
admit that each party is worse than the other."
For
other settings of Bierce's texts,
click
here.

The
opening gesture is a polytonal stretto of the first phrase from "Hail
to the Chief," in full awareness that so many American congressmen and
senators managed their "egotistical" selves into the presidency as well. The
music hall style follows, in wrong-note fashion, which then cedes to a
polytonal chord succession, the relationship being the tritone between
triads.

The
final gestures allow the repetition of Bierce's fantasy that politics might
actually demand an egotistical politician "Go away." We know the inverse of
this to be the far more normal. The setting seems to have begun in C major,
but never returns to its first roots, in the same way that politics seems to
wander off into....

The score for
Egotist is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.

Egotist
