Symphony No. 2, "The Imp of The Perverse" - Programmatic Content

Programmatic Content

As with Rodin’s sculptures, the title was chosen after the piece was finished, and implies no literary or programmatic inspiration for the music. In his Symphony No. 1 in C, Ching explored to the limit many techniques of the Classical four-movement symphony. In his second symphony, he explored the possibilities of a consciously anti-Classical approach, fragmented, and avoiding fluid textures in favour of abrupt shifts between extreme moods. There are also aleatory passages (where fragments are freely played by individual players without measure or fixed beat), but unity is sought through the pre-Classical passacaglia technique (variations built around fixed melodic units). This leads to many false climaxes before the final one, a vast crescendo over a steady, pounding beat. The Poe story parallels the macabre elements in the symphony: A man commits the perfect murder, but after a long struggle with his soul finally gives himself up, not because of a guilty conscience, but because he cannot the resist the thrill of self-destruction, so falling prey to his ‘imp of the perverse’. To Ching, this insane demonstration of existential freedom—of a superhuman freedom not bound even by rational self-interest—was a distinctly modern psychological discovery by Poe, with many points of contact with the composer's transition from the comforts of Classical sonata form to the hazards of contemporary free form.