"The Single Petal Of A Rose" - Duke Ellington

Secret music

Nov 03, 2024

Duke Ellington was a master of music. Through over a thousand compositions, he defined an era of American jazz, and continued pushing the boundaries until his death. He is perhaps the most important and widely recognised composer in American history and is deeply influential even today. However, it was obvious that fame and notoriety were not everything to him.

Background

Ellington and his orchestra returned to the UK in 1958 for the first time since their 1933 tour. At an arts festival in Yorkshire, he met Queen Elizabeth II and exchanged pleasantries. Ellington teased that he’d last been to the UK “way before you were born“—aware that Queen Elizabeth II was seven in 1933. She expressed regret that she couldn’t make any of his performances during the tour, and so Ellington promised that he would “like to write a very special composition for [her]—a real royal suite.”

He started sketching out the six movements of The Queen’s Suite as soon as he returned to the hotel that evening. He and his orchestra recorded it the following year and a single golden disc, the master record, was privately sent to the Queen. To ensure its exclusivity, Ellington reimbursed Columbia Records the 2500 dollars it cost to make the record, retaining the rights to the work. It was his way of ensuring that it would be a private gift that hardly anyone aside from his close friends would know about until after his death.

In 1976, two years after Ellington’s death, it was finally reissued and released in an album titled The Ellington Suites, also containing the Guotelas and Uwis suites.

What it means to me

In 2006, Kurt Vonnegut replied to a letter sent to him by five New York high school students, writing:

“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

He goes on to encourage them to write a poem, never show it to anyone, tear it up, and discard it in “widely separated trash receptacles.”

I love this sentiment, as it challenges the pressure of the output-focused culture so common these days. Ellington worked incredibly hard on The Queen’s Suite but never meant for it to be praised by critics or to bring him any success. He wrote it simply as an appreciation of and a heartfelt gift to another person.

It’s often too easy to believe that we are what we accomplish, and we forget what we learned as children: that the creation is its own reward. Even if, like Van Gogh, we produce thousands of works and yet die unknown, the time and effort are never wasted.

What to listen for

Each movement of The Queen’s Suite is inspired by a natural feature. A bird call Ellington heard in Florida, the Northern Lights as seen from a Canadian roadside, hundreds of lightning bugs along the Ohio River, and more.

The Single Petal Of A Rose is, of course, inspired by the fragility and delicacy of a rose (although some sources suggest it was inspired by a floral depiction on the piano of Ellington’s friend). It alternates between 4/4 and 3/4 time signatures and is played with the rhythmic freedom of rubato, giving it a timeless, almost suspended feel—as if capturing the momentary beauty of a rose in bloom.

Suggested listening activity

As Kurt Vonnegut suggests:

“Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.“

Fynn Is Listening To Things

Discussion about this post