Song notes from the CD "Mason Williams: Music 1968 - 1971
"Sunflower" is a melody that comes from an experimental composition device I invented in which a word is used to create a melody. The intervals of the "Sunflower" melody are based on the word cantilever. I probably should have named the piece "Cantilever", especially in light of the way the unresolved last cord sort of leaves you dangling in space, but I decided to use it for a short art film I wanted to make called "Sunflower". . .
. . . The concept was to make the word's biggest sunflower by using the real sun as the blossom and having a skywriter "draw" the stem and leaves below it, thereby creating, for a brief moment, a giant sunflower on the horizon. However the sun's harsh rays blotted out the image on the film, so I ended up with only a couple of photographs and this eternal little tune.
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