Music

Grade: 6
Duration: 20'00"
Instrumentation
Perusal Score (mvt. i)
Listen to it
Mvt. i.
Mvt. ii.
Mvt. iii.

Alchemy in Silent Spaces (2000-2001)

i. the logic of all my dreams
ii. points of attraction
iii. the still point of destruction

Premiere of mvt. i.: 31 October, 2000
Premiere of mvts. ii. and iii.: 4 March, 2001
by the Indiana University Wind Ensemble, Ray Cramer, cond.

Commissioned by Ray Cramer and Indiana University

This is a large-scale three-movement piece, with the first and third movements existing as modular works, available for performance separately. The first movement may seem a departure for me by anyone who's heard much of my other work, though it's actually drawn from music I wrote as an undergraduate while studying with Francis McBeth. The opening is sparse, utilizing mallet percussion, harp, and piano to create a floating sense of timelessness. This gradually builds over several minutes, ultimately launching itself into a grandiose, warm, harmonically consonant blanket of sound, after which it concludes with a single chord repeated four times at pianissimo. The music is for the most part delicate and quiet, relying on silence and space to create drama, rather than the relentless rhythmic energy common to many of my other works.

The second movement opens with solo flute, built from a melodic motive from movement i. The music again opens slowly, gradually gaining momentum, but at a faster pace than in the first movement. The music spirals upward and outward, but instead of reaching a plateau, winds itself out and comes to a grinding halt in the upper range of the ensemble. Five brief, solemn chords conclude the movement, which immediately erupts into the still point of destruction.

The third movement is built from an intervallic construction found in the first two (or perhaps it's just a motivic fragment? I'll leave it to the theorists to tell me what I've done). The music is of unceasing, but also unsettling, motion, propelled by a driving ostinato which is repeatedly interrupted by bittersweet moments of lyricism, all the while pushing toward an unforgiving climax.

There is no explicit narrative to the piece, though many particular elements do have personal quasi-biographical significance. Ultimately, this is music of both personal and musical transformation.

Orchestra

Band

Mixed