Year composed: 2011
Duration: 17′
Instrumentation: 10 performers – flute (alto flute, piccolo), oboe, clarinet (bass clarinet), percussion, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello, double bass
Commissioned by the Eco Ensemble and premiered in Hertz Hall, Berkeley, April 2011.
Movements, played without pause:
I. Introduction
II. Chant I
III. Regrets
IV. A year
V. Chant 2
VI. Cries
VII. Coda
Notes:
My piece, Tranfigurations of Grief, is about the classic stages and transformations of grief and sorrow. It is in seven movements, played without pause. The opening is marked “sad, forlorn”, with a leitmotif of natural harmonics punctuated by a piano cluster that returns throughout the composition. The first movement is characterized by a kind of airy, fluttering music; the strings begin with barely audible pitches based on their open strings, and I ask the flute to play “whistle tones”—beautiful, very quiet sounds. The second and fifth movements are a kind of abstracted spiritual chant in compound meter that builds into large cascading waves of sound. The third movement, “Regrets” and the sixth “Cries” use special extended techniques: I ask for the wind players to overblow their instrument in a very particular way, splitting the airstream to create “multiphonics”, or the illusion of chords.
The fourth is the longest movement, about five minutes. It has a drooping, soulful melody led by the first violin and echoed by the winds. The other strings play a descending, marked set of cluster chords, always shifting and irregularly accented. The melody alternates with an upbeat riff played by the piano and marimba. Later, the melody shifts to sequences of high harmonics and transforms into a dense web of lines played by the winds and piano. The final seventh movement, a Coda, returns to the opening harmonics in the strings, and a wistful, nostalgic tune is introduced by the piano and imitated by the vibraphone.
This work is dedicated to several of my composer colleagues that have died in recent years: Jorge Liderman, John Thow, and Andrew Imbrie.