Mary with the monster moth (Antheraea polyphemus) that lived in the hallway of our apartment for a few days.
Mary holds CITRUS MAXIMA, the largest species of citrus fruit in the world. With purple background.
The red pomelo was delicious. So sweet and so cold.
For the last month and a half I have been setting aside some time on Friday to cook a meal, and for the last couple Fridays my roommate has been helping. Yesterday we made Indian food.
Patrani Machi
According to Sundays at Moosewood: “In this dish, fish is topped with a coconut-cilantro chutney, wrapped in leaves, and baked. This is a popular dish around Bombay where fish and coconuts are fresh and abundant.”
Mary is supposedly starting a cooking blog, and if this blog ever materializes I will link to it for more detailed descriptions.
Will White, Conductor
Rob Spady, Clarinet
Sarah Saviet, Violin
Dash Nesbitt, Viola
Kevin Künkel, Cello
David Hughes, Piano 1
Chappell Kingsland, Piano 2
For Whom the Bell Tolls was written in less than a month, so it could be considered one of my most quickly composed pieces, but from another perspective it is one of my most slowly composed. The melody at the climax of this piece is something that I have been thinking about for a long time – it originally appeared in a setting of a Seamus Heaney poem that I wrote for baritone and mixed chamber group but eventually abandoned. Part of the repeating figure in the pianos also appeared in that piece, but it was used in a different way.
This piece uses that theme and melody again, in perhaps the simplest way possible. The entire piece is a slow crescendo towards the climax. It opens placidly with the pianos and simple long tones in the strings, which eventually give way to fragments of the ultimate melody. The fragments begin to sound more frequently until all the instruments are playing at once, and the piece climaxes in a unison statement of the melody by the clarinet and strings across four octaves. At this moment, the pianos which had been playing in G for the entire piece land on C – so the piece is also one massive cadence from G to C.
The melody contains all twelve tones and is played over a collection of notes which is essentially C-major. After the clarinet and strings complete the melody, they too land on C-major and the pianos continue to push out even farther into the overtones of the harmony. The clarinetist finishes the piece with a simple ascent up C-major ending in the final chord.
For Whom the Bell Tolls was completed in early November of 2009.
(movements 1-3)
(movements 4-6)
Alan Tomasetti, Flute
Lindsay Flowers, Oboe
JJ Koh, Clarinet
Eric Gilfus, Horn
Libby Garrett, Bassoon
Several of the movements in this piece are based on exercises that I wrote for David Farrell’s counterpoint class, and as one might assume, the piece explores a variety of approaches to counterpoint.
I. A Cage Without its Bird Swings in the Courtyard
A gently undulating chord progression repeats three times, each softer and lower than the last.
II. Branch to Branch, Half Hidden in the Leaves
This movement is entirely in unison, and explores the sounds of different instrument groupings and ranges. The bassoon begins delicately, but as the movement progresses the music becomes more forceful.
III. Old Feathers in the Rock
This movement is a short chaconne built on a repeated progression in the clarinet and bassoon. The flute suggests a heartbeat, and the horn and oboe occasionally enter with murmurs of cadential patterns.
IV. Scherzo in the Air
A three part fugue begins in 4/4, and after a short episode, the fugue returns in 3/4 before losing yet another beat and continuing in 2/4. The material is condensed further into triplets before finally coming to a halt. The fugue begins again in 4/4 but is slightly off kilter, and begins to be condensed again. Each time this process repeats, the final triplets become more boisterous and the resulting fugue more disjointed until the triplets eventually destroy the fugue altogether.
V. The Empty Golden Cage
This brief interlude is a return of the opening chord progression.
VI. The Sparrows Shattering to Nowhere
A cacophonous finale, in this movement the instruments play in independent meters. A modal melody emerges from the texture and is passed through all the instruments until they swell up into a final strident outburst.
All Spread Their Wings was completed at the end of the summer of 2008.
Vivian Ip, Conductor
Soprano
Loralee Culbert
Robin Freeman
Stéphanie Tokarz
Alto
Lydia Dahling
Elizabeth Ogonek
Jenny Perillo
Joyce Vickery
Tenor
Colin DeJong
Don Gilbert
Sam Green
Bass
Mark Chilla
Juan Hernandez
Gabe Lubell
Mark Oliveiro
Ryan Tibbetts
SETTING SAIL
by Emily Dickinson
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea, –
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
HOMAGE TO CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY
by Octavio Paz
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
(translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger)
Eternity inspires feelings of joy and endless possibility, but at the same time it can be overwhelming to contemplate and make our short lives seem futile. Setting Sail explores these feelings through the setting of two short poems by Emily Dickinson and Octavio Paz. My setting of the Dickinson poem was influenced by John Adams’ Harmonium, one of the first pieces of 20th century
music that I discovered. This movement is exultant, and expresses breathless excitement — the singers take audible breaths for effect throughout the movement. During the more solemn Paz poem, the singers speak the words “I am a man” in as many languages as they know.
Setting Sail was completed in the fall of 2006, and is the second piece I wrote at IU.
Bethany Pietroniro, Piano
The Hand of Day is a three minute minimalist piece on the shortest of poems by Octavio Paz:
The hand of day opens
Three clouds
And these few words
Using a limited range and an always sounding eighth note pulse, this piece explores horizontal rhythmic groupings. Each of the arrival points uses a slightly more dissonant combination than the last (2 vs 3, 3 vs 4, and eventually 4 vs 5).
Also, a macro-line can be heard in the pitches. A repeated C-sharp opens the piece above an oscillating fifth on A. Over the course of the composition, this upper note gradually climbs by step to D, then E, F, and G, finally reaching an A to finish the piece. Coincidentally the limited range of the piece is almost exactly the standard range of my primary instrument, the alto saxophone.
No tempo is indicated; the performer is asked to choose her own.
The Hand of Day was written in the spring of 2008.
John Leszczynski, Soprano Saxophone
Davis Jones, Alto Saxophone
Kevin Arbogast, Tenor Saxophone
Julian Clarkson, Baritone Saxophone
THEY MIGHT BE GODS
by Claire Ensley
Awake.
A rustle, a snap
Footsteps and shadows and
Eyes
Seeing, unseen.
Pursuit.
Chasing or chased,
Can’t tell. Running
Just run
Run
Run. Until
Tripping, trapped.
Your quest, sir?
Yes, a quest.
A quest and a map and a bear.
A dancing bear?
Twirls, too delicately
Faster. Faster, then fading.
Gone.
Falling.
Falling, sveltely.
Look—Raindrops!
Tiny gleaming globes
Falling too
Falling, faster
The ground—but won’t collide.
And light.
Asleep?
Light—Somewhere far?
No.
Like watching lanterns
Now,
Through a glass darkly.
But then
Seen face to face, then—
They might be gods.
Like with most of my pieces, They Might Be Gods was not conceived of programmatically, although it probably sounds like it was. In the summer of 2009 when I was working on this quartet, I was having a hard time writing any serious music that I liked. Eventually, I decided to have fun with this piece and make something that was exciting, sarcastic, and a bit profane.
After the piece was finished, I asked my friend Claire Ensley to write a poem for it. I gave her some vague ideas and an audio file, and she came up with an excellent companion poem for the quartet.
They Might Be Gods was commissioned by The West Point Saxophone Quartet and the Zzyzx Saxophone Quartet. It was completed in early October of 2009.
Almost all of this semester has been spent preparing for my composition recital: writing pieces, making parts, recruiting players, organizing rehearsals, and more. The recital happened on Sunday, and it went really well. Now that I have a bit of free time, I can finally update this site.
I’ll be posting recordings of all the pieces that were on the recital over the next few days. First, here is the wonderful painting that my sister made for me:
And mostly unrelated, happy 20th birthday to my sister!
My mom has created a great site that chronicles our trip to Alaska this summer with photo slide shows, video, and stories. I’ll be posting a few pictures from Alaska but this site is a much better story of the whole trip. Here’s the link: L’ski Travels.