A polystylistic cycle of seven songs on texts from Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  The ensemble consists of string quartet, double bass, flute (doubling ocarina) and alto saxophone (doubling soprano).

The first song written ended up being the sixth movement, “Sunrise Over Sqornshellous Zeta.”  This is the opening of a chapter with some humorous language describing a sunrise, and whole day of sunshine, in a wonderful alternation between flowery and scientific language.  This is the setup for a great dialogue between a robot and a mattress, but I decided only to set texts that were more narrative, since it was for solo voice.  There is a delicate balance in this movement between a majestic optimism and a more explicit hopelessness.

Several other movements were written concurrently.  There is a jazz movement (“Two Theories”), a classical movement (“Teleportation Ditty”), several with extended tonality, and a set-theory atonal movement.  “Two Theories” takes a text from the prologue to one of the books, and “Epilogue” uses the title of one of the books as its text.  “Major Problems” is special because it uses nothing but pizzicato strings and ocarina in the accompaniment.

There is a bit of hidden numerological symbolism in the movement called “Pralite Mental Control Techniques.”  The number 42 is important in the Hitchhiker’s Guide books as the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Unfortunately, nobody knows what the question is, but a distortion of the question shows up in the human race as “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”  42 is, of course, actually the product of six and seven.  My piece uses a set of six pitches, and the singer, representing humanity, uses those pitches at nine transpositions, while the instruments, representing the real question, use only seven transpositions, cycling backwards through those seven while the singer sings his final two.  This is why the last two phrases of this movement sound a little more dissonant than the rest.

ErrantRailcar.pdf

This was composed for a reading by the piano duo Quattro Mani.  I wrote some preliminary sketches and slapped the title Errant Railcar on the score.  I soon scrapped all the musical material, but decided to keep the title to help determine the character and direction of the piece.

I then started developing the three “themes” of the piece: a jazzy seventh chord texture, an atonal ostinato with counterpoint, and loud clusters at the extreme ranges of the instrument.  My goal was to make the three themes as distinct from each other as possible, so that it would be very clear when the two performers are playing together, and when they are playing against each other.  I got to know each of the three materials very well by improvising with them at the piano, and after a couple weeks of this, I sat down and wrote the entire piece from beginning to end in a day.  The programmatic idea of the piece is that the railcar starts slowly, builds up speed until it nearly goes off the track, slows down to get straightened out, then speeds up again and eventually flies of the track.  This is a silly image, and it is not necessary to know it to listen to the piece, but it may give some insight into the creation of the piece.

Instrumentation: flute, clarinet (Bb and Eb), bassoon, trombone, percussion (1 player), string quartet

A nonet is a piece for nine performers, and in this particular piece, the clarinetist uses two different instruments while the percussionist plays on eight instruments.  The total is therefore seventeen.

The first movement, “Two Tempi,” alternates between a fast, energetic tempo and a slightly slower, more laid back one.  Both are in a sort of swing feel, and the percussion part is akin to a jazz drum set part.  The string instruments and trombone play a lot of quarter-tones (notes between the half steps), while the woodwinds simply play frantically.  The overall effect is of each group constantly interrupting the other with its own idea of where the music is going.  The slow group starts out strong, but the fast group wins out in the end.

The second movement was written first.  It contains a simple elegiac melody presented by the solo wind instruments.  The constant accompaniment texture is a delicate one of harmonics on the strings and bowed percussion, with a slightly stronger middle section using mallets on the vibraphone.

The third movement is another short, fast one.  It is based on a descending three-note motive which is altered by half-steps to create a constantly changing harmonic world.  The meter is constantly changing, and the percussion parts at times help to clarify the meter, and at other times only confuse it further.

This piece is simple in concept but difficult to play because the performers don't get a break.  It consists entirely of very long tones that slowly shift from clusters to chords and back.

Places_to_Play.pdf

Places_to_Pray_In_and_Play_In_Take2-Lower_Quality.mp3

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike." -John Muir (1838-1914), The Yosemite

This piece was written for a reading session and concert by the Talujon percussion ensemble at the Hartt School.  I began by setting the Muir text rhythmically, and discovered that the four different phrases each used a different subdivision of the beat: the opening phrase is in quintuplets, the next in sixteenth notes, the fourth in sextuplets, and the third in a combination of sixteenths and sextuplets.  After a brief opening statement using all four of these, the piece proceeds through four sections based loosely on the four phrases.  Each player is featured at different times, including improvisation for the hand drum player, and the spoken text is also heard.

This piece is dedicated to the memory of Rosa Parks.  The middle movement, "Wail", is also dedicated to the memory of Coretta Scott King, Jackie McLean and Kirby Puckett.  All four of those well-known African-Americans had recently died, and the piece is based on traditional musics of that culture.  The first movement, "Call", is a call and response on two levels: each instrument has a turn to be the soloist with the others responding, but after every such section, there is a longer ensemble "response".  "Blues" is more or less what you would think,with the instruments using their extreme ranges.  The fourth movement, "Funk" is not quite what you would think, because the groove is often interrupted by hiccups.  The "Stomp" is primarily in asymmetrical meters, but retains a dance-like energy.  The five movements are linked by four cadenzas, one for each instrument, so the piece is performed without breaks.

The Triumphal Entry is an event recorded in all four gospels.  Each gospel writer records a slightly different version of the "Hosanna" that the people sang and shouted to Jesus.  This piece began with a rhythmic setting of all four of those versions together, in the Latin.  After writing out the rhythms, I discarded the text and added pitches to complete the piece.

This is a setting of the 1917 poem Trees by William Carlos Williams.  The poem contains several musical metaphors, which I have attempted to introduce literally in the accompaniment.  The ensemble includes clarinet, violin, electric bass (or double bass) and piano.

In 2007, when the first Momentum concert took place, I thought of a concept for a large ensemble.  It turned out that everyone was writing for only one, two or three performers, so I ended up writing Momentum Piece No. 2 for solo cello.  I reserved the "No. 1" title for the piece I originally wanted to write, and I finally got the chance to write it in 2010.  The piece is somewhat inspired by Terry Riley's In C, but each performer has different melodic fragments that are suited to the particular instrument.

This piece was written for a competition in which each piece was limited to 100 notes.  My first thought on writing a piece so limited was that it would have to be in a slow tempo in order to be long enough to have any kind of shape to it. Naturally, I discarded my first inclination. My next thought was that there could be small clusters of fast notes, separated by long silences. This is not the same as the usual usage of the word "cluster" in music, which refers to chords made up of several pitches all a (half or whole) step apart. I set about writing a piece with small clusters of fast, short notes, and tried for variety in rhythms. Finally, I set up specific tempo relations from one cluster to the next that require the performers to count the rest carefully in between the clusters. This counting will add a visual aspect to the performance.

Details coming soon.