The following recording is of a slightly modified version of the piece that uses oboe instead of saxophone.
Eliza Rodriguez, flute; Jamie Sandidad, oboe; Caitlin Beare, clarinet; Tristan Greeno, piano; Mason Lynass, Percussion, Edward Cuneen, percussion, Emily Acri, violin; Alessandra Barrett, viola; Chris Young, cello
This piece explores ideas of invented memory- how we can remember, celebrate, and even mourn things that may have never existed at all. An introduction and coda frame a central funeral procession. The introduction sets up the sound world of the piece: huge, weighty rhythms in the piano and percussion are transformed into harmonic clouds by the other instruments eventually dissipating into a single note, C, from which the processional begins.
The central section itself consists of two alternating colors/characters: a dark processional where various instruments sing out mournful melodies accompanied by a distant military drum, and a more bright and tranquil music with rocking lullaby figures in the piano- quiet and distant, like a memory. This peaceful music appears only very briefly at first, but continues to increase in prominence as the piece goes on, coalescing and taking shape. Each time this happens, the processional responds by becoming more dense and violent, as if trying to reject or subdue the memory, perhaps because the memory itself triggered a painful emotional response. As hard as it tries, the processional eventually fails to overcome the memory and fades away into the distance, leaving us with just the calm music. The rocking figures go on, but as they do, the music gets more and more ethereal and fragmented, eventually reducing itself to that same single note from which the processional began. As it becomes fragmented, it becomes clear that the rocking figure of the memory is just a transformation of the melody from the processional, not material of its own. It is as if this happy memory, which the dark processional tried so hard to subdue/forget, had always been just a version of the processional itself, just a memory/dream- it never was.
From this emptiness, the coda takes that single note and works it up into a huge storm, recalling the harmonic clouds of the introduction. The instruments grow more and more dissonant in protest, but however they try, they cannot escape that single note, the C, which eventually swallows everything at the end.
For additional information, questions, or parts requests, contact Aidan.