Category: Composition

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Sonata e Fantasia for solo flute, Op. 19

Sonata e Fantasia for solo flute (2018)

Sonata e fantasia was written at the request of the flautist Linda Jenkins, whose expressive, elegant, and virtuosic playing made this a pleasure to write. In the Classical repertoire, pieces for a single monophonic instrument are quite rare. Although there are some for the quasi-polyphonic violin and cello, there is no precedent for Classical sonata form applied in solo flute repertoire (CPE Bach’s Flute Sonata in a minor actually uses binary form!). This Classical sonata form is the “Sonata” part of the title; the “fantasia” part represents the dominant affect of the piece, especially the character of the beginning, with its freely spun-out arpeggios and melancholy melodic figures. In combining these “sonata” and “fantasia” elements I tried to create a play between freedom and order, expression and balance. Compound melody and registeral shifts suggest multiple contrapuntal voices within the flute’s monophonic line. This, combined with the frequent fast arpeggios, serves to better define the underlying Classical harmony, and shape the overall sonata form.

Sonata e fantasia for solo flute - Full Score

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“I wandered lonely as a cloud”, Op. 18

I wandered lonely as a cloud (2018)

Written for Esteli Gomez’s 2018 residency with Oregon Composers Forum, this joyful and serene setting of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud” comes alive as an extended Mozartean concert aria for soprano and miniature orchestra. The music shifts between lyrical, cantabile phrases that seem to float above the scene while shorter, playful figures evoke the dancing daffodils. The piece culminates in an elaborate coloratura passage, answered by an ebullient coda for instruments alone.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
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Overture for Chamber Orchestra, Op. 17

Overture for Chamber Orchestra (2018)

This overture was premiered at the inaugural concert of the Composers of Oregon Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble I co-founded with fellow composers Susanna Payne-Passmore and Joseph Vranas. It was particularly fun to figure out how to orchestrate Classical figurations for a chamber orchestra’s predominantly one-on-a-part instrumentation. Doubling the solo strings with woodwinds created sweet blended sonorities, while the timpani and brass choir (2 horns, trumpet and trombone) sustained thunderous climaxes. The music expresses a naive, youthful pleasure through long arching melodies, which contrast with vigorous, fiery developmental passages.

Overture for Chamber Orchestra - Full Score
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Three Shakespeare Sonnets, Op. 16

Three Shakespeare Sonnets (2017)

This is the second set of three sonnet settings I wrote for my dear friend Jessica Rossi, the first of which was Three Milton Sonnets). This Shakespeare set is late-Romantic in idiom, contrasting with the more austere, Classical set of Milton poems. The first song, with its bustling textures and winding chromatic harmonies, may project more joy and hope then the poem seems to imply. The second song is pure wistful lyricism— it may be that some of my earlier experience writing show tunes shows through here. The third song does actually start off bleak, in a somewhat Russian manner, but with the sonnet’s typical turn in feeling “haply I think on thee etc.,” the music warms and rises to a Romantic climax.

Three Shakespeare Sonnets
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Praeludium für Orgel, Op. 15

Praeludium für Orgel (2017)

I wrote this organ prelude while learning German in Munich during the summer of 2017.  Although the organ was an instrument I had been studying for several years, this was my first composition for the instrument. I drew on the rich German tradition of organ composition especially that of Buxtehude. The structure is similar to his Preludia – sectional. The first section draws on the baroque French overture affekt, with its typical scales and dotted rhythms, to which I add overlapping suspensions. This is followed by a freely played recitative and a solemn fugue in the parallel minor. There is no return to the loud pomposity of the opening; the final section is quiet and lyrical – a brief  minuet for manuals alone. The ending, with its delicate imitations, should seem to evaporate into silence.

Praeludium für Orgel - Full Score
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Fantasy Concerto for Marimba and Chamber Ensemble

Fantasy Concerto for Marimba and Chamber Ensemble (2017)

This piece is an experiment: can the Classical concerto idiom be realized by a marimba? The instrumentation is likewise eccentric, with alto saxophone and bass clarinet in place of standard Classical winds, and a mixed ensemble of mostly winds instead of a string-predominant orchestra. The novelty of the marimba timbre did inspire a few oddities – for example, the piece modulates to the bVII key area in the exposition – but the overall structure and orchestration employed the paradigms of Mozart’s piano concertos. Though very different, the featured instruments contain a few important similarities. Like the marimba, the piano’s tone is percussive and clear, and both can execute similar runs and arpeggios. Mozart’s Concerto-sonata form guided the structure of the piece, and the piano in the Fantasy Concerto takes the functional place of the string section.

Fantasy Concerto for Marimba
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Abendmusik for clarinet, cello, and piano, Op. 14

Abendmusik for clarinet, cello, and piano (2017)

“Abendmusik” means “evening-music” and can refer both to evening church concerts and to courting serenades sung outside the beloved’s window.  This piece uses the clarinet dark, round timbre to evoke the hushed intensity of evening. Delicately winding melodies woo the listener with their Mozartean charm.

Abendmusik
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Three Milton Sonnets, Op. 13

Three Milton Sonnets (2017)

John Milton’s Sonnets were written for particular occasions, especially as encomiums to friends. The three I chose to set strike me as his most personal. The first, On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christian Friend, Deceased Dec. 16, 1646, beautifully depicts his friend’s death as the soul finding freedom from the body. The second poem describes a vision or dream of his late wife, who had died in childbirth. The apparition is likened to the myth of Alcestis, who was rescued from the underworld by Hercules. It is likely that Milton’s blindness prevented him from ever seeing his second wife, giving special poignancy to the line “her face was veiled”. The third poem, Milton’s most famous sonnet, is about that blindness itself, prompting a moral question: “Doth God expect day labour, light denied?” The final song has two clear sections corresponding to the question and answer, which reflect the songs that have come before. The first section recalls the musical style of the second song, and the second section recalls that of the first.

I followed this set of three sonnets with a set of Shakespeare Sonnets the following year.

Three Milton Sonnets Complete
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String Quartet no. 3, Op. 12

String Quartet no. 3 (2017)

I. Adagio-Allegro appassionato
II. Menuetto (Allegro Moderato)-Trio
III.  Adagio
IV. Allegro molto

My third string quartet is long, passionate, and complex in structure, composed in the tradition of Beethoven’s late quartets. The first movement bends and stretches classical sonata form into something freer and more various, but still motivically unified. It begins in the “wrong” key, avoids a convincing cadence until the end of the exposition, and foreshadows one of the secondary theme in the introduction so that first becomes second, and second, first.

The second movement is a minuet and trio. The minuet, with its pizzicatos and syncopations, has a subdued melancholy echoing Brahms, while the rough-mannered, cheerful trio, with its use of drones, recalls Haydn’s “folk music” affect.

The Adagio movement is a free hybrid of sonata-rondo and theme and variation forms. The main theme is clear variation of the tender, slow theme that began the first movement, while the fugato that follows is based on the austere transition to the Allegro.

The finale is a sprightly, puckish Rondo in G minor.

String Quartet no 3 in G minor
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Chamber Opera: On the Wings of Poesy, Op. 11

Opera: On the Wings of Poesy (2015)

Posthumous portrait of John Keats by William Hilton, National Portrait Gallery London.

This hour-long chamber opera was my masters thesis at the Frost School of Music at University of Miami and is a particularly personal work. The libretto, written in collaboration with my brother Gabriel, explores the what-if scenario of a man who claims to be poet John Keats arriving in the contemporary era. How would the poetry of an artist from a different time be received? How would the unlikely claim of his identity be received? This scenario provides a clear occasion for a Classical/Romantic musical style, but it also allows me to explore why I compose the way I do – Keats finds his work dismissed as outmoded, as my music often has been.

In the opera, a professor of English, discouraged from writing poetry by its dismissal as old-fashioned imitation, runs into Keats, or perhaps a young man who simply thinks he is Keats. He inspires her to write again, and it is left to the listener to decide – is the man mad or impossible? The libretto includes many recitations of Keats’ original poems and settings of new poems in the style of Keats’ work. These poems are set as extended formal arias a la Mozart. The intervening material have a freer Romantic style, in which the orchestra plays the main melodies while the voices weave around them in a more speech like manner.

There are five musical motives that recur throughout the opera. The first two are presented in the prelude: a rushing, impetuous figure, is heard at the outset, and a lilting love-song associated with truth and beauty and the divine. The third motive, briefly suggested in the overture and used prominently in the dialogues between the characters, is a tender winding melody, evocative of the bond that forms between the characters. The fourth motive, characterized by a driving, syncopated rhythm, appears frequently to underscore the dramatic tension. The fifth motive is a sigh-like melody that is sequenced downward, evoking the character’s pasts with a sense of nostalgia.

Motive 1: “Mystery or madness?”
Motive 2 “Love, Truth and Beauty”
Motive 3: “John and Prof. Warren’s friendship”
Motive 4: “Dramatic transition”
Motive 5: “Recollection, nostalgia”


On the Wings of Poesy - Full Score