Reading a Wave (2008)
for 9 instruments placed throughout the audience
(fl, cl, sax, celesta, perc, pno, vl, vla, cello)
duration: 13 minutes
Commissioned by/Premiere: Red Light New Music Ensemble, Ted Hearne, conductor in New York on February 10, 2008 at Columbia University
(headphones are highly recommended; the recording projects the spatial setup of the players and the space in the hall much better when you can hear the panning)
Reading a Wave ("lettura di un'onda") takes its title from the opening chapter of Italo
Calvino's novella Mr Palomar. The novel opens with the protagonist of the same name
sitting at the beach intent upon looking at just a single wave. But he finds, "isolating one
wave is not easy, separating it from the wave immediately following, which seems to push it
and at times overtakes it and sweeps it away; and it is not easier to separate that wave from
the preceding wave, which seems to drag it toward the shore, unless it turns against the
following wave, as if to arrest it." I found this image striking -- particularly so because I had a very similar experience this past summer staring at the waves on a dock in the city of
Siracusa in Sicily. The beautiful nature of waves, which for Calvino serves as a metaphor for
the whole world, is that they cannot be defined in if of themselves; they exist only in relation to one another. Similarly, the opening of my Reading a Wave involves imposing -- one by
one -- several layers of music that are all similar. But like waves in an ocean, it is not so
important that their individual identity be maintained, but rather that they blend together in a composite whole whose interplay is the most intriguing part.
One more image: During the same summer I also spent time in the city of Siena. A tiny,
walled city, Siena has hundreds of churches with huge bells, often times not more than a
block from one another. Perched at the highest point in the city, I could watch as three
churches would simultaneously call off the hour, each at a slightly different speed from a
different place in the city, each echoing off of the walls of the city. This inspired the second half of the piece where the piano, glockenspiel and celesta, each perched at a different place in the hall, imitate these bells sounds and, after several minutes, slowly merge into the winds, just as the memories of these two cities merges together for me.
This recording is from a performance at the Yale School of Music, 2 April 2008. The performers are:
Sabatino Scirri, flute; Rebecca Doggett, clarinet; Aaron Hill, saxophone; Adrian Anantawan, violin; Daniel S. Lee, viola; Lachezar Kostov, 'cello; Yingying Su, celesta; Lia DeRoin, percussion; and Timothy Andres, piano.