Duration: 4 minutes
About
Sometimes a musical idea gets stuck in my head.
Something simple, maybe even a little banal. But I find it compelling, and
eventually, I incorporate it into a piece I'm writing.
The basic musical idea behind this piece — a few
simple chords built off of stacked fifths and their neighbor notes — has been
stuck in my head for five years now. In 1998, I incorporated it into my piano
sonata; here, I've used it again, but in a very different guise.
This piece also explores a more abstract idea that's
been stuck in my head lately: How can I give performers the opportunity to play
their best? I'm a control freak, so I tend to produce pedantic scores in which
every detail is carefully specified. That doesn't leave much room for
interpretation, which is, after all, what a collaboration between a composer
and performer is all about. In this piece I've tried to create a small and
simple musical world which the performer, in her own way, can guide us through.
Sonorescence was written for Jill Sokol.