Ascencion

Ascension – In 1995, I was able to spend the summer traveling and working in Greece, Turkey, Italy, and France, thanks to a generous award I was given by the Presser Music Foundation. Spending many weeks in some of the most important museums in the western world, I often found myself drawn to the Triptych altarpieces found in many of the historic Italian churches. These wooden altarpieces were typically comprised of three panels that presented scenes of the crucifixion, the deposition, and the ascension of Christ. Having been raised in a traditional Irish-Catholic family, these beautiful and meaningful works of art really seemed to speak to me. When I returned from that trip, I decided to create a musical triptych representing the same three events. To date, I have only completed the Ascension portion of the work, but I hope to return to this project again in the future. Ascension was one of the last compositions I wrote using Paul Lansky’s rt mixing environment, which was at that time ported to the SGI Indy computer. This composition was written over the Easter weekend of 1998 and performed at the Society of Electro-acoustic Music United States’ conference in Denton, Texas in 1999.

Ascension: mp3 (10MB)

Ascencion
	Ascension – In 1995, I was able to spend the summer traveling and working in Greece, Turkey, Italy, and France, thanks to a generous award I was given by the Presser Music Foundation. Spending many weeks in some of the most important museums in the western world, I often found myself drawn to the Triptych altarpieces found in many of the historic Italian churches. These wooden altarpieces were typically comprised of three panels that presented scenes of the crucifixion, the deposition, and the ascension of Christ. Having been raised in a traditional Irish-Catholic family, these beautiful and meaningful works of art really seemed to speak to me. When I returned from that trip, I decided to create a musical triptych representing the same three events. To date, I have only completed the Ascension portion of the work, but I hope to return to this project again in the future. Ascension was one of the last compositions I wrote using Paul Lansky’s rt mixing environment, which was at that time ported to the SGI Indy computer. This composition was written over the Easter weekend of 1998 and performed at the Society of Electro-acoustic Music United States’ conference in Denton, Texas in 1999. Ascension: mp3 (10MB)