In Beauty, symphony orchestra, complete materials
SKU:
$65.00
$65.00
per item
for symphony orchestra COMPLETE SET (Score and parts)
Price includes one download of each file including the full score and parts (pc, 2 fl, 2 ob, E hn, 2 bsn, cbsn, 4 hn, 3 trp, 2 trb bs trn, tba, timp, 3 perc, hp, strings). Download either at checkout OR using the links provided in the confirmation email. Permission is given for duplication of sufficient additional copies as needed for the number of players in your ensemble.
duration: c. 14 minutes (2 movements)
Program Notes:
This piece, In Beauty, was written as a commission by a remarkable amateur, community, orchestra, the Henderson Symphony Orchestra of Henderson Nevada, led by Taras Krysa, director of orchestras as UNLV where I was teaching music theory and composition. I was asked to compose a piece that would relate, somehow, to the indigenous peoples of the Southwestern United States. Since moving to Nevada, I had visited the Navajo Nation several times and become quite interested in Navajo art which I found both wonderfully successful as art and equally so as an expression of metaphysics, particularly the concept of Hózhó – an experience that combines beauty, harmony and the balance of contradictions. I was not knowledgeable about Navajo music but also was not interested in evoking any particular musical idiom in this composition. Another approach came to mind when I recalled that Morton Feldman used to discuss compositional elements, gestures, asymmetry of form, etc., in his music in connection with the antique Turkish rugs he loved and collected. And so I decided to try composing a piece in which the formal design and all of the individual musical elements were created in response to features I observed in two particular Navajo rug patterns. Because each rug design, like so much Navajo art, expresses the concept of Hózhó, it was possible to compose a piece in two movements, played without interruption, in which each movement is primarily concerned with a particular rug, but both movements, and the entire form, seek to explore the abstract experience of Hózhó.
This piece, In Beauty, was written as a commission by a remarkable amateur, community, orchestra, the Henderson Symphony Orchestra of Henderson Nevada, led by Taras Krysa, director of orchestras as UNLV where I was teaching music theory and composition. I was asked to compose a piece that would relate, somehow, to the indigenous peoples of the Southwestern United States. Since moving to Nevada, I had visited the Navajo Nation several times and become quite interested in Navajo art which I found both wonderfully successful as art and equally so as an expression of metaphysics, particularly the concept of Hózhó – an experience that combines beauty, harmony and the balance of contradictions. I was not knowledgeable about Navajo music but also was not interested in evoking any particular musical idiom in this composition. Another approach came to mind when I recalled that Morton Feldman used to discuss compositional elements, gestures, asymmetry of form, etc., in his music in connection with the antique Turkish rugs he loved and collected. And so I decided to try composing a piece in which the formal design and all of the individual musical elements were created in response to features I observed in two particular Navajo rug patterns. Because each rug design, like so much Navajo art, expresses the concept of Hózhó, it was possible to compose a piece in two movements, played without interruption, in which each movement is primarily concerned with a particular rug, but both movements, and the entire form, seek to explore the abstract experience of Hózhó.