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Look Around You (2009-10)
ensemble solo violin/viola and orchestra (picc.2.2.2.bcl.2.cbn.-2.2.2.0-
hp.pft.perc[2]-vln./vla. solo-strings)
commissioned by Albany Symphony Orchestra
premièred March 26, 2010, Troy Savings Bank Hall, Albany, NY
I began writing Look Around You in early summer, and finished it just before New Years’ Eve. It’s about ten minutes long, which means I wrote, on average, three seconds of music per day.
I’m not certain why, exactly, this piece was so long in gestation; it could be the odd format, the uncertainty of my post- academic life (or, for that matter, life in general), or just a general feeling of indecision. Also, I wanted the piece to feel like self-contained concerto, and it is always a challenge was to balance and resolve three movements’-worth of ideas within a relatively short, continuous stretch of time. Throughout the piece, musical materials are revealed to be quite different animals from what they seem at first; transitions turn unexpected corners, rhythms contract and expand to transform into opposing characters, overbearings percussion starts and stops with no warning.
Musically, I wanted the piece to feel like self-contained concerto; the challenge would be to balance and resolve three movements-worth of ideas within a relatively short, continuous stretch of time. Throughout the piece, musical materials are revealed to be quite different animals from what they seemd at first; transitions turn unexpected corners, rhythms contract and expand to transform into opposing characters.
Rather than use their combined capabilities to create the illusion of a “hyper-violin”, I decided to acknowledge and stress the differences between the violin and viola. The piece is in roughly three sections: an extended, dramatic violin passage in between two more placid viola bookends. During the first, the viola plays a series of short, repeated phrases over an extremely long, held chord; the woodwinds provide increasing forward momentum. As it gets higher, louder, and denser, moving to the violin, the music is interrupted by a new section, which barrels forward stubbornly in C minor. Though the music is fast and rhythmic, it can never quite gain footing; arpeggios of three, four, and five notes re-arrange themselves in unpredictable patterns. Next comes a more atmospheric section that retains the shifty rhythm, but in a new, gentle, harmonically open context. The final note of the piece finds the arpeggios stretched into a long, plaintive melody, played by the viola and echoed by offstage brass.
Listen (excerpt)
Owen Dalby, violin/viola; David Alan Miller, conductor; Albany Symphony Orchestra