for seven musicians (2008)
In place of a conventional program note, the following is a selection of short texts written in my sketch books during the composition of Night Division:
Some recent concerns: 1) The exploding (vertiginously-slanting) object. 2) The secretive, hermetic in art (foreign-ness). 3) The microscopic - that which occupies an alternative spatio-temporality. 4) The overripe / overgrown.
A hyperkinetic desire to fill out a given space as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
Intense proliferation of tiny, independent objects.
Very strange. I can no longer remember where these chords come from.
Harmonic space becomes totally splintered; absence of homophony... The piece ends with a dense, sumptuous gesture.
A structural chord which is not intended to be perceived.
Variable degrees of possible motion; ways of triggering these degrees. Superposition of these degrees.
The clarinet is a 'free agent' and can play with either one of the two layers.
Very continuous, but at the same time, very fragile. A delicate cohesion slowly emerges.
Don't cannibalize the past. Instead of that, do what's completely necessary: a very dense, timbrally-complex piece, moving toward an intense profusion of tiny, 'primary' (unicellular) objects. This piece should be absolutely exotic in character - an extremely dense translucence.
Extreme interiority - liminal instances (extremely reduced possibilities of movement).