viola

Refuge

August 7, 2022

Peter Slowik, viola

Refuge was written for Peter Slowik and the Deus Ex Musica Project. The piece is a meditation on Psalm 46 and the title comes from the Psalm’s opening line: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Refuge borrows melodic material from another work I wrote called Kairos, for reed quintet, which is influenced by Byzantine chant. In meditating on this Psalm, I was drawn again to the sonic aesthetic principle of cathedrals: resonance. In cathedrals, resonating the space is an attempt to sonically connect with something massive, something larger than ourselves—the Infinite—with God. The 6th-century poet Paul the Silentiary describes it this way: “human action…brings into presence the divine reaction, the divine voice…in a sense that is the reverberation of the space: After the human voice stops singing, the building continues.”[1] I use the viola’s open strings and natural harmonics extensively to make the instrument resonate as much as possible, hopefully creating the illusion that the melody is ringing in a large cathedral-like space, regardless of where the piece is performed. And it is in this resonance—the liminal space between sound and silence—where I find this line from the Psalm: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Psalm 46

¹God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
²Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
³though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging.

⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy place where the Most High dwells.
⁵God is within her, she will not fall;
    God will help her at break of day.
⁶Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
    he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

⁷The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

⁸Come and see what the Lord has done,
    the desolations he has brought on the earth.
⁹He makes wars cease
    to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the shieldswith fire.
¹⁰He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth.”

¹¹The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

(New International Version)

[1] New York Times, August 6, 2020, “How a Historian Stuffed Hagia Sophia’s Sound Into a Studio”

Solstice

July 6, 2018

The Garth Newel Piano Quartet

Program Note:
Solstice was written for my friends in the Garth Newel Piano Quartet and for the beautiful place they call home, the Garth Newel Music Center in Bath County in the Allegheny Mountains near Warm Springs, Virginia. The piece is divided into four movements, one for each season—Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring—and are ordered as such because I visited Garth Newel in each season beginning in August 2017. The title comes from the solstices, which, along with the equinoxes, divide the seasons. The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the sun’s declination “stands still”; that is, the seasonal movement of the Sun’s daily path (as seen from Earth) stops at a northern or southern limit before reversing direction. For me, this idea of “standing still” captures the essence of my experiences visiting Garth Newel: it is in this place—among the mountains and among friends, great music, and incredible food—that I have often found stillness, quiet, peace, and happiness—a respite from the everyday.

Summer begins with an homage to the most incredible cicadas and crickets I’ve ever heard. A series of warm chords and sweeping melodies introduces much of the musical material for the entire piece. For me, like summer, this music is bright, warm, and full of possibility and excitement.

Autumn is twilight, an ending. It’s the end of the summer, the end of the year, the end of warm, sunny days, and the harbinger of winter. This season is my favorite, but it is also filled with bittersweet nostalgia.

Winter is cold, icy, distant, and persistent. The melodic material in this movement is a quotation of and meditation on Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question.

Spring is bright again, beginning with rain and eventually returning to a transformed version of the fast, dancing music from Summer. I have an affinity for bluegrass and for the traditional fiddling that comes from Appalachia and the mountains surrounding Garth Newel, and this spirit, overflowing with energy and joy, also found its way into this movement.
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Solstice was written for and commissioned by the Garth Newel Piano Quartet. The commission was made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.

Red Vesper

February 18, 2014

Instrumentation:

Version 1 – Fl, Cl, A Sax, Electronics/Laptop, Pno, Vibr, Vln, Vc

Version 2 – Cl, Vln, Vc, Pno

Version 3 – Vln, Vla, Vc, Pno

Program Note:

Red Vesper was written for Bill Ryan and the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble for their tour of the Western United States, including several National Parks. The National Parks are many things to many people, but for me, they have most often been a very special place to find silence inside of myself. A vesper is an evening prayer, a meditation and reflection at the end of the day, and I found the idea of holding vespers in the wilderness to be profound and beautiful. I chose to call it red vesper because of the deep, red glow of the setting sun on the horizon and also because of the beautiful and iconic red rock formations that occupy so many of our great National Parks, particularly Capitol Reef National Park.

The version for clarinet, violin, violoncello, and piano was written for Music from Copland House.

The version for violin, viola, violoncello, and piano was written for the Garth Newel Piano Quartet.

Surface Tension

May 26, 2012

Program Note:

I am often inspired by the fleeting moments of consciousness as I fall asleep, a space that lies between the real and the surreal, between waking and dreaming. As I lay in bed one evening, I began to imagine a glass of water, filled to the brim, with the water rising slightly over the top, surface tension preventing it from spilling over. I picked up the glass and began to toss it up and down, yet the water remained intact, held together by a strange force. I then pulled the water out of the glass with my fingers and tossed the droplets into the air. As if in slow motion, some droplets fell to the ground and bounced like metal beads, others shattered like fragile glass, some fell upward and outward toward the ceiling and the walls, and yet others simply floated perpetually in midair, refusing to fall at all. In writing Surface Tension, I wanted to capture the imagery and surreality of this dream, stretching time, objects, and spaces in the same way that was possible only in that dream-space.