UNFEELING (She sketches out her dreams on his skin.)(2024)

flute/piccolo, bassoon, horn, percussion, violin, viola, cello, double bass

written for Wavefield Ensemble, commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University

UNFEELING is an extension of modular composition that I’ve been exploring since 2012. The music is conceived in blocks of material—running the spectrum between suggestive improvisation and fully notated—which run concurrently with and against other each other. The effect is something like tectonic plates, the blocks grind and push against each other, the piece’s motion and momentum is caused by the tension and energy transferred between them. Musically, this kind of composition is polyphonic on several levels. On the small scale, note-to-note level, there is a rich and complex relationship between harmonic (pitch) and inharmonic (noise) material. And if one zooms out to the middle ground, the complexity is compounded as musical figures, gestures, and phrases within each block play against each other in what initially seems like entropic cacophony but maintains an underlying architectonic structure. But the surface of the music—the musical phrases, the harmony, the rhythm, the tempi, the timbres—all of this dissolves the structure and process I just described. Like dissolving bones in an acid bath, you end up with a substance entirely different than the two you began with—a dialectical opposition sublating into something else: here, at least for me, control becomes wanton brutality and desirous carnage. Composition control, like all control, is a delusion; structure attempts to stifle passion and in so doing, the whole thing just explodes—this piece is not unfeeling, then, but all feeling. One final thing: as the structure of the piece is modular, so too is the listening of it. I encourage everyone to listen to subgroups, soloists, and the whole as different constellations of simultaneous activity.. there is no true “whole” or ideal unified orchestrated experience.. the piece is composed to offer listeners the opportunity to create their own path for experiencing the work.

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the players of the Wavefield Ensemble tonight (Roberta, Sara, John, Dennis, Erica, Carey, Chris, and Greg) for their dedicated and  virtuosic shredding—I could not ask for a better band for this project. And to Nick DeMaison for thinking of me to commission this work. My thanks to you all.  This work was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation.