Excellence in Music and Worship
Original Musical Compositions and Thoughts on Worship
This is a piece I wrote for my father’s Memorial Concert, using the text from his aunt’s book of poetry, “A Garden of Memories.” “I Want My Flowers Now” was a particularly meaningful poem to my father, as it contained an admonition to give thanks to those we love while they live, not waiting till it’s no longer possible to share our feelings of love and gratitude.
String Quartet #4 is written in four movements. Throughout the work, I utilize the octatonic scale, highlighting its features in a pseudo-jazz framework. The first and fourth movements are thematically related. The second movement is lyrical, and the third movement was written to be a sort of scherzo.
The third movement was premiered at the Seal Bay Music Festival in Maine
Diatonic, Chromatic, Microtonal Serial
This experiment deals with the same 10-note pattern used in the Chromatic/Serial example above, in three sections of the overtone scale: 1) the lowest ten nodes [diatonic/harmonic], 2) the middle ten nodes [chromatic], and 3) the highest ten nodes [microtonal]. Using the same pattern in each of the sections created the same contour of the theme, but not the same intervals, since the intervallic differences of the lowest ten notes are wide and the intervallic differences of the highest ten are much smaller.
What I found interesting is that the motif could be recognizable, even feeling like an exact reflection, when comparing it against each of the three ranges. The intervallic differences between each of the ranges of the scale didn’t seem to alter the recognizability of the pattern.
From this experiment, perhaps a new way of dealing with motivic development can be obtained: what I call ‘motive ballooning.’ Consider drawing a motif on the outside of a balloon with a marker. Then blow the balloon full of air, and the written motif expands. Let the air out a little, and the motif shrinks, etc. The motif is still recognizable, even though the size of the intervals change.
In this piece, I used two different tempos in the family of R20, 75BPM and 120BPM, so each of the three parts of the R20 scale had eight versions of the motif: Prime, Inversion, Retrograde, Retrograde/Inversion in 75BPM and 150BPM. This, all in all, gave me a total of 24 different versions of the motif, each of them only used once, in the traditional serialist ethos.
Even though serialism is employed, each of the three sections of the overtone scale are harmonically and tonally congruent, as all notes exist inside the same overtone scale. Harmony and Melody or, one could say, Vertical and Horizontal properties are one and the same.
(For more information, please see my article Integrated Frequency)
Melody
This is a single melodic line, stretching over the span of a several-octave overtone scale. Using the melody canonically in R40, R60, R120, R160, and R200, the lines create counterpoint against each other.
R60 and R40 are related. R40, in this instance represents tonic and R60 represents Dominant.
(For more information, please see my article, Integrated Frequency)
String Quartet #2
I wrote this when I was about eighteen years old, while still living in New York City, working on my Bachelor’s degree from Juilliard. The many string quartet performances I had attended in the New York area, as well as at Meadowmount Summer Music camp, put a desire in me to stretch forth and write for the medium.
I was elated to have it recorded a couple years later by the Thouvenel String Quartet. In 1985, it was choreographed by Anthony Ferro, named “Novella Blanc.”