Composed for Bergamot Quartet
Score available here
Score available here
The constant of the prairie is golds. [In the eastern and coastal forests, you find every nuance of green represented in the bright mass of mosses and near blackened spruce.] By September the summer heat has bleached the grasses to a sea of golds, their seeds dried and loosened. I reach down and strip the seeds off a stalk with two fingers, forming a brief flower that scatters on the wind whose breaths are echoed by racing ripples in the grasses. Patches of poplar and aspen trickle the dawn light. By September the shortened days have aged their leaves, turned them to golds, thinning the washes of wind that rattles their leaves and sounds like home.
Golds is structured as a series of postcards celebrating parts of the prairie fall that bring me a feeling of joy and awe. These postcards are loosely structured to map the course of a day, and like a day, should be thought of as one continuously unfolding gesture rather than as a series of events.
Golds is written for Bergmot Quartet playing their quartet of Hardanger instruments. These instruments include sympathetically resonating strings and were the inspiration for my instrument Resin, which is also featured in this piece. The score represents a new direction in my approach to notation, where poetic and visual material is used to inform the interpretation of flexible musical material.