as a fish looks at the sun (2021)
First performance and commission
Gaudete Brass (Bill Baxtresser, Charles Russell Roberts, Joanna Schulz, Scott Tegge, Paul Von Hoff)
Ensemble
2 Trumpets in B-flat
Horn in F
Trombone
Tuba
Duration
5 minutes, 45 seconds
Perusal score
Gaudete Brass (Bill Baxtresser, Charles Russell Roberts, Joanna Schulz, Scott Tegge, Paul Von Hoff)
Ensemble
2 Trumpets in B-flat
Horn in F
Trombone
Tuba
Duration
5 minutes, 45 seconds
Perusal score
Purchase
Program note
When I sat down with Gaudete Brass in the spring of 2021 to talk about what this work should be, the weight of the past and the fragility of the future were woven throughout our discussion, as with all artistic conversations I’ve been having in the past year. We talked about musical qualities (transparency and lyricism) and emotional ones (hope, transformation, and rebirth), and this work explores how difficult—or even impossible—holding onto these can be. They slip away almost as soon as we notice them.
I’ve been thinking a lot about multigenerational transformation, especially my frustration at how slow it is, because the process of re-learning our histories that happens over and over for each new generation. There’s a déjà vu quality in a lot of social justice conversations that can wear us down, even as we collectively pull the moral arc of the universe towards justice, a degree at a time.
With these ideas in mind, and with a line stuck in my head from the closing section of The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller describing being suddenly plunged under the water, never able to see light in the same way again, this work is composed in three sections. Each section is full of a different flavor of hope, evaporates before it can fulfill its promise, and then regroups to try again with a fresh look at old ideas. The opening horn solo (“fragile but full of hope, like a river flowing under a sheet of ice”) is inspired by the feeling of being utterly dumbstruck at just how nice it is to walk around on one of the first warm days of the year after winter. The middle section (“sparkling and fresh, the wind in your face”) explores the energy of a hope that is directionless and searching for a path forward. Each gesture is earnest but fragmented and out of step with the others. The section blooms with a refracted version of the opening horn melody and a trombone cadenza. The closing section (“carefree, like a pod of dolphins racing a ship”) weaves together gestures and lines from the opening sections into the first moment of full ensemble unison in the piece. Instead of a being definitive moment of triumph, the energy from this big final push fades, like a wave sucked back to sea.
When I sat down with Gaudete Brass in the spring of 2021 to talk about what this work should be, the weight of the past and the fragility of the future were woven throughout our discussion, as with all artistic conversations I’ve been having in the past year. We talked about musical qualities (transparency and lyricism) and emotional ones (hope, transformation, and rebirth), and this work explores how difficult—or even impossible—holding onto these can be. They slip away almost as soon as we notice them.
I’ve been thinking a lot about multigenerational transformation, especially my frustration at how slow it is, because the process of re-learning our histories that happens over and over for each new generation. There’s a déjà vu quality in a lot of social justice conversations that can wear us down, even as we collectively pull the moral arc of the universe towards justice, a degree at a time.
With these ideas in mind, and with a line stuck in my head from the closing section of The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller describing being suddenly plunged under the water, never able to see light in the same way again, this work is composed in three sections. Each section is full of a different flavor of hope, evaporates before it can fulfill its promise, and then regroups to try again with a fresh look at old ideas. The opening horn solo (“fragile but full of hope, like a river flowing under a sheet of ice”) is inspired by the feeling of being utterly dumbstruck at just how nice it is to walk around on one of the first warm days of the year after winter. The middle section (“sparkling and fresh, the wind in your face”) explores the energy of a hope that is directionless and searching for a path forward. Each gesture is earnest but fragmented and out of step with the others. The section blooms with a refracted version of the opening horn melody and a trombone cadenza. The closing section (“carefree, like a pod of dolphins racing a ship”) weaves together gestures and lines from the opening sections into the first moment of full ensemble unison in the piece. Instead of a being definitive moment of triumph, the energy from this big final push fades, like a wave sucked back to sea.