Cold Horizon
Reynold Tharp
About this work:
Cold Horizon, for chamber orchestra, grew out of a piece for vibraphone and piano entitled Cold, which I wrote in Paris in January 2001. Developing or amplifying latent aspects of an earlier piece in new directions enables me to examine and refine my musical materials in different ways and creates an ever-growing web of allusions between pieces. In this case, the icy shimmering of Cold is reworked and stretched out into a supple and continuous line as if it were seen at twilight under an unstable, flickering, distant light. The late afternoon play of pale sunlight and fog over San Francisco Bay in winter was my main inspiration.
In a sense, Cold Horizon is mostly concerned with resonance, a fundamental sonic phenomenon, as a model or metaphor for developing musical gestures and forms. Often resonance is used to create a sense of perspective, to make manifest that music takes place not only in time but also in space. Musical lines that are slightly out of alignment and blur the boundary between counterpoint and heterophony seem to shadow each other as they echo in space. Similarly, rhythmic processes and subtle changes of orchestration create the illusion of musical gestures that approach or recede. The opening of the piece, a quasi-Doppler effect, is an example of this. Another typical use of resonance is the filtering of complex harmonies into simple intervals, floating points of stability that form a thread of consonance woven across the span of the piece. Frequent use of quarter-tones blurs the line between timbre and harmony and creates a sense of depth against the well-tempered, “normal” harmonies.
An initial sketch of Cold Horizon was premiered in July 2002 by the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence under Sylvio Gualda at the Centre Acanthes contemporary music festival in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, France. A new version was first performed in September 2003 by the University of California, Berkeley Symphony conducted by David Milnes. This final longer and larger version was completed in early 2006 and first played by David Alan Miller and the Minnesota Orchestra at the Composer Institute and Reading Sessions in May 2006.
Year composed: 2006
Duration: 00:09:00
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Chamber Orchestra
Instrumentation: 2 Flute, 1 Oboe, 2 Clarinet, 2 Bassoon, 2 Horn in F, 2 Trumpet, 1 Trombone, 2 Percussion (General), 1 Piano
Instrumentation notes: Strings