About this work:
I wrote this to answer the question of how to establish control over a large expanse of time. I had studied the late works of Morton Feldman and wanted to get the first-hand experience of writing a cyclopean work.
I decided to use a top-down compositional method to structure it. By establishing the duration, number of sections, and instrumental combinations prior to working on thematic material, I made a formal structure that was flexible to revision but also strict enough to focus my creative energy. The sections of the piece and their repetitions were far easier to govern using the external architecture, and certain manipulations of the moments, extensions of themes, and large scale repetitions became apparent as methods to continue the moment form nature of the piece using fresh approaches. It also has the nice Feldman effect of erasing the listeners memory of the structure. I'm quite satisfied with the moment form achieved.
My choice of the pitch collection was due to its amount of note overlap on many transpositional levels. Its ability to fluctuate between areas of minimal shared tones to, like that in the final section of the piece, an almost pure diatonic atmosphere by way of guiding the mapping of pitches was crucial to the structure of the piece. I not only had the idea of evolving from dissonance to consonance, but I could also gauge the distribution of pitches across the piece, and plan moments of transposition to avoid over iteration of notes.
The challenge in writing a piece this large for one set of performers is in how to account for atrophy. My approach was to give the performers enough individual moments of rest so that they wouldn't be too strained physically by the time the ending was reached. I didn't want the intonation or execution to suffer too greatly, but I also wanted the audience to sense a level of exhaustion so that piece would, in essence, die of old age; that it really felt like an ending. I wanted the ending to be uncomfortably long; the prolongation of a singular identity to contrast the ever changing spectrum that was presented before it.
Should it not be possible, the clarinet may opt out of the Bb in the extreme altissimo at rehearsal #10 and in measure 370 by transposing it down an octave.
The cover art is by Erron Reed.