Rainbow Around the Sun
Nicholas Chase
About this work:
Since I was a child I have been fascinated by man’s ability to create pattern out of seeming chaos. The form assigned to constellations in the night sky mean nothing to me, yet the concept of their various arrangements has remained with us through the ages. A Rainbow Around the Sun is an exploration of creating order from random information. The pitch, rhythmic and metrical material are all derived from raw numerical data as gathered from the radio galaxy NGC 383 (also known as radio galaxy 3C31) found in the Pisces region of the sky, and standing about 220,000,000 light years from us. As improbable as this is, I have also incorporated a serialization of the name of Michael Dash, the much-loved baritone/contra-tenor in whose memory this work is commissioned. The relationship between the two ideas seems outwardly disparate, however I have chosen to interpret them as two immense concepts, somehow intimate at the same time, and perhaps in this way they find a home together in this work.
Version: 1
Year composed: 2003
Duration: 00:16:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Keyboard plus One Instrument
Instrumentation: 1 Harpsichord,1 Harpsichord soloist(s), 1 Viola,1 Viola soloist(s)