Night Movements

violin, clarinet, piano
(2003)
8 minutes

Premiered by Eden MacAdam-Somer, violin
Leah Biber, clarinet
Kyle Evans, piano
December 3, 2003 - Houston, Texas

listen
Virgine Gagne, violin
Maiko Sasaki, clarinet
Kana Mimaki, piano

About the piece:

I originally conceived of Night Movements while living in Berlin during the spring of 2003. Though most of the composing was done when I returned to the U.S. in the fall, I think the feel of the piece owes much to my wanderings around Berlin at night, which were at time cold and lonely and at times wild. Night Movements is just one long movement, but it divides naturally into a series of smaller sections. The piece opens with a bell-like tolling in the piano and journeys on through soft mysteriousness, fast, rhythmic dissonance and a surprise tonal section which comes like a distant memory in the middle of the piece. These sections, which vary in texture, tonality, rhythm and harmony, are united by motives which reappear in altered ways as the piece builds towards a wild klezmer-polka conclusion. The smallest motivic kernel is the interval of a minor third. We hear this at the beginning of the piece in the piano's 'tolling' music. Most of the subsequent melodies and gestures in the piece, like the clarinet's opening melody and the violin's theme at the beginning of the first fast section, are spun out of minor thirds. In general, the piano's gestures are based on falling minor thirds and the violin's and clarinet's gestures on rising minor thirds. This underlies a more obvious tension in the piece between the piano and the other two instruments.