Premiered by the Quinetique Quartet at the 2013 Bridges International Conference on the Arts and Mathematics, Enschede, The Netherlands, curated by Dmitri Tymoczko. Canonic Offerings is based on my work with canons that have an infinite number of solutions. These are maximally self-similar melodic lines that can be combined successfully and performed simultaneously by any number of voices, each voice at its own tempo yielding either rational or irrational tempo ratios, with the melody moving either forward or backward. In Canonic Offerings I have selected a small number of these combinations based on three such melodies, attempting to give the flavor of the combinatorial possibilities within the context of a unified (and finite) composition.

Canonic Offerings

Performed by János Ávéd, Marton Fenyvesi, Balazs Horvath, and Ákos Benkó

Hungarian Jazz

Performed by Emily Hanna Crane and Hui-Ting Yang

Metamorphoses II

Recorded by Minyoung Rho

“The way out of climate change is inside each of us.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

Meditations on a Warming Planet began as a part of Ann Duhamel's "Prayers for a Feverish Planet" project, which features a collection of works for solo piano that respond in some manner to climate change. Inspired by the ambitiousness of the project and Ann's moving performances, I decided to add three more movements to form the current set of four, each focusing on a different aspect of the crisis.

From a human perspective, the warming of the planet is very gradual, yet relentless, a steady progression (accumulation) toward a more chaotic and less hospitable world. "Parched Earth" depicts the process of desertification, where fertile regions are gradually replaced by arid, unfertile areas. While the process can be natural, the spread of arid regions is increasingly caused (and exacerbated) by human activities.

"Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics" (noaa.gov). While these are naturally occuring phenomena, their size and the resulting release of moisture as precipitation and potential for flooding are increasing due to climate change. "Atmospheric River" attempts to capture the general phenomena of more frequent and more destructive flooding that is a direct result of a warmer planet.

"Habitat" depicts the progressive loss of species and wildlife, again exacerbated by climate change, in a rather direct manner with a gradual reduction of musical activity leading to a single, isolated, and extremely thin note. Over the course of the movement, a harmonic progression, presented in lush arpeggios at first, is progressively reduced until only its memory persists.

Over the decade beginning in 2012 over 1,700 environmental activists and land defenders have been murdered doing their work. "In Memoriam" is dedicated to the memory of these courageous individuals, focusing on their beautiful, impactful, and inspiring lives. An optional slide show featuring specific individuals is available for performance.

Meditations on a Warming Planet

Phyllis Pancella, mezzo; Minyoung Rho, piano

Several years ago, I fell into despair after hearing a report about millennials questioning the wisdom, even morality, of having children given the climate crisis and projections of the type of world their children would inherit. Setting aside the merits of such arguments, the discussion struck at the heart of my own anxieties raising two children who are aware that their entire lives will be affected unpredictably by climate change. Succumbing to these fears, I was plagued with insomnia, joyless, and felt physically ill at my own daily contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.

Looking beyond scientific articles and the news, I turned to artistic responses to the crisis and discovered the work of the Marshall Islander poet, spoken-word artist, and climate activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. “Dear Matafele Peinam” was written for and first performed at the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 UN Secretary- General’s Climate Summit. WriKen to her then seven-month-old daughter, the poem addresses climate change in general and the specific and urgent threat to the Marshall Islands and similar island countries through the lens of the most intimate of relationships—a parent seeking to protect their child.

"we are artists painting, dancing, writing"
In setting the poem, I've done my best to capture its meaning and provide a musical context for the text without losing the overall directness, succinct articulation of the threat and subsequent focus on the collective fight, and especially the touching depiction of the poet’s daughter. The poem is presented in four secLons, realized as four separate movements. “You are” captures the simple delights of a young child (bananas, hugs, walks by the lagoon) and concludes with a slightly exhausted mother and a still bouncing baby. “I want to tell you” hints at the threats facing the Marshall Islands, with peaceful lagoons devouring shorelines, sea walls, and roots of breadfruit trees, rendering the islands uninhabitable, their inhabitants left to wander without a home. The third and by far largest section of the poem (“Don’t cry”) channels anger at “blindfolded bureaucracies” and companies “with broken morals” into personal and collective acLon. “You’ll see” is (mostly) a lullaby, reassuring a drowsy child and recalling the melody from the first movement most associated with her.

we won’t let you down, you’ll see
We can’t promise our children that everything will be okay, but we can assure them that we are going to fight, which begins with those most vulnerable to climate change. The best chance we have to protect our own homeland is to do everything we can to preserve theirs.

Dear Matafele Pienam: you'll see

Dear Matafele Peinam: don't cry

Dear Matafele Peinam: i want to tell you

Dear Matafele Peinam: you are

Written for and performed by Trio Bel Canto:
PatrickMeighan, alto saxophone
John S. Moore, tenor saxophone
Krista Wallace-Boaz, piano

Tre Balli 2

Tre Balli 1

Performed by William Koeler. Recorded by Jeri-Mae Astolfi for Capstone Records. http://www.capstonerecords.org/CPS-8777.html

Patty, My Dear

Performance by the Pacifica Quartet. First Prize National Association of Composers, USA Young Composers Competition

Relativity

Rarefaction

Glass

Canonic Offerings performed by the T'ang Quartet as part of Mathemusical Conversations: https://sites.google.com/site/mathemusicalconversations/home

Metamorphoses: Canon a 3 for cello and computer delay

Chamber Concerto, for clarinet, trumpet, piano, percussion, 2 violins, cello, and contrabass, performed at the Composers Conference, Wellesley College, July 1999.

ChamberConcerto1

Performed by Donald Berman at the 2003 Florida State University Festival of New Music. reflections on the nature of light is a set of three piano pieces which are inspired by recent preoccupations with the nature of light, sparked by Leonard Shlain’s Art and Physics and Richard P. Feynman’s QED: The strange theory of light and matter. While not intended as programmatic depictions of light, I have no doubt that the ideas inspired by these books were an indirect influence on the composition of, and my subsequent reaction to, these pieces.
refractions is a musical analogy for the way in which light gives way to numerous, previously imperceptible, colors when passed through a prism. At times, all of the musical material is drawn from partials of a single fundamental, while in other passages the two hands separate into independent streams yielding multiple spectra.
Leonardo da Vinci used the term “sfumato” to describe the phenomenon in which shadows and outlines of objects become less crisp and increasingly blurred as they recede into the distance. In sfumato, as in Impressionistic paintings, blurring becomes one of the most prominent features as melodies blur into harmony, harmonies into resonance, and successive phrases blur into one another in a continually and gradually evolving improvisational architecture.
la Sainte-Chapelle opens with a series of slow, sustained chords—a progression of harmonic colors with each sonority leaving its distinctive mark on the cumulative resonance. The slight variations in harmonic color from one chord to the next may be likened to the various shadings of natural light by the magnificent stained-glass windows at la Sainte-Chapelle and other cathedrals. Just as the color of this transformed light is an integral part of the cathedral’s architecture, the resonance of these chords is central to the design of the movement, gradually coalescing into a peal of bells near the end.
These three movements may be viewed as musical metaphors for the physical, perceptual, and spiritual natures of light, respectively.

la Sainte-Chapelle

sfumato

refractions

Chain Reactions was commissioned for the 75th Commemoration of Chicago Pile-1, the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction achieved under the supervision of Enrico Fermi. The first movement, Subcriticality, refers to the situation in which neutron losses (due to absorption) exceed neutron production (due to fission) leading to eventual termination of the reaction. Throughout the movement, processes are initiated that inevitably dissipate energy and terminate. The second movement, Criticality, is stable without being static. The rhythms of the movement are determined by a guided probabilistic structure that determines the likelihood of a new note at each pulse in much the same way that the “cross section” of a nucleus characterizes the probability that the nucleus will undergo a nuclear reaction.

Chain Reactions

Point and Line to Plane

Premiered by Benjamin Sung and David Kalhous, Opperman Music Hall, February 1, 2013.

Clifton Callender

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