My latest work for the Toy Piano Composers performed by Dan Morphy, Sharon Lee, Katherine Watson, Anthony Thompson, Adam Scime, and Wesley Chen. The electronics are made up of three op amps daisy chained and fed into each other with piezo microphones for an infinite feedback loop. We were asked to work with an old form, so I took the form of a Sonata and utilized aleatory in order to destroy not only its structure, but my own creative process. Themes 1 and 2 were originally improvised by myself on the piano. Their respective recapitulations are re-transcritptions of the improvisations by use of spectrographic programs. The developmental and coda sections are made up of cut and paste quotations of the re-transciptions.

Sonata for Satan

This was one of my first textural works, where I began to work with aleatory and indeterminacy. The first movement was intuitively conceived and through composed, with the durations being marked by relative space within the score. The second movement is a chromatic fugue.

String Quartet no. 2:  I - Vast and Spacious; II - Fugue

Is the first of 3 movements based on the art of Max Ernst. It was written between my 2nd and 3rd years of my undergrad and performed by my good friend James Moat.

3 Sketches for Solo Violin-i) Celebs

This Is the second of 3 movements based on the art of Max Ernst. It was written between my 2nd and 3rd years of my undergrad and performed by my good friend James Moat.The violin is muted for this movement, as a means to aurally transmit the washed look of the original painting by Ernst. For me, the muted/washed effect represents the submission of the victim in a battle, in this case being the victim of love.

3 Sketches for Solo Violin-ii) The Triumph of Love

           The work presented here is a musical interpretation of the epic poem found in the Norse Mythology known as “Voluspa” which is translated as “Prophecy [spa] of the Seeress [volva].1The poem as a whole is the synopsis of the entire mythology and is believed to have been the first of the Scandanavian people. It encompasses the creation and the destruction of the physical world, then its rebirth. Due to the size of this work I have decided to work only with the first section of the poem, the creation of the physi- cal world.

A common theme found in most mythologies is the act of destruction as the necessary predecessor of creation, in the Norse my- thology this theme can be found in every section. This balance of destruction and creation is also the driving force of the music and appears as creative systems that govern form, melody, texture and harmony. Each movement represents an important chap- ter from the poem, drawing upon text, imagery, and mood.

           The first movement is divided into two discreet sections: The Prophecy; and the Original State of the World. The Prophecy is treated as an introduction to the work whose goal is to gather the elder Gods to hear the prophecy of how the physical world will be created. In order to create this sound I have taken the english translation of the introduction and created a melody with accompaniment:

Give Ear
All ye divine races
Great and Small
Sons of Heimdal!
I am about to relate
The wonderful works of Valfather,
The oldest sayings of men,
The first I remember.2

The second half of the first movement is the story of how the first being, Ymer (the Frost Giants) was born. For this movement three important themes are introduced: Muspelheim (the fire world) represented by tremolo strings; Niflheim (the ice world) represented by a longer and more flowing melody introduced by the cellos; and chaos (the spark) first introduced by the flute. The
fire and ice themes are set into a fugal texture and grow into a tutti climax representing the birth of Ymer, then fade back into the void, waiting for Ragnarok. 


Voluspa Movement 1

The work presented here is a musical interpretation of the epic poem found in the Norse Mythology known as “Voluspa” which is translated as “Prophecy [spa] of the Seeress [volva].1The poem as a whole is the synopsis of the entire mythology and is believed to have been the first of the Scandanavian people. It encompasses the creation and the destruction of the physical world, then its rebirth. Due to the size of this work I have decided to work only with the first section of the poem, the creation of the physi- cal world.

A common theme found in most mythologies is the act of destruction as the necessary predecessor of creation, in the Norse my- thology this theme can be found in every section. This balance of destruction and creation is also the driving force of the music and appears as creative systems that govern form, melody, texture and harmony. Each movement represents an important chap- ter from the poem, drawing upon text, imagery, and mood.
The third movement is vastly different from the first two in its structure, harmony, and overall sound world. In this chapter, the origins of the Sun and Moon are described as both beautiful and horrific, once again showing how destruction and creation are intricately linked. A man and his wife have two children that are so beautiful that they are named Sun and Moon, when the Gods hear of this, they punish the parents for their act of pride by placing the children in the sky to serve the heavenly bodies. The children control the movement of the sun and moon by pulling them with a cart which is being chased by giant wolves who will devour them when Ragnarok comes.The overall mood of this movement is dark and solemn, as the perspective I have taken is the parents of Sun and Moon watching their children being punished for their faults day and night.

In order to construct this piece, a 12-tone row was created in to control melody, harmony and form. The first two presentations of the row represent the Sun (prime) and the Moon (retrograde). The remainder of the movement is based on the fragmentation and development of these two motives and the harmonic content created by tetra chords from the prime row. 

“Voluspa” as a whole represents the many ups and downs of life and how they are both necessary for a fulfilling existence. We must see death not as and end, but as a new beginning, for without death there can be no renewal and the cycle of life would wither away into apathy.


Voluspa Movement 3

'The Red Sky' is a work written in my Master's Degree for harp, Marimba, Violin and Cello. It has currently won the award for the Toronto Harp Society's Harp Compostiion Contest and will have its official premiere in late 2013. This recording has Angela Schwarzkopf on harp, Michelle Colton on marimba, Melissa Schakk on violin and Samuel Bison on cello.

danielbrophy