Before the Dawn (2023)
for band

(reading demo recording)

Before the Dawn was written to honor the teaching career of Mr. Dave Gott, who served as Director of Bands at Haslett High School in Haslett, Michigan for 19 years. It was commissioned by the Haslett High School Band Boosters. Before I started writing this piece, I visited the Haslett High School Band to ask about their experiences with Mr. Gott and to brainstorm ideas for the piece. What struck me most about their observations and memories of Mr. Gott was how he had helped so many of them do things they themselves did not think they could do, both personally and collectively—he saw potential in them that they could not yet see and helped them achieve goals they could not have even imagined.

I am also fortunate to call Dave Gott my friend. For as long as I’ve known him, he wakes up well before dawn, getting a head start on the day. For me, this time when the deep blue night sky moves toward day through hues of glorious red and orange is a time of hopefulness, joy, and optimism—it feels like anything is possible. My hope with this piece is to capture that feeling—the same optimism, hope, and inspiration that Mr. Gott brought to every student that entered his classroom—and to celebrate it through music. A simple melody rises from the distant horizon, repeating and expanding each time as more voices join. Eventually the melody gives way to unbridled energy, joy, and wonder, with soloists and sections collectively weaving their own unique variation of the melody into a colorful tapestry.

Before The Dawn

Lucas Petersen and Kansas University Wind Ensemble

Live world premiere recording 11 April, 2023, Lied Centre, Lawrence, KS

POUNCE for Wind Ensemble

The Disarray was inspired by the self-taught abstract and street photographer Olga Karlovac, more specifically her second photography book of the same name, as well her as self-portraits. Her work strikes me as dark and unsettlingly beautiful, and it instills in me a sense of inner turmoil that takes over the outside world. In this piece I aimed to simply capture the feeling of profound grief and inescapable desolation that I find in her photography.

The Disarray

"Bravado" (2023) was written for the Tanglewood Music Festival 2023 orchestral readings and explores the many connotations of the word “bravado,” a descendent of the Old Italian adjective bravo, meaning “wild” or “courageous.” A person with bravado can be seen as bold or reckless, daring or arrogant, confident or overbearing. The orchestra musically embodies this range of traits through the transformation of the piece’s primary melody. Thank you to the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra for bringing "Bravado" to life.

INSTRUMENTATION:
Flute 1-2 (Flute 2 doubles Piccolo)
Oboe 1-2
Clarinet in Bb 1-2
Bassoon 1-2
Horn in F 1-4
Trumpet in Bb 1-2 (metal straight mute)
Trombone 1-2 (metal straight mute)
Bass Trombone (metal straight mute)
Tuba
Timpani
Percussion 1: Suspended Cymbal, Xylophone
Percussion 2: Bass Drum, Glockenspiel
Harp
Strings

PERUSAL SCORE REQUESTS:
Contact Just a Theory Press at admin@justatheorypress.com

WIND BAND VERSION:
Arrangement commissioned by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band (touring fall 2023: https://www.marineband.marines.mil/Tour/). Perusal score available via Just a Theory Press (admin@justatheorypress.com); available for programming beginning November 2023.

LEARN MORE:
https://www.galaflagello.com/

Bravado - Tanglewood Reading

EDGES is inspired by several events in my life over the period of 1995-97.  Two are near-death experiences, while the third is the sudden passing of one of my closest colleagues and best friends, Professor Robert Cooper.  

The first movement, "BACK FROM THE EDGE", is a chronicle of the battle that I waged with "flesh-eating strep", which nearly cost me my life in spring, 1995.  A fragment of a line from French playwright Jean Genet’s “Prisoner of Love” served as additional inspiration: 

 “perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay in memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh.  A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.”

In a sense, my life has re-emerged from where it lay, for a while, silent, in memory.

Movement II, "POSTCARDS", is inspired by my mentor and friend, composer Donald Erb, who had his own near-death experience about a year later in the same Ithaca, New York hospital (a bizarre coincidence).  I know that he shared many of the mental aberrations I experienced during the recovery process, and POSTCARDS reflects the strange visions, the elusive but more and more frequent moments of clarity, and the eventual return to reality that such experiences create.  For me, in retrospect, these thoughts were like vivid postcards of other realities, sent to me by another part of my mind and filtered through the pain, the fear, and the medications that I had been given.  There was also a highly obsessive quality to my thoughts during the reco-very, which is reflected in the primary melodic material which simply refuses to disappear, though it changes colors, dynamics, and tempos at every turn.

Postcards -- real postcards, that is -- also played a role in my experiences.  While recovering, I received a post card (often of questionable taste) every two or three days from Don.  When it was his turn to be in recovery, it was my turn to send him postcards (equally questionable)...they seem now to me to be a lifeline to reality from people who are eager to welcome us back.

A quote was inspirational for this second movement as well, this time from Hermann Hesse’s Damien:

“In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.”

The final movement is a reflection on the amazing, wonderful, and sometimes difficult life of my colleague, Robert Cooper.  Robert had, without a doubt, the speediest metabolism of anyone I have ever known.  Lunch with Robert could be defined as both of us eating for the first five minutes and Robert watching me finish eating for the last 45.  Robert had two computers in his office and a phone; often all three were busy at once, while he carried on at least one additional conversation with whomever was present.  Yet Robert had great depth too.  He was a living example to students and colleagues, especially in facing life’s travails with courage and conviction.  He was also funny as hell.  I suppose that Robert’s pace was impossible to sustain, and in fact he died suddenly at age 45 on September 18, 1997. 

No quotations needed with this movement.  This one’s for you, man.


EDGES Movement III OhMan for wind ensemble

EDGES Movement II Postcards for wind ensemble

EDGES Movement I Back from the Edge for wind ensemble

Can’t Never Could is a fantasy for two pianos and orchestra. As an alumna of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra—I was the orchestral pianist—I had a blast thinking about what sort of orchestral colors, techniques, or ideas would have excited me as a young composer sitting in the middle of an orchestra during rehearsals and performances. With this in mind, I decided to give each instrumental family a virtuosic section which challenges what one might normally do in traditional repertoire. These changes in
orchestration trigger the changes in form as the duo pianists (my piano duo, HOCKET) interact in fantastical flourishes around the orchestral material.

Can't Never Could

The United States Air Force Band, Col. Don Schofield, conductor. Live performance on March 6, 2024 at the American Bandmasters Association.

Part 1 from "Deep Down (Symphony No. 1)"

for alto saxophone, electric guitar, percussion, and accordion 

March 26, 2024 - Illinois State University
REDNOTE Composition Workshop

Black Ice

Black Ice - Performed by HYPERCUBE

This work is part of a cycle of four works related to representations of the four elements in the Old Testament. Neshamah means “breath” and is inspired in the following biblical text:
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7).
This piece was commissioned by the Ibermúsicas Project and was composed at the Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras and at the Centro de Pesquisa em Música Eletroacústica of Federal University of Minas Gerais. It received an honorable mention at the Concours International de Composition Electroacoustique de Monaco 2016 and at the Destellos Competition 2016.
Also check the version with video at:
https://youtu.be/RIzLRAQ9h0M

Neshamah

Composer David Biedenbender’s music has been described as “simply beautiful” [twincities.com] and is noted for its “rhythmic intensity” [NewMusicBox] and “stirring harmonies” [Boston Classical Review]. “Modern, venturesome, and inexorable…The excitement, intensity, and freshness that characterizes Biedenbender’s music hung in the [air] long after the last note was played” [Examiner.com]. David has written music for the concert stage as well as for dance and multimedia collaborations, and his work is often influenced by his diverse musical experiences in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist, in wind, jazz, and New Orleans-style brass bands as a euphonium, bass trombone, and tuba player, and by his study of Indian Carnatic Music. His present creative interests include working with everyone from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data. He has had the privilege of collaborating with and being commissioned by many talented performers and ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Stenhammar String Quartet, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, U.S. Navy Band, Philharmonie Baden-Baden (Germany), VocalEssence, and Eastman Wind Ensemble, among many others. 

He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Michigan State University. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University, and has also studied at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Aspen Music Festival, and in Mysore, India where he studied carnatic music. For more information, visit: www.davidbiedenbender.com.

Before The Dawn

davebied

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