Music for Voice

flash flood fiction, for vocal sextet. Written for and recorded by Variant 6 for Princeton Sound Kitchen.

text: "flash flood fiction", by Rūta Kuzmickas

what moon spreads out like mold
along the dampened paper backs
of storm clouds coalescing—

sleeplessly we watch their water-music,
clutching at our pearls, baring
our teeth, decisively believing

in the tactile strength
of glass

flash flood fiction

Written for the Royal Danish Academy of Music's "Accordion Festival - The New World" (2021), performed by Arcangelo Pignatelli

Our breaths are what keep us alive. They take from the air around us and give back. Usually the phrase “catch my breath” refers to our own selves taking a pause, defined as “to wait and rest for a moment when you have been very active, so that you can begin to breathe more slowly” (Cambridge Dictionary). The saying “hold my breath” literally means stop breathing briefly, and figuratively means waiting on the edge of one’s seat for something, as in “I won’t hold my breath.”  But imagine if a breath could be caught and held in your hands…if it was something material, instead of being one with the air. Saying it to someone as opposed to applying it to yourself. Who would you say this to? What would this sensation feel like? How is it let go?

I connect breathing with time; both invisible, intangible yet inescapable, coming and going every moment. This piece is as an expression of breathing patterns, thinking about certain memories based on a graphic provided for the performer involving at times blurry dualities between still vs. moving, spoken vs. wordless, broken vs. healing, forgotten vs. relived, wrong vs. right, deafening vs. nothing, distant vs. suffocating, absent vs. present. The performer inhales and exhales the sound into the audience, with them, as if pushing them away and pulling them back in. But there is also another "audience": people in the performer's memories (especially if playing alone), and the sound qualities that memory would have...the nature of the breath in that memory. Connecting the physical and psychological, the accordion is the brain constantly sponging and absorbing life, with all the ever-oscillating neurological activity molding the mind ranging from emotions to logic. It’s about both the physicality of the body and accordion as well as the mentality fueling it. 

Physical breakage and repair are a definitive present moment that turns to past, dictated by real time. Mental breakage and repair, however, are ethereally connected between past and present, cycling back and forth more ambiguously in slow or fast motion, governed by our singular minds’ idiosyncratic perceptions; the eyes and ears through which we see, hear and process the world.

In this piece, there is always a common note bridging the left and right hands, either vertically or horizontally, in harmony or melody, representing this thread between two energies, passing breaths between each other. Often, the chord clusters grow bigger and add to what’s already there, carrying the past to the present to the future, constantly re-contextualizing the accumulation of emotional energy and memories, and playing with all the possible frameworks that could color a chord or note. In theory, to catch one’s breath, one has to meet halfway and pass it. The left and right hands become more than just functional components of the body; they are two living breathing bodies trying to connect with each other. They actively maintain their joint balance amidst sonic fragility that creates a kind of illusion of physical fragility, as if there is a possibility of suddenly falling through a floor, or beneath a high-wire, at any moment.

Cover art: Annie Nikunen

Catch My Breath And Hold It

Yarn/Wire
New Music Brandeis - March 2022

Russell Greenberg, Sae Hashimoto, percussion
Laura Barger, Julia Den Boer, piano

Thank you, James Praznik, recording engineer

memory-palace: Quilts for San Francisco (2022)

"Sea Poppies", premiered by Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra, directed by Ian Niederhoffer (cond.)

"Sea Poppies," by H.D.

Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,

treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.

Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?

Sea Poppies (2017)

for percussion and fixed media.

I. Chroma
II. Value
III. Hue

performed by Joanne Chiang.
premiered in Duke's Hall, Royal Academy of Music in May 2022.

artwork: Sol LeWitt - Composite Series, Plate #01 (1971)

Video: https://youtu.be/knODmkcNeqU?si=qTI2aO6x1ZOQl39B

Three Studies

Performed by Eighth Blackbird and the U.S. Navy Band, Capt. Kenneth Collins, conductor.

Full performance video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHMabYCLKrI

Eighth Blackbird + US Navy Band, Kenneth Collins, conductor

Vital Sines

"A brief investigation on distilled melancholias, nostalgias & summer brightness 
or 
the land of belonging placed at the liminal verge of shattering identities."

Premiered by Ekmeles (ekmeles.com/) at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music.

Special thanks to Evan Caplinger for creating the best laugh I’ve had in years and lending your ears multiple time throughout this project. Additional thanks to Marcos Balter, Maximillian Coburn & Zosha Di Castri for providing me with incredibly useful advice for this piece.

Voice I : Charlotte Mundy
 Voice II : Elisa Sutherland
 Voice III : Timothy Parsons 
Voice IV : Gregório Taniguchi 
Voice V : Jeffrey Gavett
 Voice VI : Steven Hrycelak

like a frog on the road to it

Commissioned by the U.S. Navy Band for Jonathan Yanik

Completed Oct. 17, 2023
Premiered at the International Saxophone Symposium on January 12, 2024 at George Mason University

As a child, I used to obsessively rewatch my favorite movies. Seeing the same sequences over and over, I would begin to notice little mistakes across cuts - misplaced items, inexplicable outfit changes, loose strands of hair - and I started to wonder how actors managed to keep their characters consistent if they could barely maintain their physical appearances. I soon realized that many actors, quite simply, did not. 

Continuity Errors, true to its name, celebrates the unexpected surrealism of inconsistency. The piece is filled with sudden, frenetic shifts in tone, register, and key, with these drop-of-a-dime changes kicked off by the clapboard-like ‘crack!’ of a whip. The solo saxophone is the star of the show, eager to shine but occasionally out of step with the whip’s cues. The music frequently invokes the stylings of grand, cinematic soundscapes, even as the soloist obsessively brings the music back toward a more mischievous, off-kilter dance. As the piece builds towards its relentless climax, it cycles again and again through the soloist’s dance, as though trying to rehearse it again and again. The piece ends explosively with a series of wild jump cuts, culminating in a final exhausted smack of the whip. 

Many thanks to Jonathan Yanik and the amazing musicians of the U.S. Navy Band for realizing this piece.

Large Ensemble

Continuity Errors, for alto saxophone and wind ensemble

for solo cello & tinfoil speaker sculpture

performed by Nick Photinos October 10, 2023 at Taplin Auditorium, Princeton University

CRINKLE CUDDLE CRUMPLE CRUNCH

Performed by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in January 2023, conducted by Clark Rundell.

programme note:

egress – to go out of or leave a place. A strategy of exit.

Writing music often feels like an exercise in learning how to escape a trap I’ve set for myself, like creating a little world with certain rules that have to be broken in order to progress. Sometimes I imagine that it’s not me doing this but the music itself, like an autonomous AI thing scanning random bits of music in real time, trying to understand itself. As if programmed by a machine, the orchestra starts and stops, switches material, gets things wrong, tries them again – always manically searching for some kind of logical thread, a way forward and out, an egress.

Egress

Youtube video of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUf5Ca6_wk0

commissioned by Ensemble Proton Bern as a part of Protonwerk No. 13

live recording of premiere 23. April 2024 - Dampfzentrale Bern

Ensemble Proton Bern 

Conductor- Gregory Charette
Alto flute, piccolo - Bettina Berger 
Oboe - Martin Bliggenstorfer 
Basset horn, contrabass clarinet - Richard Elliot Haynes
Bassoon, Contrabassoon - Elise Jacoberger 
Harp - Vera Schnider 
Piano - Coco Schwarz
Violin - Maximilian Haft 
Cello - Jan-Filip Ťupa

Recording and mixing - Joël Cormier

Program note: 
“Stained light” is a part of an ongoing attempt in my work to uncover sensations and emotions from my own childhood. It can be both nostalgic and dark, as I try to remember how sensitive I felt to everything as a child – to the weather, to the energy of people around me, to the sounds of the world. In the piece, I try to create fragile spaces in which small details can affect the whole system, uncovering layers of sweetness or of darkness. There is something always under the surface, like a hidden song, half-remembered, heard from a distance.

Stained light | for ensemble proton bern (2023-24)

I wrote music to the text of Shelley's poem, "Love's Philosophy." Performed at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Yale University. The text is below: 

The fountains mingle with the river
   And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
   With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
   All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
   Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven
   And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
   If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
   And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
   If thou kiss not me?

Love's Philosophy

This song came into being through collaborating with Caroline Dunigan (soprano) and Kevin Madison (piano), two incredible musicians who have an acute and expressive sensitivity to new works. Performed at Transylvania County Library in Brevard, NC.

Everyone Sang
by Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

and the song was wordless

Performed by singers from Yale Voxtet and Yale Schola Cantorum:

Conductor: Jasmine Gelber
Sopranos: Addy Sterrett, Isobel Anthony
Countertenor: Bradley Sharpe
Alto: Emma Simmons
Tenors: Hannah Goodwillie, Will Watson
Basses: Ned Vogel, Zak Fletcher


selections from "Marginal at Best," (2014), Anonymous
i: all I am//
ii: if I was anything more (her)

i
all I am is marginally curious
in my head, curiosity is some unrelenting force that propels people to explore their
world
yet all I am is marginally curious
I would know
yet I can't build the courage to break down my limitations
I begin to fall asleep
conversations
her
I would talk to her
it took her to set
who am I

ii
if I was anything more, I would build up the courage to talk to her
we'd compare perspectives and laugh at the differences
and appreciate the world anew

marginal at best

02/12/20 - New York, NY - Somethings spoken a handful of times (string trio)
PREMIERE - Future Space - Chartreuse Trio

PROGRAM NOTE
Some things spoken a handful of times was written during the Winter of 2019 for my friends of the Chartreuse Trio.

Movements:
1.	prayer — augmentation
2.	variation I
3.	“to Daniel” — …wie ein hauch… — “Gloria tibi trinitas”
4.	glacially “glosa” — variation II — 3 fragments

. . . . I waited unseen and always,
And slept while God carried me through the lethargic mist, 
And took my time . . . . 

Not all birds that sing
Give help to heaven. But where
Song fails there blindness comes
To the poor prisoner.
Yet the last of all is life.

. . . . the closest
Simplest things—this moment with you,

Fragments from: Song of Myself and A Song for Occupations, Walt Whitman; Hölderlin to Sinclair, Erich Fried

Somethings spoken a handful of times (string trio)

Support the world premiere of "The New Manila Envelope" on March 29, 2025 at The DiMenna Center: https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/the-new-manila-envelope/general_support


Composer, bassist, improviser
Based in Princeton, NJ

contact: maxvinetz@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8SCUUMzUDA&ab_channel=ScoreFollower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDhK67Gsq-I
https://www.maxvinetz.com/

Love's Philosophy

Max Vinetz

Related tracks