Thorofare

Scenes of Woods and Wind (excerpt: movements 2 - 4)

Fire-Flowers

1. Magnificent Mile

2. Mid - American Dream

3. Momentary Glow

Heather Cornelius, harp

This piece was written for my sister Heather and premiered by her at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Ontario in April 2015. Growing up, Heather and I had a cat who, though kept strictly indoors, would occasionally attempt to escape into the wide world. I remember one dramatic incident in which the cat had to be pulled back inside by its tail after making a dash onto our deck. In this piece, I sought to musically depict cat sounds, which continuously vary in pitch (a fact familiar to cat owners), through glissando-like melodic figures. In my exploration of unusual harp timbres, I also found several techniques, such as tuning key slides and pedal glisses, which create appropriately catlike sliding gestures with distinctive colors. The title is French for "the song of the escaped cat." I imagine what might have happened if our cat had made good its escape and set off on an adventure into the town. Would the cat enjoy its feeling of freedom and independence? Or would it become lonely and long to return home?

Le chant du chat échappé

Wet Ink Ensemble
Alex Mincek, saxophone
Ian Antonio, percussion

Extrapolations

from Three Nocturnes
Lamont Symphony Orchestra
S. Mordecai Fuhrman, conductor
Recorded live in Gates Concert Hall, Newman Center for the Performing Arts
Denver, Colorado

Nocturnes (2014-2015) is a set of three symphonic poems based on nighttime scenes in places I had visited the previous summer. As in Debussy's famous Nocturnes, the music is not a literal representation of nocturnal sounds, but rather an evocation of the feelings aroused in these peculiar environments. Stylistically, it also bears the influence of some of my favorite composers to whom I was listening at the time, including Mahler, Bartók, and Sibelius.
For On the Bare Mountain, imagine yourself sleeping under the stars on a grassy mountainside in the Rockies. Miles from the nearest highway, with the marmots snug in their dens and the only nearby humans, the silence is total and profound. Without any trees for the wind to whistle and rustle through, you can’t even hear it, but only feel it brushing across your face. 
Goblins Forest depicts a brisk ascent into the high country through stunted alpine trees forming grotesque, twisted shapes in the predawn darkness. Gradually, the sky changes to twilight, and then to sunrise, illuminating a sheer mountain wall with salmon-colored clouds zooming off its summit at frightening speed. In transcendent moments like these, the iconic beauty of the natural world affords us a glimpse of the power and majesty of the Creator.

On The Bare Mountain and Goblins Forest

This piece is a musical depiction of a fractal, a mathematical pattern where each part is a miniature image of the whole. This fractal, known as the logistic map, is itself a graphical display of the logistic growth function, an equation which governs the rate of growth of a population bounded by some upper limit, such as an ecosystem with limited resources. Depending on the parameter of how fast the population reproduces relative to the maximum capacity of the environment (represented by the horizontal axis of the image), the actual level of the population (on the vertical axis) may reach a stable equilibrium, oscillate between high and low levels, or explode and crash wildly. In particular, very small differences in the parameter may mean the difference between a regular cycle of “boom” and “bust” years or a chaotic series of levels with no apparent rhyme or reason. 
In 1975, mathematician James Yorke proved that any logistical system that displays such regular cycles with odd periods (repeating every 3, 5, or 7 years) is also susceptible to chaotic behavior, a stunning discovery which essentially launched the mathematical field now known as chaos theory. The title of Yorke’s paper was simply Period Three Implies Chaos.
In this piece, the musical gestures undergo gradual transformation from order to chaos in all aspects, including pitch, timbre, and texture. At first, the sounds are so pure they can barely be heard. Gradually, they coalesce into a low C which immediately begins rising in pitch. As its rise slows, it splits into two voices, then into four, and so on until reaching chaos, all the while becoming noisier and noisier. Yet, in the middle of the most chaotic regions, like the eye of a hurricane, appear the “windows of order” described by Yorke, in which a regular ostinato gives the illusion of stability and calm, but the triple or quintuple meter ominously hints at the music’s chaotic destiny.
Musicians interested in learning about the history and theory of mathematical chaos should consult James Gleick’s fascinating book, entitled simply Chaos.

Implied Chaos

Nathan Cornelius searches for the hidden beauty in sounds both fresh and familiar. By taking listeners with him on his journey through sonic landscapes, he seeks to open their ears to new colors, textures, and ultimately, new ways of hearing.  His compositions have been premiered by Wet Ink Ensemble, the Playground Ensemble, the Lamont Symphony Orchestra, and Modern Hue. He is also the co-founder of Nebula Ensemble, a group dedicated to creating and performing new chamber music throughout Colorado. He blogs about new music and his compositional philosophy at deformingprisms.wordpress.com. 