Jesse Kaiser, violin

The Many Shapes of Light was inspired by the renovation of the Riverfront Park Pavilion in Spokane Washington. This structure (something like the metal ribbing of a large circus tent) was fitted with 479 LED light blades in September of 2019 and is now used as a public space for gatherings, concerts, and mesmerizing light shows.

This piece envisions the performer as being situated on the elevated catwalk in the middle of this space, playing along with the ever-changing, swirling lighting patterns and slowly encountering the natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest.

In addition to these local themes, the work is additionally inspired by two fragments of music. The first is a staple of the violin repertoire– J.S. Bach’s Partita in E Major, BWV 1006. I analyzed a short sample of a recording of the prélude from the Partita to arrive at the present work’s harmonic material.

The second fragment that contributes to the piece is the hymn tune, Go to Dark Gethsemane. The short melody bears some similarities to figuration from the Bach prélude and is quite personally meaningful. This tune is disguised in a few places throughout the work, and it gradually comes to the fore as the piece progresses.

The Many Shapes of Light was commissioned by violinist and composer Jesse Kaiser as part of an ongoing commissioning series for works for solo violin.

https://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/the-many-shapes-of-light/

The Many Shapes of Light

Performed by Duende Flute Quartet

Consider the Cedar was commissioned by the Duende flute quartet for an outdoor performance at Congaree National Park during the Spring of 2021. The group requested that I construct a piece of “data-driven music” in which the elements of a data set (in this case the flood level of Cedar Creek in Congaree National Park) is used as a basis for creating musical material. In crafting this work, I constructed a piece of “graphical software,” connecting boxes representing the data, various mathematical functions, and the resulting music notation in a program called OpenMusic. In this way, I was able to “co-compose” the piece with the help of the software I had designed, enabling me to listen to a large number of results before picking a one to embellish.

As the piece progresses, the short melodic fragments and gestures that the flutes play will gradually change in prominence. Some sections of the work will also suddenly change harmonic material. These processes reflect the changing height of the river from year to year, with each flute representing one of the year’s four seasons. While a piece as brief as Consider the Cedar cannot represent the intricacies of thirteen years in the life of the river, I hope that the piece might evoke something of the teeming life that Cedar Creek sustains, or perhaps the ever-quickening, destructive pace of life in the 21st century.

https://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/consider-the-cedar/

Consider The Cedar

Duende Flute Quartet

Quiver and Quench was written for an outdoor performance of the Duende Flute Quartet at Edisto Beach State Park in South Carolina. The work explores the relationship between the ocean, the creatures that inhabit the waters & shores, and the role that these marine ecosystems play in the lives of human beings.

The work sets three texts, the first being an excerpt from Psalm 104:25-26. This passage is a remarkable ancient Hebrew meditation on the activity teeming within and upon the surface of the ocean. The text is spoken and sung in the Latin Vulgate.

The second and third texts are by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), an early 20th century American Imagist poet. Sea Iris holds a magnifying glass up to the simultaneously fragile and tenacious flowers that populate the shore. These sun-drenched, sand-grit perspectives reflect back the powerful generative and destructive forces of the ocean and the points at which lumbering human activity brushes against these much smaller members of the marine ecosystem.

Finally, the third text presents a stark and prescient image of human beings and the sea in conflict. The Wind Sleepers imagines a chorus of voices driven away by the wind and the waves, foreshadowing in 1916 a world we recognize today in the experiences of climate refugees. They cry “we are stung by the hurled sand and the broken shells. We no longer sleep in the wind – we awoke and fled through the city gate.”

In the shadow of these texts, fragmented musical quotations from a choral work – Never Weather-Beaten Sail – begin to appear. The plaintive tune by C. Hubert H. Parry and text by Thomas Campion hold the promise of welcome and rest for weary sojourners: “Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore. Never tired pilgrim’s limbs affected slumber more than my wearied sprite…”

Quiver and Quench attempts to hold these varying perspectives and experiences in tension, probing all the complexities evoked by the single word mare, “the sea.”

https://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/quiver-and-quench/

Quiver And Quench

While I often write works in sonata form, this piece makes a considerable departure from some of the form’s traditional conventions.  The material is developed from five central themes which are liberally shared among the work’s three sections.  Additionally, the work systematically explores many of the key areas related to the tonic by thirds (bIII, biii, iii, #iv, bVI, VI, vi, as well as bVIII, bII, bii, and other distantly related keys).

The opening movement is the most optimistic of the three, beginning with bright and lyrical themes.  The second of these themes (B) eventually becomes a source of unrest, taking control of the flute cadenza and brutally ending the first section.  The second section introduces the fifth theme of the work— a lyrical melody which is treated in canon between the flute and piano.  The B-theme interrupts just after the climax and ends the second section as it ended the first.  The final section is quite agitated and rapidly cycles through the themes C – E before arriving at the violent B-theme.  At this point, the first theme finally manages to wrest back control and pull the piece to a close.

Premiere:  November 10, 2017; Spokane, WA.  Michelle Hannaford, flute; Peter Underhill, piano.

Sonatine for Flute and Piano - Excerpts

Performed by the composer.

Midnight Dances is inspired by a phrase from one of the best-loved classics of children’s literature— The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. In composing this work, I wanted to write a piece that incorporated the captivating rhythmic drive that I so admire in my favorite contemporary works for piano. The piece opens with a brief atmospheric introduction before launching into the first dance section. After a flourish, this dance winds down and gives way to a more effusive, stately second theme. The first dance recommences, but it melts into an ostinato figure and a quasi- canon that reprises the second theme. After a final climax, the first dance gradually winds down, leading back into the atmospheric tones that opened the work.

https://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/midnight-dances/

Midnight Dances

Emily Huston, soprano; Peter Underhill, piano.

I began to write this piece after discovering the work of the American poet Sara Teasdale. The texts and music travel through a series of moods and emotions. The first two songs explore introspection, unsatisfied expectation, and the bittersweet nostalgia that accompanies a fulfilled dream. The last two songs are much brighter; they explore themes of gratitude, amazement, and wonder.

http://peterunderhill.org/pierrot-in-the-garden/

Pierrot In The Garden

Hannah Fulton, bassoon;  Lawrence Maher, oboe;  Peter Underhill, piano.

Textures for Trio was composed with the intent of avoiding thematic development. Rather, the same theme appears again and again while the textures in the surrounding accompaniment constantly change. The accompaniment varies in style and density, passing through simple homophony, imitative counterpoint, antiphonal dialogue, serialist gestures, and climactic moments which form a collage of the previous four textural materials.

https://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/textures-for-trio/

Textures For Trio

Hannah Thompson, soprano; Avery Dabe, Bassoon; Grace Shepard, piano.  Written for "An Evening of Serious Whimsy" at the Columbia Museum of Art.

The poems that comprise The Flowers of Reminding are taken from e e cummings’ “Five Poems.” The three selected here all deal with death in its different guises. The first movement considers the life and death of the day as a metaphor for a human lifespan. The second movement, “The Gate” presents a fantastic, apocalyptic vision of death as a frozen moment in time. Finally, “The Baloonman” tells of an unsettling Pied Piper character who ensnares children and kills the innocence of childhood. While much of cummings’ poetry is fanciful, stylized, and humorous, these poems each betray elements of foreboding that lie just below the surface.

https://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/the-flowers-of-reminding/

The Flowers of Reminding

The Spark Collective: Sabrina Raber, flute; Matthew Castner, saxophone; Dakota Corbliss, horn; Ben Haimann, percussion; Grace Shepard, piano.

Terrarium is a work that explores the transition between two musical ecosystems and the feeling of being transplanted into an unfamiliar environment.  While the core musical material of the work is constructed from the same four-note motive throughout, sections of the piece represent different attitudes of repose, excitement, anxiety, and adaptation.  This piece represents an enclosed musical space— much like a physical terrarium— where the listener can observe the reactions of the transplanted organism from a distance.

https://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/terrarium/

Terrarium

The University of South Carolina Graduate Saxophone Ensemble: Matthew Castner, Andrew Hutchens, Dillon Smith.

An asterism is a term for small group of prominent stars; it is also the term used to designate the typographical symbol, “⁂ .”  In "Asterisms," each saxophone is similar to a star tracing its way through a sort of “harmonic space.” The players gradually wind their way through a sequence of ten chords, each performer tracing out a separate path of pitches, somewhat similar to the paths of the stars in the night sky. Asterisms is constructed in a three-part form. The beginning and ending portions of the work seem to view the constellation from a distance; the middle section takes a closer look at the frenzied, chaotic, and beautiful drama that unfolds as stars are created, destroyed, or flung across the immense distances of outer space.

http://peterunderhill.org/portfolio/asterisms/

Asterisms

Peter Underhill is a composer from the Pacific Northwest.

Peter Underhill

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