If there is a dead thing still rotting (2021)

FOR FLUTE AND RECITED TEXT ALONE

If there is a dead thing still rotting takes its title from a line of poet Muriel Leung’s BONE CONFETTI, a collection of work intertwined with the relationships between death and mourning. Leung writes, “There are two types of survivors at the end of the world—lovers and ghosts who die, are revived, and die again. Each death and resurrection carves its way into the landscape of a wrecked city where skies are flocked by molten birds and trees grow in shades of ash.”

This reaction to Leung’s work incorporates a poem entitled “The Lost Years” from the subsection “In Abstensia-Land: A Funeral.” The performer recites the text of the work throughout the piece, stretching to bridge and emphasize the interdependency of text, sound, and meaning.

If there is a dead thing still rotting was written for flutist Denis Savelyev as part of a collaboration between the Peabody Institute’s Flute and Composition Departments, and was premiered on November 29, 2021.

For more information about Muriel Leung's BONE CONFETTI, visit www.murielleung.com/bone-confetti.

Denis Savelyev, flute and recited text
November 29, 2021
Baltimore, MD

If There Is A Dead Thing Still Rotting (2021)

shadow of a difference / falling (2020)

FOR OBOE ALONE

shadow of a difference / falling is a series of moments based around the idea of the proverbial bird beating its wings against its newfound cage in trepidation. Each impulse provides insight into its fragile disposition, venturing from moments of cautious curiosity, through forlorn wails and futile exertions, to a melancholy resignation of its confinement. The work exposes the bird’s vulnerability by exploring blurred inflections of pitch, unsteady and ever-wavering sweeps across registers, and sharp juxtapositions between timid and rash gestures.

shadow of a difference / falling was written for Andrew Nogal and commissioned by the Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music in the Library of Congress, as part of the Boccaccio Project: A Series of Music Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Andrew Nogal, oboe
June 16, 2020
Livestreamed

Shadow Of A Difference / Falling (2020), oboe version

shadow of a difference / falling (2020)

version for soprano saxophone

"shadow of a difference / falling" is a series of moments based around the idea of the proverbial bird beating its wings against its newfound cage in trepidation. Each impulse provides insight into its fragile disposition, venturing from moments of cautious curiosity, through forlorn wails and futile exertions, to a melancholy resignation of its confinement. The work exposes the bird’s vulnerability through explorations of blurred inflections of pitch, unsteady and ever-wavering sweeps across registers, and sharp juxtapositions between timid and rash gestures.

The title of the work is excerpted from Denise Levertov’s poem “Claritas.”

"shadow of a difference / falling" was written in May 2020 for Andrew Nogal and was commissioned by the Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music in the Library of Congress, as part of the Boccaccio Project: a series of compositions written under the COVID-19 quarantine; it has been revised for soprano saxophone in collaboration with Christopher Agnew.

Christopher Agnew, soprano saxophone
February 16, 2022
Baltimore, MD

shadow of a difference / falling (2020), soprano saxophone version

It so happens that ears have no eyelids (2022)

for clarinet, bassoon, horn, and electric guitar

All sound is invisible in the form of a piercer of envelopes. Whether it be bodies, rooms, apartments, castles, fortified cities. Immaterial, it breaks all barriers. Sound ignores skin, does not know what a limit is: it is neither internal, nor external. Unlimiting, it is unlocalizable. It cannot be touched: it is ungraspable. Hearing is not like seeing. What is seen can be abolished by the eyelids, can be stopped by partitions or curtains, can be rendered immediately inaccessible by walls. What is heard knows neither eyelids, nor partitions, neither curtains, nor walls. Undelimitable, it is impossible to protect oneself from it. There is no acoustic viewpoint. There is no terrace, no window, no keep, no citadel, no panoramic lookout of sound. There is neither a subject nor an object of hearing. Sound rushes in. It violates. Hearing is the most archaic perception in the course of personal history, even before smelling, well before seeing, and is allied with the night.

—Pascal Quignard
The Hatred of Music
trans. Matthew Amos and Fredrik Rönnbäck

"It so happens that ears have no eyelids" was written for the Dal Niente and DePaul Summer Residency for New Music 2022.

Ensemble Dal Niente
Jesse Langen, guitar
Katie Jimoh, clarinet
Ben Roidl-Ward, bassoon
Matt Oliphant, horn
Michael Lewanski, conductor

It so happens that ears have no eyelids (2022)

The eye-trunks, grasping each other tightly, and the visible wet air exhale. (2022)

Lena Vidulich, viola

In November of 2021, I had the opportunity to travel to Vienna for the first time, where I was exposed to the work of Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele at the Leopold Museum. A student of Gustav Klimt, much of Schiele’s work is known for its contorted body shapes, its extraordinary intensity, and its raw sexuality.

This piece was written in reaction to my first exposure to Schiele’s portraits and writings. While I develop this piece in response to his broader oeuvre of work, I found myself particularly captivated by his 1910 Nude Self-Portrait in Gray with Open Mouth (a reproduction of which appears on the following page). The grimmest of greys and most sable of blacks is broken only by the slightest tinge of yellow around the eyes of his self-portrait—a much darker and more resigned existence than I find in his other portrait work.

Schiele died at the age of twenty-eight from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

The eye-trunks, grasping each other tightly, and the visible wet air exhale was written for Nadia Sirota as part of a residency with the Peabody Institute at the Johns Hopkins University. It was premiered by Lena Vidulich of earspace, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The eye-trunks, grasping each other tightly, and the visible wet air exhale. (2022)

Durham Symphony Orchestra
William Henry Curry, conductor
Recorded live on April 23, 2023
Hayti Heritage Center, Durham, NC

Image:
"Jede Nacht besucht uns ein Traum"
Alfred Kubin, 1900

Like many composers, much of my work is in reaction to the work of other artists, poets, and musicians, and my work for the Durham Symphony Orchestra is no exception. I first had the opportunity to engage with Alfred Kubin’s artwork when visiting the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Known especially for its collection of symbolist and expressionist works of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in particular, the Leopold houses one of the largest collections of Austrian work from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Though his work wasn’t included in the Nazi 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition (which epitomized the party’s anathematic reaction toward Jewish creativity of the Weimar period), Kubin’s pieces was soon grouped with the other “degenerate artists” due to his frequent fantastical expressionism and his macabre subject matter. His “Jede Nacht besucht uns ein Traum” (“Every Night a Dream Visits Us”) depicts a nude female figure rapidly descending upon a field, rousing a whirlwind of dust and debris, bending stalks toward their breaking point. Her extremities are depicted with scythe-like shadows, her entire head clothed in a sable mask bound by coal-black ribbons that linger in her wake.

My reaction to the work attempts to build upon the spirit of the image across a time-based art form. The scene seems to exist outside any clear specification of time, and I explore both the complete suspension musical time through impossibly slow sustains in the strings and rapid progression of time through quick shifts in thematic materials and instrumentation, creating the sharp juxtapositions of moments that can only occur in our imaginary states. Melodies are harmonized almost exclusively with dissonant intervals, decisively cutting through rustling orchestral textures while simulating the tone colors of instruments that can only exist within our imaginations. The fantastical figurine departs as quickly as she arrives, leaving the scene eviscerated by her absence.
Every Night a Dream Visits Us was commissioned as part of a 2022–2023 residency with the Durham Symphony Orchestra
—Richard Drehoff Jr.

Every Night a Dream Visits Us (2023)

Live recording of composer Clarence Barlow's "until" (version 5), for piano and drone. Performed as part of UNC's 2016 Festival on the Hill: Music, Science, and Nature.

Not a perfect recording, but I think it's successful enough to explore the idea of the piece. Thanks to Lee Weisert for organizing the festival and allowing me to take part!

until (version 5)

until (version 5) - Clarence Barlow

Vanessa Ascher, flute
David Therrien-Brongo, percussion

Premiered June 13, 2019 at Domaine Forget.

Light, upon glass strongholds, bounces

Richard Drehoff Jr. (b. 1991) is a doctoral student at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University studying composition and music theory. His compositional and research interests explore listeners' perceptions of gesture across time and examine sonic constructions of intimacy and vulnerability within the composer-performer-listener framework.

Richard is the Co-Director of earspace, an ensemble championing the presentation of immersive multimedia performances of diverse works by contemporary composers. His works have been commissioned by the Library of Congress and the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble and have been performed by groups such as the Mivos Quartet, the ECCE Ensemble, and members of Talea Ensemble. Recent accolades include a residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, a composition fellowship from the James Tenney Memorial Symposium, and conference presentations at the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic on works by Galina Ustvolskaya and Pierre Boulez.

Richard Drehoff Jr.

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