Hearing Voices

for clarinet, violin, cello and piano

2011

for the University of Texas New Music Ensemble
duration: 25 minutes 

I. Two-Faced (excerpt)
II. Aria (excerpt)
III. Vamp (excerpt)
IV. Serenata (excerpt)

Program Note

Hearing Voices, written for the University of Texas New Music Ensemble, explores a serious/playful dialectic that I’ve explored in several recent compositions. As its title implies, the piece is inherently unstable in its expression of these two poles; and the opening movement, Two-Faced, illustrates this dichotomy with its rapid fluctuation from contrapuntal complexity to playful transparency. The inner two movements widen their scope, as Aria and Vamp expand upon their respective sides of the dialectic. Beyond a certain affective schizophrenia, the title simultaneously alludes to the gradual emergence of unencumbered melody over the course of the four movements, most clearly heard in the final movement, Serenata. In this movement the material of the previous three movements is transformed into a of long, elegiac melody, but not without its own playful interruptions.