Program Note
Textes and Glosses was composed in the final months of 1998 in Aspen, Colorado and Boston,
Massachusetts. Formally, it is divided into a series of "Textes" and "Glosses," an idea borrowed
from French baroque harpsichord music. The text sections are dialogues between pure tones in the
flute and piano. The gloss sections on the other hand, are more poetic, musing ramblings over the
soft accompaning cushion. These commentaries are in a way variations, extensions and elaborations
of the ideas from the text; the musical language is altered somewhat but the material is the same,
as if looking at the same relationship from two contradictory viewpoints.
A generative harmonic progression of six chords, sometimes fixed registrally and at other times more
free, continuously undergoes looping and modification to create all of the melodies and harmonies of
the piece. The melodic material develops from a kind of troping of more freely derived material
within arpeggiations of the generative harmonies.
- New York, November 2001
Premiere:
Orlando Cela, flute
Stefan Wirth, piano
30 March 1999
Williams Hall
Boston, Massachusetts
Listen
Performance bu Orlando Cela, flute and Stefan Wirth, piano