Lighter Shades

Written in 2018 for soprano voice, flute, piano, violin, viola, cello (16 minutes

Original program note:

I’ve been doing a lot of research recently on ink wash painting. I think the most immediate thing that stood out to me is that, on some base level, this medium can be seen as a study of diffusion and envelope. There is an attack, sustain, decay, and release in each stroke. As ink is pulled, it loses density. In a way, this makes the final product a documented temporal experience. Careful articulations of color within a field of negative space create an organic blend and transition of static and kinetic energy with the existing surface and the deliberate additions to it. Once painted, it cannot be changed or erased. This makes the medium physically and mentally demanding process as well.

Technicalities aside, there are evocative implications within the philosophy of the technique. Although I have been unable to find a single and specific source for the theory, an explanation found on Wikipedia truly resonated with me and my compositional approach. Stating; The goal of ink and wash painting is not simply to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its spirit. To paint a horse, the ink wash painting artist must understand its temperament better than its muscles and bones. To paint a flower, there is no need to perfectly match its petals and colors, but it is essential to convey its liveliness and fragrance. East Asian ink wash painting may be regarded as a form of expressionistic art that captures the unseen. In landscape painting, the scenes depicted are typically imaginary, or very loose adaptations of actual views, from which the artist may have been very distant.”

Lighter Shades, to me, plays out as a distant and happy tapestry of idealized memories: a Personal mythology of an imaginary landscape. Perhaps I was never there; I don’t remember anything anyone said or exactly what I saw, but I remember what it felt like. I hate to use the term “abstract expressionism” (or abstract impressionism), but nothing is concrete and yet there is still something to smile about. A clouded feeling of warmth and comfort. Foggy, but certainly not dark.

This was the first big piece I finished at UNT, the final project for a composition seminar required by all incoming graduate students. There is an intense preoccupation with color in this one, much like my string quartet As if You’d See the Light and perhaps much more than some of my other music. In my note for As if You’d See the Light, I said the following:

At the time, I was trying to be extremely detail oriented […] but this preoccupation with specific techniques and micro-management of details was something I felt really pressured to do and I’m not sure how often the details (bow placement, muting, etc) really benefit the piece.

I should say that I didn’t feel pressured by an external source as much as pressured by my own perceptions of what a composer “should” do: we “should” be detailed, we “should” know everything on the page, and know everything has a purpose and everything “has to be” controlled. I now think this is bunk – you don’t have to do any of that stuff. You can, but anyone who says that it is imperative to do so might just be stuck in some old-school, overly romanticized ideal of what a creative “genius” is…

 Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh… but there is always the risk of digging into the arbitrary with this stuff. I don’t think this piece has too many arbitrary features, and after listening a few more times with some detachment and distance in time, I feel that the colors that come out of these techniques often work, but constantly keep me asking “why” to myself and wondering where I might go with these things in the future.

I like this piece overall, but there’s a lot of embarrassing shit in it. A lot of stuff I absolutely wouldn’t do now – unnecessary ephemera that add little to the atmosphere or “point” of the piece.

I still think this might be true, but this piece is also rather personal in a few extra-musical ways, but mainly because it was an introduction to a lot of people who I would become friends with and frequent collaborators across my entire time in Texas.