Erb Study

Written in 2020 for woodwind quintet (11 minutes)

From the Score:

Quartertones and any smaller division of the octave is something I have a really hard time exploring in acoustic pieces. I love doing this with electronics- I could listen to two sinewaves beat against each other for a long time. Still, it’s been really difficult for me to incorporate this into my acoustic language. This sort of abstractly expressive sound-world isn’t always the right place for it, but I think this piece has expanded my range significantly. The emotive power and tension/release that these colors give the piece add a yearning or aching quality to the slow gestures, and there are some moments that I think just sound magical with these new colors. Cathrine Erb is an American photographer whose “luminous photo-based works capture a spirit of the sublime in everyday life. Her practice is a meditative process, exploring and revealing the radiance of the present moment and the complexities of relationships among people, places, things, as well as things unseen. Her studies of clouds transcend space and time with luscious translucence, while her portraits of everyday objects are instilled with the ineffable longing of memory.”

www.davidluskgallery.com

www.catherineerb.com

Who the hell thought writing a woodwind quintet during a pandemic was a good idea?

This one was a bit of a pet-project: I write music that I want to listen to, but that also comes with a healthy dose of self-criticism and personal critique. Sometimes I really like to listen to my older pieces, sometimes they make me feel crunchy inside. It’s all about the learning process from each piece. I wrote this woodwind quintet because I generally hate woodwind quintets; I wanted to make a piece I wanted to listen to, and that urge helped me refine the piece again and again until it became one of my personal favorites.

So, while I think being self-consious about your own work, perhaps even if you hate hearing it, is a normal thing that is part of the process, the more important question needs to be more fundamental: are you even making the kind of music you like in the first place?