It Snowed December 6th

Written in 2018, for flute and piano (12 minutes)

While writing the note for this page, I remembered that during the rehearsal process I made several edits that are not reflected in the score available on this page. I can’t find the updated score, but I know the recording provided on this page is the accurate version of the piece. This piece hasn’t been played in years, so it’s a low priority for me at the moment, but if you are considering programming this piece, please reach out to me and I’ll send you the updated score within 5 days. I want to delete a bar…

I’ve written a lot of music for flute, and that body of work stems from my friendships with Natalie Magaña and Alaina Clarice; two comrades that have been putting up with my shit and my music for a while! The first piece Natalie asked me for was A Face Behind (bass flute and percussion, 2017), the second was this.

 There are a few musical references in this one; the first occurs in the opening bars. I won’t give away all the secretes here (that wouldn’t be fun), but there are references and quotations from at least 4 pieces throughout. I almost never use “extended techniques” but I’ve used the re/re# trill a lot – not that I would describe that as “extended” by any means, but we’re getting a little more brave in this one!

 Listening back for the first time in years, I really like the headspace where this piece puts me in. There’s certainly the Feldman/Donofrio influence right on the surface of the piece, but I can pick up on a number of things that I still use and really love to play with in more recent pieces, especially the unisons and the resonance of a piano after a unison with the flute. The pacing of the piece is interesting as well- there is a push and pull and islands of gesture and energy that make the piece less static or monochromatic than often expected it to be. I also enjoyed the flashes of memories about the formal schematics of this piece; if you want to take the time, check out the way certain phrases and gestures return and the amount of variation I explored with a number of ideas.

 If you see the note at the top of this page about the edited version of the score: I think there are a few things that I was just self-conscious of. I remember being pretty freaked out in the early rehearsals… what can you do?

 Again, going back to my issue with titles: because I get asked a whole bunch: the date doesn’t mean anything. It is neither the start date nor the completion date of the piece. Rather, it is the date that I decided it was time to pick a title for the piece. I don’t feel like I have a particular talent for picking titles, so I went through a phase of titles that are just dates- a few of them have stuck around November 12, 2014 for solo piano was the first one, October 5th for solo crotales (2016), and March 8th for solo piano (2018), and I guess this piece is close enough to fall into that category as well. The number of “date pieces” used to be rather substantial but I have withdrawn most of them, and a number of other pieces that began with a dated title but were completed with something better.

 I wrote this sometime in early Spring of 2018, and I remember sitting in a practice room on the second floor of the College of Music at BGSU and finding “on December 6th, it snowed” written in one of my notebooks. I’m not sure if this is a true statement, or even why I wrote it, but there was the title (after some minor edits).

 This piece was premiered in a church on a scorching summer’s day in Toledo, Ohio. I remember sitting in agony thinking this piece was too long, and I was getting too sweaty. The piece feels much shorter in AC.