Creation (2022)
Program notes
Trodden is a loose and fragmentary setting of Wallace Stevens’ From The Misery of Don Joost, a poem about the difficulty of change, the dissonance between bodily and intellectual knowledge, and the haunting echoes of a haunted life.
The main gesture is made up of two dichotomous halves: a quiet, highly ornamental melody, led by the voice, and raucous walls of sound, led by the electric guitar and saxophone. The musicians tread this two-part path many times, slowly adding layers of complexity and difference. As this gesture is repeated – the path trodden-over – the halves bleed into each other, initiating their transformation into something else entirely."
I HAVE finished my combat with the sun;
And my body, the old animal,
Knows nothing more.
The powerful seasons bred and killed,And were themselves the genii
Of their own ends.
Oh, but the very self of the storm
Of sun and slaves, breeding and death,
The old animal—
The senses and feeling, the very sound
And sight, and all there was of the storm—
Knows nothing more.
From the Misery of Don Joost - Wallace Stevens
Performances
Season | Date | Concert | Member(s) |
---|---|---|---|
2021-22 | L'ARSENALE / NEM (IT/QC) | 14 APRIL | Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, L'Arsenale |