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Saturn
[Click image to view sample PDF score]
(flute, violin, hand-held percussion, accordion) 4 min., 2008.
Premiered by Sonar Ensemble, Baltimore, MD.
Commissioned by Sonar and the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Saturn explores the possibilities and limitations from this dual conception. For Sonar, this piece is part of a suite on the planets designed to accompany an exhibition of images from the Hubble telescope. In order to be suitable for the NYME, the piece needed to utilize fewer than one hundred notes. I solved the latter issue by creating a work with very few individual gestures that are repeated and layered throughout. This obedience to strict regulation shows the influence of Saturn, the titan whose long mythical reign was characterized by great peace and order (of course, one of his methods for perpetuating his power was eating his children). Images of the planet Saturn also find their way into this composition through a sense of vast isolation.