'Emerald Link' for symphonic wind ensemble.

摘要

Emerald Link is a 10-minute composition scored for symphonic wind ensemble (3 flutes, 3 oboes, 6 clarinets, 3 bassoons-4 saxophones-3 trumpets, 4 French horns, 3 trombones, euphonium, tuba-string bass-timpani, 3-percussion-celesta, piano). The piece is inspired by synaesthetic connections between sound and color developed from the observations of French composer Olivier Messiaen. In a series of interviews with Claude Samuels (Music and Color), he describes his third mode of limited transposition as follows: "horizontally layered stripes: from bottom to top, dark gray, mauve, light gray, and white with mauve and pale yellow highlights-with flaming gold letters, of an unknown script, and a quantity of little red or blue arcs that are very thin, very fine, hardly visible. Dominant are gray and mauve." I was struck by this description of how Messiaen "hears" color or "sees" sound in two ways: first, by its powerful language, and second, by the extreme detail of his auditory vision in which each component of the whole works inherently to form an overall complex of color. These concepts of sound and color are very much alive in the works of the European avant-garde such as George Benjamin, Magnus Lindberg and the late Gerard Grisey, a body of work less popular in most of the United States, which has been performed a great deal in Los Angeles where Emerald Link was composed. This work is an attempt to integrate the coloristic thinking suggested by the above passage into my own musical vocabulary.;In Emerald Link, musical elements combine to form a shifting palette of sound-color controlled by register. For instance, some rhythmic devices become diminished as they occur higher in the register. In cases where larger voicings were necessary to strengthen the impact, traditional octave doublings were replaced with major sevenths, minor ninths or microtonal intervals, displaced by one or two octaves. This enrichment to the harmony added to the overall sound-color of the work. Emerald Link is in four continuous sections, each section corresponds roughly to proportions derived from the golden mean.