for electric guitar, saxophone, percussion, and piano
duration: 7 minutes
Commissioned by/Premiere:
Flexible Music on October 10, 2007 at the Stone in New York
Additional Performances:
Flexible Music, October 18, 2007 at Manhattan School of Music in New York
New Music Collective, Dec 17, 2008 at the Circular Church in Charleston, SC
New Music Collective, Dec 17, 2008 at the Circular Church in Charleston, SC
Listen:
Score:
About the Work:
"Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G-D-A-E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. [...] Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worthwhile."
—Nathaniel West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)
Variations on a Still Point takes as its starting point Nathaniel West's "tropism for order": In the first movement, all of the players play the exact same music in the exact same rhythm. But as the movement progresses, so much of what West describes happens: instruments go out of tune, and out of sync; the music stops and starts again trying to reorder itself, but is hopelessly more and more out of order each time. After a last ditch effort to order itself, the music eschews the neurosis of the first movement with a serene acceptance in the beauty of disorder. This is the second movement.
Variations on a Still Point was written in the summer and September of 2006 and received its first performance by the ensemble Flexible Music on October 10, 2007 at The Stone in New York. It has since been revised; the New Music Collective of Charleston, SC gave the revised premiere.
All works are Copyright Christopher Cerrone and published by Outburst-Inburst Musics. For a printed perusal score and CD recording, please contact me.—Nathaniel West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)
Variations on a Still Point takes as its starting point Nathaniel West's "tropism for order": In the first movement, all of the players play the exact same music in the exact same rhythm. But as the movement progresses, so much of what West describes happens: instruments go out of tune, and out of sync; the music stops and starts again trying to reorder itself, but is hopelessly more and more out of order each time. After a last ditch effort to order itself, the music eschews the neurosis of the first movement with a serene acceptance in the beauty of disorder. This is the second movement.
Variations on a Still Point was written in the summer and September of 2006 and received its first performance by the ensemble Flexible Music on October 10, 2007 at The Stone in New York. It has since been revised; the New Music Collective of Charleston, SC gave the revised premiere.