worst of all is to begin [2004]
For solo piano
Duration: ca. 10'
I. Chorale - II. Fantasia - III. Nocturne - IV. Passacaglia
For solo piano
Duration: ca. 10'
I. Chorale - II. Fantasia - III. Nocturne - IV. Passacaglia
Listen to pianist Yih Mei Hui:
First performance: April, 2004 by Sarah Bob on the New Gallery Concert Series
worst of all is to begin was written for Sarah Bob in memory of our mutual friend Veronica Peters. Veronica was one of the first people I met when I began working at the Community Music Center of Boston. She was a kind, joyous, and generous person, and I came to regard her presence and effect on my new – and first real – job as maternal. She passed away after a long illness in 2003.
This was a difficult piece to write, mainly because of my reluctance to try to sum anything up - either Veronica's reassuring impact on me, or her personality, or her passing, in any kind of musical way. Instead, I wanted to assemble a simple and brief "sound album" of mementos, one that I could add to or re-arrange as I liked. I wanted to get down in note form some moments of reflection, and as with some of my other pieces at the time, to focus less on completion – i.e. beginning, middle, and end – and more on the instant that a thought, memory, or feeling is observed. I tried to capture both the stillness of reflection as well as the movement of the memory itself. In each of these small movements, I wanted one element of sound that was always still and calm in its repetition, while a more aimless, rambling and conversational texture wandered through and away, without ever really giving up too much about itself.
The piece is divided into four “movements” – Chorale, Fantasia, Nocturne, and Passacaglia – although those titles are less about implied formal structures than they are about moods and atmospheres. The title, by the way, comes from a short story by Donald Barthelme. I've always been drawn to Barthelme as a writer because he seemed more like a decorator of short stories than a teller of them, which really fit the way I was feeling about this piece. The full line goes like this: "Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin."
worst of all is to begin was written for Sarah Bob in memory of our mutual friend Veronica Peters. Veronica was one of the first people I met when I began working at the Community Music Center of Boston. She was a kind, joyous, and generous person, and I came to regard her presence and effect on my new – and first real – job as maternal. She passed away after a long illness in 2003.
This was a difficult piece to write, mainly because of my reluctance to try to sum anything up - either Veronica's reassuring impact on me, or her personality, or her passing, in any kind of musical way. Instead, I wanted to assemble a simple and brief "sound album" of mementos, one that I could add to or re-arrange as I liked. I wanted to get down in note form some moments of reflection, and as with some of my other pieces at the time, to focus less on completion – i.e. beginning, middle, and end – and more on the instant that a thought, memory, or feeling is observed. I tried to capture both the stillness of reflection as well as the movement of the memory itself. In each of these small movements, I wanted one element of sound that was always still and calm in its repetition, while a more aimless, rambling and conversational texture wandered through and away, without ever really giving up too much about itself.
The piece is divided into four “movements” – Chorale, Fantasia, Nocturne, and Passacaglia – although those titles are less about implied formal structures than they are about moods and atmospheres. The title, by the way, comes from a short story by Donald Barthelme. I've always been drawn to Barthelme as a writer because he seemed more like a decorator of short stories than a teller of them, which really fit the way I was feeling about this piece. The full line goes like this: "Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin."