Duration: 7'
Commissioned by Bent Frequency | Dedicated to Jan Baker & Stuart Gerber
The title of this work is derived from Alex Ross’s excellent book, The Rest is Noise. In his opening to Chapter Five, “Apparition from the Woods,” Ross discusses the art of musical composition. Among other notable observations, I was most struck by the following description: “Unlike a novel or a painting, a score gives up its full meaning only when it is performed in front of an audience; it is a child of loneliness that lives off crowds. Nameless terrors creep into the limbo between composition and performance, during which the score sits mutely on the desk.”
While the evocative title of this piece might imply a work of languid introspection, I have tried instead to explore the anxious state of a composer enduring the limbo between the completion of a composition and its eventual performance. The music is virtuosic, fast-paced, and extremely restless throughout. With only one reflective section provided to break up its relentless energy, the composition seeks to mimic the torrent of insecurities a composer faces upon completion of a new work. Will the performers like the piece? Will an audience like it? Will the piece be performed well? Will anyone even come to listen? Will it ever get performed again? To quote Ross once again, “Hans Pfitzner dramatized that moment of panic and doubt in Palestrina, his “musical legend’ about the life of the Italian Renaissance composer. The character of Palestrina speaks for all colleagues across the centuries when he stops his work to cry, ‘What is the point of all this? Ach, what is it for? What for?’ “