oggetti I

oggetti I (omaggio a Sciarrino) was written June 2-5, 2014 in New York, NY for Chamber Music Campania as composer-in-residence, and premiered by the Fiati 5 wind quintet in Lucera, Italy on June 25, 2014. This is the first movement of a larger cycle of works for wind quintet exploring concise musical objects, gestures, and formal structures. While composing this work, I was concurrently finishing antistasis for Ensemble Nikel and composing very rapidly to complete both commissions. Many concepts and compositional devices are shared between the two works, although there is no explicitly shared material. The Ancient Greek word ἀντίστασις (antístasis), meaning opposition, is defined as a rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase in a different or contrary sense. In the work for Nikel, this concept is translated into sound through the repetition of a small number of musical gestures, or objects, that are continually recurring and recontextualized so as to contribute to the composite in a different way. oggetti I functions in a similar manner, drawing upon extremely limited materials that are reconfigured in various ways, something like a musical jigsaw puzzle.