Vignettes
Program Notes
Vignettes was commissioned by the Miklos quartet from Hartford, Connecticut. It was part of a series of commissioned works the ensemble requested for their odd instrumentation, with each work lasting three minutes. I set out to write a series of short miniatures as explorations of musical ideas. The first movement "Unision" explores various ways in which musicians interpret the word unison. There is unison in pitch, unison in rhythym and this movement explores the way these two types of unisons can be exploited. The second movement is a play on one of the Bartok Mikrosmos titled Augmentation/Diminution. My movement is about a thematic idea that grows one note at a time and then eventually reduces down back to a single note. Chorale is an homage to the chorale writing style of the Russian composer Igor
Stravinsky. Each voice on it's own making a clear melody however when lined up vertically has moments of beautiful dissonance.
The fourth movement slap asks the musicians to make music with their instruments in non-traditional ways. Turning these beautifully melodic instruments into percussion instruments. The final movement Hocket, plays on an old renaissance compositional technique where
a single melodic idea leaps around the many voices.