Hover (2017)
2 marimbas
c. 7 minutes
Premiered by Jacob Ottmer & Michael Cheng
Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston: MATCH, Houstin, TX, 12 July 2019
c. 7 minutes
Premiered by Jacob Ottmer & Michael Cheng
Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston: MATCH, Houstin, TX, 12 July 2019
Hover arises out of the desire to work deeply with a single musical idea. It opens with just one note (E) to which a second note (F) is eventually added. The conflict between these two notes becomes the basis for the overall piece. I owe much of the theme that finally emerges to Dominico Scarlatti. While attending a lecture by scholar Janet Schmalfeld, I was struck by four beautiful, ephemeral measures from the middle of Scarlatti’s Sonata in F minor, K. 481, which Schmalfeld labeled as “hovering.” The central theme of my own composition expands and explores the possibilities of Scarlatti’s four hovering measures, leading the work to its climax. When the E and the F return at the end of the piece, it is now the E that now seems foreign to the texture, and it is up to the listener to decide which note, if either, has come out victorious.