Orchestra (Full Score)
SKU: HL.244904
For Orchestra.
Composed by Bryce
Dessner. Music Sales
America. Classical.
Softcover. Composed 2017.
64 pages. Duration 1020
seconds. Chester Music
#CH83985. Published by
Chester Music
(HL.244904).
8.25x12.0x0.508
inches.
Quilting,
co-commissioned by the
BBC Symphony Orchestra
and the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, is my first
stand alone work for
orchestraand is loosely
inspired by the American
tradition of quilt
making. I composed
Quilting while living
most of last year in
Paris.During my time
there, I thought a lot
about what it means to
compose symphonic music
as a young American in
the 21st century, when so
many of the many
masterworks which are
programmed year in and
out by orchestras across
the country are European.
I considered which
artistic traditions
defined the American
19th-century. I began to
think of the American
crafts-tradition of
quilting as a foilto the
high-art tradition of
European orchestral
composition. As the score
for my new work began to
take shape, I started
thinking about the
manuscript itself as an
object, its vertical and
horizontal planes create
a kind of patterned
geometry of their own.
Visually the way a
musical score is woven
together like patchwork
brought to mind quilts
and the great American
tradition of quilting. I
imagined about how
conducting an orchestra
can feellike stitching a
piece together, or sewing
together a large number
of musical ideas and
musicians into a coherent
and transcendent whole.
Quilting was an integral
part of American
vernacular in the 18th
and 19th centuries, the
African-American quilting
tradition is especially
fascinating, and the
quilts tell the stories
of the women and
communities who made
them. The names of the
quilt patterns themselves
can have their own sense
of narrative: 'jacobs
ladder', 'drunkards
path', 'solomon's
puzzle', and (my favorite
for its relevance to this
piece) 'the road to
California. - Bryce
Dessner.