A unique chamber showpiece in which each player gradually changes instruments. Fun to listen to, watch, and play!
Brandon Nelson
IMAGO DEI
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Snow, gently falling…then blown about by a sudden gust. Melting, in the glare of the sun…
Get the music here!
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Stéphane Mallarmé was a French poet active in the late 19th century. His work, highly unusual for the time, was inspiration for Debussy and Schoenberg.
The reader grapples with great metaphysical questions, existential doubt, strangeness, and uncertainty;
with rhythms of fragmentation and silence; dislocated syntax; the rapid formation, transmutation, and
evaporation of images; and thoughts that seem to escape being fixed into any one interpretation.As he once said: “Paint not the thing itself, but the effect it produces.”
I have chosen excerpts from several of his poems as inspiration for some tone painting. While some “contemporary” effects are employed, I decided to try to use more traditional resources to create the strange twists and turns of Mallarmé’s world.
Recording and sales information will be made available after the premiere (late autumn 2023)
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What a perfect opener or encore piece for your next recital! A light, spirited, rhythmically-energetic showpiece that will be sure to perk everyone up!
Get the music here!
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A “diptych” is a picture or series of pictures (such as an altarpiece) painted or carved on two hinged tablets or a work made up of two matching parts. I have endeavored to create in music two contrasting “panels” of music for brass quintet.
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“Such was the darkness of that day, the tortures and lamentations of the afflicted, and the power of former presidents, that we walked in the clouds, and could not see our way.”
-John Hale, minister and witness to the Salem witch trialsSimple explanations are tempting yet ultimately impossible and, indeed, minimize the great human tragedy that was the persecution and killing of “witches” in Salem. What could possibly whip up such a hysteria among colonial Americans, so apparently devoted to quiet stoicism and religious piety?
Scholars have been divided for centuries, coming up with pet theories on what compelled this society to turn against certain elements within it. Indeed, many volumes have been written, yet the conclusion we may reach is that a perfect explanation will never be ours.
This piece focuses not as much on potential causation, but reflects upon the fundamental nature of guilt, justice, and forgiveness, on both human and divine levels. Does the professed absolution of God clear the conscious completely notwithstanding the blood of the innocent on one’s hands? Answers again remain elusive, but the questions are continuously demanded.
The title is taken from the Book of Exodus, King James Version. This verse is the clearest and most pointed reference to witches in the Bible and as such has been used as justification for the kinds of persecution seen in Salem by “witch hunters” through the ages. By the end of the Salem killings, twenty innocent people had lost their lives, five others (including two infants) having died while imprisoned. In November 2001, the Massachusetts legislature passed an act exonerating all of those convicted.
If there is any positive outcome to this episode of our history, it may be, as put by George Lincoln Burr, “the rock on which the theocracy was shattered.”
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A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at the beginning of creation and was the mother of Hypnos (Sleep)
and Thanatos (Death). She was of such exceptional power and beauty that she was feared even
by Zeus himself! This musical character sketch depicts this dark power and beauty in a dramatic
journey from twilight to dusk! -
A set of variations on a round composed by Clara Schumann, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of her birth.
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Written to commemorate the passing of a band member’s mother, this piece is both wistful remembrance and a joy-filled celebration of life.
Brandon Nelson 