neither from nor towards (ballade)

for clarinet, baritone saxophone, & piano

Composed: 2007
Duration: 9'

Program Notes

Commissioned by the Thelema Trio
Recorded by the Thelema Trio on neither from nor towards (innova CD752).

neither from nor towards (ballade) explores motion within stasis, and the intersection of process with intuition. Its quick flurries of notes tend only gradually toward large-scale movement, and fall back time and again to the unchanging center. The piece is based on my earlier work, Ballade, for soprano saxophone and marimba, and takes its title from a line of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton. Like Eliot's paradoxical "still point of the turning world" – itself clearly linked to contemporaneous ideas emerging from early quantum mechanics – the pitch center of neither from nor towards is always crucial, yet never in the foreground. Instead, the instruments dance around that center, sometimes trading glances at each other across it, sometimes joining in furious consort to stray away from it (and yet always falling back).

Score and Recording

Click the PDF icon below for a viewable score in PDF format. For a printable score and other performance materials, including the necessary software, please contact me.