trumpet, bassoon, drum set, two pianos, interactive electronics, and lighting design
70 minutes
info
Premiered at Roy O. Disney Concert Hall, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
March 12, 2022
Music by Sam Wells, Lighting Design by Alejandro Melendez, Direction by Joshua Sobel
Dana Jessen, bassoon
Vicki Ray, piano
SPLICE Ensemble:
Keith Kirchoff, piano
Adam Vidiksis, drum set
Sam Wells, trumpet
Alejandro Melendez, lighting consultant
Stephanie Lutz, lighting consultant
Josh Sobel, conceptual consultant
program note
The entirety of existence was a text waiting to be read. Which means there could be no line between the reader and the written. You, who are reading this, you too are written, you too can be read. And I, a writer, am already written through and through. Everything between us, everything that separates us, mountains, stars, years, shimmering thoughts and dreams that die with waking, all of it is a single chain of signs that do not point to another reality, only to this one, all at once.
-Ben Ehrenreich, “Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time”
“The Cottonwood Florilegium” is a musical text that is read as it is written and written as it is read. It is a collection of a perspectives and ideas, musically interpreted, on the entirety of existence from the internal and local to the cosmic and infinite.
Humanity has developed a myriad of approaches to gaining perspective on this reality. We strive to step aside and look at reality not from the active locus of experience, but at a remove, with a spiritual or scientific objectivity. We imagine being able to read the text of existence from a different angle, seeing previously invisible connections. Through this imagination, we inscribe the lacunae of our perceptions to create meaning and expand the context of our experience.
A florilegium is a medieval collection of excerpts, proverbs, ideas, and formulas that grew of the commonplacing tradition of communal writings to collect and index knowledge. Florilegia have traditionally presented in several ways: as patristic anthologies of Christian literature, as literary anthologies of secular texts, and as the literal translation of “a gathering of flowers” indicates, a collection of botanically accurate plant illustrations. Here, the florilegium is a comingled set of thoughts, perspectives, and questions on the collective experience of humanity gathered from a range of sources and experiences.
“The Cottonwood Florilegium” is organized into twelve movements that compose five parts. The part names are associated with constellations, asterisms, and weather phenomena that have been ascribed spiritual meaning. Humanity often looks outward to forces beyond our control, be it the environment or the cosmos at large, to gain insight to our experience. The movement names focus on the local, perceptual, and active states of presence and personal experience. All these modes of understanding are inscribed into the text that is “The Cottonwood Florilegium,” this terrestrial bound collection of attempts at making sense of humanity. We can see our pasts and futures in the terrestrial world around us, unveiled through geologic processes and expressed through active environmental changes. The cottonwood tree, widely present in the North American landscape, appears in numerous myths of indigenous peoples to the continent. Having grown up around these trees, the cottonwood presents a personally important signifier of place and location to me. The cottonwood tree can be a marker for home, a reminder that despite our attempts step outside of our experience to understand our place in the cosmos, we are of and a part of this planet.
The Cottonwood Florilegium is presented as a massive and collective life cycle infused with layers of nested narrative arcs.
Part A
The Winter Circle is an asterism that is visible in the Northern Hemisphere winter sky. Comprised of the major stars in the Orion, Taurus, Auriga, Gemini, Canis Minor, and Canis Major constellations, the Winter Circle physically links these major myths while also holding mythological significance in its own right for several cultures. In Lakota mythology the winter circle mirrors the Čhaŋgléska Wakȟaŋ, or Sacred Hoop, a religious symbol representing life stages, deities, and the location of the creation myth of the Great Race. Movement I, “accretion,” relates not only to the geologic and astrophysical accumulation of matter into massive objects, but also the gathering of experiences and relationships that define our history. Part A and Movement I represent a world building process, a communal accrual of musical matter and potential energy that sets the trajectory for the rest of work.
Part B
The Tramontana is the classical name of a northern wind in the Mediterranean. In Catalan culture, the tramontana is so strong that it takes on a supernatural quality that causes people to act strangely or lose their grip with reality. Movements II and III, present a dissolution of the joint accrual of the previous section and a disruption of the collective, with individual musicians exerting more agency and improvisatory freedom. Protention is the Husserlian phenomenological anticipation of the next moment. The disruption causes us to question what is next.
Part C
Vela is a constellation in the southern sky that depicts the sails of the ship Argo from Greek Mythology. Representing a journey and evoking the open-endedness and transformational potential of ocean voyages. Movements IV, V, and VI offer the most open sections of the work. The musicians are freely improvising with each other and the electronic components to represent a journey of leaving, becoming, and returning.
Part D
Horologium is a constellation in the southern sky depicting a pendulum clock. This constellation was cataloged relatively recently by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1756. Here, Horologium represent an application of logic and parsing of understanding onto the memories of experience, an attempt to make sense of what has just transpired. Movement VII, “retending,” presents purely electronic sound creating an introspective moment that grabbles with personal memory and experience. Retention is the conceptual pair to protention. Retention is the Husserlian concept of retaining perceptual acts consciousness. Movement VIII, “mapping,” represents attempts at organizing and understanding those experiences. Movement IX, “telling,” shares these understandings.
Part E
Noctua is a former constellation that depicts an owl perched on that tail of Hydra, the water snake. The owl, a pervasive symbol throughout many mythologies, is often depicted as omens of night, death, or wisdom. Part E is divided into three movements: waning, eroding, and unearthing. Each presents an erasure, creating negative space, that aims not to represent destruction but rather a revealing.
The Cottonwood Florilegium was composed for Dana Jessen (bassoon), Vicki Ray (piano), and SPLICE Ensemble: Keith Kirchoff (piano), Adam Vidiksis (drum set), and Sam Wells (trumpet). This project would not have been possible without the collaboration of these musicians nor without the efforts, visions, and dedication of Alejandro Melendez (lighting consultant), Stephanie Lutz (lighting consultant), and Josh Sobel (conceptual consultant). I am deeply inspired by and creatively indebted to my collaborators. I hope that this work feels as much theirs as it does mine.
The entire work is performed without pause.