music

SCORE

PROGRAM NOTE
I typically write music with fairly involved programmatic intentions along with forms that echo or
amplify them. However, I also enjoy music that simply unfolds a process or a ‘conceit’. Fabrication 19: Slant is a component part of a larger 32-movement cycle for various ensembles ranging from solos and duos to works for orchestra. These Fabrications explore more mechanical approaches to generating music. Each has a subtitle; a synonym of ‘fabrication’ which says something about the piece itself.

see also Fabrications

TEXT
I watched her climb into the sunset and stay there,
watching the world from the other side.

Clouds moved the other way.
The lights in cities were stars.
Deserts were the surface of the moon.

When she climbed out again, she too was backwards.
She stumbled in counterclockwise circles.
She spoke a language no one else could understand.
Time passed.
I saw that she was painfully unhappy.

One evening we sat watching the sunset, and I asked her, "Why did you return?
Why didn't you stay there?"

She didn't say anything,
only pressed a bit of moon rock into my hand,
and, standing, she fell.
Falling, she clung to the earth again with all her might
with her short fingernails and her long hair.

I watched him climb into the sunset and stay there,
watching the world from the other side.

Clouds moved the other way.
The lights in cities were stars.
Deserts were the surface of the moon.

When he climbed out again, he too was backwards.
He stumbled in counterclockwise circles.
He spoke a language no one else could understand.
Time passed.
I saw that he was painfully unhappy.

One evening we sat watching the sunset, and I asked him, "Why did you return?
Why didn't you stay there?"

He didn't say anything,
only pressed a bit of moon rock into my hand,
and, standing, he fell.
Falling, he clung to the earth again with all his might
with his short fingernails and his long hair.

Frederick Choi (b.1979)