grandFather, composed in Chicago between August of 2012 and September of 2014, inhabits a world of musical complexity without equal in my prior or subsequent works. Although many of the compositional techniques and notational conventions employed can be traced to a careful study and consideration of the works of musical forbears and colleagues, the aesthetic justifications for their use herein are entirely personal.
The piece’s rhythmic complexity and baroque tablature notation are intended to circumvent the fluency of execution and facility usually possessed by players of a high level of technical mastery. The score’s overwrought detail and complexity, especially in the context of the bassoon’s already byzantine mechanism, also contributes to a situation of struggle in which the perform finds herself: a struggle with the instrument, a struggle with an unfamiliar notation, a struggle with inherently volatile instrumental techniques, and a struggle with the composer’s aggressively prescriptive rhythms. It is through these acts of struggle that the performer imprints their individual creative agency onto the text.
grandFather was premiered by Ben Roidl-Ward at Northwestern University’s Galvin Recital Hall on January 22, 2016.