Duration: 20’
Instrumentation: bassoon and piano
Performance Note:
A Dirge, a Dance, and a Prayer dates from the second year of the coronavirus pandemic and, while the music doesn’t reference that public health crisis (at least not directly or consciously), it does reflect my thinking on some of the day’s social and political troubles. At root, the piece explores the question of what it takes to break free from the grip of unrelenting cycles and habits, particularly of the deleterious variety.
Across its three movements, the two instruments are sometimes unified in purpose, sometimes at odds; the first two sections end in explosive breakdowns from both bassoon and piano. While the finale finds a common way out of a prospective rut, it doesn’t arrive in some sunny upland: echoes of the past intrude and the final cadence (an inversion of the opening “dirge theme”) offers the promise of a hopeful resolution but not necessarily the thing itself. Here as in the real world, the question of whether or not the “Prayer” will be answered in the affirmative remains to be seen.