Program Note
At its core, An Implausible Assemblage of Lost Artifacts is a piece about timbre. From the outset, I wanted to explore as many textures and combinations of instruments as possible. The result was a piece with a shifting, kaleidoscopic quality. As the music developed, I found myself embracing the kaleidoscope metaphor, imagining the piece as sonically realizing an art gallery or antique shop refracted through tinted glass. At times, the music shifts rapidly from one idea to the next. Elsewhere, the mood is almost meditative, particularly in the first and third movements, where soloists inhabit a haze of “glassy” harmonics.
While each movement has its own melodies and motives, there are several threads that run throughout the whole piece. Chief among them is the fiddle tune The Whistler of Rosslea, which manages to sneak into odd places, rhythmically and modally distorted, long before the overt presentation of the theme in the fourth movement. The tune bounces around the ensemble in a Percy Grainger-inspired modified strophic form that juxtaposes the melody against increasingly awkward accompaniments. The piece ends with the ensemble tripping over itself as the reel spirals out of control.
The four movements are as follows:
- Prologue
- Prīmus ab Ōrīs
- The Silver Weald
- Diversion: The Gangly Goat