Sentinels
Commissioned by Laurel Whisler in honor of her
husband,
Bruce
Sentinels was commissioned by friend and colleague
Laurel Whisler for her husband Bruce who, with Gary Malvern, gave the
premiere in the spring of 2002. Gary recorded the piece with
Ivano Iscari in Verona the following summer.
The work pays homage to the mensural advances of the trecento and may
be more bicinium than fanfare in its modality and didacticism.
Framed by echos of a martial motive, the central portion of the
composition wends it way through various configurations of perfect and
imperfect tempus and prolation, accelerating towards an abrupt
cæsura in the process. (In this sense the rhythmic
structure can be heard to collapse on itself.)
Despite my efforts to sustain a mood of celebration, the image
ever-imposed before my mind’s eye as I worked was that of two towering,
isolated individuals—shadow figures in some tragic sense—invoked, no
doubt, by the events of September 11.
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